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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

I believe it's also occasionally brought up that the public was generally on the side of the National Guard re: the Kent State Shootings.

The public sucks sometimes.

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If you throw rocks at a military unit and then chase them as they try to retreat, you’re fair game. Throwing rocks is no small matter. A single blow from a rock can kill a man. Not to mention that this was part of a series of demonstrations that had already devolved into outright rioting.

That's funny you say that. You're literally describing the Boston Massacre which I think most Americans would side with the colonists on.

However, no less than future President John Adams defended the British soldiers in court! And of the eight British soldiers charged with manslaughter, Adams got six acquitted and two got the minor (for the time) punishment of branding their thumbs.

I'm an American citizen, and ever since I learned about the Boston Massacre in high school I've thought the British troops were unjustly maligned.

Of course, I also don't think the Revolution was a morally-justified war, so I guess I'm an outlier.

It's surprising how far the "American" version of the revolutionary war has spread, but it's probably because the British didn't care that much and afterwards not pissing off a friendly partner was more important.

Much of what is "taught" about the revolutionary war is obviously one-sided bullshit.

I was talking to some American friends the other day about the Boston Tea Party. It was recently propped up by the ACLU as a proud heritage moment of American protest. But my understanding is that it was a riot involving theft and destruction of property. I don’t think the seizure and destruction of the contents of, say, an Amazon Delivery Van would be seen the same way.

As a non-American with no real motivation to see any specific narrative be promoted, it feels like American history often leans heavily on “the ends justify the means.”

There is a difference between targeted violence and destruction of property as a means to exert economic pressure on a trading entity, and untargeted violence and destruction of property as a means to express your displeasure with current life. The historical claim of the Boston Tea Party rioters is that they broke a padlock and paid for a new one, as the padlock was personal property; the rest of the cargo was dumped into the harbor and ruined deliberately.

If someone was protesting Amazon, or the government's protection of Amazon, and as part of their protest they seized and destroyed the contents of an Amazon delivery van, they would be demonstrating a viable and possibly effective method of hurting Amazon (although you'd have to destroy a lot of delivery vans.)

The fact of the matter is that there are no governments that exist by the full consent of the governed. The only way for a "fully justified" government to exist is for no government to exist. The American revolution was no more or less justified than the formation of the Ottoman empire, or of Egypt during the time of the pharaohs.

Would the contents of the Amazon delivery van end up in the Boston Harbor or on ebay?

I personally wouldn't shed a tear over the seizure and destruction of the contents of an Amazon Delivery Van.

Most Americans have absolutely no idea about what happened during the Boston Massacre except "British Bad", which is exactly what the propaganda wanted.

The Boston Massacre was bullshit. John Adams defended the soldiers in court and had them acquitted.

I think their acquittal says more about the court system than of the incident that led to the trial. With a good lawyer, you have always been able to get away with murder.

> Some Kent residents raised four fingers when they passed each other in the street, a silent signal that meant, “At least we got four of them.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/04/19/girl-kent...

As long as they're walking yes, but if they're inside tanks or sufficient armored vehicles then they shouldn't respond with lethal force or at all.

Well geez, really glad that killing a few students defused that series of demonstrations!

Err, wait, it didn't accomplish that at all.

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