I don’t know you but I hope wherever you are you’re safe and have a good idea of what your next steps are going to be. I’m getting increasingly distraught over what’s happening myself. It’s starting to affect my family life and I’m having a lot of trouble coping.
Venting on the internet is a way for a lot of people to come to grips with what they’re seeing. I understand. If this is what helps you cope, I won’t stop you.
Me, it’s especially difficult to see how this hatred is so self-amplifying. I see a president whose primary method of getting to where he is, is to make people hate each other to a maximum degree. I watch liberals like myself fall for it. I see how he intentionally puts armed agents in locations where he knows people will protest, then I see how those protesters are killed in the most predictable way imaginable, because they’re seen as a threat by the people with guns. Then I see the hatred get worse, the protests get larger, with more innocent people joining in, and meanwhile Trump is shipping more armed agents to the same cities.
I wish I had an answer. The answer isn’t “don’t protest”, nor is the answer “let’s all put ourselves in a position to be killed” either. I hope on some level that the images of these people getting executed is seared into enough people’s minds that Trump pays an actual political cost, but then I remember what the BLM protests turned into, and how public support tanked for what should have been an obvious issue. So whatever is going to happen, I’m not sure any of our anger is actually going to help. But I don’t really have an answer. I’m sorry.
My reasons for flagging topics like this is it just fits a pattern of “administration does something abhorrent, people get mad, social media amplifies the anger, it turns into real world deaths.” I really don’t like seeing this happen. I don’t like the hatred amplification that the internet is doing to my country. I don’t know what else to say.
I don't hate you. I'm frustrated with your mental gymnastics. Because your entire thread here boils down to this
> it just fits a pattern of “administration does something abhorrent, people get mad, social media amplifies the anger, it turns into real world deaths
I need you to pay attention to how you're writing. You are laying the deaths of these people squarely on the left for how they react to abhorrence. And if you're going to blame people on the internet for these deaths, you should provide something concrete.
Please outline what bait you think the left took that caused the death of Renee Nicole Good. Explain what "Hatred" was leading us to this moment. Because her last words were "That's fine dude, I'm not mad at you." We must have a fundamental difference of opinion on cause and effect. Because what I'm seeing is a bunch of untrained goons getting frustrated with people and shooting them in anger, knowing that nobody can stop them, and most people making excuses for it.
The idea that the choice is up to us whether we get brutalized is insulting, and frankly, I've seen it being used to excuse political violence for far too long. The idea that the best thing for us now would be to bury these deaths as 6th page news is frustrating, because as someone actually close to this, I've talked with many victims of ICE, and universally, all of them are more upset with the silence and indifference than they are with ICE themselves.
Please, please, please tone it down. Really. This is the amplification I’m talking about. You say “I don’t hate you” and then spew a bunch of hate at me. I’m having a lot of trouble not getting extremely angry right now at your reply because you’re taking the least charitable possible interpretation of every fucking thing I’m saying. This is so fucking maddening. I’m going to reply but please understand this is fucking killing me.
> You are laying the deaths of these people squarely on the left for how they react to abhorrence
> Please outline what bait you think the left took that caused the death of Renee Nicole Good
> Explain what "Hatred" was leading us to this moment.
> The idea that the choice is up to us whether we get brutalized
> The idea that the best thing for us now would be to bury these deaths as 6th page news
I am going to reply to all of this in a chunk. And I want to picture in your mind that I’m someone in your life that you respect (friend, neighbor, loved one, doesn’t matter) talking. Because otherwise I’m just a handle on a forum, and faceless, like the car driving in front of you when you have road rage. It’s so easy to forget we are human beings having a conversation here. Please remember that.
The hate amplification is not causing these deaths. I never said that. I’m saying it leads to them, in a sense that it puts people in the position where it’s going to happen. A death can have nearly infinite things that can lead to it, in the sense that if any one of those things didn’t happen, things could have gone differently.
This is a very important distinction to make. It’s the difference between giving your daughter advice for “don’t dress like that when you go out, there are a lot of dangerous people out there” and saying “it was her fault she was raped”. The former is practical advice you might give to someone you care about, and the latter is the abhorrent victim blaming you’re casually accusing me of doing.
The hatred leads to deaths because there are armed men who are itching to kill liberals, and the hatred makes people think “I ought to go put my car in the way of them.” (I’m not referring to how Renee moved her car in obvious compliance with the officer telling her to, I’m talking about the fact that she had her car there in the first place.) Renee herself probably didn’t have any hatred in her heart at that moment, but I can nearly guarantee she had a lot of conversations just like the ones others are having here, where they look at what’s happening and, in an echo chamber, escalate the rhetoric they’re using. It may go from “ICE is wrong” to “ICE is kidnapping people” to “ICE is the gestapo” to “We need to stop them” to “let’s stop them” to “ok I’ll bring a gun just in case” in the blink of an eye (the gun part being something that’s more relevant to yesterday’s story than the Renee one.)
No, it’s not the left’s fault they’re getting brutalized. It’s the brutalizer’s fault. It’s not fault I’m referring to, it’s “if things would have happened differently this death may have been avoided.” One of those things that could have happened differently is for people to choose a different avenue than directly interacting with the armed men.
No, I don’t have a better alternative than that in mind at the moment, I’m sorry. I know people have to do something, but there has to be something that is less likely to result in deaths than directly interfering with the armed men themselves (yes, filming isn’t interfering, but I dunno, get a zoom lens and maybe do it from farther away. Because if you’re standing right in front of them it very much does seem like interfering. Or in Renee’s case, maybe don’t intentionally park your car in front of the ice agents.)
I don’t know you but I hope wherever you are you’re safe and have a good idea of what your next steps are going to be. I’m getting increasingly distraught over what’s happening myself. It’s starting to affect my family life and I’m having a lot of trouble coping.
Venting on the internet is a way for a lot of people to come to grips with what they’re seeing. I understand. If this is what helps you cope, I won’t stop you.
Me, it’s especially difficult to see how this hatred is so self-amplifying. I see a president whose primary method of getting to where he is, is to make people hate each other to a maximum degree. I watch liberals like myself fall for it. I see how he intentionally puts armed agents in locations where he knows people will protest, then I see how those protesters are killed in the most predictable way imaginable, because they’re seen as a threat by the people with guns. Then I see the hatred get worse, the protests get larger, with more innocent people joining in, and meanwhile Trump is shipping more armed agents to the same cities.
I wish I had an answer. The answer isn’t “don’t protest”, nor is the answer “let’s all put ourselves in a position to be killed” either. I hope on some level that the images of these people getting executed is seared into enough people’s minds that Trump pays an actual political cost, but then I remember what the BLM protests turned into, and how public support tanked for what should have been an obvious issue. So whatever is going to happen, I’m not sure any of our anger is actually going to help. But I don’t really have an answer. I’m sorry.
My reasons for flagging topics like this is it just fits a pattern of “administration does something abhorrent, people get mad, social media amplifies the anger, it turns into real world deaths.” I really don’t like seeing this happen. I don’t like the hatred amplification that the internet is doing to my country. I don’t know what else to say.
I don't hate you. I'm frustrated with your mental gymnastics. Because your entire thread here boils down to this
> it just fits a pattern of “administration does something abhorrent, people get mad, social media amplifies the anger, it turns into real world deaths
I need you to pay attention to how you're writing. You are laying the deaths of these people squarely on the left for how they react to abhorrence. And if you're going to blame people on the internet for these deaths, you should provide something concrete.
Please outline what bait you think the left took that caused the death of Renee Nicole Good. Explain what "Hatred" was leading us to this moment. Because her last words were "That's fine dude, I'm not mad at you." We must have a fundamental difference of opinion on cause and effect. Because what I'm seeing is a bunch of untrained goons getting frustrated with people and shooting them in anger, knowing that nobody can stop them, and most people making excuses for it.
The idea that the choice is up to us whether we get brutalized is insulting, and frankly, I've seen it being used to excuse political violence for far too long. The idea that the best thing for us now would be to bury these deaths as 6th page news is frustrating, because as someone actually close to this, I've talked with many victims of ICE, and universally, all of them are more upset with the silence and indifference than they are with ICE themselves.
This.
Please, please, please tone it down. Really. This is the amplification I’m talking about. You say “I don’t hate you” and then spew a bunch of hate at me. I’m having a lot of trouble not getting extremely angry right now at your reply because you’re taking the least charitable possible interpretation of every fucking thing I’m saying. This is so fucking maddening. I’m going to reply but please understand this is fucking killing me.
> You are laying the deaths of these people squarely on the left for how they react to abhorrence
> Please outline what bait you think the left took that caused the death of Renee Nicole Good
> Explain what "Hatred" was leading us to this moment.
> The idea that the choice is up to us whether we get brutalized
> The idea that the best thing for us now would be to bury these deaths as 6th page news
I am going to reply to all of this in a chunk. And I want to picture in your mind that I’m someone in your life that you respect (friend, neighbor, loved one, doesn’t matter) talking. Because otherwise I’m just a handle on a forum, and faceless, like the car driving in front of you when you have road rage. It’s so easy to forget we are human beings having a conversation here. Please remember that.
The hate amplification is not causing these deaths. I never said that. I’m saying it leads to them, in a sense that it puts people in the position where it’s going to happen. A death can have nearly infinite things that can lead to it, in the sense that if any one of those things didn’t happen, things could have gone differently.
This is a very important distinction to make. It’s the difference between giving your daughter advice for “don’t dress like that when you go out, there are a lot of dangerous people out there” and saying “it was her fault she was raped”. The former is practical advice you might give to someone you care about, and the latter is the abhorrent victim blaming you’re casually accusing me of doing.
The hatred leads to deaths because there are armed men who are itching to kill liberals, and the hatred makes people think “I ought to go put my car in the way of them.” (I’m not referring to how Renee moved her car in obvious compliance with the officer telling her to, I’m talking about the fact that she had her car there in the first place.) Renee herself probably didn’t have any hatred in her heart at that moment, but I can nearly guarantee she had a lot of conversations just like the ones others are having here, where they look at what’s happening and, in an echo chamber, escalate the rhetoric they’re using. It may go from “ICE is wrong” to “ICE is kidnapping people” to “ICE is the gestapo” to “We need to stop them” to “let’s stop them” to “ok I’ll bring a gun just in case” in the blink of an eye (the gun part being something that’s more relevant to yesterday’s story than the Renee one.)
No, it’s not the left’s fault they’re getting brutalized. It’s the brutalizer’s fault. It’s not fault I’m referring to, it’s “if things would have happened differently this death may have been avoided.” One of those things that could have happened differently is for people to choose a different avenue than directly interacting with the armed men.
No, I don’t have a better alternative than that in mind at the moment, I’m sorry. I know people have to do something, but there has to be something that is less likely to result in deaths than directly interfering with the armed men themselves (yes, filming isn’t interfering, but I dunno, get a zoom lens and maybe do it from farther away. Because if you’re standing right in front of them it very much does seem like interfering. Or in Renee’s case, maybe don’t intentionally park your car in front of the ice agents.)
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