brandon

I heard a saying once (I cannot remember the provenance) that could be paraphrased like: “The liberal is someone who is for all movements except the current movement; against all wars except the current war.”

There are two important points:

1. Every major movement in history has incorporated elements of violence;
2. Which movements we retroactively consider as violent is determined by sociological consensus.

For example, the American civil rights movement is today considered by people to have been largely non-violent. However at the time the movement’s opponents definitely thought of, and portrayed it as a violent enterprise.

Opponents of a movement will always portray that movement as violent. The status-quo consensus perspective on historical protests is written by the victors. Therefore, the hypothesis that “non-violent” protests are more likely to succeed than “violent” ones is self-fulfilling. When protest movements succeed we are less likely to consider them “violent”.

I was chastised by a random person at my local protest for joining in a chant of “Fuck Donald Trump”.

Many of these people are still so attached to the idea of civility politics that they don’t even want anyone to curse.

That’s because they’d rather have a serial sex pest than a s̸̼̹̼͂͐̚ò̵̳͇̝͍̲̪̥͎̆͆͋͊͘͜ͅc̵̡̤̰̳͙̱̰̞̟̈́̈́͝i̶͕͕̹͆̃̈́̽͗̓ḁ̶̯̠̳̅͌̿̋̈́̐͠͝l̶̡̟̮͕̖͉̪̺̇͗ḭ̵͎̲̇ş̶͙̱̼̮̮̼̜̮̃̄́͒̐̒͗̚t̴͙̏̌̈́̎̃̀̀͋͝

It’s a $5M gold card visa program. I don’t think they’ve made any details about the scheme public yet.

I empathize with the hope that the national guard would side with protesters in violation of their orders, but is there any historical precedent for that?

On the other hand, there have been plenty of historical confrontations where the national guard has engaged in violence against demonstrators.

Maybe it can be different this time, but I don’t know.

Typically this position is referred to as ‘Lieutenant Governor’, and every state I know of has one.

They are referring to some fringe “tax protester” conspiracy theories which dispute that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments#Sixteenth_Amendment_ratification

Suffice it to say, these ‘theories’ have been largely rejected, including by the states themselves, and by the SCOTUS.