The Trump Post-Presidency and Insurrection

I'm not sure that a significant proportion of the 2020 BLM protests were violent. Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the site of the George Floyd murder, was hit hard, but I think most BLM protests were peaceful. The article At least 25 Americans were killed during protests and political unrest in 2020 | Protest | The Guardian uses the database of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project to conclude that nine people were killed during BLM protests during 2020, which is nine people too many but nowhere near the number one would expect had thousands of the protests been violent. The article continues:

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ACLED found that the overwhelming majority of the more than 9.000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations that took place across the US after the killing of George Floyd have been peaceful. News reports at the height of demonstrations over Floyd’s killing cited dozens of deaths in connection with protests, but many of those turned out to be examples of deadly crimes carried out in the vicinity of protests, rather than directly related to the demonstrations themselves, the researchers concluded.

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Police violence against the BLM protestors should also be remembered.--Percy

Hi Taq. I had to think about that.It wasn't Black Leftists Matter.I don't see why a mass protest movement by a racial minority subject to being shot (unarmed) or choked to death by a cop is a liberal responsibility. As I recall, until recently, violence at political protests, including during the BLM protests, was condemned on all sides. Conservatives pressed liberals to condemn the movement itself, using their refusal to paint them as pro-violence and anti-police. Now, of course, since 1/6/2020, the GOP supports violent protest and considers the Capitol police and the FBI to be thugs. And as Percy suggests above, the police response to BLM protests was sometimes excessive and provocative.Perhaps one could argue that liberals should not encourage the belief that racist policing is wrong and that the wronged have the right to protest. That seems contrary to both the truth and the Constitution.The stronger argument is that it is conservatives who bear a moral burden for championing quasi-military policing and blocking reforms that would address the institutionalized racism. The heavily armed police presence for the D.C. BLM protests vs the late, weak response to the 1/6 insurrectionists is instructive. As more than one pundit noted, a thousand angry black men smashing their way into the Capitol would have been shot. It's fascinating to recall that 1/6 got a rehearsal in November 2000 with the Brooks Brothers Riot, when busloads of GOP operatives stormed (yes, including violence) the Miami-Dade County recount and succeeded in stopping it; thus there was time for Bush to win a SCOTUS stay of the recount, on the grounds it might cause him irreparable harm, and later SCOTUS could rule there was no time for a recount.That cast has reassembled. Be afraid.

The debates and discussions about the BLM movement were strongly correlated with partisan politics. I don't know of any polls, but I would be absolutely surprised if the people in those protests were more than 5% Trump voters. Here in the PNW there were completely zany takeovers in Portland and Seattle, and again, I highly doubt those were Trump voters.All I was trying to point out is that crazy is not limited to just to conservatism. I think there is certainly a difference in quantity, however. I also think there is a difference in kind between the BLM movement and the 1/6 insurrection. It's one thing to protest excessive police brutality. It is quite another to use violence as a way of stopping the transfer of power in a democracy.

Brooks Brothers Riot was in 2000 not 2020. Typo

I hear "Brooks Brothers Riot" and all I can picture in my head is a bunch of yuppies in overpriced suits getting into a slap fight.

Yep, me too. This was about the same time as Enron collapsed there were protests about that.I always thought it was too bad they didn't name it "Black Lives Matter, Too!"

Fair enough. That's what I meant when I said we have kooks on the left.But I can list a number of right wing movements that are good candidates for nurturing assassins. Proud Boys, Sovereign Citizens, militias, MAGA -- folks filled with racial and partisan rage and an obvious or even announced proclivity to violence.There's nothing like that on the left.By the way, I don't consider myself a leftist.I'm orthagonal. Everyone is wrong.

That was the spirit of it, but I doubt the "Too" would have improved their reception on the right, which is a racist monolith.

Gimme a front row seat and a tub of popcorn ... kinda like watching Speaker Johnson and the Keystone Congress.

As I have posted in FB more than once, if you're going to add another letter to the acronym, make it an 'A', as in "Black Lives Also Matter".Police bullets and all...

I made a mistake. This was supposed to be in Phat Unplugged.

Taken to Phat’s thread

Careful, someone might confuse you with a Libertarian.

For anyone with a familiarity with the English language, the "too" is implied. No one accuses people at a 5K race to support breast cancer patients of being against those with prostate cancer. It is interesting that a certain faction of our political landscape think civil rights are a zero sum game.

I caucus with the lefties.