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On May 26 2022 13:02 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 12:50 ChristianS wrote:
Fascism is always difficult and controversial to define, but I’m not sure your distinction has clarified much. There’s no fundamental requirement of paramilitary forces, and it certainly doesn’t have to be against the current government. By that definition a “fascist government” would be a contradiction in terms! Not even the third reich would qualify! I'd say that your example would be a fascist organization that succeeded into becoming the ruling government. Before Hitler took power, he commanded the SA (the paramilitary arm) and then instituted the SS (the loyalists and party member fraction within the military).
So once they took power they ceased to be fascist? Otherwise it would appear there's no requirement that fascists be a paramilitary opposing the current government. Meanwhile not all paramilitaries opposing the current government are fascist, so it would appear your "definition" is anything but.
Not that fascism is especially easy to define, mind you. The term derives from the ancient fasces symbol generally associated with strength and power, so sometimes people will define fascism as a belief system which worships power and physical force. For instance several years back a speaker at the Republican National Convention (Scott Walker IIRC?) said something along the lines of "we should revere our soldiers and police," which some observers pointed out is, quite literally, fascist. That's not that useful, though, because we obviously use the term "fascism" to refer to a constellation of symptoms (autocratic rule, ultra-nationalism, ethnocentrism, cult of action, etc.) that are not inherent in the idea of "revering our soldiers and police," whether that idea is right or wrong aside. Wikipedia chooses to define it historically, which is not especially useful in deciding whether any new political movement is or isn't fascist.
Some comedian (I forget which) once asked if the reason every picture of Bigfoot always seems to come out blurry is because Bigfoot is, in fact, blurry. Maybe fascism is difficult to define ideologically because it is, fundamentally, ideologically blurry. There's a Sartre quote about anti-Semites that's gotten referenced on this form quite a few times that might be relevant here, if you substitute "fascists" for "anti-Semites":
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.
Fascists are illiberal. They don't believe in democracy, or rational debate, or "good faith" discussion, so it's a bit dense to try to define it as an ideology you can debate with. It might be more useful to think of it less as an ideology or system of government, and more as an aesthetic: fascists "believe" in strength, masculinity, and action because those are viscerally appealing to them, not based on some first-principles argumentation. That's part of why their policy goals can be so fluid: in 2016 Trump was proudly announcing his administration would be a friend to LGBTQ people, and they cheered. A few years later he banned trans people from serving in the military, and they cheered. Now they're cheering an agenda of outright persecution of trans people, in between calling people "groomers" and blaming shootings on some random trans person on the internet. There's no coherent ideology here, just aggression.
All of this is to say: no, I don't think it would be useful to present discussion to define fascism as paramilitary organizations working against the form of government
Fascism is a complex beast, and I think artificially restricting the definition will obfuscate rather than illuminate.
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Once in power they became a fascist government, ie dictator for life with no option for recourse and party members in key positions. I don't think it's that blurry when you consider that part.
Rallying against minorities is a common strategy to channel popular discontent into support for a movement which is not exclusive to fascism. In the US it's in the interest of both parties to define and promote issues that aren't related to problems they both caused to protect the currently dysfunctional two party system, which gives them an incentive to not solve problems but rather prolong and exploit them.
To me as an outside observer it looks like Reps and Dems just alternate playing good cop and bad cop.
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I love how the more conservative types I read argue for more metal doors, armed security guards, fences and so on to make schools secure. Essentially it sounds like a prison.
This is just so dystopian.
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On May 26 2022 14:43 Velr wrote:
I love how the more conservative types I read argue for more metal doors, armed security guards, fences and so on to make schools secure. Essentially it sounds like a prison.
This is just so dystopian.
"What can we do, while keeping the total rate of gun purchases flat if not curved upwards? That is what we should do"
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Northern Ireland26508 Posts
I don’t think a sizeable paramilitary presence is a prerequisite for fascism, although it tends to come with the territory.
For me fascism is imbued with some overriding cultural traits, some very common themes.
I could see some hypothetical state where the police and military are revered as keepers of order, of a functioning state of certain values, kind of how the US Constitution is perceived. Whereas in fascism, crudely speaking they are more perceived as bulwarks against various undesirables, themselves defined by whatever cultural conditions define x fascist state.
As Christian said, I don’t know where the line is, but there probably is a line whereupon wholesale political violence with widespread participation can occur.
It is one of the great complacencies of our age, and indeed I assume prior ages that progress is linear, and every ugly hurdle humanity clears in its evolution is a one and done thing.
I’m extremely doubtful that we’ll see the US becoming a full-blown fascist state, but things can still get rather ugly long before that state of affairs is reached.
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Northern Ireland26508 Posts
On May 26 2022 13:02 plasmidghost wrote:
I have no idea how to properly communicate how terrified I am.
I haven't even expressed a fraction of my true despair at our position. The far-right has targeted us. It was posted earlier, but far-right figureheads like Candace Owens have spent the entire day blaming trans people for the shooting in Uvalde because of neonazis on 4chan maliciously pushing that and it's been picked up by GOP politicians like Paul Gosar and similar. This is going to end with us being killed because of this rhetoric.
The entire GOP is targeting us and we're not being fought for or cared about by many outside of the community. All the anti-trans bills are being passed throughout the US and the federal government has barely done anything to stop it. Biden had the DOJ fight against the bills, but that literally doesn't stop states from targeting us. In Montana, the state was ordered to allow sex markers to be updated without sterilization, so they decided to not only defy the court order, but now forbid birth certificates from having sex markers changed for any reason, which will fuck over trans people applying for Social Security, passports, and the like. No one federally is preventing this.
Despite violence inflicted on us, we cannot fight back because that will just cause even more violence on us and make spineless liberals say both sides are bad. Look at what's happened in Palestine. Israeli occupiers are allowed to destroy Palestinian homes, imprison Palestinian citizens, and murder Palestinian journalists and because Palestinians try to fight back and resist, their suffering and genocide is justified by nearly all of the American government. This is going to happen to trans people should any of us fight back.
That is indeed worrying
Will not being able to change birth certificate sex actually preclude application for social security etc, or just make it more difficult?
As bad as these laws are, and indicative of ill intent, for me they’re less worrying than the wider cultural push that they’re at the forefront of.
The law may, and frequently is an ass. The people around us form much of our daily reality. And what we’re seeing is a long-standing and active cultivation of at best disgust, and at worst outright hatred of the trans community.
It’s been a long term process, one in which people who don’t care for a woman’s bodily autonomy, and mock women’s sport suddenly care about the integrity of the latter. A subject I feel this thread deals with earnestly, but many absolutely use it as a thin edge of an anti-trans wedge.
And recently that has escalated with a grossly irresponsible and erroneous attribution of blame for a massacre onto the trans community, one so egregious and obviously wrong that I just outright don’t believe the commentators and legislators doing it did not do so deliberately.
If it were an earnest mistake you’d see a full and rather grovelling apology.
As you well know, the trans community are already grossly disproportionate recipients of violence, and I can earnestly see this getting actively worse before it gets better.
I believe you’ve been accused of overreacting in seeking to emigrate in the past here, from where I’m sitting you are making a sensible decision, albeit regrettable in its necessity.
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Ah, yes, the "states rights, until the states want something I don't like."
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The situation in the US is gonna come down to some large scale violence at some point, they're making it reaaaal inevitable.
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If you change nothing when people peacefully protest you can't complain when people stop peacefully protesting.
Ows didn't bring any changes to better the economic situation for the young at the time. The woman's match didn't save women rights. All the George Floyd protests that were peaceful got ignored and nothing changed.
The Supreme Court justices should be getting security details if they except people to be happy with their rights being taken away from them.
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Obama, you complete and total idiot. How in the world does this make sense. Why not just make separate Tweets. "Yeah but" during this time are you kidding me
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On May 27 2022 01:27 Zambrah wrote:
The situation in the US is gonna come down to some large scale violence at some point, they're making it reaaaal inevitable.
But I heard the national temperature was going to start cooling down, now that conservatives are getting what they want.
/s
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On May 26 2022 11:30 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them? Sorry, I typed most of a response and then work stuff came up and kept me busy all day. I don’t expect you to change anyone’s mind, and in general I don’t expect posts on TL to have almost any effect on US political outcomes. Also, to be clear, “inflammatory rhetoric” has only a little to do with the sort of stuff I’m afraid is inevitable. I don’t think “we live in a police state” is useful analysis at present, although I think a lot of the stuff people associate with police states is more present than is commonly admitted. I think “getting more fascist every day” is obviously true but it’s not especially useful phrasing either - it’d be nice to know what terrible things will happen when, which is obviously a much harder prediction to make. But peaceful coexistence keeps looking less and less possible. When the other side wants to arrest you, take your kids away from you*, criminalize your whole way of life it gets harder and harder to maintain “but THESE tactics are out of bounds.” So tactics escalate, revenge cycles make each escalation easier to justify (e.g. “court packing is okay because the other guys already shrunk the court until they could install their own guy!”) and it’s not clear how de-escalation could even happen. Meanwhile nobody’s under any illusions that the government actually has the ability to enact meaningful change anymore. Whatever political solution you want to see to major problems we’re facing (universal healthcare? UBI? Cap and trade? A wall on the southern border? Defunding or even reforming the police? Gun control? Election integrity protections?) it’s obvious to everyone it won’t happen in the next, say, 5 years. The actual issues people are fighting over for the midterms are just culture war bullshit (CRT, GRT, etc.) that make no pretense of solving anybody’s issues with healthcare or climate change or immigration or anything else obviously big and important and bad. Like, I don’t know what it takes for people to, say, start killing each other at scale over political conflict, but I’m confident the limit exists, and we’re moving toward it, and I see no indication we will or even can decelerate. Like, my goal here isn’t to call you out so much as figure out if you see more hope than I do, and if so where you’re finding it! *I see in the intervening hours there’s been some dispute about whether any trans kids have actually been taken away by CPS yet. My understanding was no, since Abbott instructed his administration to do so but got blocked by courts. I think Idaho’s anti-trans bill also criminalizes various aspects of affirming your kid’s gender; imprisoning the parents necessarily involves taking them away from their kids, but I’m going on recollection and I’m not sure where the Idaho bill ended up. I can research it more later if we actually think the specifics are important here.
People were saying the same thing for years and years about Trump. We're on a clear path to fascism, he is the next Hitler, yadda yadda. I rolled my eyes at them as well. The climax of that was the January 6 insurrection. Some people see that as an attempted coup d'etat where our Democracy was nearly overthrown. I'm not nearly as confident that the country with the most powerful military ever assembled was nearly toppled by an army of fat old men that look like they just finished the $8.99 lunch special at Hometown Buffet. It seemed like they snapped back to reality as soon as one of them took a bullet to the chest. Now Trump's star is dying. You might not know it from this thread because everyone here still insists on talking about this guy every day, but Trump is becoming less relevant every day and that is reflected in the polls.
Also the fact that the culture war bullshit are the big things most people are fighting over makes political conflict even more unlikely, in my opinion. I don't see the 2nd civil war being fought over which bathroom people can use. The biggest issue in the country right now aren't the real issues or the culture war bullshit. The biggest issue is who deserves to win the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. Our fat apathetic populace is still a far way from violent revolution.
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Northern Ireland26508 Posts
On May 27 2022 06:04 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 11:30 ChristianS wrote:On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them? Sorry, I typed most of a response and then work stuff came up and kept me busy all day. I don’t expect you to change anyone’s mind, and in general I don’t expect posts on TL to have almost any effect on US political outcomes. Also, to be clear, “inflammatory rhetoric” has only a little to do with the sort of stuff I’m afraid is inevitable. I don’t think “we live in a police state” is useful analysis at present, although I think a lot of the stuff people associate with police states is more present than is commonly admitted. I think “getting more fascist every day” is obviously true but it’s not especially useful phrasing either - it’d be nice to know what terrible things will happen when, which is obviously a much harder prediction to make. But peaceful coexistence keeps looking less and less possible. When the other side wants to arrest you, take your kids away from you*, criminalize your whole way of life it gets harder and harder to maintain “but THESE tactics are out of bounds.” So tactics escalate, revenge cycles make each escalation easier to justify (e.g. “court packing is okay because the other guys already shrunk the court until they could install their own guy!”) and it’s not clear how de-escalation could even happen. Meanwhile nobody’s under any illusions that the government actually has the ability to enact meaningful change anymore. Whatever political solution you want to see to major problems we’re facing (universal healthcare? UBI? Cap and trade? A wall on the southern border? Defunding or even reforming the police? Gun control? Election integrity protections?) it’s obvious to everyone it won’t happen in the next, say, 5 years. The actual issues people are fighting over for the midterms are just culture war bullshit (CRT, GRT, etc.) that make no pretense of solving anybody’s issues with healthcare or climate change or immigration or anything else obviously big and important and bad. Like, I don’t know what it takes for people to, say, start killing each other at scale over political conflict, but I’m confident the limit exists, and we’re moving toward it, and I see no indication we will or even can decelerate. Like, my goal here isn’t to call you out so much as figure out if you see more hope than I do, and if so where you’re finding it! *I see in the intervening hours there’s been some dispute about whether any trans kids have actually been taken away by CPS yet. My understanding was no, since Abbott instructed his administration to do so but got blocked by courts. I think Idaho’s anti-trans bill also criminalizes various aspects of affirming your kid’s gender; imprisoning the parents necessarily involves taking them away from their kids, but I’m going on recollection and I’m not sure where the Idaho bill ended up. I can research it more later if we actually think the specifics are important here. People were saying the same thing for years and years about Trump. We're on a clear path to fascism, he is the next Hitler, yadda yadda. I rolled my eyes at them as well. The climax of that was the January 6 insurrection. Some people see that as an attempted coup d'etat where our Democracy was nearly overthrown. I'm not nearly as confident that the country with the most powerful military ever assembled was nearly toppled by an army of fat old men that look like they just finished the $8.99 lunch special at Hometown Buffet. It seemed like they snapped back to reality as soon as one of them took a bullet to the chest. Now Trump's star is dying. You might not know it from this thread because everyone here still insists on talking about this guy every day, but Trump is becoming less relevant every day and that is reflected in the polls. Also the fact that the culture war bullshit are the big things most people are fighting over makes political conflict even more unlikely, in my opinion. I don't see the 2nd civil war being fought over which bathroom people can use. The biggest issue in the country right now aren't the real issues or the culture war bullshit. The biggest issue is who deserves to win the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. Our fat apathetic populace is still a far way from violent revolution.
It was an attempted coup d'etat though.
Whether it was likely to succeed or not is not the point, that it happened, and that there have been fuck all consequences for the occurrence subsequently are the main bones of contention. The latter is much more damning, to my sensibilities anyway.
There was/is some undoubted hyperbole, I’ll not deny that but on the flip side for every other ‘overreaction’, that thing happened.
Trump’s personal star may be dying, as to whether the areas he dragged the party to persist is very much a wait and see prospect. I’m seeing fuck all evidence that the party is pulling away from the kind of elements Trump injected, but they may in time.
I would wholeheartedly agree that violent revolution or a second civil war are remote propositions, but none of the aforementioned is good.
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A series of tweets paints an interesting and sad potential scenario
If I were one of the parents, I’d be demanding an autopsy to determine the nature of the injuries and whether you can tell if the shot came from near or far away.
Also, props to this woman:
Right now I’m having a hard time determining what value the police contributed.
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I assume everyone understands the overwhelming drive of a parent to rescue their children, but keeping civilians out of an active shooting zone is a pretty standard action for police.
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On May 27 2022 07:18 Gorsameth wrote:
I assume everyone understands the overwhelming drive of a parent to rescue their children, but keeping civilians out of an active shooting zone is a pretty standard action for police.
It is, and it makes sense, but she shouldn't feel like she has to contemplate entering an actively dangerous zone either, just to feel like there's a chance that someone might be able to save her kid. As far as I can tell, between shouting to kids who were hiding and blowing their cover, containing the shooter in the classroom with the kids, and doing fuck all to actually stem the death and chaos, they contributed negative value to the situation.
As law enforcement is want to do, after all.
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United States43821 Posts
On May 27 2022 07:18 Gorsameth wrote:
I assume everyone understands the overwhelming drive of a parent to rescue their children, but keeping civilians out of an active shooting zone is a pretty standard action for police.
In as much as they may interfere with the police response to the active shooter. In this case the police response to the active shooter was to wait for him to run out of kids.
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EPT
