Official Off Topic Discussion Thread #1
- Thread starter Chrisplosion
- Start date
Today Trump condemned violent groups in Charlottesville that supported him but the media forgot Obama never condemned violence by his supporters. Heck, BLM even visited the White House.
He caved to pressure from those who demanded that he condemn certain groups when the fact of the matter is that the protestors were peaceful until they were engaged by BLM and antifa types.
All the rhetoric being blown about yet no one is saying a thing about freedom of speech and expression.You don't have to like or agree with what someone else is saying but their right to say it must be respected.
The Constitution does not mean anything to the groups mentioned above if it does not pertain to them.
hello; I have been looking for more information about how the ruckus got started. I missed much of the news coverage so far and the little I have seen has been focusing on opinions about what president Trump said and how he said it.
Other than that from what little I have seen the white groups have been getting all the blame. I do not yet know who should be blamed. There are three or more of these white groups being named and it is not clear to me which ones are the problem. Sorta seems like all are being lumped together.
I do not know yet if the guy who used the car to run down people is a part of one of the groups. Even if he is or is not he did a very wrong thing and may he get exactly what he deserves.
I have not seen much video so far. What I have seen is some footage of a brawl where both sides are going at each other. It seems both sides of the fight brought some clubs. I am a bit confused as to why exclusively so far one side is being labeled as "haters" and not the other. Both sides brought cudgel type weapons, so don't both deserve to be given the hater label? Maybe I missed something. As I said so far I have not seen much so perhaps there is more that will explain things better.
Is it that the white group(s) wanted to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee sitting on Traveler and were confronted by an opposing group who started trouble?
Is it that the white group(s) wanted to stir up trouble and used the statue removal protest as a way to lure in otherwise peaceful opposition?
Is some other thing going on?
I will have some time to catch up on the news but am not too confident I will find much in the way of straight information. The spin, bias and talking points are likely already well in place.
This an extraordinarily complex situation, and as such will be misrepresented and simplified by the media.
The Charlottesville clash was precipitated by the Charlottesville City Council changing the name of Robert E Lee Park to Emancipation Park and taking down the Robert E Lee statue.
The Charlottesville City Council is fully in their right to do this, and conversely individuals who disagree with the decision are fully in their right to protest this decision.
The legacy of the Confederacy is very complicated. In one sense the Confederacy was based on defense of the racist institution of slavery, and in another sense based on state's rights.
Robert E Lee believed at the outset that secession from the Union to defend slavery was not a good idea, but he found himself choosing to take the side of Virginia in the impending war with the United States.
For some, Robert E Lee represents the racist subjugation of African Americans, for others he represents the defense of Southern independence from the federal government.
There's no doubt that there were white nationalists who came to protest the removal of the statue. Their views were on display in the form of racist signs and symbols in today's clash. However, there is no doubt some who protest the removal of the statue, who don't hold racist views but see the Robert E Lee statue as a symbol of Virginia and the South and the effort to cleanse the South of Confederate symbols as a politically-correct campaign to white-wash history.
As for the counter-protesters, these too likely had a mixture of groups and intentions. For some, they came to legitimately protest what they see as a racist campaign to defend the Confederacy. However there is no doubt that the anarchist/Marxist group Antifa came not to protest, but to forcefully/violently prevent the legal assembly of statue removal protesters.
The pro-Robert E Lee statue protesters obviously anticipated Antifa blocking them so they brought shields and weapons to defend/attack and allow them to protest the statue removal. However the statue removal protesters were pushed out of the park by police and into the counter protests. Antifa obviously anticipated the clash as they too brought shields and weapons. A recipe for disaster and thus the clash - a well anticipated and orchestrated event.
Lost in the clash, are the peaceful individuals on both sides who legitimately wanted to practice their freedom of speech and assembly to protest and counter-protest.
These complexities will likely be washed over and this will simply become a result of the Trump presidency. As the media already showing they are blaming Breitbart and Steve Bannon. This completely ignores the relatively recent phenomenon of Confederacy legacy removal.
No doubt, if Hillary Clinton was president we would see the same sort of clash play out again and again.
What's the solution? I don't know. But I feel it's important to take an honest overview of all sides in this complex situation.
I followed most of the live coverage by cable news yesterday and there were incidents of blm and antifa people,most of whom were armed with ball bats and sticks jumping in the protestors faces and trying to provoke them,they were even screaming at police officers who were standing by.....at one point a woman showed up and began mouthing off about feminist issues...not sure what that had to do with what was going on lol.
My take is that the whole mess would not have turned out the way that it did had those other groups not shown up to confront anyone..
Quite a few of the white protestors were armed with rifles and handguns and interestingly enough as bad as things got,none of those firearms were put to use.
