My kids are in their 20s now and I remember those kids screaming on the floor of the grocery store and wondering what they would be like as adults. Well now we know. Also, my kids screamed in the store too, but I would get really close and whisper in their ear “whatever it is you want, you will never, ever get it by acting this way.” And I didn’t, and their temper tantrum phase was short lived. One of the most important things we do as parents is follow through with consequences for bad behavior. Or we’ll get adults like these protestors.
Two words: Bear spray. Large container. Copious amounts. Ok, that’s 6 words but you get the idea. I’ve had pepper spray in my eyes during training. I would have done anything to find a hose and cold water. If enough regular people commuters show up to such protests so equipped such childish nonsense will stop. The people must take control of such matters because government law enforcement is entirely ineffective to prevent or expeditiously resolve such criminal activity. So I say let them lie their writhing on the ground in agony while glued to the ground and unable to move. Or let them rip the skin off their hands trying to get loose. Either one works for me. Perhaps that will teach a lesson. Criminal activity with no or demininus consequences will repeat itself. That lesson is as old as humanity.
I like that idea. Living in Montana I've seen its effects too. I was thinking of a scarier (for the protesters) solution. Douse them with gasoline and tell them it will be ignited in 60 seconds. I can't imagine then waiting around and gasoline is more available on roadways than bear spray.
I think you miss the point. As a citizen who gives you the privilege of policing I don’t appreciate being lectured about what crime I may be committing because I’m forced to respond to criminal activity that police are wholly ineffective at preventing or stopping in an expeditions manner. Secondly, your assertion that these people are “infantile assholes” is not only inaccurate and misleading, but such an inaccurate description as to tell me that you do not understand the seriousness of the problem. They are not merely infantile. They are serious criminals who in effect hold hundreds and often thousands of motorists involuntarily hostage. Rather than lecture the citizenry about what we cannot cannot do, what I’d like to hear from you is how you’re going to do the job that your fellow citizens entrust you with and prevent or expeditiously resolve such situations.
Also, please explain how during a protest firemen are allowed to spray water at a high rate of speed through high pressure hoses at protestors who are not all violent and do not all pose an imminent threat of physical harm, but at the same time claim that I cannot spray them with pepper spray?
I am not a law enforcement officer. Nor do I speak for law enforcement. I simply made a truthful statement: you would be committing criminal battery by employing your stated method. I strongly suspect you're entirely a keyboard warrior, in any case. Just as well.
And I didn't miss your point at all. Your point was that these protesters were committing crimes that inconvenienced, and potentially endangered, others. You therefore feel justified in committing crimes against them. Whether you feel it is morally justified has nothing to do with whether the employment of your weapon of choice is in itself the commission of a crime; it most certainly is. The use of force against another, unless to prevent imminent death or bodily harm to you or an innocent third person or persons, is a crime.
In short, you become the very thing you oppose. Congratulations, again.
Sigh. Where to start. Let's try your attack not on my ideas, but your snide sniping at my credibility, an ad hominem attack.
Yep. I'm a keyboard warrior. That's me. 22 year career in the US Army. Retired officer. J.D. LLM in Military Law with a specialty in International Law. Use of force expert. I have plenty of military qualifications but I'll spare everyone having to read all that. Desert Shield, Bosnia and Afghanistan Vet. Served in various units including the 82d Airborne Div, 3d Special Forces Group, US Army Special Forces Command, and an elite US Army Special Mission Unit. Arrived in Afg in Nov, 2001, when we were actually winning and left long before we lost. Have worked in law enforcement since 2008. POST certified General, Firearms, and EVOC Instructor. Glock certified Instructor and Armorer. Certified Use of Force instructor. My pedigree is irrelevant to my arguments but since you decided, without any evidence, to impugn my education, training, experience and credibility, I thought it fair play to set the record straight. I wonder if this is the only thing you could be wrong about?
Next, lets discuss the issue of criminality...is it a crime? Perhaps. It depends on circumstances. Was it a crime for the tribal policeman in Nevada to use his patrol vehicle to smash through a similar barricade to which environmental wackos had stupidly chained themselves during the Burning Man festival this past August? Perhaps. Perhaps not. That happened nearly four months ago and the Tribal Officer has not been charged and as far as I can determine he's still employed. Certainly using a large police pickup truck to ram a barricade to which people have stupidly chained themselves puts them at risk of death or serious physical injury and yet so far...crickets. Spraying them with pepper spray is certainly far less serious than the action taken by that Tribal Officer.
The assertion that I become the thing I oppose if in opposing a criminal act I also violate the law is without merit. Such action is the very essence of "civil disobedience." Committing a criminal act to oppose a greater moral or criminal wrong. That would mean that every single founder of this nation was a mere criminal, not a collection of great men, flawed though they were, who had the genius and moral and physical courage to found our Republic. My answer to your assertion is so what? Why is that relevant to this discussion because I see it as entirely irrelevant. Had the founders of our nation taken counsel of their fears, as you apparently do, we wouldn't be here, at least not as Americans. While you would likely have been concerned about the criminality of their actions, I am glad that they had the moral and physical courage to commit treason against Great Britain.
Perhaps instead of attacking my proposed solution to the problem like sports reporters safely in the studio snipe at the quarterback on the field, you might instead suggest a better idea to solve the problem. If not then I suggest that you leave such problems to those who President Teddy Roosevelt described as "the men in the arena."
Wow. No self-aggrandizement there. Comparison to the Founders. Such humility is touching.
Doesn't change the fact that bear spraying the protesters is a criminal act. One unjustified under the law. Your prior service - and I do sincerely thank you for it - does not change that.
Frankly, all I wanted to do in posting is let people know that proceeding in the manner you suggest is a crime, and is likely to get them charged. Act accordingly. I don't generally post a lot on internet forums.
I love that Adam seems to be a free speech absolutist and will allow us to brawl like this until we get it out of our systems. I'm almost there.
Check this out...I was comparing your assertion that spraying nutty agitators with bear spray was a crime to the fact that the very people who founded the country were criminals under the law of the time. The point I was making is to ask you the question...so what?...a question I've asked twice now and you've declined to really answer. Instead I get ad hominem attacks against my personal background (keyboard warrior) and my character (engaging in self-aggrandizement). There is no self-aggrandizement there unless I compared myself to the founding fathers, which I obviously was not. You apparently missed that detail. My point is that even assuming that such as use of pepper spray is criminal, which it may or may not be depending on circumstances, the people who founded the nation were criminals under the law, as were the Boston Tea Party people. Our nation was born in civil disobedience. At the right time and in the right place it's acceptable as long as the consequences of such criminal acts are acceptable to the person committing them. To roughly paraphrase Charles Dickens, in this case "the law is an ass." And its an ass because it has spectacularly failed to prevent nutter leftists from harming thousands of their fellow citizens under the false guise of "free speech." The constitution contemplates reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on free speech and blocking a major highway...or any road for that matter where one does not have the permission of authorities...is not protected speech.
As to the issue of criminal act...here is a scenario where it is not a criminal act to use bear spray on these fools...a mother is driving with her child and the child has a seizure in the car. On the way to the hospital the mother comes upon one of these nonsensical "protests" and they won't allow her through. She jumps out with her bear spray, hoses the nutty leftist climate change cultists down...or in this case the pro-Palestinian terrorist fans...and they move and she drives off to the hospital and saves her child's life. Crime? I don't think so. Your blanket assertion that its a crime is simply false. It may be, but it's not going to be in every place and under every circumstance. And like the founding fathers perhaps the calculus is that the risk is worth it. But you still miss the point that this is evidence of a much greater evil and a much greater wrong...that self-absorbed narcissists can hijack an entire highway and literally thousands of people using it because they decide that they have a greater right to do so than you do to get to the hospital, go to work, go to a medical appointment, visit your aged parents, etc. This is evidence of societal breakdown because the law doesn't matter. It's impotent to prevent such activity so why should it be allowed to be effective to prevent a response to such morally wrong acts? A moral wrong is being perpetrated upon citizens and the government is unable to effectively respond. Isn't it nice to think that one could get out of one's vehicle and spray all those smug, self-important jerks down with pepper spray and leave them writhing by the side of the road? I think that's a happy thought.
The collective narcissism of those who throw tantrums and call it justice™️. I see this as a manifestation of a meaning-deficit culture of slackers who have very comfortable lives. Oppression cosplayers.
Oppression cosplayers. That is a perfect insight. It is exactly that.
They have their cause, and the disruption demonstrates to everyone else how much they care. They don't want to be there, you understand. But if no one blocks the traffic thousands of miles away from the war zone how will anything change?
You usually are so kind and compassionate. It shows that even the best of us have their limits for tolerating bratty behavior.
Not far from the shutdown is Chinatown, now mostly comprised of those from other parts of Asia as most Chinese moved away. Shopping in a small trinket store, the shop owner and her sister apologized for roping off sections of the store. With the high rate of vandalism, they couldn't afford to lose more inventory to theft. Instead of smells of food and dried herbs in the air, there was the pervasive smell of poo. These two small, petite women were easy targets for criminals. I could only fumble an apology that they have been welcomed into our society only to be held out as easy prey. The same mentality that shuts down a highway - hurting mainly the working class - is the same mentality that brought us the defund the police movement. Those who promulgate this insanity rarely suffer the consequences, and therein lies the problem.
As James Lindsay opines, we get confused by the rhetoric through mystification. One has to see what seems to be virtuous statements and actions to see they are anything but. This is why your platform is so important - to help de-mystify what is truly pathology.
Every word of this is on point. The absolute disdain these folks feel for every day working class people, while pretending to be standing up for the oppressed - makes me want to break things.
You are so right; thank you for calling this out. It is so frustrating to see most of mainstream media just brush this off. I just wonder when this country is going to turn around and start holding people accountable for their actions.
You nailed this one. I'm watching similar idiots blocking rush hour commuters in Penn Station, NY, and thinking "who the heck has this much time on their hands, to intentionally waste the time of others?" They are privileged, and tolerating this stuff will only make it worse.
I'm okay with protests as long as they're ones people can walk past and get on with their day. No one has a right to disrupt someone else's ability to move freely.
My kids are in their 20s now and I remember those kids screaming on the floor of the grocery store and wondering what they would be like as adults. Well now we know. Also, my kids screamed in the store too, but I would get really close and whisper in their ear “whatever it is you want, you will never, ever get it by acting this way.” And I didn’t, and their temper tantrum phase was short lived. One of the most important things we do as parents is follow through with consequences for bad behavior. Or we’ll get adults like these protestors.
Two words: Bear spray. Large container. Copious amounts. Ok, that’s 6 words but you get the idea. I’ve had pepper spray in my eyes during training. I would have done anything to find a hose and cold water. If enough regular people commuters show up to such protests so equipped such childish nonsense will stop. The people must take control of such matters because government law enforcement is entirely ineffective to prevent or expeditiously resolve such criminal activity. So I say let them lie their writhing on the ground in agony while glued to the ground and unable to move. Or let them rip the skin off their hands trying to get loose. Either one works for me. Perhaps that will teach a lesson. Criminal activity with no or demininus consequences will repeat itself. That lesson is as old as humanity.
I'm good with that. Deploy the bear spray!
Harsh, but ok. lol
Sorry, let them “lay there,” not “their.” Stupid autocorrect.
Autocorrect is the real threat AI poses to humanity. Think about it.
I like that idea. Living in Montana I've seen its effects too. I was thinking of a scarier (for the protesters) solution. Douse them with gasoline and tell them it will be ignited in 60 seconds. I can't imagine then waiting around and gasoline is more available on roadways than bear spray.
Too bad law enforcement grade OC spray isn't legal for civilians to carry. It's 10% vs 2% for bear spray, like bobbing for apples in the deep fryer.
Can you say criminal battery? Yes, you just committed a crime, in my jurisdiction, a felony. congratulations.
Yes, they are infantile assholes. No, you do not get to be one too.
I think you miss the point. As a citizen who gives you the privilege of policing I don’t appreciate being lectured about what crime I may be committing because I’m forced to respond to criminal activity that police are wholly ineffective at preventing or stopping in an expeditions manner. Secondly, your assertion that these people are “infantile assholes” is not only inaccurate and misleading, but such an inaccurate description as to tell me that you do not understand the seriousness of the problem. They are not merely infantile. They are serious criminals who in effect hold hundreds and often thousands of motorists involuntarily hostage. Rather than lecture the citizenry about what we cannot cannot do, what I’d like to hear from you is how you’re going to do the job that your fellow citizens entrust you with and prevent or expeditiously resolve such situations.
Also, please explain how during a protest firemen are allowed to spray water at a high rate of speed through high pressure hoses at protestors who are not all violent and do not all pose an imminent threat of physical harm, but at the same time claim that I cannot spray them with pepper spray?
I am not a law enforcement officer. Nor do I speak for law enforcement. I simply made a truthful statement: you would be committing criminal battery by employing your stated method. I strongly suspect you're entirely a keyboard warrior, in any case. Just as well.
And I didn't miss your point at all. Your point was that these protesters were committing crimes that inconvenienced, and potentially endangered, others. You therefore feel justified in committing crimes against them. Whether you feel it is morally justified has nothing to do with whether the employment of your weapon of choice is in itself the commission of a crime; it most certainly is. The use of force against another, unless to prevent imminent death or bodily harm to you or an innocent third person or persons, is a crime.
In short, you become the very thing you oppose. Congratulations, again.
Sigh. Where to start. Let's try your attack not on my ideas, but your snide sniping at my credibility, an ad hominem attack.
Yep. I'm a keyboard warrior. That's me. 22 year career in the US Army. Retired officer. J.D. LLM in Military Law with a specialty in International Law. Use of force expert. I have plenty of military qualifications but I'll spare everyone having to read all that. Desert Shield, Bosnia and Afghanistan Vet. Served in various units including the 82d Airborne Div, 3d Special Forces Group, US Army Special Forces Command, and an elite US Army Special Mission Unit. Arrived in Afg in Nov, 2001, when we were actually winning and left long before we lost. Have worked in law enforcement since 2008. POST certified General, Firearms, and EVOC Instructor. Glock certified Instructor and Armorer. Certified Use of Force instructor. My pedigree is irrelevant to my arguments but since you decided, without any evidence, to impugn my education, training, experience and credibility, I thought it fair play to set the record straight. I wonder if this is the only thing you could be wrong about?
Next, lets discuss the issue of criminality...is it a crime? Perhaps. It depends on circumstances. Was it a crime for the tribal policeman in Nevada to use his patrol vehicle to smash through a similar barricade to which environmental wackos had stupidly chained themselves during the Burning Man festival this past August? Perhaps. Perhaps not. That happened nearly four months ago and the Tribal Officer has not been charged and as far as I can determine he's still employed. Certainly using a large police pickup truck to ram a barricade to which people have stupidly chained themselves puts them at risk of death or serious physical injury and yet so far...crickets. Spraying them with pepper spray is certainly far less serious than the action taken by that Tribal Officer.
The assertion that I become the thing I oppose if in opposing a criminal act I also violate the law is without merit. Such action is the very essence of "civil disobedience." Committing a criminal act to oppose a greater moral or criminal wrong. That would mean that every single founder of this nation was a mere criminal, not a collection of great men, flawed though they were, who had the genius and moral and physical courage to found our Republic. My answer to your assertion is so what? Why is that relevant to this discussion because I see it as entirely irrelevant. Had the founders of our nation taken counsel of their fears, as you apparently do, we wouldn't be here, at least not as Americans. While you would likely have been concerned about the criminality of their actions, I am glad that they had the moral and physical courage to commit treason against Great Britain.
Perhaps instead of attacking my proposed solution to the problem like sports reporters safely in the studio snipe at the quarterback on the field, you might instead suggest a better idea to solve the problem. If not then I suggest that you leave such problems to those who President Teddy Roosevelt described as "the men in the arena."
Wow. No self-aggrandizement there. Comparison to the Founders. Such humility is touching.
Doesn't change the fact that bear spraying the protesters is a criminal act. One unjustified under the law. Your prior service - and I do sincerely thank you for it - does not change that.
Frankly, all I wanted to do in posting is let people know that proceeding in the manner you suggest is a crime, and is likely to get them charged. Act accordingly. I don't generally post a lot on internet forums.
So - as you were.
I love that Adam seems to be a free speech absolutist and will allow us to brawl like this until we get it out of our systems. I'm almost there.
Check this out...I was comparing your assertion that spraying nutty agitators with bear spray was a crime to the fact that the very people who founded the country were criminals under the law of the time. The point I was making is to ask you the question...so what?...a question I've asked twice now and you've declined to really answer. Instead I get ad hominem attacks against my personal background (keyboard warrior) and my character (engaging in self-aggrandizement). There is no self-aggrandizement there unless I compared myself to the founding fathers, which I obviously was not. You apparently missed that detail. My point is that even assuming that such as use of pepper spray is criminal, which it may or may not be depending on circumstances, the people who founded the nation were criminals under the law, as were the Boston Tea Party people. Our nation was born in civil disobedience. At the right time and in the right place it's acceptable as long as the consequences of such criminal acts are acceptable to the person committing them. To roughly paraphrase Charles Dickens, in this case "the law is an ass." And its an ass because it has spectacularly failed to prevent nutter leftists from harming thousands of their fellow citizens under the false guise of "free speech." The constitution contemplates reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on free speech and blocking a major highway...or any road for that matter where one does not have the permission of authorities...is not protected speech.
As to the issue of criminal act...here is a scenario where it is not a criminal act to use bear spray on these fools...a mother is driving with her child and the child has a seizure in the car. On the way to the hospital the mother comes upon one of these nonsensical "protests" and they won't allow her through. She jumps out with her bear spray, hoses the nutty leftist climate change cultists down...or in this case the pro-Palestinian terrorist fans...and they move and she drives off to the hospital and saves her child's life. Crime? I don't think so. Your blanket assertion that its a crime is simply false. It may be, but it's not going to be in every place and under every circumstance. And like the founding fathers perhaps the calculus is that the risk is worth it. But you still miss the point that this is evidence of a much greater evil and a much greater wrong...that self-absorbed narcissists can hijack an entire highway and literally thousands of people using it because they decide that they have a greater right to do so than you do to get to the hospital, go to work, go to a medical appointment, visit your aged parents, etc. This is evidence of societal breakdown because the law doesn't matter. It's impotent to prevent such activity so why should it be allowed to be effective to prevent a response to such morally wrong acts? A moral wrong is being perpetrated upon citizens and the government is unable to effectively respond. Isn't it nice to think that one could get out of one's vehicle and spray all those smug, self-important jerks down with pepper spray and leave them writhing by the side of the road? I think that's a happy thought.
The collective narcissism of those who throw tantrums and call it justice™️. I see this as a manifestation of a meaning-deficit culture of slackers who have very comfortable lives. Oppression cosplayers.
Oppression cos-players wins the internet 👏
Oppression cosplayers. That is a perfect insight. It is exactly that.
They have their cause, and the disruption demonstrates to everyone else how much they care. They don't want to be there, you understand. But if no one blocks the traffic thousands of miles away from the war zone how will anything change?
They are absurd. It is all an act.
Hamassholes
👏👏👏
You usually are so kind and compassionate. It shows that even the best of us have their limits for tolerating bratty behavior.
Not far from the shutdown is Chinatown, now mostly comprised of those from other parts of Asia as most Chinese moved away. Shopping in a small trinket store, the shop owner and her sister apologized for roping off sections of the store. With the high rate of vandalism, they couldn't afford to lose more inventory to theft. Instead of smells of food and dried herbs in the air, there was the pervasive smell of poo. These two small, petite women were easy targets for criminals. I could only fumble an apology that they have been welcomed into our society only to be held out as easy prey. The same mentality that shuts down a highway - hurting mainly the working class - is the same mentality that brought us the defund the police movement. Those who promulgate this insanity rarely suffer the consequences, and therein lies the problem.
I have zero tolerance for certain behaviors. I have compassion for the "well-intentioned" social misfits...but these people are malicious narcissists.
As James Lindsay opines, we get confused by the rhetoric through mystification. One has to see what seems to be virtuous statements and actions to see they are anything but. This is why your platform is so important - to help de-mystify what is truly pathology.
That is sad and embarrassing.
Thank you for standing tall and speaking truth. You are a warrior for GOOD!
Thank you
Realize that they are enjoying themselves. They get pleasure with the sense of power they have to disrupt.
Every word of this is on point. The absolute disdain these folks feel for every day working class people, while pretending to be standing up for the oppressed - makes me want to break things.
It’s cosplay. They’re LARPing.
I wish they would try this in any flyover state in a country town.
These scum put the suck in suck.
https://www.greenleapforward.wtf/p/same-faces-same-narcissists-same
lol
You are so right; thank you for calling this out. It is so frustrating to see most of mainstream media just brush this off. I just wonder when this country is going to turn around and start holding people accountable for their actions.
You nailed this one. I'm watching similar idiots blocking rush hour commuters in Penn Station, NY, and thinking "who the heck has this much time on their hands, to intentionally waste the time of others?" They are privileged, and tolerating this stuff will only make it worse.
I'm okay with protests as long as they're ones people can walk past and get on with their day. No one has a right to disrupt someone else's ability to move freely.
Perfectly stated. Thank you.
My pleasure. Thank you for reading.
Ugh. Exactly.
Well said👏👏👏