• @[email protected]
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        43 hours ago

        I think that was a cat napping on a keyboard. rare coincidence that the keystrokes looked like english words.

    • @[email protected]
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      26 hours ago

      Sometimes I feel the need to quote from the greatest thinkers. And other times I fee like I should quote comedians.

      Richard Pryor once filmed a movie in a prison. Afterwards he talked about his experience of listening to the prisoners and hearing their stories.

      His conclusion was that he was really happy there were prisons.

      • @[email protected]
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        75 hours ago

        When Stir Crazy was filmed in 1980, the U.S. prison population was about 329,800 people, representing approximately 140 individuals per 100,000 residents, or roughly 0.14% of the population. By 2022, the prison population had risen to around 2 million , incarcerated in state and federal prisons and jails, making up 541 per 100,000 residents, or about 0.54% of the population.

        Richard Pryor only saw the beginning of the crisis which is why he was able to joke about it.

  • @FuryMaker
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    16 hours ago

    “Don’t run, we come in peace”

  • @[email protected]
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    3112 hours ago

    Tails is only partly correct. The state is open about it’s monopoly on violence , and it’s a key argument in the philosophy of government. The state will use that violence against anyone who threatens it.

    The state exists to protect the power that enables the state. Protestors object to some organization of the state, and so they’re de facto threats.
    Minorities are disproportionately targeted because they inevitably don’t have the power that enables the state.

    It’s not the state being pro peace and making exceptions, it’s the state being pro-state, and being structured around that principle. The violence is inherent and exceptions are made if you provide value or benefit from value being defined to include you.

    • Guy Dudeman
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      47 hours ago

      And in a democracy, the state ought to be synonymous with “The People” but under capitalism and privately funded election campaigns, the state is controlled by the corporations and the rich who can afford to run candidates that represent their interests instead of the majority of the common people.

    • @[email protected]
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      912 hours ago

      All societies use some form of violence to control people.

      Even the Amish ‘shun’ the malefactors.

        • @[email protected]
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          16 hours ago

          What does that even mean?

          The Vikings let people go out and raid other villages but drew the line at murdering your neighbor. It that what you’re going on about? You think any one who wants should be able to have their own army?

          • @[email protected]
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            14 hours ago

            What exactly do you mean? Monopolization? Superstructure? Violence? Where do I need to start? At the definition of a state?

            My critique is as follows: Violence is currently monopolized by a hierarchical system of command & control - the state. I (and I’m presuming: OP as well) question the legitimacy of the state and its’ monopoly of violence.

            I would prefer it if the necessary amount of violence would be controlled by horizontal power structures.

  • Stern
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    1513 hours ago

    Me looking at the number of times nonviolence worked: Okay so MLK, Gandhi, and… uhh

    Me looking at times violence worked: Opens “History of the World” to page 1, 10,000 BCE Oh this is going to take a while isn’t it.

    • @[email protected]
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      2612 hours ago

      You could argue that MLK didn’t really work. And Gandhi’s contemporaries weren’t that peaceful, but quite influential. That narrative just isn’t that great for the people in power.

      • @[email protected]
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        33 hours ago

        Yeah MLK is cherry picked as hell. We learn about “civil disobedience,” but gloss over the White Moderate and his perspectives on Capitalism as a terminal strategy.

      • Stern
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        58 hours ago

        Could certainly put forth that folks had a choice between Malcolm X (or others, he’s just the first to spring to mind.) or MLK and decided on discretion, but really, I’m just meme’ing so lets not think on it too hard.