General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Russia: Constitutional Court Upholds ‘Foreign Agents’ Law [View all]The Magistrate
(95,266 posts)What kind of a 'twisted bubble' do I live in where I hold the view people being beaten have a right to defend themselves with deadly force? What sort of 'twisted bubble' indeed.
It is pretty generally conceded that people have a right to defend themselves against violence done to their person, and to do so in a manner which ends the attack against them. People who do not hold that there is a right of self-defense generally have principled objections to violence in any direction, by anyone, and this is certainly a view I can respect, even if I disagree with it. But you have no such principled objections to violence; in fact, you endorse a good deal of violence --- you consider riot police have a perfect right to beat protestors, and that Russia has a perfect right to invade Crimea and possibly portions of Ukraine. If there is any consistency to your view, it is that you endorse violence when it is either used against people you do not like ( persons who you conceive to be dupes of neo-cons and fascists ), or by a side of a quarrel you support, while you abhor violence done to persons you support ( riot police of the previous Ukraine government, whom you imagine to be resisting fascist dupes of neo-cons ) or in a cause you do not agree with. That is not an attitude which entitles you to much in the way of moral posturing, and gives you no standing whatsoever to lecture anyone else on their views regarding the propriety of violence, either in particular instances or expression of general principles.
It is not necessary for me to 'twist that into you personally supporting police brutality', because when you condemn resistance to police brutality, and most stridently so where that resistance is effective, no twisting at all is required to observe that you are supporting police brutality, because it is in fact what you are doing, with of course the risible caveat that you support police brutality only when you do not like the objects of it.