re: #458 Csarneson

I appreciate your perspective Bass and the unequal way that our country treats its citizens certainly needs to be changed. Where we disagree is the best way to accomplish that. There are two primary options:
1) Rage - Get louder, ruder, angrier, and destructive. This is the approach the GOP is taking as well. The GOP is failing miserably and I think the BLM group will ultimately fail as well or at least make slower progress than they could have. This is the approach the palestinians took for several decades before finally becoming more mainstream lately and making progress. I’d be shocked if there was not a two-state solution in the next couple years now that they have the majority of the world’s support. If these rage and hostage-taking tactics don’t fail outright they are certainly marginalizing themselves and setting back their cause until the next generation
2) Constant civility and rational pressure - painting your group as sympathetic figures. This is the approach that seems to work again and again for groups. They gain friends and convince the entire population that their requests are reasonable and rational. Ultimately the large and broad coalition of people can put far more pressure for change than a few marginalized people who are easy to dismiss as radicals.

You appear to be willing to support option #1. I suggest they should pursue option #2. Turning your sympathetic allies into those that will dismiss you seems like an extremely unwise choice.

Tone policing and pollyanna bs. I don’t know what history you’ve been watching but it wasn’t simply civility and rational pressure that won past civil rights battles. It was also protests, boycotts and in several cases such as Stonewall, galvanizing riots. It’s simplistic and totally backwards nonsense to think that people just convinced the majority of society to treat them equally, in many cases they had to convince the very small minority of society that sits on the courts first that the disruptive consequences and naked hypocrisy outweighed tradition and were no longer legally defensible, and society only came along decades later.

It’s also a really a tone deaf ridiculous false equivalence and insulting as fuck to condescendingly compare the minor lack of civility shown to Bernie Sanders and his campaign with “hostage taking,” or anything involving past Palestinian tactics, violence and open warfare in that dispute.