Maybe this is finally a good use for depleted uranium?

Ugh, I really hate it when people make comics like this that make it seem like solving our problems would be so simple. In the real world, where things are a lot messier, you need the blade to be at least several times higher for it to work properly!

Nope, that was entirely an invention on your part. Recall that my actual words were:

It is much better to acknowledge that blowing up the building is a non-peaceful act and then examine it critically in order to determine whether it is really worth it, then to dismiss it as being peaceful which makes it seem like it is not a big deal.

If, after examining it critically, you decide to go ahead, then so be it; you just shouldn’t skip that step because blowing things up is kind of a big deal, even when merited.

(Believe it or not, I actually try my best to choose my words carefully in order to convey my position as clearly as possible; I cannot help the fact that people do not seem to put as much care into reading them in return.)

By I am extremely curious about how you would respond to the question in my comment, though:

But if I am part of the problem, let me ask you this: what acts of violence have you personally carried out recently to fight fascism? Or are you part of the problem too?

I would also add that if the answer to the first question is “none”, then: why not?

Demolition of facist tools of invasion of privacy is literally what this community is about. “Abolition” if you require a synonym.

I do not think that it is within the power of these particular protestors to “abolish” anything, so saying they should do that next seems a bit silly.

Thank you for not removing your beam from the ICE course of violence.

Where did I ever say that their course of violence was not bad? That is a projection on your part. You are arguing with an invented fantasy version of me rather than the person that actually exists.

But hey, let me help you out a bit. If you think that violence is necessary, then I would actually strongly recommend reading the Bhagavad Gita because it has you covered, as it is basically all about a god (Lord Krishna) trying to convince a man (Arjuna) not to abandon a battle on both the physical and spiritual plain. Lots of verses are relevant, but to limit myself to a few (2:31-33):

Considering your dharma, you should not vacillate. For a warrior, nothing is higher than a war against evil. The warrior confronted with such a war should be pleased, Arjuna, for it comes as an open gate to heaven. But if you do not participate in this battle against evil, you will incur sin, violating your dharma and your honor.

Ok. Thank you for admitting you don’t comprehend the point of protests.

You just linked to a play in order to make your point. That is pretty consistent with you living in a world of fantasy, I must say.

Until you learn how dictators have been stripped from their violence historically, I have no further use to engage your bad faith view of demolition.

If you think that demolishing a building is the best course of action at this time then so be it, but don’t act like I am the one with a bad faith view because you insist on calling it a peaceful act, and I am merely pointing it out.

So you are arguing that the optimal strategy is to do one protest to make your point about the state, and then start unleashing violence?

So the ultimate point was to criticize these people for merely engaging in another protest rather than doing something effective?

What “non-violent solution bullshit”? I never said that violence was never an acceptable solution (in fact, nor did I even use the word “violence”), just that it should be called what it is.

But if I am part of the problem, let me ask you this: what acts of violence have you personally carried out recently to fight fascism? Or are you part of the problem too?

If they had believed it was the best option at the very beginning, then nothing had been stopping her family from fleeing somewhere else instead of going into hiding when it would have arguably been easiest to do so.

Also, it would not be enough to wound some of the soldiers; you would have to kill all of them before they were able to kill you and then capture your friends. Nonetheless, once her family had been discovered, I acknowledge that was really the only option that had a chance of keeping them from being captured. It is one thing to say that, though, and another to actually start shooting when you are the one faced with such a decision.

Nah, keep it around and poison it with bad information so that the people using it make poor decisions, just like they did with Sauron in the Lord of the Rings!

You did not have to go out of your way to admit your lack of reading comprehension, but I appreciate you for doing so anyway! 😆

If the people keeping her family in hiding had chosen to open fire on the Gestapo instead of keeping her family’s presence a secret, then it is not clear to me how it would have resulted in her living longer than she did.

They didn’t, but lots of people here have wished that they (or someone else) would.

Agreed, but if you had the option of hiding your friends, then that would probably be better than shooting at the people trying to take them away for the simple reason then you would probably get outshot, and if not then more would likely follow. If you don’t have that option, though, then by all means start shooting if that is the only way to save their lives.

Applied to this situation: it would probably be better for this group to protest peacefully for as long as they can because once they start blowing up buildings then most likely martial law or something similar will be declared and they will likely lose the ability to do anything unless they can win against the military. Additionally, they would likely end up alienating the general population, so there would be few places they could go to for support.

I mean, if you are not going to engage with the things I actually said, then there is only so much I can in response. 😃

Enjoy your “later dork” Parthian shot.

I genuinely appreciate your concern, but you do not have to worry about me. 😀

I can understand that, but keep in mind that, from my perspective, my original comment,

I think that you might not get to claim the mantle of peaceful protest when you start blowing things up yourself.

was intended to be perfectly innocuous (if a bit wry). After all, the article was about a largely peaceful protest, and introducing demolition into the mix seems like it would be going against the spirit of that.

Regarding, “only tangentially related to the topic”, I think that you will note that the paragraph I wrote just now analyzing the effect of the protest on the developer conference and the likely effect it had on recruitment in the long term is more than anyone else in this post has said about what actually happened in this particular protest, rather than various fantasies of Palantir’s destruction. I actually would have loved to have more interesting discussion along those lines (because my analysis is not the only valid one!), but there is not much evidence that anyone else here read more than just the title…

RingSun, specifically the Black Coffee flavor.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way: if you think that blowing up fascist things is the right thing to do in a particular situation, then why do you care so much about whether it is a peaceful act or not?

This article is about protests that were (arguably) largely peaceful, and I presume that was intentional on the part of the organizers. I doubt that they would be interested in dropping the mantle of peaceful protest in order to gain license to start blowing up buildings. I could be wrong about that, though. Certainly no one here seems to be interested in peaceful protest.

Who would make an argument that exploding anything is peaceful?

You, by posting a comment disagreeing with my original comment pointing out demolition crosses the line into not being peaceful.