Don't read the comments. Don't read the comments.

[sabotabby]

The post is fine, if sad, but the discussion makes me rage.

Look, armchair commentators on the internet: The moment you find yourself defending an armed group of thugs who shot across the very border that you claim to respect, murdering an unarmed child, is the moment you step back from the computer, think about what you've just typed, and re-evaluate whether human society might be better off without you.

Comments

[thebigbadbutch.livejournal.com]

Join ONTD_P. We have all the news with 99.5% fewer right wing douchefaces.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

it only took four comments until "the little rock-lobbing bastard earned his Darwin award"

[numb3r-5ev3n.livejournal.com]

The whole situation makes me sick.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

Bloody hell, it sounds like Palestine or somewhere!
What is it with gun-weilding maniacs that they have to go around shooting people?
Why don't armies and police forces give their armed members special training in how to deal with dayto day ordinary completely unsurprising and obviously to be expected circumstances such as children throwing rocks, people jeering and spitting, people hating them, etc etc?
And on that topic, why the fuck aren't policemen educated in basic democracy, taught that citizens have not just a right but even a duty to protest on the streets in order to make their views heard, and that it is in no way acceptable to try to impede this democratic process with weapons and by beating up random passers by?

When I was three and four I hated police and used to listen to Ian Dury and the Police (Sting version, not pigs), and every time a policeman walked by I used to shout, "fucking bastard stupid git!" (I think it was from an Ian Dury song) until my parents learned they'd have to turn me round quickly if a policeman passed as there was no way of stopping me...

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw that yesterday. I still don't have non-cusswords to say about it. And I will not read the comments. I don't want to know.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

And I will not read the comments. I don't want to know.

This is very sensible.

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

It's something that's been bothering me about the reactions to any number of what seem to me to be clear cut cases of police brutality: the number of people who have adopted a pro-authoritarian mentality-most of whom would be deeply upset if you called them authoritarians.

It's like rape culture, but for everyone!

"He must've done something to provoke them."

"What was he even doing there?"

"Listen, when a cop asks you a question, you just respond respectfully with the answer, and don't give them a reason to do anything to you."

We heard it about the stapler-wielding Robert Dziekanski, about Peter Watts who may well be a jerk but was not committing any sort of illegal act, about Henry Louis Gates Jr who went in the wrong door to his own house, and about this poor Mexican kid.

Why were they even wearing that dress, any of them?

[kynn.livejournal.com]

we also heard it about Jean Charles de Menezes

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

... true.

My list was not exhaustive.

[kynn.livejournal.com]

i know, sorry :)

[zingerella.livejournal.com]

So am I, really.

[krinndnz.livejournal.com]

Echoing and reinforcing this. I'm particularly puzzled about how it gets expressed in private, where people should be a bit safer. I can understand a tremendous reluctance to resist the police, given their in-practical-terms unlimited ability to fuck with the life of any given American citizen. I'm fair frightened of them myself. But even if a body were scared, what good would it do to advocate authority-with-no-consequences for the police? It's not like this sort of thing has ever spared a person who supported the police: the bullets and tasers and batons don't read your blog.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

I wrote this in a Metafilter thread about that kid whose Assistant Principle chokeslammed him to the flood and gave him a concussion:

I would also note that this ties into the fact that we live in a world in which rape victims have their sexual (and nonsexual) histories brought up in court at their rapists' trials; as a culture we fucking love the idea that a person who steps the least bit out of line brings any harm they suffer onto themselves. We search madly, whenever we see or hear of a person being hurt, to find a way to say "Oh, he brought it on himself." See also the repeated and outright insane insistence post-Katrina that the people who lost their homes and lives were at fault for living in a place where it could happen, or how readily the phrase "well, why did she go back to him?" comes to so many peoples' lips when they hear of a woman being repeatedly abused by her husband.

We don't do this because it is sane, or reasonable. We do it because by identifying some thing that they did "wrong"- wearing a short skirt, trying to push away a larger man who put himself in a threatening, intimidating position, returning to an abusive spouse- we can assure ourselves that the bad things that happen to people happen because they are deficient, because they are immoral, because they are weak, and we, in this analysis, are not these things. It is a form of othering which establishes the categories of "good people" and "bad people", and searches frantically for an excuse to place in the "bad people" category any person to whom harm comes. It is not for the purpose of better understanding the world; it is for the purpose of reassuring ourselves that it can't happen to me, because I am responsible and moral and smart.

The damage this does to the fabric of our society, as we find reasons not to have sympathy for victims or to help them (how many people do you know who say things like "I don't want my tax money paying for lazy people on welfare?") is incalculable.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Just awful.

These people whose instict is just always to take the side of those in authority, of those with the bigger guns...

Fuck. :-(

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

..is the moment you step back from the computer, think about what you've just typed, and re-evaluate whether human society might be better off without you.

Ms. SabboManners,

I was gonna suggest that the hypothetical blogger put a barrel in their mouth and pull the trigger. Is that too extreme?

-Confused in Nevada

[sabotabby]

Dear Confused,

It is impolite to suggest that a blogger blow his or her brains out on the internet. Think of the poor wretch who is charged with cleaning up the mess. If you must council suicide to racist douchebags, consider a method that does not ruin the carpets.

Yours,
Ms SaboManners

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

...........

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

I have learned the hard way that reading the comments on almost any news story, anywhere, tends to undermine what little faith in humanity I have left.

[ironed_orchid]

fuck that shit