Posted on 12/05/2014 2:29:57 AM PST by granada
Imagine that Eric Garner had been white. Imagine that he’d been living in Idaho. Imagine that the law-enforcement officers who killed him had been federal agents.
His death would be a Tea Party crusade.
Think about it. The police hassled Garner because he had a history of selling untaxed cigarettes. It’s the kind of big-government intrusion that drives Tea Partiers nuts. One of the events that helped launch the Tea Party, in fact, came in January 2009, when activists from Young Americans for Liberty donned American Indian garb to protest the soda taxes proposed by then-New York Governor David Patterson.
Garner responded to being hassled with a statement of “don’t tread on me” anti-government defiance: “I was just minding my own business. Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today!” A tussle ensued. The police put Garner in a chokehold, and he died.
The Garner case bears some resemblance to that of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who this spring prevented Bureau of Land Management agents from impounding his cattle after he refused to pay government grazing fees. Like Garner, Bundy was engaged in a form of commerce he believed the government should not tax. Like Garner, Bundy resisted law enforcement’s efforts to punish him for it. For many conservatives, this made Bundy a hero and the government that sought to penalize him a tyranny. Right-wing activists, including some Republican legislators, flocked to Bundy’s ranch as he stared down federal agents, and Nevada Senator Dean Heller dubbed these vigilantes “patriots.” “At the heart of this issue,” declared Fox’s Sean Hannity, is “my belief that our government is simply out of control.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
There would have been no story
It would have been hailed as a victory against smoking cigarettes
Not true. A white infant has been shot in the face by black thugs, scores of elderly white women have been raped and/or murdered by black animals, and many scores of whites have been murdered by black savages in “knockout” games. Plus much, much more. And I have yet to see Tea Partiers or any other whites or conservatives take any of this up as a “cause”, though we should have. We damn well should have.
I’ve defended the cops. I think they’re in an incredibly tough situation in the big liberal cities — caught between the bonehead nanny government and its brood of lawless citizens. I think it’s a state of affairs that makes Garner type situations more or less inevitable. Frequent disrespect and resistance towards the police means the police use force more often, which the raises the odds of this sort of thing happening. Garner’s death was unintentional and had nothing to do with racism, yet it can certainly be traced to “structural” factors — namely structural liberalism.
if eric garner were selling cigarettes illegally, he would not be a patriot, he would be a criminal, thus, a liberal, thus, not a tea party guy
Thank you. And that’s just a sampling of the crimes, many of them utterly heinous and savage, perpetrated upon whites by blacks.
If the horrific Christian/Newsome torture/murders didn’t get us up off our lazy azzes, if the murder of an infant by point-blank shooting in his face, didn’t make us rise up, if the rape and murder of a 101 yo white woman didn’t stir us to action, I don’t know what will.
What a doofus!
They will never understand that we don’t defend criminals no matter what color they are. And by “criminal”, I mean in the traditional accepted sense, not some conservative who was targeted by the IRS for their political beliefs.
And the idea that Conservatives would be staging relentless and disruptive demonstrations all across the country is also nonsense. And I say that as just a thought exercise.
For example, [some] conservatives would and will participate in pro-life rallies and/or pickets around abort clinics. But conservatives would not throw bombs into an abortion clinic. Yes, one overzealous “person” (cannot say nor characterize him as “cons”) might take affairs into his own hands and shoot an abortionist.
Conservs would attend the kinds of rallies on Wall St. we saw when the first bank bailouts were going on, back in 2008. And they would attend a Wash DC protest gathering early in the history of the Tea Party. The TP gatherings were permitted, I am sure, and whatever was done on Wall St in those early demonstrations did not prevent anyone from getting to work, AFAIK.
What about “items” like Terry Schiavo....Waco...Ruby Ridge...[I am not putting them into the same category other than to name them as items so-called “conservatives aka “wing nuts” would glom on to]
Yes, some came out to protest those events. One difference is the unwillingness on Conservatives to flaunt “orderly-society” norms and get in the face of law enforcement. The Bundy incident could be a notable exception, and of course the distinction there was that the action occurred out on ranchland, disrupting nobody EXCEPT and ONLY the law enforcement that was applied.
And oh yeah, Conservs typically have jobs and lives they need to attend to.
I will again agree with you, and let us not forget that our first Black president is setting and has set multiple fine examples of pissing on the law with impunity and getting his peeps to cover for him, while nothing that is going on is in any way anything that can be blamed on him. Unless of course it’s phantom numbers and “world peace” which is really breaking out all over the place.
precisely
Exactly, and I would also say that the Bundy situation had an aspect of higher principle (or whatever you want to call it) that is simply not there with Garner. Just like the original Boston tea party, Bundy was about something bigger taxes, even though taxes were technically the issue.
Look into why the choke holds were banned.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2956125/
Note, this study was small because of the longer term, possibly fatal, results that could occur.
In my view Garner represents exactly what we are fighting against; an all powerful state that will kill you over taxes.
If Eric Garner were white the whole incident would have never made the news.
This has nothing to do w/ race and everything to do w/ excessive government power.
And, btw, the criminal justice system is corrupt w/ a capital C.
and yes, blacks get the worst of it-- because they can't afford fancy lawyers to turn the law on its head.
You’re absolutely correct. It is that I wonder about arresting people for selling one or two cigarettes. It is not as if one will find a stray full bottle on the street. There are extensive physical differences between the two commodities.
The comparison for Brown and Garner would be white people killed by cops, or more directly white people killed by black cops, or most specifically unarmed white people killed by black cops.
I’m sure they exist, but they’re in all likelihood a smallish percentage of unarmed black people killed by white cops.
This is of course primarily a function of the much higher black crime rate and the larger percentage of the population that is white, hence more white cops.
$5.85 per pack tax in NYC. Extortion.
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