I honestly believe 75% of the arguments here are pure misunderstandings. If we were the same 100 people irl club or something I bet the fight frequencies would plummet.
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How much time do you think it takes to send a memo to federal law enforcement with directives about use of force against protestors? Keep in mind we have phones and internet today so Biden doesn’t need to send the pony express out to Portland.
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In the future, I think anyone who responds with “of course this change will take time” should give what they think is a reasonable amount of time to accomplish the thing, and what exactly needs to be done that will take all that time.
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If you think sending a memo is going to solve this, well I have bad news for you.
Homicide laws don’t solve the problem of murder either, but they show that the state doesn’t approve of it and will investigate and punish it when it occurs. Instead, we have a statement from the admin that they were monitoring what happened in Portland. That’s it. The fact that they did not disavow it or attempt to stop it means they approve of it.
This is all very basic shit that I know you know. Come on.
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I agree that the statement sucks. But the statement was just acknowledgement that they are aware of the situation. No administration is going to jump in and criticize the police without investigating and trying to determine what happened. They are never going to tell cops not to use force if necessary. Cops are always going to describe their actions as necessary.
But I do agree they could make a much better statement that makes it clear that they do not condone the unjustified use of force, and if after investigating they find the use of force is unjustified, there will be consequences. If we don’t see statements and actions along these lines and in support of peaceful protests in the near future, then I’ll be disappointed. But I do not expect any blanket condemnation of any force used by cops. That is political suicide in this country. That is the part that will take forever (if even possible) to change.
They are all quite happy to criticize protestors while the fires are still burning.
Like, this post boils down to “of course Biden is going to suck wrt police”. Which like - yeah? I’m not sure what you think he needs time to accomplish, though. He can make it clear how he expects local and federal law enforcement to respond to protests right now. Given what happened over the entirety of his campaign, and the weeks leading up to his inauguration, it’s insane that he did not have that type of policy ready on day one.
I agree and think this is valid criticism and I hope these kinds of statements are coming soon.
At the same time, I also think his administration not actively pouring gasoline on the flames is a huge improvement.
I would argue that acknowledging they were watching and doing nothing is clearly pouring gasoline on the fire. Like, if the teacher clearly sees me playing with my phone in class and then just continues on with the lesson, my takeaway is that they don’t care and there will be no consequences if I continue the behavior.
If your only bar is “is he better than Trump on this issue” then sure, he probably is. But not by much. You don’t get extra credit for feeling extra bad for the protestors while you continue to do absolutely nothing to stop the abuse by the police.
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He’s not going to accept or assume it’s abuse by the police until he has a much more clear picture of what actually happened. And I think he’s probably correct to approach it that way considering the shitty political and social realities of this country.
What this actually means is, if he acknowledges it at all, he will say “we’re going to wait for the investigation to be completed” and when that finally happens in 8 months nobody will remember or care. The correct approach is when you see federal agents using a fucking crop duster leaf blower whatever to shoot chemical agents at protestors is to assume the police are fucking wrong, like they are in literally 100/100 of these situations.
If the federal cops broke out with some new equipment on day one it seems like they were testing Biden. Biden could order them to stop doing it or perhaps he can’t because he literally cannot control them and is afraid of what will happen if he tries.
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Maybe I’m being too charitable toward Biden. (It’s certainly not because I supported him. I held my nose when I voted and wouldn’t have bothered voting if he wasn’t literally running against mini Hitler.)
He does? Where has he blamed advocates? You are confusing him with a subset of his supporters.
This is the accurate take. The cops are trying to splinter the left from the center. Jokes on them that happened ten minutes after the inauguration.
No good choices there for Biden tactically. Either get forced to react to police brutality immediately after taking office and open another front (and one where there is plenty of legit disagreement inside his coalition) or ignore this awful shit and look terrible to his coalition.
I’ve had some hope in the past for reform. I think the reforms in LA after the 1992 riots actually did some good, at least for a while. But, man, police departments (in NYC, not Alabama) can’t even be trusted to hire non-racist assholes as anti-discrimination chiefs.
I think, like with the President and the US government in general, the best you can hope for with reform is still pretty bad.
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Two weeks.
Two weeks to do what?
I’m joking about Donnie Dumb Dumb’s secret health care plan that was always going to be provided in a couple of weeks.
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Look I get where you’re coming from. You’re a guy who is pretty comfortable with personal sacrifice to do what you think is right. That’s not how they make national politicians, particularly not national politicians from Biden’s model year.
If you’re expecting him to do things solely because they’re the right thing to do without regard for politics you’re going to be disappointed not just in Biden but by literally anyone who ever gets to be president.
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