In the state of California, if you use force on someone who has only committed a property crime you will go to to jail- not the criminal. Think long and hard and privately about how you will defend yourself and your belongings.
Seattle way of life
- Thread starter Mmshul
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All of this is very avoidable if people only could have a decent discussion with each other, and give it a little while to at least try and understand each other.
We're not that different, but these bubbles we're living in is dangerous in the long run and it's not only USA that are having these problems.
We're not that different, but these bubbles we're living in is dangerous in the long run and it's not only USA that are having these problems.
Belongings outside and your detached garage yes. Home - no. As many states do, CA has a castle doctrine. It is pretty much the mother of all home defense laws as far as lethal force goes. I digress...
“Under Penal Code 198.5, California follows the Castle doctrine, meaning there is no duty to retreat if a resident confronts an intruder inside the home. Residents are permitted to use force against intruders who break into their homes, or try to force their way in. “A Person's Home is their Castle.”
I can't be the only member reading this from outside the US sighing and muttering a quiet 'WTF' is going on with the US at the moment.
From over here it looks like the whole country is coming apart at the seams ahead of the presidential election.
From over here it looks like the whole country is coming apart at the seams ahead of the presidential election.
We are.
When Antifa Hysteria Sweeps America
Opinion | When Antifa Hysteria Sweeps America (Published 2020)
The panic is a measure of how deluded public discourse has become.
Coming apart at the seams...? You mean a mayor and governor allowing a group to occupy a major part of its downtown core? Nothing to see here, move along. Its just the US being the US..LOL! (-;
Mike Goble
Well-Known Member
We are a nation built on occupying someone else's land...
We do have a long history of having to use civil disobedience to correct obvious wrongs. You would think our moral compass would be enough...but it's apparently not.
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Mike Goble
Well-Known Member
The Malheur occupation - protesters seizing land to bring light to their cause. Large groups of armed outsiders appearing in small towns, harassing locals and eventually seizing property. Six weeks later arrests are made. Where was the National Guard? Police in riot gear? Helicopters hovering overhead? Tear gas?
The US is not coming apart at the seams. There are peaceful protests in virtually every city, and some protests in some places that are not so peaceful. My nephew, a 25 year old computer scientist, lives at the edge of the CHAZ zone in Seattle, which after the initial flare up has been peaceful. It's been annoying for him, but that's about it. Hopefully the occupiers there will find something better to do and go home.
The media chooses to highlight the violence. And replay the same scenes of violence and destruction over and over again.
In our city, Ft. Myers, Florida, my kids (ages 15 and 18) have been involved in several peaceful protests with a specific aim--to get rid of the statue of Robert E. Lee (who led the Confederate military in the Civil War). And it is working. Gen. Lee never set foot in our county, which also named Lee! We may rename the county, which I agree with. We don't need to honor and glorify people who were on the wrong side of history. I don't see too many towns named "Mussolini" in Italy, for example.
My home town is Richmond, Virginia, which was the capital of the Confederacy. Monument Avenue, which is a beautiful, has very large statues of Lee, Jeb Stuart, and Jeff Davis, among others. These are finally coming down. The goal is not to erase history, but to stop honoring those who fought so vehemently to preserve slavery. It is LONG overdue.
Hopefully police departments nationwide can get better training for their officers, so we can prevent killings like George Floyd's. Every day we move closer to that goal.
Lastly, we do have to be concerned about the president being unwilling to reliquish power if he loses the election. He has made baseless claims about voter fraud in the past, and he may do it again to rally his crazies with their guns and camo and body armor. Then the country really will be at risk of coming apart at the seams.
Baseless claims, check out New Mexico, thousands of votes misplaced
There is no moral compass in Washington DC. Rather, it navigates via a compass which responds primarily to money and retention of power. Given the traditional costs to win an election at almost any level of govt, one shouldn’t expect anything different. I would say it’s better at the state and municipal level, but none are without greed and corruption. To be greedy and cover power is part of human nature, despite what was taught in my college sociology classes.
“The media chooses to highlight the violence”
For our foreign friends, let’s not forget that the “news” is a profit focused entertainment industry which achieves its success by titlating viewers with extremes of human behavior. It’s not like the old days when the nightly news program was a cost burden paid for by the other shows on the network.
I have both conservative and liberal friends who love pontificating to me about the problems in China or France or Japan etc. rarely does it occur to them that what they are being fed by the “news” is not a fair representation of the whole story. My usual response is to ask how much time they’ve recently spent it <the> country recently.
You can no doubt see why both my liberal and conservative friends find me exasperating. Such is the burden of trying to be a rational objective and scientifically minded person. I should hang out with BavBob more...
For our foreign friends, let’s not forget that the “news” is a profit focused entertainment industry which achieves its success by titlating viewers with extremes of human behavior. It’s not like the old days when the nightly news program was a cost burden paid for by the other shows on the network.
I have both conservative and liberal friends who love pontificating to me about the problems in China or France or Japan etc. rarely does it occur to them that what they are being fed by the “news” is not a fair representation of the whole story. My usual response is to ask how much time they’ve recently spent it <the> country recently.
You can no doubt see why both my liberal and conservative friends find me exasperating. Such is the burden of trying to be a rational objective and scientifically minded person. I should hang out with BavBob more...
John, you are a science guy so data first, visceral response last. I think the same way. I focus on pure, unbiased, blindly acquired data. Sadly, not much of it around.
Regarding the statues mentioned by craterface above. I've visited most of the previous Iron Curtain countries, and of course in 1988, all of them had gigantic statues of various Soviet political and military leaders. On our last trip to Budapest, we went to a location about 10 miles outside of the city (it is of course really two cities - Buda and Pest). This location was an outdoor museum of about 10 acres. The Budapest citizens decided they did not want to erase history, nor honor the propagators of that difficult time. So, they removed all of the 20-50 foot tall Soviet statues from the city and transferred them to this location as recognition that it occurred, but they are away from the every day activities of the citizens.
My wife and I thought that was a good approach, and often wonder if that couldn't be done in the US as well. Re-writing history about both the slavery era and the near annihilation of the native peoples is an abomination to me.
Gary
My wife and I thought that was a good approach, and often wonder if that couldn't be done in the US as well. Re-writing history about both the slavery era and the near annihilation of the native peoples is an abomination to me.
Gary
That is essentially what cities are doing now. Moving statues to history museums. I don’t see the association between the removal of a public monuments (that is what they are) and rewriting history. Both highly accurate and white-washed history has been written and archived for better or worse. It isn’t going anywhere, and you can find it all in the Library of Congress, or Netflix. The narrative around losing vital history by taking down monuments is simply false. Taking down a statue is *not the same as building a Walmart on a Civil War battlefield. These aren’t period landmarks and historical sites. We are removing modern day (mostly Jim Crow era) tributes to Confederate leaders. Painting over a 1955 Dixie flag mural on a wall of a Piggly Wiggly wouldn’t be erasing civil war history either. I made that example up to illustrate my point.
The only real fallout other than removal/transport cost is that a skilled artist can no longer showcase their work. Sadly they chose subject matter and a government paycheck that honored leaders fighting for a lost cause...
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In Canada , statues of our first Prime Minister, Sir John A MacDonald have been removed from public view. There is a call to remove pretty well all former Prime Ministers from our currency. Coincidentally, the statue of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau was vandalised by someone who painted Black Face over him yesterday.
Journalists asked the RCMP if this was a Hate crime .
While we are focused on these pressing issues, anyone Wonder if organ harvesting in China is real?!
Journalists asked the RCMP if this was a Hate crime .
While we are focused on these pressing issues, anyone Wonder if organ harvesting in China is real?!
Agree 100 percent. In my hometown of Richmond they can move those statues to Hollywood Cemetary, the place where the Confederate dead are buried, and clust them in a display, just as they have done in a Budapest.
I love that solution!
Why do we tend to gravitate to either/or answers for situations like this rather than finding a way that can work for both viewpoints?