The 87-year-old whose eviction sparked a domestic crisis and triggered nationwide anti-government protests has died in hospital late on Wednesday. Protesters say they will continue to demonstrate to uphold her legacy.
The 87-year-old whose eviction sparked a domestic crisis and triggered nationwide anti-government protests has died in hospital late on Wednesday. Protesters say they will continue to demonstrate to uphold her legacy.
I ultimately think your heart is in the right place, but your focus is misguided. It’s not pouring oil on the fire to recenter the conversation around the issue that is fuelling the rage. You’re not going to find much success appealing to the better angels of the corpos. They’ve made their decision. I don’t want to see anyone hurt, but the natural consequences of their inhumanity, is retribution in kind. Protecting them from the consequences of their own actions is as good as permission to escalate. I will mourn for those who are hurt in the crossfire, but they need to know where this ends and there’s no clearer way to remind them the cost of playing with fire than to let them get burned. I will not encourage violence, and I will continue to work to fix the problem by advocating for reasonable housing accommodations. But I’m not going to restrain those who have been pushed past their limits. The rights of free men and women are paid for in blood, and they always have been. I don’t have to like it. But not liking the price, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be paid.
When I was a boy, my grandfather taught me to hunt. When I took my first buck, there were tears streaming down my face. After the buck was dead, my grandfather didn’t yell at me for crying, he knelt down with me and he said a prayer of thanksgiving over it. He didn’t tell me to “man up and get over it”, he told me to never get comfortable with taking a life, any life. It might be necessary, that buck fed our family for months, at a time when meat from the grocer would have been too much of a luxury. But you should never let yourself get numb to what it cost, either the deer, or you. I don’t believe in gods or bibles these days. I still say a prayer after every kill, and it still hurts.
I won’t tell you to numb yourself to the cost. I won’t ask you to cheer for blood. I will ask you to look away and keep your eye on doing whatever you are able to make sure no one ever feels their only path forward is violence again. Understand what brought them to that point, cure the disease and let the symptoms run their course. Symptoms aren’t directly caused by the disease. They’re the body’s natural defences. Sometimes they will get carried away and you need to rein them in, but they serve a purpose.
Recentering has nothing do with violence per se, and i do not think appealing to corpos is going to change things by itself. But we have civil institutions in Europe that can be an vent for all of this aggression without causing bodily harm. I believe that democracy can enact meaningful change without physically harming people.
I have never killed an animal larger than a fly, and i would never do that outside of a fight to the death, because i realized the sanctity of life. Nothing can give it back, and nothing can be gained by senselessly spilling blood. I am also an atheist - religion is a socially accepted delusion for me, and should be treated like any mental illness to release humanity from this cycle of insanity society has been caught in thousands of years ago.
I am sorry that you were indoctrinated to make it ok to kill random animals for your gain.
And how well are those working right now? How’s the resistance to spiralling authoritarianism going in France, in Germany, in most European countries? How are your institutional outlets holding up to Russian and American propaganda? Because I know here in Canada it sure isn’t sunshine and roses. Sometimes you have to remind the right wing that the system protects them, as much as it protects us so they quit undermining it.
Not the point, but unless you’re a vegan, I’m just more honest about it. Also, the ritual isn’t about faith, it’s a frame of mind. The point of the story was that there is a whole world of difference between not caring about life, and accepting that life is messy and sometimes ugly and choosing to do the least harm for the greatest good is the kindest choice you can make.
My general point was that standing back and letting a little selective violence leak through can be enough to remind everyone what the stakes are, and can prevent a lot more violence down the road. Demonstrating that you aren’t so lost in bureaucracy that you’ve forgotten how to hit back quells a lot of ambitions and saves lives in the long run.