> IMHO there are things that are much more scary than some trespassing into government buildings or a riot.
Yes, like trespassing into government buildings for the purpose of preventing a peaceful, lawful democratic transfer of power.
Protest is compatible with democracy. What happened two days ago is not. If you don't like the outcome of an election, you can complain about it, you can be a nuisance about it, you can talk about it. What you can't do, is try to carry out a coup.
> Heaven forbid that people protest getting killed randomly by the police.
Did anyone in power make any proposals on how to fix what was being protested about? In contrast, I saw a lot of politicians talking about how awful the protesters were as if they were protesting just for the sake of it.
> I am all for peaceful protests, the constitution has given every citizen the right to protest
They have been peaceful protesting for literally months now. One bad incident does not mean anything and there is a lot of information about how the government goons infiltrated the protests.
If you are all for peaceful protests, you wouldn't single out one single incident but that's exactly what you are doing and I think it's malicious. Which you are free to do, but please don't pretend otherwise.
> The ideal protest in my eyes is a peaceful, effective one.
I know several people personally who say this exact phrase, yet they mocked the football players who took a knee during the national anthem at games protesting exactly this issue.
Obviously most sane people would prefer an effective and peaceful protest, but there has yet to be one for this particular issue. So I am hardly surprised it has become this violent, especially with members of the police force and the president antagonizing people further. Also, I would add that any protest of great size naturally has people who try to take advantage of it and turn to anarchy. Shutting down such rioters with force seems to exacerbate the issue, as police force is what is being protest—an understandably difficult predicament.
> but today they might let the protest get a bit wild if they want to allow the protesters a bit of leeway, and then those untrained, poorly equipped policemen will be screwed.
I'd say most often than not, when a government lets a protest get wild it's because they want to justify the harsh repression that's coming or at least that when the time comes for decision, they won't side with the protestors.
Or they're just in over their head but in that case, they don't let it get wild, they just loose control.
> protests are just delegitimized by inserting violent people in them and not arresting them
It's an attempted tactic, though in the US I think by the political opposition (radical neo-reactionaries) and not the government. It has uneven success.
> countless pictures of pallets of bricks being delivered to demonstration sites in the night before the protest opposed to the leading party
Do we know those pictures were legitimate? Countless pictures on the Internet doesn't mean much.
> Many legitimate protests from people who actually are minorities in their nations, were put in bad light and you never heard of them.
Please, calling it a coup is a joke. France has larger demonstrations almost monthly (at least during non-Covid times), I've seen larger riots in the aftermath of hockey games.
Oh is this referring to the so called "insurection"? That was like a mild protest compared to other recent ones.
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