We Can Work It Out - Politics & Philosophy | Page 107 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Beatlebug said

AppleScruffJunior said

The President of the US threatened to shoot unarmed US citizens on a social media platform.  

The President of the US threatened to shoot unarmed US citizens who were rioting, looting, and destroying state and private property. You can do quite a lot of damage without a firearm. Now, you can disagree that such decisive military force was entirely fair, but it’s still an important distinction to make. When you start infringing on the rights of others, you forfeit some of your own. Not all of them, but still.

  

A President should not be threatening violence against their own citizens, especially on such a callous platform as social media.

Is it right to bring a gun to a knife fight? There are other ways of controlling crowds without shooting them. The fact that a head of a government would even think of posting a thing like that is disgusting.

@Beatlebug said

AppleScruffJunior said

The President of the US threatened to shoot unarmed US citizens on a social media platform.  

The President of the US threatened to shoot unarmed US citizens who were rioting, looting, and destroying state and private property. You can do quite a lot of damage without a firearm. Now, you can disagree that such decisive military force was entirely fair, but it’s still an important distinction to make. When you start infringing on the rights of others, you forfeit some of your own. Not all of them, but still.

Most world leaders, among the Western democracies probably only one, your one, would threaten rioters with being shot; they would, instead, send out the message that rioters would met with the full force of the law, and should expect to be prosecuted not executed.

Beatlebug said

Starr Shine? said

Twitter isn’t bound by freedom of speach since it is a private company like how YouTube blocks things that aren’t breaking laws. 

Guess it is about if you’d rather have a corporation in charge rather than the goverment   

If you read my entire post and that’s all you’ve taken away, I would encourage you to read it again, more carefully.

It’s not about freedom of speech, it’s about what types of companies can be held to which sets of legal restrictions.

And were Trump to be successful in opening up social media sites to libel laws the only result would probably be the barring of Americans to social media sites, just as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means there are many US-based sites are blocked to me as a European as they are not willing, or do not feel able, to abide by the laws in Europe.

And it wouldn’t just be big players like Twitter, Americans would probably lose access to this forum as I doubt Joe would want to risk a libel action in America for something said on here.

Live social media sites cannot work if every post needs to be pre-moderated to avoid the risk of something libellous getting through.

It would also need to be legislated for, and I very much doubt many in the Congress or Senate would vote to cut off their easiest, and cheapest, way to communicate with their electorate.

He’s a bully, plain and simple, who’s throwing a hissy fit and abusing his office because he got fact-checked, and not for the first time was found wanting, just the first time it was done by Twitter.

And for those who’d claim he’s not abusing his office by using it to intimidate those who disagree with him, there was no talk of making social media sites liable to libel laws before Twitter fact-checked him, and right after he’s making threats to have the law changed (although the law change he proposes wouldn’t prevent Twitter fact-checking him).

Given how many times, and in how many ways, he has breached Twitter’s rules, he’s lucky they have a policy of not shutting the accounts of world leaders.

@Dark Overlord said
RN Regarding point 1, this riot is most comparable to the 1992 Rodney King riots, where 10 people were killed by law enforcement. And while that number may seem low, the fact that the National Guard was armed and ready to kill shows that Trump’s not the only leader who would resort to such measures and it’s also worth mentioning that there’s only been 2 confirmed deaths related to the riots so far, neither being by law enforcement (although 1 of the deaths was a member of law enforcement).

Regarding point 2, i mostly agree but i wouldn’t call Trump a bully. When i think of a bully, i think of someone who does mean but trivial things like steal your lunchbox and call you mean names. Trump on the other hand is one of the most powerful people on the face of the earth who does major things that affect the whole world (mostly (but not always) for the worse IMO).

Regarding your point 1, the US having an armed police force always gives the possibility of incidents being met with deadly force when necessary, but it should always be the last resort. Trump didn’t indicate in any way that the use of deadly force would only be deployed as a last resort but headlined it as his response to the situation.

On your point 2, many people in positions of power — be they a Weinstein or Trump — use their position to try and intimidate those they feel they can to get what they want. The playgrounds may be bigger but the threats to hurt you if you don’t do what they want are still the actions of a bully. As my mother used to say, “If you take a penny out of my purse without asking or a fifty pound note, you’re still a thief.” The scale doesn’t change what you are.