Trump

There are 76 posts filed in Trump (this is page 3 of 8).

This essay by Will Saletan at The Bulwark is an excellent summary of all of the freedoms that Charlie Kirk relied on in his political speech, and if anyone (<cough>Jimmy Kimmel et al<cough>) gets called down for these actions, people need to push back!

Political violence, political speech, and political hate

I am totally against political violence. I agree with Frank McPherson that I am sad about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. People should not be shooting people because they disagree with their speech or behavior. I agree with Andrew Shell that Charlie Kirk had the right to free speech (1st Amendment). The “Golden Rule” would be a good starting place here. If you would not like being shot to death, don’t do it to others.

People should also think about their speech and whether it meets the Golden Rule or not. I was not aware of who Charlie Kirk was before this South Park episode. (which has now been pulled from repeat broadcast on Comedy Central). I was not aware that Kirk has spoken out that felt it was “worth it” to have some gun deaths in the US to preserve the Second Amendment (right to bear arms), or aware of the extent of his racist and bigoted behavior. How does this behavior square with the Golden Rule?

Finally, an atmosphere of political hate pervades our federal government. From Stephen Miller to Tom Homan to Donald Trump, demonizing of people and groups occurs on a non-stop basis. Is this in line with the Golden Rule? I think not.

I recently went on a trip where I was going to fly over the body of water south of Texas. The pilot correctly identified the body of water as “the Gulf of Mexico”. Nice!

My thoughts on the Los Angeles protests

As I posted earlier today, the Monday protest were handled by local law enforcement. The National Guard and Marines were not needed. Trump should back off on this, but he will not. Sounds like there is a hearing scheduled for Thursday on California’s suit against Trump.

I am against violence and property damage. I am also against unrestricted actions to sweep up people off the streets and deporting them to foreign countries without due process. In my opinion, this is what the protests are about. The actions of ICE in Los Angeles were the ignition point.

I live in the Portland, Oregon area, and I covered the 2020 protests on Portland Protest News. To me, the reason why protests continued for so long is that there has been a demonstrated evidence of racist behavior by the Portland Police Bureau, and people had had enough. Were there bad actors? Sure. Were there people inciting violence? Yes. But there was also the Wall of Moms, there were other protesters of the racist behavior who were peaceful. Was there attempts to defuse the situation? Not really.

Protests are spreading across the nation. No Kings protests are being planned across the nation. There is a growing number of people who are protesting the actions of the Trump adminstration.

Further reading:

I watched the live coverage of the LA protests Monday on CNN, looks like local (California) law enforcement were handling it, no need for National Guard/Marines/Feds. They should go home. More on this later….