Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Ain't This America Vigilantism - why isn’t it illegal?

Just make sure we aren’t in the classic ‘talking past each other’ limboland, I’m not addressing the Rittenhouse verdict, I’m suggesting ways of preventing such stupid things from happening in the future.

Jury finds all 3 men guilty of murder in Ahmaud Arbery’s death

Vigilantism is confirmed as illegal in Georgia!
TAT

Charlottesville jury just found the alt-right groups who organized their rally that ended in murder, owe a bunch of people 26 million dollars.

Welp, there's a reason why Georgia just appealed their 1860s "citizens arrest" law - besides the fact that slavery was abolished. You just can't trust racist whites to do the right thing...

So who exactly can you trust? Surely you can trust a priest who's washed in the blood of the lamb?

Police officers? No one is more trustworthy, right? Sworn to protect and serve?

Black people are entirely trustworthy? And non-racist whites can always be trusted?

What about Hispanics?

I was indoctrinated at a very early age into the soft fringes of racism. Deep South farming village, y'know? To my shame, some of that still lives and breathes inside me. So I can't be trusted, and frankly you haven't exhibited the sort of level-headedness I'd look for in someone if hoped they'd always do the right thing, is it because you're gay? Liberal? From the west coast? White non-racist

Funny thing is though, most of us do our best.

Racism is on the way out. Not gone by a long shot but look around you...black and white couples are all over the place, mixed-race kids, integrated neighborhoods and schools. I see children of all races playing together, adults of all races working and playing together. Being gay or non-binary doesn't hold the stigma it once did...there's a same-sex couple down the street, one is a lawyer the other a high muckety muck with the Orlando police department.

And this is still the same little farming village I grew up in, though it's many times larger now and the farms are long gone. Everything around here is run by Republicans(conservatives) and everything is running well and smoothly.

Our mayor is Black, Our police chief is Black and both are well-loved and respected.

Small town, deep south, USA.

Incidences of violent vigilantism are so rare as to be negligible in the greater scheme of things. The Georgia incident wasn't vigilantism. It was an act of sheer racial hatred and violent murder. The justice system recognized that and all were found guilty on all counts.
Those men never for one minute thought they were protecting anybody's rights or property, they never for a minute thought they were "doing the right thing".

Young Ritterhouse thought he was doing the right thing. He thought that the police wanted him there and they gave him every impression he was right. He didn't confront or attack any Black people and bravely stated on the most racist show on the most racist network that he was not a racist and supported the BLM movement! The boy will probably make a pretty good cop one day.

Nope. Sorry. There is evidence which Judge Shroeder would not allow where Kyle made comments about wanting to shoot somebody. Kyle went looking for trouble and he found it. Kyle is now joins George Zimmerman and OJ Simpson as murderers who got away with it.

Did the voices in young Kyle's head tell him that?

One way to prevent it is to stop the senseless killing of Black people by law enforcement officers.

But I think that wave has broken with George Floyd's murderer behind bars. Kansas City cop just went to jail too. Public opinion and the courts are turning against the racist killings and I think cops are getting the message. We haven't seen the last "senseless racist killing by a cop" by any means, but there seems to be a lull in the action right now...could it be a slowdown? Maybe. I think so...

As it turns out cops have a lot more to fear these days from heavily armed and belligerent white sovereign citizens(white racists) than from unarmed colored folks mostly minding their own business....but there's a conundrum here.

Cops hang out on the same Facebook(Meta) pages as the heavily armed and belligerent white sovereign citizens(white racists) they have the most to fear from when they are at work...

Rick is right in many ways in his assessment of Republicans and for the most part, I fully agree with him, it's just his drama queen, knee-jerk reaction to everything stupid done by republicans I object to. There's so much stupid and I have so few f*cks to give.

What is vigilantism? Being vigilant? And doesn't it promote justice for the most part that we all are vigilant all the time? Was the girl who recorded George Floyd's ordeal a vigilante? Should her video be dismissed because she wasn't "official"?

Vigilance and self-defense lead to chaos and violence and are the antithesis of government is what you claim. I disagree. Stupidity is the reason when good intentions go sideways is your other implication...I agree, but you can't legislate stupidity out of existence.

"In war, victory. In peace vigilance. In death, sacrifice"

I have found an interesting thing when discussing racism. The older somebody is the more likely they are to be racist. Most don't even know it. I remember my grandmother (dead and gone for a long time, now). She referred to everybody not white by their racist name. I would prefer not to give that list but it just didn't matter - that's just the way she talked. I also noted that most of her friends did the same thing. They meant no harm and it was what it was and everybody just did it. I noticed that my parents didn't do that. Nobody really talked about it, it was just what it was.

Now most of that has gone away. My son (in his 50's) told me that I had taught him to just treat everybody the same and he does. A couple of months ago he told me that he caught hell from a black person because he didn't treat them as a black person and asked me what the hell that even meant. My answer is that I have no idea and ignore it because it makes no sense (at least to me).

Anybody understand that one?

Some folks like being victims?

What we learned this week about vigilantism is that you need to be the only who survives. Because a dead man can't tell his side of the story.