
I Cannot Remain Silent - Xplor
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-cities-are-not-battlespaces/612553/
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hprotagonist
it ought to go without saying, but just to make this explicitly clear: the
author is Admiral Mike Mullen (ret), whose last position before he retired was
as the seventeenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He was a servicemember from 1968 to 2011, served under 9 administrations, and
was appointed chair of the joint chiefs by GWB in 2007 and retained through
Obama's first term.

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softwaredoug
Lafayette square is such a sacred place. Right in front of the white house.
It’s always full of protestors, regardless of the administration.

If we can’t let people peacefully protest here, then we’ve really lost
legitimacy as a liberal democracy.

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noad
We have not been a democracy or a representative republic for a long time, at
a bare minimum we would need a new amendment to overturn citizens united and
move to publicly financed elections to get back to that. You can claim you're
represented in this current system, I understand that need, but it's not
really accurate.

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dsjoerg
My vote counts and is counted. That makes it a representative republic.
Citizens United and publicly financed elections do not affect whether or not
my vote counts or is counted. Of course they affect what messages me and my
fellow citizens see, and they are important. But your claims would only make
sense in a world where money guaranteed votes rather than merely influenced
voters.

~~~
noad
Your local representative is spending 90% of their day talking to lobbyists
who pay to talk to them and doing fundraising calls with rich people.

People press the button on a machine in lots of countries, that doesn't
necessarily make them a republic. The practical reality of the situation is
they are spending every day NOT representing people as much as possible. This
isn't an abstract thought experiment in political science definitions, this is
the actual reality we are living under.

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remmargorp64
It sounds like the public need to wake up to the reality that politics are
driven by money, and instead of using a voting system, we should just
crowdfund sponsor our candidates and lock them into contracts.

The longer we keep our head in the sand instead of facing reality, the more
delusional we get.

If we, as the public, are unwilling to actually pay our candidates the way
that lobbyists are, and if we are unwilling to change the laws that allow
lobbyists to continue influencing politicians in this manner, then we
effectively have no representation.

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glitcher
Genuinely curious why this story was flagged while an active discussion is
taking place in the comments, which are very similar to discussions in other
related stories on HN not getting flagged.

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0xffff2
I agree. I get the wish to keep HN from being an (overly) political place, and
I might agree with flagging this if it was a post on some random person's blog
(even if that person is well known in tech). But this is not that. This a
statement from a long serving and respected former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs, someone who is _eminently_ qualified to comment. Furthermore, it is a
post that speaks not to any of the details, but to the larger picture of what
is going on in the United States right now.

If there was a single post about the current situation that I would nominate
to be allowed here, this is undoubtedly it.

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oftenwrong
Why was this flagged?

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nojvek
> This is not the time for stunts. This is the time for leadership.

Trump's comments about "dominate the battle space" really pierced my heart.

Seeing the president openly violate the first amendment right: "the right of
the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress
of grievances" made me very sad.

"that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth." \- I don't think we have a government for the people.

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RichardHeart
"Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so." Yes
actually, in a riot, your fellow citizens are your enemy, and their own.

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klyrs
This was not a riot but a peaceful protest that was covered by multiple camera
angles (including the POV or a camera that got punched by a cop/fed/whatever
while they brutalized journalists). Civilian riots in the next town over do
not justify police riots to enable a tyrant to walk across the street to take
pictures of an upside-down bible in front of a church while that same church's
pastors were tear-gassed.

