A police officer kneels outside Los Angeles Police Department headquarters on Tuesday during a protest after the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
Washington Post: The next front in the culture war: Police kneeling
President Trump on Wednesday retweeted a claim that New York City police were being asked to “bend a knee to terrorists”
The scene was one of many hectic ones this week in Washington, D.C.: A police officer is being urged to kneel by protesters, and he obliges, before he’s quickly brought to his feet by fellow officers. Then he kneels again, this time before being pulled back by his colleagues and losing his balance. He resumes standing in front of the line of protesters.
Other footage of the same scene shows another officer briefly kneeling next to him (warning: some explicit language in that link).
As unrest rages across the country, scenes like this are becoming part of the culture war over policing and the protests. To some supporters of the protests, they are a show of good faith by police officers over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. To others, they’re empty gestures or even sinister allusions to how Floyd was killed. And to some critics of how the police are handling the unrest, they demonstrate capitulation in the face of the mob.
President Trump waded into this on Wednesday morning for the first time, retweeting a message that included attacking New York City police for being “tasked to bully Orthodox Jews and bend a knee to terrorists.”
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Throughout history bending the knee has always been used by conquerors, dictators, and authoritarian governments to extract fealty and cooperation from those who have been vanquished, conquered, and suppressed. It is also a form of humiliation .... to degrade those who are not part of your country/class/race/or movement. The Nazis used this tactic during the Second World War before executing their prisoners. Mao used this during the cultural revolution to humiliate his perceived enemies. But I have recently learned that American blacks have a different history when it comes to bending the knee. I am sure they had to give the knee to their slave masters centuries ago, but the Civil rights movement in the sixties used bending the knee as a means to protest .... The Rise of the Black Activists (Saturday Evening Post). Colin Kaepernick is not the first to bend the knee, but he is the first that I know of to do it against the US flag and anthem. So I am curious. Would you kneel in today's environment? Would you kneel to show solidarity to American blacks that some are now demanding?
Update: I would not kneel because the Nazis did this. My history (which is Russian) is different. Correction. Very different.
12 comments:
This US military retiree and combat vet will never kneel.
Never
No, my history of kneeling is when a bully wants you to submit to him and he beats the sh!t out of you anyway!! The kneeling is like rubbing salt into the wound of your humiliation. Essentially the kneeling accomplishes nothing but make your situation worse. As the rioters/looters behave similar to bullies albeit bullies with military precision, I would think their approach to this would be similar. So, no I'm not kneeling in submission to them.
https://twitter.com/brasstracks/status/1266541547362934784
"If you’re a white artist who’s recorded with me in the past and you haven’t spoken up on what’s going on right now, I’m leaking your untuned dry vocal stems by the end of the weekend, good luck"
This may seem funny but for real, seven years of sessions around the world under my belt and 4 hard drive backups. make your voice heard or I will in another way :)
---
Nothing worries me more than the phrase “right side of history”. It is pure dogma. There is no willingness for dialogue or compromise or understanding. It is the mindset of conquerors and genociders.
Stage 2 of this color-style revolution requires that the adherents begin blackmailing the silent majority into signaling their "support".
WNU Editor, you got it all wrong. They are being asked to kneel together.
Big difference.
Kapernicke was put up to it by his Muslim girlfriend.
Like the reason for the COVID lockdown the reason kneeling morphed over time.
You might kneel together, but it is the ringleaders of the ones who request it, who will reap the benefits.
It is horse shit.
“It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” ― Emiliano Zapata
11B19D
You got a flat tire and need assistance? You got it to the best of my ability. You gotta get through a door with a stroller, etc? I'll hold it open.
Why? Cuz you're a human being and you need a little help.
You want me to overlook the behavior of an unacceptably large percent of members of your race, culture, affiliation that I find negatively impact my enjoyment of life...after the citizens of this country have, since I was a young man last century, paid more, legislated more, give lip service to and volunteered to assist, more than any country on earth in history, measures to get you out of the hole you are instrumental in digging, they ain't no knee pads large enough or ever will be manufactured for me to put them on.
I deeply resent the crime statistics, the once nice but now deeply degraded neighborhoods I remember as a child and young man. I deeply resent the price others pay for the behavior of the self-directed losers of any culture, some of whose members stand aside and then blame others for the unpleasant behavior of those losers they bore and raised the resultant unpleasantness that such behavior brings to them and where they live and who then expect me to show solidarity with that degradation!!! Find shadow...chase.
For some people too much is never enough.
If we knelt together, perhaps. But if demanded, no.
Fuc# NO. I patrolled the streets of that NYC shithole in the 70's, joined the military and lost soldiers to combat and suicide. No, FUC# YOU. I DON'T KNEEL.
I will not kneel to anyone for anything. I won't go to any sports that condones this. Can't anyway but it's wrong.
Never I am Swedish.
We have our own BLM movement and disgustungly enough a Policewomen bent during her work and hold up a sign "White Silence is Violence". She was ethnic swede, and got both celebrated and condemned by various politicians.
Post a Comment