You're original false dichotomy is also condescending getting you a condescending tone. There is nobody who believes in shooting whoever you disagree with. There is nobody who supports random shootings. The post you were responding to was one almost directly laying out American founding philosophy, that we live under a consent based government.

The person you were responding to was laying down an argument that would defend the civil rights movement, that frequently acted in violation in of the law, threatened violence, and even became violent, before the descendants of people who were literally slaves (under law) were given protection by the law, protection that is still violated to this day which the black lives matter protests and contemporary driving/walking while black cases show. It took riots to see consequences for one cop extra-judicially killing a man.

Say what you want about the case in new york, but it is building consensus that we have a 2 tiered legal system that exists to protect the rich and impose order (not justice) on the poor.

Change doesn't happen only from the carrot or only from the stick, but the carrot and the stick working together. Where you are right is that destruction and being against alone will not lead to good outcomes, you have to create and be for something to have good outcomes.

If I reflect on this in relation to the national situation, you're de facto defending what is happening right now and choosing beliefs that defend this repeatedly new normal as inevitable and using magical thinking to describe how change should happen. It's magical because its easy to say what you say, but if you were to write an algorithm for what real physical humans do in real life to create change, you will quickly find out how much magic is required and how many functions you have to implement later or how many impossible things you need to be true. Russia has elections too. Believing that American elections could not be like Russian elections is pure American exceptionalism.

People with agency vote based on information, but there is an entire information economy controlled by the very rich that you deny in your other posts. Money influences votes, you have to confront the depth of what that means and you're not. You should read the dissent of citizens united.

You're right I don't know your background, but you don't seem to have internalized the founding philosophy because if you had you couldn't argue the way you argue which means either you don't have a philosophical framework to support you or you haven't really deeply thought about the things you say yourself and given them any philosophical rigor.

And yeah, I agree, there is an extremely strong analogy to the national situation, and you should reflect on which "side" you are on.

By calling the post obnoxious you haven't made me feel obnoxious, you've created the conditions to confirm my own beliefs and made yourself appear to be in denial. You haven't given me anything to critically think about my own beliefs, you've only told me that being told you're wrong and uninformed feels bad, but much like the half of America who feels condescended and chooses to be strong and wrong rather than question themselves, you will get exactly the government you deserve.

I think you see the target on your back (based on your profile) as someone who could be seen as contributing to the downfall of America and directly harming those who participate in our for profit healthcare system, and want laws to protect you while failing to realize that laws are not defending those our for profit healthcare system victimizes. Since you profit from a system that victimizes people, I can certainly see how you would see the attack as "random" since the very same logic that applied, and that some are even celebrating, could reasonably be applied to you based on your titles alone giving you a sense of insecurity that those who need healthcare feel.

I think the actor acted with conscience and since I also act in conscience I don't feel at risk. I feel more at risk from people who follow the law but don't care about justice than I do from people who care about justice but don't follow the law. America was literally built by the latter. There is no explicit relationship between justice and law other than law without justice de-legitimizes law until people reject it and choose to act on their own, meaning they choose the state of nature.

I am as white and as American as you get. I am descended from people who fought in the revolutionary war, all 16 of my great great grandparents were born here, and I would feel much much safer sitting next to the person in question than an ICE agent, and I would prefer to be in a country made of the former than the latter, and if you want to live in a free country, you should start contemplating why you must support people who hold justice in higher esteem than the law.

I am not defending the current situation, I am opposing people acting as judge jury and executioner, in the name of their own justice. Individuals going out and shooting people on the street is not an appropriate "stick" in a functional society, or one that seeks to prevent sliding deeper into dysfunction. What I reject is the idea that anyone who doesn't accept your definition of justice should have a target on their back. That is not a power I will grant, even under veiled threats of death and national destruction.

I have never voted republican in my life, am appalled by the current lawlessness, and generally support healthcare reform. We should be allies with many mutual interests, but here you are making an enemy.

> Individuals going out and shooting people on the street is not an appropriate "stick" in a functional society

I absolutely 100% completely agree, however you added "in a functional society" which is why that statement is true. We are not in a functional society, we are in a rapidly deteriorating one.

So why did you add in a functional society? Is it true in a non functioning society? How should people act in a non functioning society? What determines whether a society is functioning or not? Who gets to make that choice whether society is functioning or not? Was the confederacy a functioning society? Was it a functioning society for chattel slaves? Would they have been justified in using "sticks"? Are Ukrainians justified in using sticks? Why or why not?

> is not an appropriate "stick" in a functional society

> am appalled by the current lawlessness

Don't you see your own denial even a little, or how someone in good faith could interpret it that way?

> We should be allies with many mutual interests, but here you are making an enemy.

I could accuse you of the same, but I don't think you're an enemy at all, I think you're ignorant, privileged, and haven't really given your own point of view a thorough shakedown. I am not angry at you, nor do I see you as an enemy. If I did, I would treat you like rayiner, I might accidentally respond, but otherwise I would downvote flag and move on. I am sad that you are too scared to accept what is true because it makes you personally responsible for participating in building a future we want to be a part of and nobody wants to be told they are responsible especially when that message comes with personal cost. Anger is a result of feeling threatened, but sadness is a result of understanding, and I am deeply sad about the current state of things and people who should be ideological allies choosing comfort over truth.

Everyone wants a functioning government, but "nobody" wants to pay taxes or take a pay cut do be a part of it. Everyone wants labor rights and higher wages, but nobody wants to risk their job, their pay, or their "permanent record." Everyone wants to sit in the shade of the tree of liberty, but nobody wants to water it. You'll only want to fight for liberty once it's gone and by then the fight will be much much harder.

I asked so many questions and almost none of them are rhetorical. I think if you took the time to answer any of them, you would quickly run into trouble maintaining internal consistency, and I think the core of it is that you have no conception of what it takes to go from the state of nature to a consensus based lawful government because you think Locke and Jefferson were "edgelords".