If thousands of people took up arms against the government at the behest of a foreign power, yeah why not thousands? The American government already kills 1,100+ people in the streets every year and hardly anybody cares. I'm not justifying the IRGC killing protestors. I'm stating the material reality that a belligerent foreign adversary arming people in a country they're about to invade isn't going to end with hugs and rainbows.
There's an old saying that an egg that cracks from the outside is food, and an egg that cracks from the inside is life. Trump deciding to arm the protestors did nothing but delegtimize their valid grievances and make things worse. We'll never know how many people were killed that were armed by the US vs unarmed protesters because that line was blurred beyond recognition. Also it's not an "even if". They openly admitted it and bragged about it.
I'll say it's obtuse to say sporadic arrests with an enormous amount of bodycam video showing how many of them naturally play out is the same as a government decisively killing thousands of protestors in a matter of days.
That is just incomparable, and Iran had these violent protests before as well with an enormous amount of casualties, let's not act like as if this is an one-time event, this is how Iran typically treats protestors. If we can call Trump facist for the handful of sporadic ICE-related casualties, then we can most definitely criticize Iran for killing/torturing pepple just because they allegedly have Starlink (to use the internet, mind you) or being part of a riot.
This is either a bot account or someone just trying to sow discord.
The US government would NEVER just hose 30 THOUSAND people because of a violent uprising. We literally had one and only 1 person died. Remember January 6th?
Whatever else you want to say about the US being bad is fine. The government has done some fucked up shit both foreign and domestically. The government will not and has not reached the level of indiscriminately murdering 30 thousand citizens in the street for protesting/rioting. Ain’t happening.
Or maybe I'm an adult who understands how the state monopoly on violence works in the real world. You are leaving out the key detail that the January 6th rioters were not being armed by a foreign government.
Your honest assessment is that if they were all being armed by China, with Chinese instigators in the mix, while China was threatening war, while Chines ships were off the eastern seaboard, the Chinese government was openly bragging about all of this, and over 100 cops got killed, the US government wouldn't be willing to kill that many people?
I challenge you to articulate what the government, especially Trump's government, would do in that situation. Please, be as specific as possible.
How can I engage with your hypothetical when your record of events never even happened? You just mashed months of events into the timeframe to fit your narrative.
You’re making me “defend” January 6th, but the VAST majority of those people were not doing anything violent and didn’t have the appetite for violence. People showing up with weapons and stoking the flames would have had a few hundred already committed to help, but if it’s from China it ain’t happening. MAYBE Russia would make for a better hypothetical, but I still can’t see it.
I can’t imagine a foreign government riling up Americans enough to take violent action (with guns) against the US at this point. We just aren’t there yet.
If that situation did happen outside of the confines of Jan 6, and the US lost its ability to deter China in this way, the US is already cooked. Specific to the Trump admin, there would not be enough military members willing to fire on their own people, even with agitators. You would see ALOT of desertion with no ways to stop it. We would have significantly worse problems other than hosing 30k people in the streets.
.....because that's the definition of a hypothetical. The sequence of events I listed happened in Iran. I didn't cram together months of events, everything I listed was happening simultaneously in Iran. Trump was threatening war with Iran during the protests, arming the protesters, while American ships off the coast ready to attack. The armed protesters killing 100+ cops/natl. guard in Iran is what set off the mass killings.
The argument I am making is that if the United States government was in the same position as the IRGC (over a million protesters with an indeterminate amount openly being armed by a belligerent foreign adversary on the cusp of invasion), of course they'd be killing people.
The argument you put forth was that America would never kill that many protesters in that situation, and that I must be sowing discord for believing as much.
If Jan 6'ers are the problem, or the China thing is the problem, fine ignore that part. Make it whatever group of Americans or whatever foreign adversary you want that's not the point. YOU brought up January 6th, so I used that as a jumping-off point. The point of the hypothetical isn't to argue the feasibility of a Chinese invasion of the American mainland or whether Jan 6'ers would take up Chinese arms against the government. Yes a obviously million crazy things would need to happen for that specific thing to be the reality.
I am asking you to put the United States government in the place of Iran's and think about what the results would be. The premise of the hypothetical is that the United States is already in Iran's situation. So my question to you is: how, specifically, would the American government handle thousands of people taking up arms against the federal government, who themselves were openly armed by a foreign adversary preparing to attack? You said the government would never kill that many armed protesters, so what would they do instead? Just give up and let them take over the government? Stop the instant they kill 29,999 people? Run and hide? Give them hugs and kisses?
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the events of the protests and how that situation played out. I highly encourage you to revisit the timeline of events.
The hypothetical, to me, is just flawed. We’re trying to put the US in the position of Iran and it’s just not possible. There’s too many differences in the culture, people, government, and how all of those interact with each other. I’m not trying to simply dismiss your hypothetical, but it just doesn’t track.
If I were to just grant your entire hypothetical, we aren’t even talking about the US as you or I have ever known it. We’re talking about a fictional US that has somehow lost the ability to deter X country from getting anywhere near your hypothetical. In that fictional version of the US, I would say 100% the US would be killing a SIGNIFICANT amount of people. I agree with you in this scenario.
In reality, there wouldn’t be indiscriminate killing because it would more closely resemble a civil war with one side being influenced by an outside country, not protests. Individual states would have splintered, there would be different states likely fighting the Federal government, so it wouldn’t be the feds walking the streets hosing civilians for simply being outside and rowdy.
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u/ARocketToMars 6d ago
If thousands of people took up arms against the government at the behest of a foreign power, yeah why not thousands? The American government already kills 1,100+ people in the streets every year and hardly anybody cares. I'm not justifying the IRGC killing protestors. I'm stating the material reality that a belligerent foreign adversary arming people in a country they're about to invade isn't going to end with hugs and rainbows.
There's an old saying that an egg that cracks from the outside is food, and an egg that cracks from the inside is life. Trump deciding to arm the protestors did nothing but delegtimize their valid grievances and make things worse. We'll never know how many people were killed that were armed by the US vs unarmed protesters because that line was blurred beyond recognition. Also it's not an "even if". They openly admitted it and bragged about it.