Political Memes

[jerry mcmasters]

Rather than go line by line and try to analyze how it relates to what I am saying, I will just say I appreciate your opinion of the matter, and hopefully going forward both of us can be consistent in our views (your approval, my disgust) of police targeting of anti-government protesters.

That would be the height of stupidity. Each protest is unique both on its objective (yes, the right to protest is proportional to the wrong being protested), in its method, in its length, in problem it engender and in response from the police, the government and civil society in general. It would be highly fallacious to turn this into an absolutist stand to throw accusations of hypocrisy. After all, you were often very defensive about the BLM protest, actively advocated for the rioters of January 6th to be shot on sight as they tried to enter the Capitol building forcefully despite being unarmed, support the protest in Ottawa and the Canadian border, defend a "pro civil right stance" all the while advocating in favor of laws that severely limit the right to vote on the basis you believe not all citizen are "worthy of voting" and these are far from being your only muddled views. This, in and on itself, isn't a problem. That doesn't make you an hypocrite or wrong. It just illustrate the fact that politics is complicated and that turning it into a game of ideological purity and consistency at the expense of nuance and context is precisely one of the major symptom of political polarization that makes recent US politics so toxic and that is also has also spread to Canada, the UK and France.

PS: I would like to mention that, in the case of the woman in the video, the police didn't targeted her because she is a antigovernmental protestor. She wasn't a protestor and wasn't "targeted" for any police intervention of coercive nature. She was handed out a pamphlet that would have helped her protest the government.

I disagree.  Maybe I am too wedded to the American perception of freedoms of speech and protest and assembly.  I don't think you should consider the objective of the protest, I think you have to accept that other citizens have, no matter how foolish I think it, different opinions, and the right to peacefully lawfully protest.  It's pretentious to imagine you yourself hold some standard that protests can be judged "proportional to the wrong being protested."  All you have is your opinion.  So just be consistent:  The government should not target protesters, but should vigorously enforce the law and punish law-breaking protesters.  If their cause was just, like 1950s and 1960s civil rights protesters rightfully breaking unjust segregationist laws, they bring honor and attention and martyrdom to a just cause.  If their cause is baloney, it's baloney and they are just law breakers getting punished for law breaking. Just be consistent.