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Comment by _jal | Hacker News Reader

As I said in another comment, the importance of the change doesn't lie in a narrow look at the changed component. It is formally about the overall balance of rights, responsibilities of citizens and police/military[1], and less formally about trust between the two and the overall climate we want to live in, as a country.

If you make a given police enforcement mechanism cheaper, it will be used more. What does that do to your average person's sense of privacy/fear/trust? What kind of relationship do we want to have between citizens[2] and its government?

[1] That line is being blurred.

[2] Not subjects

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I suppose, to that end, what about my rights to not be looted or have my car flipped over and set ablaze?

I suppose in those situations, I'd be grateful for some law enforcement presence monitoring the situation and guiding folks on the ground to the most appropriate places needing the most attention.

If law enforcement did their jobs properly, things wouldn't escalate to the point where you need to worry about being looted or having your car flipped over and set on fire.

This is a failure of law enforcement, and drone surveillance is a lazy band-aid that they're applying to a situation they themselves have caused.

I certainly don't condone rioting, looting, and setting random buildings on fire. But the police created this situation.

"Needing the most attention"? Bah. The only thing the police should be doing in this situation is standing down, admitting their wrongdoing, and accepting punishment. That will do much more to stop the rioting and start healing the police-citizen divide than anything else they can do. But of course that's not going to happen; police as a whole seem more interested in militarizing and acting above the law.

> I certainly don't condone rioting, looting, and setting random buildings on fire. But the police created this situation.

This specific situation? Ya, sure, maybe.

What about the rioting, looting, setting buildings on fire, etc. in Berkeley because some students opposed Ben Shapiro giving a talk? How did the police create that situation?

> The only thing the police should be doing in this situation is standing down, admitting their wrongdoing, and accepting punishment.

How exactly are the police being "punished" by my store being looted by people who don't even know why the riot started in the first place, let alone give any damns about someone being murdered by one police officer.

How is people carrying off 6 new televisions, freshly robbed from a local store, going to stop the rioting and "heal" the police-citizen divide?

> What about the rioting, looting, setting buildings on fire, etc. in Berkeley because some students opposed Ben Shapiro giving a talk? How did the police create that situation?

The New York Times States

> By the end of the night, the authorities said they had arrested nine people, some of them accused of carrying banned weapons. But no major violence was reported.

People remember the consequences of sitting idly by during the rise of fascism. The proper response to fascist light is anger. Almost all the people were able to do this without getting arrested let alone setting buildings on fire.

> How exactly are the police being "punished" by my store being looted by people who don't even know why the riot started in the first place, let alone give any damns about someone being murdered by one police officer.

When order breaks down people a minority take advantage. Everyone knows why the riot started in the first place. You are justly angry about bad behavior but how angry were you when black person after black person was murdered? If you don't want order breaking down punish all the guilty especially officers who murder the citizenry.

This is sadly typical. An utter refusal to engage, just an expressed preference for as much state violence as needed to protect their car.

> This is sadly typical. An utter refusal to engage

Unfortunately I feel this is the direction most political conversations go as-of late. Talking right past each other.

To claim the other side has an utter refusal to engage is not just unfair, it's a perfect description of exactly the behavior you have just engaged in yourself. It would be more apt to substitute "utter refusal to engage" with "utter refusal to accept my opinion as fact".

I am the GP poster above. I thought I asked some provoking questions about why we have a problem with a former military drone (presumably demilitarized) flying over a city to conduct surveillance during a time of civil unrest.

Instead of thoughtful responses, this question has largely received criticism and claims that I support state violence. I haven't a clue how this is considered reasonable discourse - and it's no wonder the country grows further and further apart politically.

To take this meta-discussion a step further, I think this is the inevitable course of an argument where one group cares about X but not Y, and the other group cares about Y but not X. The two debaters won't have much to say to each other except "Let's talk about X", "No, let's talk about Y", etc. You can't have a structured debate unless both people care about the same thing and hold explicitly contrary views on it. But this is rarely the case in today's fragmented information landscape where different information sources emphasize different things.

Thanks for explaining where you're coming from here. I'll offer my perspective.

I replied to your original comment, indicating my belief that the issue is substantially more complicated than your framing suggested, and briefly explained a couple reasons why. I have several more, if you honestly have any interest.

Your reply was to claim it is just about your property rights - the only relation to my comment was the response hierarchy. I honestly still don't see how that's not a refusal to engage.

One point:

> claims that I support state violence

Well, what do you call what's going on? (I do also consider intrusive surveillance a form of violence, but understand why some think that's dilutive to the term.)

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