The arrested man identified himself as a combat veteran and said he was burning the American flag in protest of an executive order Trump signed Monday targeting flag burning.
Where can I contribute to the legal fund?
Y’all know this is just so they can replay clips of their “opposition” burning flags on Fox News. To vilify more people is the only goal here.
Funny. I can’t wait to fight a civil war against Fox News viewers. So we can be done with their genes. Not like the Jazzy militia will have any capabilities.
Trunp and Magats are such effing snowflakes they need a safe space.
Like prison?
I smell a lawsuit.
That might actually be the point.
Oh good, it’ll get up to the supreme court soon so we can hear about how the president can unilaterally say “fuck the constitution,” actually.
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with humans
Jesus Christ, what is wrong with
humansAmericans?Ftfy
How can you make an executive order like that? That’s not exactly an order.
That would need to be a law, passed by Congress.
This dude has gone so fucking nuts with executive orders left and right out the ass, that no one is even asking wtf? It’s not supposed to be the magical “I can do anything” card. But everyone is ok with this I guess…
No, just the only people who can actually do something about it.
Most people don’t know that it is the legislative branch that’s supposed to create laws. Oh who am I kidding? Most Americans don’t even know there are three branches of government.
It doesn’t matter, Trump can legally do whatever he wants, he’s a king. 1/3rd of the population of America believes that Trump can rule unilaterally. The other 2/3rds are scared of the first and they should be. Trump and MAGA have the executive branch, the judicial branch, the legislative branch, the armed forces, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, and wall street in their side. They only group not on Trump’s side is the general public and it should be pretty obvious now that he doesn’t have any use for the general public. Trump won. He’s king of The United States of America, I suggest you start to think about what you’re going to do about it.
My advice to Americans is to leave if they can
Running will do for a spell. But I intend to stay and (politically) fight.
Besides, I’m not sure anywhere is significantly better than USA for places to stand against it. No place with humans is immune to the disease of leader worship.
Iran was once a relatively tolerant democracy. Then the people who actually take their religion seriously took over.
Where do you propose those 300 million people go?
He can’t legally do it, its still against the law.
He’s personally immune from punishment, but if he does something illegally it can be undone.
E.g if he illegally arrests someone, they’ll still get released… one day… and probably get punitive damages. But Trump won’t be held accountable.
If you came across someone beating the shit out of another person would you try to stop them or would you stand pointing saying “that’s illegal” or “after they’re done they’re get in so much trouble!”?
The law doesn’t apply to these people, and Trump got his 34 felonies before becoming the president without any consequences whatsoever. Garcia was sent El Salvador illegally and it’s wild he even made it back alive, and no amount of money will change what happened to him if he were to even somehow get that in however many years. If I recall correctly he’s still not safe.
He absolutely can do it. He’s not allowed to do it, but rule of law has gone down the drain. The USA are back to the divine right of kings, now
But her emails! The egg prices are too damn high!
Yeah, tell that to Abrego Garcia. Just because one day some judge might reflect that it was wrong for the government to lie, human traffic, and manufacture false charges doesn’t mean his life wasn’t ruined.
I really find it hard to conceive of a government that doesn’t hold their leaders accountable, but that is apparently what we have been doing for a looong time.
Except that his administration is. Look at Abrego Garcia. He’s going to be deported and there won’t be any recourse to undo that. If it can be done, with no consequences, and can’t be undone, doesn’t matter if a piece of paper says it’s illegal. It won’t be enforced, and a law that isn’t enforced might as well not exist.
Congress can’t do that without a 3/4 majority of states also agreeing. It would require a constitutional amendment altering the first amendment. Which is an extra big deal as nobody serious would think to propose altering the bill of rights, it used to be sacred. Mind you the government didn’t follow it ever really, but thats what happens to sacred things
The other option is that the supreme court undoes a prior decision, like they did to roe v. wade. Texas v. Johnson was only a 5-4 decision (To be clear, I think this would be awful as well, but it is likely how the admin plans to enforce this, assuming they have a plan).
Both congress and the Supreme Court handed ceded all their power to the executive branch. We have a dictator now, full stop. This country is run by the whims of a pedophile protecting (at best), rapist, criminal (convicted, not punished - REWARDED).
It would need to be a Constitutional amendment unless the Supreme Court “reconsiders” precedent on this exact issue.
The executive order, like most others, is completely illegal, but when authoritarians control all the levers of power and have military on the streets of DC and the DC police answers to them, then who’s going to stop them?
Congratulations on waking up from your coma! A few things have happened since 2015. Let me help you get up to speed…
They’re not orders to him, they are decrees
you misunderstand how america works.
If he was burning a book, the fascist cops would have joined-in
Unless that book was a Bible. Or a conservative grifter’s book.
That was fast, good on that guy. Will this be a watershed moment when his infernal majesty’s decrees are challenged?
No.
Most of his shit IS getting overturned. The doom and gloom isn’t helpful.
Most, but not all. And the SCOTUS is eroding our rights one bribe at a time. If this goes to the highest court, are you certain we will still have the freedom of speech when it’s over?
NO?
His decisions wont be challenged in any way that matters. Nobody in the Trump admin will go to prison for the things they did. People will continue being kidnapped, tortured and killed. All elections will continue to be manipulated directly or algorithmically through social media and legacy media.
Yeah, just give up and roll over. No point it trying or fighting, just take it and let them win. No reason to even try to hope.
This sounds like a coward who’s ready to give up before even fighting. Maybe you’re ready to accept all that, some of us aren’t. Keep your doom and gloom to yourself, you’re helping no one.
If everyone throughout history thought like you then the world would be a much worse place.
Yeah, just give up and roll over.
Did i say that? No. What im saying is that things wont be fixed by lawsuits. They should still file them and maybe there will be some tiny cute victories, but the underlying issue, that is Trump being alive and out of prison, wont be solved with fucking lawsuits.
The US legal system is fucking done for and all that this does is postponing the inevitable need for a militant resistance. Shit is loooong past the “lets sue our way out of this” stage. That stage ended when Trump was allowed to become president again.
If everyone throughout history thought like you then the world would be a much worse place.
While this is a comedy skit, i am thinking more along these lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KivCRqfFcqY
Because “everyone throughout history” has also tried suing their way out of fascism and that really didnt work for them at fucking all my guy.While i really do appreciate peace and not being violent, when being faced with unjust violence, sometimes you just have a moral obligation to become violent yourself.
You act like you know the future, what will happen like it’s set in stone, and that it will be horrible. You sound like a defeatist and/or extremist. Neither of which are known for their rock solid logic.
You continue to do that behavior in this comment as well.
Shit is loooong past the “lets sue our way out of this” stage.
And…
Because “everyone throughout history” has also tried suing their way out of fascism and that really didnt work for them at fucking all my guy.
I never said you could sue your way out, why is this your response? You’re original comment didn’t even mention that. Jesus, you’re building random strawmen and working off assumptions. You don’t know my stance beyond that I disagree with a vague aspect of yours. I could agree that suing is pointless, you have no idea. Why even bring this up? Because you assumed that’s what I was talking about or thinking?
You’re fabricating things so you have something to attack. You’re so blinded by hate you’re ready to attack anyone that disagrees with you, to the point of making up assumptions to have something to argue about. That’s no better than MAGA ffs. Try using thoughts, not emotions. We’re better than this, man.
While i really do appreciate peace and not being violent, when being faced with unjust violence, sometimes you just have a moral obligation to become violent yourself.
Cool. And I’m sure once you realize that everyone might not have the same idea of who the right people to attack are, or what the right way to go about it is you might think: wow, we should have been a little more thoughtful in our approach and not treated violence like the only option. Instead, we should have looked at it like a tool in a belt of other strong tools. Because if you think killing Trump magically fixes America, as your little skit implies, you’re naive. He could easily become a martyr for those people. What would that mean? Have you thought about that?
You’re so blinded by hate you’re ready to attack anyone that disagrees with you, to the point of making up assumptions to have something to argue about.
Literally every sentence of your first comment was an attack on my character and made assumptions about my beliefs. The fucking audacity. I dont even see a need to respond to this schizo post in detail.
Literally all i did was respond to someone overly optimistic with a probably very realistic prediction of what will happen. To fight a political or literal war you cant be deluding yourself into believing that someone else will save you through legal challenges.
Many U.S. veterans I know support the right of freedom of expression, to include flag burning. They say they feel its disrespectful but its the right they bleed for, for people to express themselves
I remember a case where this singer burnt an american flag in protest (I think korean war) and the president was grilled on his take on the matter and he daid that whats beautiful about our country, that we can do these things, and that im the countries we are fighting agianst thier citizens dont have the same freedoms as americans.
If you aren’t for freedom of speech when its an expression you don’t agree with, you aren’t for freedom of speech.
Hey, it’s cool that some of them understand the law, but… also, I don’t think veterans have any special privilege or insight into how our freedoms work.
I don’t think any of us need their permission to exercise our rights. I don’t think that’s what you were going for, but I’m just saying this because so much of the discussion often seems to go to what “the troops” think about it. It just doesn’t matter.
I was bringing it up half out of people tending to use veterans and soldiers as justification for “cracking down” on things like flag burning, saying how it disrespects our troops or something. When 1) as you say, thier opinion doesn’t matter and 2) They also aren’t as offended as republicans say they are.
It’s my first amendment right to call the troops babykillers and to thank their Jodies for their service. And if someone wants the government to stop me then they’re anti American. The first amendment is especially for the right to criticize and mock the government and her agents.
Fair enough. Also, I should not have had that last sentence worded that way. I should have said that their opinion does not matter more than the opinions of non-veterans, IMHO. Being Americans, their opinion does matter as much as any other, but still the law is the law and unless the unhinged cons get an amendment, freedom should still be a thing…even on something like burning a flag.
This idea that the military “fights for our freedom” needs to die. It’s complete horseshit. The last conflict the US military was involved in that could remotely be considered as a defense of Americans (the populace, not the oligarchs) was WW2. Everything since has been neocolonialism and gangster activity. Even prior to WW2, their primary function over their life has been genocide and colonialism. It was the US military that brought the world concentration camps. If there is any hope for Americans, we need to kill the civic religion.
WWII is not a good example even. The oligarchy helped fund the Nazi and then made sure the Jews had no where to go. Then we went in and helped slaughter countless civilians for a problem we created. That clearly makes us the good guys riiiight?
I don’t even understand what is so offensive about flag burning. It’s something teenagers and sheltered young adults do as a feeble form of symbolic rebellion. Genuinely, who cares? It’s not like the flag has some kind of mystical power. It’s not the original version. 9/10, it’s just a cheap copy that was purchased specifically for that demonstration.
I’m a grown man. Why the fuck do I care about teenagers skateboarding in the church parking lot? I got my own problems.
Plus that flag was statistically likely to be made not in the USA
100% this. I remember when some dopey kid tried to burn the flag at a campus I was at, and one of my roommates was simply beside himself with fury over it.
I thought the whole thing was a great big bowl of wrong. The dumbass that was “protesting” was butthurt about something that had nothing to do with America or the flag, IIRC. He just wanted to be edgy or whatever. But the fury from the reactionaries, including my roommate - hilarious.
My roommate even wrote a letter of outrage to the administration. I mean, he was literally beet red with rage over it. His letter tried to work in the “fire safety” angle too, because deep down, even the dumbass reactionary knew the law when it comes to freedom.
When you make kids swear allegiance to a piece of cloth for years, you get stuff like that.
Yeah, I was surrounded by many of them during K-12. We had to stand and pledge allegiance every single day. I usually mumbled my way through it in the early years. At some point, I just stopped doing the mumbling any more. It felt so mindless and cultish.
I remember some girl in high school doing some mock outrage at seeing me doing this, but more in a flirty way, like “you’re so baaaaad, boy!” kind of way.
Luckily I had parents that did a lot of the Lord’s work in counter-brainwashing when I was at home, LOL, so none of the “stand for the anthem and reciting the pledge” every morning at government school (with the 1950s red scare phrase added in, mind you to scare away the godless commies!) didn’t really stick.
I’m still patriotic as HELL. And I love this country’s supposed ideals and founding documents like nobody’s business. But not in the way the brainless cons think of “patriotism”. Their false patriotism is a pantload.
It wasn’t CMU, was it?
No, this was Penn State, ages ago. I don’t think it made the papers or anything that I know of. Probably not even a police report. Some dumbazz tried to light a flag with a Zippo apparently - several students, including some associates, classmates and friends of mine saw him try it. It was inside a dorm building.
Obviously people restrained him/separated the flag from his Zippo, not because they were fighting for gawd, mom, apple pie and the MURICAN FLAG, but because it’s a pretty fucking stupid idea to burn a piece of cloth inside of a building…
Neither my roommate and I were there. No flag was actually burned or even really charred as I understand it. I’m pretty sure it was his own flag. But my roommate who heard about it just about popped a blood vessel over it, LOL. And not really the blatant fire safety aspect. That’s when I saw first-hand just how irrational some people are about other people exercising freedoms.
Dang. That’s nuts but seems right for teenagers lol. I ask because the same thing happened at CMU in like 2002, but it did make the papers. The whole city turned it into a fucking thing.
That’s such a stupid executive order because the only difference between so called desecration and retiring a flag is the your intentions in how you are setting the flag on fire
people should start holding solemn ceremonies to retire flags via fire in public and see how that goes as well
I mean, intent is very often a major defining factor whether something is illegal or not.
The difference between murder and manslaughter often hinges on whether there was intent.
And for something as stupid as loitering intent is the sole deciding factor for guilt.
That…
Is actually fucking brilliantly appropriate as well. It would symbolicly illustrate Trumps facsict regime us burning our country in peices, thereby destroying the states…
This ends with blood in the streets. We just need to decide whose blood.
I have some thoughts on that:
Is this a picture of the last guillotine execution in France during the 70s?
I don’t actually know, but good question! I pulled it from Pinterest:
https://fr.pinterest.com/pin/508414245428023265/
Don’t judge me.
Were you…possibly
Were you…
Were you looking up Guillotine ideas on Pinterest?
Isn’t everyone these days?
I think it’s some well-dressed gentlemen executing a working man. Let’s get this guy for being on the wrong side!
It will be the poors blood
I’ve been saying this as well. There is going to be American blood spilt on the streets before this is over. We haven’t reached the bottom yet.
Good on him. I was thinking about doing that myself but I don’t live near DC.
Jeez. It’s… Too perfect.
So I get that the act of burning the flag is protected speech, but surely the act of setting a fire on public property is a crime regardless?
I would think burning flags is only ok on a place where burning other things is ok.
No more birthday candles allowed in glorious free USA.
That’s a pretty bad faith comment. The video of the incident showed the person pouring accelerant on a flag on the ground and starting a decent sized fire.
I support the flag burning, but I think that there is a better way to do it than pouring gas on the sidewalk and lighting it up. Doing in a metal container would be much more responsible.
Did the fire spread to anything else and cause damage
Come on dude, that’s another bad faith argument. The legality of setting fire to things is not determined after the fact.
You’re better than this. Try to put more thought into your comments.
Or maybe stop apologizing for cruel dictators. They don’t need your help, so don’t help them. This “to be fair” and “decorum” crap has gotten us to a point where children are being kidnapped and raped without consequence, and free speech has been eliminated. I know you aren’t trying to be part of the problem, but I’m here to tell you that you absolutely, unequivocally, are part of the problem.
Yeaaa, that’s pretty off base. You’re moving the goalposts. I just said it’s a crime to set fire to things on the sidewalk in a public and mentioned that it would be more responsible to do it with a metal bin or something.
All of this “apologizing for cruel dictators” “you are part of the problem” bullshit is nonsense bad faith strawman argument. You were looking for someone to fight with and went after me because it suits you to do so.
Picking fights like this with random people who agree with 98% of what you think because 2% of their opinions are different yours, is a right wingers wet dream. They love that you are doing this. They love that you would take time out of your day to attack your allies and further fracture resistance.
As a youth myself and friends lit many a thing on fire. Most were fireworks but there were other things and sometimes with a magnifying glass. Now these were rather small fires but none the less they were by and large allowed as no law was ever enforced in this regard although sometimes we were told to knock it off.
Just wanted to pop in to say all of this "master debater"ese is bullshit and people should stop taking those who endlessly rattle on about “goal posts” and logical fallacies seriously.
This isn’t fucking debate club nor is it Ben Shapiro.
I doubt anyone’s mind has ever been changed a single iota by this type of talk, and I find it pointless at best and fascist apologia at worst.
Friend, you’re on lemmy. You may only have extremist views with 0 nuance or else you’re a part of The Enemy™.
Realistic takes are not allowed here
Yes, the way to push him on this would be to very publicly burn a flag in a manner that is perfectly legal otherwise. Find an official fire pit or BBQ in a public park. Scorching the sidewalk with gasoline is only going to give them an easy win when they charge you for “defacing public property,” creating a danger to the public, or even arson.
