Poliorketes, you ask how many democracies use violence? They all do. The armed forces and police forces have the monopoly of legitimate violence. I didn't say they went about shooting everyone. But that doesn't mean that the army is never used. Nor does it mean that there is no violence. Because there is PLENTY of violence in the streets by the forces of "order" against peaceful protesters. Physical violence, as well as moral and financial violence by the use of courts, injunctions, and fines against legitimate pacific protests. The latest in Québec were the students against the tuition fee hikes. Hikes they wouldn't even suffer themselves, the hikes being gradual and only truly affecting the students who will sign up in three years or so. They protest to safeguard accessible public higher education. A fundamental necessity to a healthy democracy (going to school until you are 16 doesn't make you a good citizen, it barely teaches you to count). And yet they are demonized by two of the bigger parties, including the last one in power.
"Financial violence" is not violence. Violence means, like, guns and bayonets and broken bottles and stuff.
Politicians speaking harshly about their opponents and publicly badmouthing protestors is not violence.
Police brutality is violence. But now we have to, again, recognize a slippery slope fallacy when we see one. Because democracies sometimes exercise violence, especially when other means are exhausted, in a generally constrained fashion does not make them categorically identical to, say, Syria's present regime, or Egypt, Tunisia, or Libya's former regimes. It just isn't the same. And to assert that those phenomena can even be discussed with the same words is to denigrate and demean the struggles of thousands of dead people fighting for rights, while inappropriately elevating the status of people who are already residents of some of the richest, most peaceful, most entitled, most powerful nations in the world.
I'm not saying, "Because there's someone worse off, you can't complain." I'm saying, "You can't complain
with the same words."
*hint hint* remove mendincant lol IG... I mean lets just talk about it on the forums, cuz whats said here would never leak IG, and the last think we would want is for Aurvandiils nobles to *hint hint* RISE UP against Mendicant...
Personally, I don't want Mendicant removed. Hireshmont want to compel his debasement and force gross indignities upon him. Then maybe force him to become a priest or something.
