Caitlin JOHNSTONE

As protests against police brutality are met with an unceasing barrage of police brutality, the obsequious bootlicking copologia in online discussion forums has been cranked up to eleven.

I’ve written a couple of articles touching on the police assault and hospitalization of 75 year-old lifelong peace activist Martin Gugino, and the bat shit insane arguments I’ve been encountering to justify this self-evidently unjustifiable occurrence have been absolutely jaw-dropping. People have been using some of the dumbest arguments I’ve ever seen on the internet to claim Gugino staged his injury.

They’ve been spamming a bogus article by the odious disinfo blog The Conservative Treehouse which claims, citing literally no evidence whatsoever, that “Gugino was attempting to capture the radio communications signature of Buffalo police officers”, assuming on no basis whatsoever that the septuagenarian would need to be within touching distance of the police in order to do such a thing.

Mostly, though, they’ve been saying that Gugino deserved to be shoved by the officers.

“He shouldn’t have gotten in their path!” they object.

No, bootlicker, it’s not okay to assault someone just because they’re in your way and you’re wearing a badge. Don’t shove people, much less senior citizens who could be injured and die. You should have learned not to shove people in preschool.

“Well obviously if you get too close to the police moving around like that they’re going to give you a shove,” they argue.

Yes, yes police do often physically assault people for inexcusable reasons. Thank you for confirming the problem the grownups are trying to solve here. Stop interrupting adult conversations designed to accomplish that.

Why do people do this? Why whenever there’s a video of police brutality, no matter how clearly and obviously wrong it is, are there always people falling all over themselves to try and justify or spin it as something acceptable or illusory? Literally always, without a single, solitary exception?

Well, here are five reasons:

Poster Comment:

Continued at the link.