It has been happening your entire goddamn life but now that it's white people across the Canadian border you're tweakin'. Your choice: Read a book Or get hectored by John Oliver for fifteen minutes.But goddamn I don't want to feel like it's ok to abuse civil liberties of people I disagree with.
As a white guy tho you're safe. EIGHTEEN FBI agents raided my dad's house looking for plutonium. Then they raided his other house because they weren't even smart enough to contextualize the raid. Had my dad been brown? That would have been a no-knock warrant with battering ram and flash-bangs. I know this because I had a buddy who was looking for me one fine day, at the exact same house, who was white but happened to look native american and they had him in a stress position for thirty minutes after rolling four squad cars across the lawn at him, drawing weapons and holding a K9 a foot from his face barking and ready to murder. DEVIL'S ADVOCACY: White people are itchy about the Patriot Act because it gives the police the right to treat white people like brown people.
For now, but that's not my concern. My concern is that authoritarian governance isn't going to be good for any of us, regardless of our color. "Just as bad for white people" isn't a good outcome, and also not the likely outcome. Devil's Devil's Advocacy: White people pushback is good for all because the white male lawmakers are sympathetic in their ignorance.As a white guy tho you're safe.
I don't disagree? But my point is that caring more now is part of the problem. One need only look at the different applications of justice between Standing Rock and Malheur to illustrate that giving a shit about civil liberties only when people who look like us are imperiled is the whole of the issue.
You know what would rule? For the Republican Party to get so up in their don't wear masks/don't teach critical race theory nonsense that they decide that impinging the liberties of anyone is unamerican. The reason Malheur went as simply as it did was the whiplash reaction against Ruby Ridge/Waco/Etc under Clinton. They said as much. If I were a liberal attorney general I would go after every redneck sonofabitch with the full goose-stepping authority vested in me. Provoke me some real backlash. California's gun laws are as tough as they are because the Black Panthers practiced open carry. Be interesting to see Black Lives Matter adopt similar tactics.