> This caused the right to de-emphasize those concerns and put more emphasis on the defense of the police.
But that's the choice, isn't it; faced with a choice between property damage, however minor or even theoretical, and human life (or the serious injuries incurred by protestors and journalists who had rubber bullets fired at their eyes), conservatives immediately turn around and defend the police.
The police can read between the lines as well as anyone else, so they interpret that as the voters ordering them to go out and injure as many protestors as necessary until the protests stop. Which, of course, escalates the protests.
(How is Radley Balko conservative? It's very hard to tell from that twitter feed)
I'd say Radley Balko is libertarian. The intersection of doctrinally libertarian viewpoints with main stream American politics is complex at best. For what it's worth, I often see his articles shared in right-wing circles favorably. I haven't really heard of him having much of a following in left-wing circles. It doesn't sound very helpful to our political scene to be highly concerned that somebody can't be easily placed in a bucket of right-wing or left-wing.
On the other, to borrow some of the left's standard viewpoints, I could say that it's a very privileged viewpoint that property damage is inconsequential compared to injury. How many lower-class people will suffer from losing their mode of transportation, having their home rendered unsafe, or even having "luxuries" that were sources of comfort in a difficult life destroyed? How many people started out in poverty and spent a lifetime building a business from nothing so they could rise into the middle class, only to watch it be destroyed by privileged mostly-white rioters in response to something that they had nothing to do with, that happened in a completely different city? And it certainly isn't like rioters haven't intentionally attacked, injured, and in a few cases killed, both citizens and law enforcement officers as well.
But that's the choice, isn't it; faced with a choice between property damage, however minor or even theoretical, and human life (or the serious injuries incurred by protestors and journalists who had rubber bullets fired at their eyes), conservatives immediately turn around and defend the police.
The police can read between the lines as well as anyone else, so they interpret that as the voters ordering them to go out and injure as many protestors as necessary until the protests stop. Which, of course, escalates the protests.
(How is Radley Balko conservative? It's very hard to tell from that twitter feed)