07-09-2016, 01:17 PM
(03-13-2016, 12:18 AM)DarkGrievous7145 Wrote: The conspiracy theorists sound less and less insane with each passing day, it seems.
It's funny actually, I used to run in conspiracy circles a few years back, there's always been the fringe elements to it like the fake moon landing guys or Illuminati chasers, they're good to poke fun at and they draw attention for it, but everything I was following was a bit more down to earth and rational. We were talking about things like UAV's, facial recognition systems, wiretaps, even war crime coverups, I basically stopped being part of the conspiracy theory scene where all the stuff we were chasing stopped being theories and started being headlines.
I only bring that up because I've been specifically asked by a few people what my take is on the Dallas situation, from me what it boils down to is that it does have some hallmarks of a false-flag operation, pretty much along the lines of what happened before with the Black Panthers, but if that is the case it's a lot of trouble to go to with no real reason for it.
Fact is that the general public already vilifies BLM and sees the police as the good guys, even without overt acts of violence people see it as threatening and violent by default. From what I've seen and read I feel comfortable enough saying that the shooter is not just your Average Joe off the streets, hence the potential grey areas where conspiracy theorists like to jump the gun, maybe the guy was a plant, maybe he's just an avid gun nut, but again that doesn't really change the situation.
What we will definitely see, regardless, is a huge amount of spin and scrambling to garner more support for the uniforms and more animosity towards the protestors, bullets in cops galvanizes the population more than bullets in civilians, because hey, they're the good guys.
I'm kind of concerned about the use of a bomb disposal robot to take out the gunman, it's not an entirely unexpected precedent, but it's not a comfortable one to see. As the article already posted says, that's a tactic closer to warfare than law enforcement, it's excessive force and it wasn't intended to simply apprehend, and it worked. I can already see this being used as justification to give law enforcement access to armed drones and other remote defense systems, and with enough public outcry over dead cops and enough fear over terrorism, I can't imagine it being a hard sell.