Anti-Corporate Anarchist Capitalists Part III: Their Lying Eyes

In my previous post, I discussed the Grand Narrative that anarcho capitalists use to justify their claims that our nation is heading towards a full-on Police State, based upon a few isolated incidents of police abuse and government intrusion they've cherrypicked to make those claims.  But as I found from the particular anarcho capitalist I was dealing with, even the cherrypicked facts ain't what they're hyped to be.

Because it wasn't just that he lacked enough proof to justify the Grand Narrative he was making, but that the scant bits of evidence he provided to me were either meaningless, or more often, actually refuted the claims he was making.  While he considered himself the ultimate skeptic because he didn't believe anything the government or media said, he'd accept entirely ridiculous claims that were refuted by his own evidence; rather than trust his lying eyes.

Ironically, all of his actual news sources were from the mainstream media.  So he refused to believe anything the media said...unless he thought it confirmed his beliefs; in which case they were entirely reliable.  But I guess he shouldn't have been so trusting, as they didn't say what he thought they said.

Geraldo Rivera, Trustworthy Liar

For example, his "proof" that our military was providing security to the Taliban so that they could grow opium for us was a Fox News story from Geraldo Rivera, in which Geraldo "exposed" how our military was tolerating poppy farmers in one region of Afghanistan so they wouldn't hate us and work with the Taliban.  So his link told the opposite story of the one he thought it said, and relied upon Geraldo and Fox News as proof of this ridiculous claim.

And sure, maybe Geraldo was lying about that.  I can see that being the case.  Yet, this guy provided no evidence that Geraldo was lying, and the little research I've done of other people making this claim also have no evidence suggesting it's a lie.  It's all about assuming it's a lie, because that's the only way this story is important to them.  While the only evidence they have refutes their point.

So they'll use Fox News as their evidence, but only to the point that it undermines them.  After that, mere assertions and guesses are enough; with no good explanation on why Fox would have reported this story in the first place if it was evidence of evil government practices.

News Flash: Don’t Point Guns at Cops

My debate with this guy started after he posted a YouTube video to his Facebook profile entitled POLICE BRUTALITY - Granny Shot 7 TIMES By Cops For Refusing To Answer Census. And skeptic that I am, I had my doubts about this, so I watched the video which I've posted below.



Now, if you watched the video, you’ll know one thing: The grandmother did NOT get killed for refusing to answer the census. Rather, she got killed because she pointed a shotgun at police and refused to put it down.

And nothing in the video disputed that account. While her son was there insisting that she shouldn’t have been shot, it was based upon the idea that she was a nice grandmother and the police should have known that she was a nice grandmother and wouldn’t have used the gun she was holding. But even HE didn’t dispute that she had a shotgun.

And the whole story was that a census worker went to a house, the guy at the door refused to answer questions and pointed a gun at the census worker. The worker reported it to the police, who showed up and arrested the guy for assault; which is what happens when you point guns at innocent people.

While they were taking him away, his mom came out with a shotgun and wouldn’t put it down after police told her to; so the police shot and killed her. That’s it. That’s the story. And my anarchist capitalist opponent presented nothing to contradict that.  Not even a link to another account of the story.  All he knew was what I presented to you, which for him was confirmation that the government is intrusive and needs to be stopped.

BTW, this news story got it wrong and the census worker did not arrive at the house after dark.  Rather, she arrived at 7:45 PM, which was twenty minutes before sunset, and it took two hours for the police to arrive; which is when the arrest and shooting happened.  And yes, it was a female census worker that this man was so intimidated by that he needed a gun to protect himself from her intrusive questions.

Ooooh, those scary scary census forms.  Is it any wonder we all live in fear?

It Was The Guns, Stupid

Now, maybe the police DIDN’T have to kill her. Maybe this WAS police abuse. I don’t know, I wasn’t there and I’m not attempting to defend the police actions; because I don't know what happened.

But in no case did this have anything to do with the census at all; except that it was a census worker who happened to have gone to this jackass’s door. The REAL problem here wasn’t the census or government intrusion; it was guns; duh! Had the guy and grandma not had guns, nobody would have been hurt at all. And if you point guns at innocent people, you should expect bad things to happen to you.

And of course, the other issue is that the jackass with the gun had nothing to fear about the census at all. Were it not for anti-government fear-mongers, this guy would have answered the census when it was mailed to him and avoided the whole situation.  As is usually the case, the only reason you need to fear the government shooting you down is because you acted in a way that made them have to shoot you down. It’s like a dog that purposefully got rabies because he was told that rabid dogs get shot, and he wanted to protect himself by getting rabies.

And when I pointed out to the guy that this video had nothing to do with the census, and that the grandmother died because she pointed a shotgun at police; he refused to listen; though he had no evidence to the contrary. The best he could do was to insist that citizens have a right to point their guns at whoever they want, and the government doesn’t have any right to stop them.

Seriously, that was it. I fully showed how this story didn’t fit his narrative of intrusive government at all, but rather than admit that he was wrong, the best he could do was to make a nonsensical point that would embarrass a third grader. Really? You have the right to point your guns at innocent people?? I don’t think so.

And the scariest part is how he could not only watch that clip, but actually felt confident enough about it to post it on his Facebook page, without having understood at all what he was watching. The person who posted the clip insisted that it was about a grandmother getting killed for not answering the census, and this bozo was too stupid to use his own brain to know otherwise.

And it was like that again and again with him.  He kept sending me stories proving how evil the government is and, having known little or nothing about the story beforehand, I used his own source material to refute the very point he was making.  And after each time, I kept asking him how much longer he'd keep trusting the people who had fed him this material, and rather than finally understand that he had been suckered; he'd just post another story from the same people who had mislead him before.

In my next post, I'll cover a few more of these stories.  Or maybe not.  I'm kind of losing steam on this, and since I no longer have access to those posts, I have to do it all from memory.  So I don't know.  We'll see.