My thought is that this is not going to last. Law enforcement is completely different from a year ago, when they "couldn't find" who was ransacking Apple retail stores. There are many lawful forms of expressing your views.
Yes, after the recent promotional event at the White House I can easily imagine protecting Teslas becomes a top priority, and that damaging one is punishable by death.
It is unequivocally terrorism to participate in violence against civilians with the aim of causing political change. And it's domestic because it's here. It's definitionally correct.
It is not definitionally correct because when you or I say "domestic terrorism", despite being the same text and same sound, it is not the same as when the administration says "domestic terrorism". All they're saying is that they care to stop people damaging tesla's. Not that they are going to be stopping the dictionary definition of "domestic terrorist"
It is terrorism, indisputably. Arguing other point is relatively inconsequential. But if we were to argue the point, to argue that spray-paint isn't "violence" isn't going to have much credibility when it's perceived to be from the long standing "words are violence" and "silence is violence" crowd. A selective standard is no standard at all. How the spray paint differs is that it is property destruction in service of intimidation toward a political end.
Does that mean that Republicans engaged in terrorism when they threatened to hang journalists, shoot immigrants or Democrats, etc.? Seems like the courts might be overloaded if we redefine every threat as an act of terrorism.
Honestly, I don't think the article supports the headline.
ex. "The cost to insure a Tesla Model 3 went up 30 percent last year.". Nothing happening in March of this year is affecting the price of insurance from last year. I have no doubt that stuff happening in March of this year will affect insurance prices this year but Tesla insurance is just expensive because the availability of Tesla repairs is low.
Whether or not law enforcement (which is most likely state level and therefore didn't change this year) can figure out whose doing vandalism isn't going to affect the price as significantly as Tesla's own inability to repair vehicles.
Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?
I think it's more likely they'll start enforcing jaywalking laws against children playing hockey in the street.
Now, I'm not saying anyone should vandalize someone else's car for political reasons but as a campaign to dissuade people from buying Teslas this seems to be quite effective.
> Law enforcement, comprised completely of government workers, is going to go out and find the people protesting against killing off their golden goose?
Law enforcement has both generally been spared direct cuts and had federal accountability measures removed, so they, and especially the worst actors, have plenty of reason to friendly to the regime.
Law enforcement, comprised of local workers, are accountable to their local citizens.
I don't think they have any particular beef against cutting federal workers.
> as a campaign to dissuade people from buying Teslas this seems to be quite effective.
Terrorism is generally effective. That's kind of the point, to effect change through violence. Although hopefully, that effect doesn't escalate to enforcement of real ID on the Web to deal with all of the people promoting terrorism on social media platforms.
The insurance in question is more about individual cars rather than stores;
And while Teslas have Sentry mode that could detect things like paint, door dings, tire vandalism to record a criminal act, law enforcement has rarely been able to enforce much except the extreme or flagrant.
But it is more difficult to prove criminal intent and value paint, metal, and tire damage.
If Sentry mode records the perpetrator, the cops have to find it criminal, and then the DA decides to prosecute....
Good luck civilly pursuing every door ding or the mustard that fell off a sandwich -- even if somebody holds their ID up to a sentry mode camera, or drives off with their license plate clearly visible.
