I saw left wingers claiming that "don't tread on me" is in opposition to "he should have complied [with the police]" and alleging right wing hypocrisy, presumably referring to the death of Renee Nicole Good when she tried to run an ICE agent over with her car.
This is not the first time I've seen left wingers making this specious comparison, and left wingers as usual have trouble understanding things outside of their worldview (their much vaunted "empathy" notwithstanding). So I will do a deep dive here:
"Don't tread on me" is a slogan that comes from the Gadsden flag (the one with a snake) and was attested to as early as 1775.
Looking at it in the context of the American Revolutionary War and the rhetoric surrounding it, it can be understood in terms of resistance to government tyranny, by which we can understand governments doing things that they should not be doing and being "oppressive, harsh, or unjust".
This is not the same as anarchy, or thinking that states and their representatives are illegitimate. There is no hypocrisy in touting "Don't tread on me" as a principle, while at the same time believing that government has a legitimate (non-tyrannical) role.
"Don't tread on me" was later taken up as a slogan by libertarians, but even libertarians believe in a role for the state (anarchists who claim to be libertarian because it sounds nicer notwithstanding).
And if you believe that the state is legitimate, it is not surprising, hypocritical or unbelievable that you would think that the police are too. For example, Trevor Miles of the Libertarian Party of North Carolina, in Policing in America - A Libertarian Perspective, does not call for the police to be abolished, and even minarchists, who as the name suggests are almost anarchists, believe that there should be police.
So if the police are legitimate, it is not "tyranny" to follow their instructions, and one can believe in "don't tread on me" while at the same time believing that one should follow police instructions.
However, more than that, when people say "he should have complied", they are not saying you should do everything the police tell you to do, no matter how ridiculous.
I asked Google Gemini "what are some cases where conservatives say someone "should have complied" with the police", and it gave me the following examples:
George Floyd
Michael Brown
Adam Toledo
Dexter Reed
It also gave me Ashli Babbitt, but she is not relevant when left wingers accuse right wingers of hypocrisy over "don't tread on me".
We can also add Renee Nicole Good, since it is the current case attracting the claims of hypocrisy.
Let us look at what "he should have complied" means in each of these examples.
George Floyd - Floyd "actively resisted being handcuffed" at first, and struggled when the police tried to put him in the car
Michael Brown - eyewitnesses, including some who did not want to be named because they feared for their safety, said that he attacked the police officer before being shot
Adam Toledo - he was seen with what looked like a firearm in his hand. His body was also found with a gun nearby. These 2 points are clear from the camera footage. According to the police, he also fled from them, was holding his waistband, did not follow verbal direction, gave imminent threat of battery with weapon and used force likely to cause death or great bodily harm.
Dexter Reed - he was killed in a firefight with police officers after a traffic stop where he started shooting first.
Renee Nicole Good - shot by an ICE officer because she tried to run him over with her vehicle. Here, complying means she shouldn't have tried to kill the ICE officer.
So we can see that in most (80%) of these cases, when right wingers say "he should have complied", what this means is "if you don't try to attack or kill the police, they won't do the same to you".
And in the remaining case, George Floyd, he was resisting arrest. In all 50 US States (including Minnesota), resisting arrest is a crime.
Perhaps one might think that the police are in the wrong in some scenarios, but "don't tread on me" does not mean that one is justified in attacking the police (or resisting arrest). The American way is to sue them afterwards, and complying in the heat of the moment to reduce the chances of being a target of police violence (and also not attract additional charges) does not mean that one is letting others tread on oneself.
So in conclusion, "It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible."
