Jump to content

George Floyd and the protests.


Ms. Spam
 Share

Recommended Posts

Our campus cops are actually trained to show that cops are kind and hired for a specific purpose to make the kids feel safe (his hiring came out of school shootings so he's like our air marshal designed to prevent school shootings). But the kids hate him. The weirdest part is he's actually a pretty nice dude. He's donated to the schools food drives, comes to school events off duty, has young hip vibe but man do the kids not like him.

Based on what youve said about your school demographics, it makes sense. There is probably a good amount of fear related to law enforcement.

 

We had a couple of cops doing security at my high school. We were basically like a small college campus with 8 different buildings with classrooms and another building where they did food for the school district, so they patrolled a lot. And this was before Columbine changed everything.

 

They actually befriended the kids who were highest risk for breaking the law, even hanging out with them while they hid and smoked, which was a total violation of school rules. But it worked, and we had very few problems on campus.

 

Im not against different departments/ cities going the route of Camden a few years ago when they basically defunded the police and started over with cops reapplying. The biggest problem isnt a lack of good cops, its a system designed to protect bad cops. That ranges from the unions to department leadership, all the way up to the Supreme Court. And of course the president telling police to not be careful about hurting people. We need to change the system and especially change tthe laws. Unless we do that, nothing is going to work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So in your scenario Ice do veteran cops get to re apply for their jobs or are you talking about almost 1 million rookie cops policing the streets?

I havent hashed the details out in my head yet. Mostly because my scenario will never happen, so whats the point? But lets just say that the general view of how the police do their jobs is so dim that the thought of a million rookies with good training sounds just as good if not better than what we have right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The rhetoric has changed. At first it was ABOLISH ALL POLICE and I asked my questions, even as a good liberal, and now it's become DEFUND THE POLICE and I am an idiot for not knowing exactly what a multi tiered plan was from the start.

 

I'm truly feeling like the liberal movement is hashtag rage and fervor with its heart in the right place and a democratic leadership that is clueless as to how to stop it.

 

I am constantly finding myself in this center space of a venn diagram while the rest of the world is in one of two circle moving away from each other.

 

When it comes to people's freedoms and rights I am 100% liberal. When it comes to how those rights are protected and upheld I find myself vacillating between sides.

When it comes to fiscal matters, the older I get, the more conservative I become.

 

The Democratic party owns the media and is corrupt as hell, and his shown itself to owned and controlled by the elite when it claims to be the party of the common man.

 

The GOP is so deeply worried about keeping it's fundamentalist core, that it spends all its energy trying to control and legislate old fashioned morals and values that only serve a segment of the population. They have also proven it is more important to win than serve when they actually endorsed Trump.

 

I live and work in the super liberal Hollywood bubble, which is fine and comfortable for me-- but if I voiced these thoughts on social media it would cost me friends and jobs. There is a cult of hashtag mob mentality amongst liberals that I find just as unsettling as conservative thinly veiled racist nationalism.

 

Obviously I support BLM, obviously I support change-- but to be told I MUST announce this or I am the enemy, or that I must vote blue no matter who, or any other group think hive mentality decree, is a bunch of crap.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I live and work in the super liberal Hollywood bubble, which is fine and comfortable for me-- but if I voiced these thoughts on social media it would cost me friends and jobs. There is a cult of hashtag mob mentality amongst liberals that I find just as unsettling as conservative thinly veiled racist nationalism.

 

Obviously I support BLM, obviously I support change-- but to be told I MUST announce this or I am the enemy, or that I must vote blue no matter who, or any other group think hive mentality decree, is a bunch of crap.

Thiiiiiiiis!

 

I threw myself into the Standing Rock movement in 2016, and ended up in a community organizer role. When you work with one social justice movement, you end up working with all of them, so I used to attend multiple BLM events. I have my "receipts," more than most people have. And all I got was a rampaging case of PTSD. Not because of the opposition to my causes - I was never in North Dakota, so I never got shot or tear gassed or mauled by dogs, though I can't say the constant fighting with racist dickwads on social media didn't contribute to my condition. But because my fellow organizers kept demanding I do more, more, more, despite having a full-time job to keep up with, and a chronic illness that was worsening. They were fine with watching me kill myself for the cause. Whenever I would ask for help or a break, I'd get "oh, I have physical and mental health issues, too, but this is important!"

 

They're doing it again. I get to explain to all of them that I've been messed up so bad that I'm literally physically and emotionally incapable of protesting anymore. None of them have expressed any real sympathy for my condition.

 

Well, that important work isn't going to get done if you burn your allies out over and over to "serve the cause". Which is downright tragic, because I do feel very strongly about social justice issues and I do want to help. I just can't handle the people who work on them.

 

I've been out of the discourse for the past two years... I'm not surprised the dems have further tribalized, but it's still sad to hear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tribalism is indeed an issue, but I think Tank's bubble makes it seem way worse than it is. The Democrats are still pretty varied - they pretty much agree on abortion and hating Trump, and that the healthcare system isn't perfect. But beyond those things, there's a diversity of opinion that isn't allowed in the GOP. And as someone who is more conservative than a lot of people here, I can speak to that side better than most.

 

It's also easy to confuse the media being in the pocket of the Dems because of the fact that Trump is constantly picking a fight, and also constantly lies and says horrible things. To some degree it's frustrating, like how the late night hosts overly focus on him (Fallon tends to take the high road, but Colbert and Meyers are way out there).

 

I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat (seriously - I'm a card carrying member of the American Solidarity Party, not just someone who claims to be independent but votes for the same party constantly) but I think that it's apples and oranges between the Dems and GOP during the Trump era.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My take on all this is that everyone is running on emotion at 11. That is exactly the wrong time to enact change, because that is when well-intention-ed yet wrong decisions are made. It doesn't help that the news media has operated for over a century now with the philosophy of "if it bleeds it leads," because it sells and makes shareholders happy. The news media is far from objective, and they cherry pick stories (generally speaking) what they think is newsworthy, which serves only to whip everyone up in a frenzy. In fact, in recent decades, the news (both left and right) actively agitate the population. There was a term used to describe that type of news reporting: yellow journalism. I blame the news, for most of what is going on in the way of riots.

 

This is NOT to say I don't support the idea of peaceful protests, and the concept that BLM is trying to get across. We've seen too many black people killed, both by racists and corrupt cops. While the black community receives this injustice at the hands of police daily, they are not alone. I think that this conversation should be more about police brutality in general, and not just make it only about one community receiving such injustice. Change MUST happen. And it should change for ALL experiencing police brutality. But because the news loves to play black VS white to agitate society, I think right now, no one is able to make public policy changes objectively. Ideally, I think organizations like BLM need to ally themselves with other communities of all colors, and present a peaceful and united front to make this change...but only after people have had a chance to calm down. I know some believe that one should never let a crisis go to waste, and believe this is the time to do it now, but I think that is wrong headed. By waiting until the dust has settled, and if BLM can ally themselves not with Antifa, but other minority groups (and stop looking to shills like Al Sharpton) to hold politicians accountable or vote them out, I think it will be a lot more effective.

 

One last thought...the reason Ghandi (and MLK after him) chose peaceful protests because they understood this. That is what is needed now. Not radicalism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tank, I completely agree with the sentiment above. Right now the amount of virtue signaling going on is nuts, and it's also frustrating because it's not actually helpful and doesn't do anything. I think that people are pent up and calling out racist Uncle Larry is cathartic more than a desire to change the status quo. I think people are also pissed at the government for locking them in their houses so it's really easy to yell DEFUND THE POLICE because they also feel encroached upon, although it's completely different than systemic racism.

 

I can't support the Republican party after they allowed Trump the nomination. I'm also finding it difficult to support Joe Biden and the "establishment" Democratic elite, but I'm definitely not a Libertarian, either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

fuckin Larry

 

No doubt the worst thing about the modern liberal is their purity tests. If you don't check EVERY SINGLE BOX ALL THE TIME FOREVER, you might as well be Trump himself. It's self defeating and irritating as shit. It's why they constantly lose winnable elections. They just can't seem to figure it out. There's no self reflection at all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got a question for discussion's sake only. I am politically a centrist, with a tendency to lean left. Maybe even what some call a classical liberal. But it seems to me that the younger generations who are liberal are just immature in their expressions of outrage in general, and cancel culture is a sword that cuts both ways. Do I sound out of line with that statement?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You sound like your dad, and your grandfather before him. The younger generation usually gets it wrong even though well meaning. Then the opinion changes over time. I will say that this generation has no use for history.

 

Leave it to Al Sharpton to use Floyd's funeral to tell the NFL to give Colin Kaepernick his job back.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You sound like your dad, and your grandfather before him. The younger generation usually gets it wrong even though well meaning. Then the opinion changes over time.

 

Leave it to Al Sharpton to use Floyd's funeral to tell the NFL to give Colin Kaepernick his job back.

I guess I am crotchety in my old age. LOL! I don't mean that sarcastically either. I don't want to sound or be like my dad or grandfather*, and I am open to learning about how I can avoid it. Thank you met. I do mean that.

 

 

*My maternal grandfather was a good man, and my dad still is. They were/ are progressive thinkers. I know I sound like an old man myself sometimes, and I want to change that. But also not at the extent of compromising who I am at my core.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the things we did as kids I'm now seeing myself acting like my parents. It's funny.

 

So Cops the television show has been cancelled because of this. Does anything really think this was necessary. Why are we giving in to zealots? I heard a great analogy the other day. You can "bend the knee"(go along to get along) all you want. How did that work out for Ned Stark? He got his head cut off. There will never be enough that you can do for some people. They will turn on you eventually.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The worst part of the social discourse that's happening is people are using ****ing Twitter and Instagram to address these massive multifaceted sociological problems and trying to summize a position with a meme and a hashtag. It's ****ing infuriating. If there was any place to have a reasoned intellectual discussion with experts and professionals about what needs to be done etc.. Instagram and Twitter are not the vehicles for it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the things we did as kids I'm now seeing myself acting like my parents. It's funny.

 

So Cops the television show has been cancelled because of this. Does anything really think this was necessary. Why are we giving in to zealots? I heard a great analogy the other day. You can "bend the knee"(go along to get along) all you want. How did that work out for Ned Stark? He got his head cut off. There will never be enough that you can do for some people. They will turn on you eventually.

There will always be those who either can't be pleased, or even move goal posts. True.

 

However, there are things that can be done. Defunding the police is wrong headed. However, DEMILITARIZING the police is needed. When you have urban police departments where patrol officers stay in the cruiser most of the time unless it is to arrest someone, and even the average officer has access to assault rifles in that car, police officers tend to be seen as an occupying force, rather than providers of protection and security. The police need to go back to the concept of community policing. Maybe creating a new structure, and do more community policing.

 

Where I live, we have a transit system that is patrolled by not police officers, but unarmed police assistants. Citizens can go to them if there is a problem, but these police assistants are not POST certified, do not have most police powers, but can radio the police when needed if a situation calls for it. Essentially, they are secuity guards that are employed by t he police.

 

I say maybe police departments need to consider hiring more police assistants, and maybe put them on motorcycle beats. Have them get out and get to know the communities they serve, and let the communities they serve get to know them. A lot of police officers jobs are mundane, and don't require the special police legal powers they possess, like taking theft reports, or handling routine citizen complaints. A lot of situations can be defused without the need to arrest or use of weapons. If police assistants run into situations requiring an actual police officer, they could radio for that at that time.

 

Maybe that is idealistic, but I think it is worth giving it a try. I think police assistants could help improve community/police relations because they would be more approachable and they would have a different mission, would not be as threatening to communities that historically had police brutality, police assistants would be the first point of contact to the community and would only call in an actual police officer if it was needed..

 

Edit

Also, there needs to be more federal oversight. Maybe not necessarily federalize police altogether, but there needs to be standards overseen. For example, it's clear there shouldn't be choke holds of any kind performed by the police. The feds need to ensure that is outlawed nationwide and have a means to enforce that with local police departments.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The worst part of the social discourse that's happening is people are using ****ing Twitter and Instagram to address these massive multifaceted sociological problems and trying to summize a position with a meme and a hashtag. It's ****ing infuriating. If there was any place to have a reasoned intellectual discussion with experts and professionals about what needs to be done etc.. Instagram and Twitter are not the vehicles for it!

Yeah, I hate twitter. People need to stay off twitter. Having twitter at your finger tips so you can send half baked thoughts out is dumb. How can one convey a message that makes sense in 178 characters, or whatever it is now. Most statements come off like tourette syndrome.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Soooooo. This defund the cops thing is raging on my facebook page with some of my Pokemon Go friends. Apparently we're seeing a dividing line of super liberal dyed in the wool Bernie supporters and the complete opposite, guys who would vote for a Mitt Romney because they don't want to upset the apple cart but also like things divided up correctly and in their right spots and need to have police and feel all this is disrespectful. Me, I'm in the middle.

 

I think people should keep protesting. But they have to have follow through. You can't just throw "Black Lives Matter" and not want to do the work to fix it. Stuff needs to be done though and what we have now is definitely not working. When you've voiced your anger and gotten that out, what are you going to do about it? What plan do you have? I always ask that about things in school because I want critical thinking for my students. It's great to let it all out but in the end what can you do to make it better and is it fixable.

 

Democracy is not passive.

 

Just look at the nonsense we have right now in our own White House Administration. The stuff this president does is crazy. Like even before he was elected I was like "No way someone will vote for him now because that's just wrong. People won't look the other way because of what he did?" But then one more straw of dumbness was added to the pile - Trump's mocking of a disabled reporter, his comments about the wall, his taped talk about grabbing women, his stupid University, his dumb foundation. All of that I expected people to see and move on and chose a better candidate. But because of systemic choices to look the other way or allow it to pass it keeps on going with Trump. Think of all the things we've been outraged by in this Administration and it's still going to happen. I genuinely believe that Congress and specifically the Senate is the three other cops and the guy videoing not doing anything to stop Chauvin from kneeling on a man and suffocating him to death in almost nine minutes.

 

And that brings me to this topic of defunding the police. That's what's so shocking about the video evidence from ALLLLLLLLL the other videos we have seen of black lives snuffed out. Chauvin looked into the camera that was filming him and no fucks were given. He knew exactly what it was he was doing. And people let it happen. Here's a guy who more than likely had to wear a body camera and because he had 18 other complaints was still an officer of the law. So what we have now doesn't work.

 

Defunding the police in Minneapolis is like the thing that the BLM movement is asking for. It's the next step. They know they need to do something to assuage the pain but they have to do something so big that it draws attention and makes people think. It brings up the topic so it can be discussed. Go find out how much your city spends on it's police budget and then compare it to what they spend on say things like housing, social services, and feeding the population. During Covid your city is probably seeing an up tick in homeless people too. San Antonion spends 479 million dollars a year on our police force compared to 52 million for housing and health and human services. Cops are already wearing a dozen hats when they get called out for anything from the homeless vagrant peeing in your bushes in your upscale neighborhood, to the lady caught stealing from the grocery store, to home squatters playing music too loud. What if the city spent more money helping to feed people so they don't have to go and steal, or provide housing and care for people with emotional issues that keep them from maintaining a job and and a place to stay? Sure, we need people to investigate murders, manage traffic laws, keep gangs under control. Policing work will still need to be done.

 

Defunding police is not the right term but everything's raw right now. And we have the worst leader ever in our country right now so it is up to cities to chose what they want to do. Democracy is not passive. Work has to be done. I chose to be the moderating voice. What if we changed the budget to fund more homes people can afford to live in, work on making things easier for people to elevate themselves. What if we had better review of officers and ones that have complaints lose their peace officer license and cannot get hired anywhere else?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The rhetoric has changed. At first it was ABOLISH ALL POLICE and I asked my questions, even as a good liberal, and now it's become DEFUND THE POLICE and I am an idiot for not knowing exactly what a multi tiered plan was from the start.

 

I'm truly feeling like the liberal movement is hashtag rage and fervor with its heart in the right place and a democratic leadership that is clueless as to how to stop it.

 

I am constantly finding myself in this center space of a venn diagram while the rest of the world is in one of two circle moving away from each other.

 

When it comes to people's freedoms and rights I am 100% liberal. When it comes to how those rights are protected and upheld I find myself vacillating between sides.

When it comes to fiscal matters, the older I get, the more conservative I become.

 

The Democratic party owns the media and is corrupt as hell, and his shown itself to owned and controlled by the elite when it claims to be the party of the common man.

 

The GOP is so deeply worried about keeping it's fundamentalist core, that it spends all its energy trying to control and legislate old fashioned morals and values that only serve a segment of the population. They have also proven it is more important to win than serve when they actually endorsed Trump.

 

I live and work in the super liberal Hollywood bubble, which is fine and comfortable for me-- but if I voiced these thoughts on social media it would cost me friends and jobs. There is a cult of hashtag mob mentality amongst liberals that I find just as unsettling as conservative thinly veiled racist nationalism.

 

Obviously I support BLM, obviously I support change-- but to be told I MUST announce this or I am the enemy, or that I must vote blue no matter who, or any other group think hive mentality decree, is a bunch of crap.

Hate to say I told you so. :p

 

That said, it's worrying that there's no "side" in this whole matter that seems to actually have any real grip on things.

 

The progressives are simply becoming more openly and obviously what I've been saying they were for a long time now: a mythology based as opposed to a fact and policy based movement. They took everything they once "deconstructed" while in the universities: western media, the nuclear family, American exceptionalism, the protestant work ethic, conservatism, whatever - and simply turned it on its head and made a civic religion out of the outcome.

 

Critical theory, while it does have its uses, doesn't then become a theory on how to actually effect real change. For all their rage and visibility, they're demonstrably poor at electoral politics, for example, and from what I've read, progressives aren't posed to do well come November. Because of this, they degenerate into communities of ongoing toxic rage. Yet because it is a mythos, and because people are attracted to the initially positive themes of racial and gender based justice and fairness, it never seems to want for newcomers who see doubling down on the tried and true (and failed) methods of performative radicalism as the way to push things forward. Sometimes they're partially successful, but since this group is so self loathing at heart, it can't abide long term success and ends up sabotaging itself somehow.

 

Rinse, lather, repeat.

 

The conservatives, well, abandon hope all ye who enter here. At present, the G.O.P just seems to be the port-of-call for anyone frustrated with millennial radicalism, as well as boomer-cons who've long since lost the real contest for the heart and mind of America. The religious right has fully endorsed Trump, which is ridiculous on the face of it. We might as well have Hugh Hefner in the White House. Yet the religious right wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and Trump will give the SCOTUS the justices it needs to do that. So what we see here is expediency prevail over principle. This isn't strictly a conservative thing - observe how quickly MeToo shriveled and died on the altar of protecting the democrat's avatar-savior sleepy Joe Biden from scrutiny surrounding his own past conduct (expect the current race hysteria to suffer a comparable fate). But the center-right in America is now the more calm, cool and collected side of things, and they notice stuff like this. The American people notice stuff like this. Not to mention Trump's other numerous failings.

 

Back in 2015, the whole Trump/Bannon machine alongside the cultural libertarian "alt-lite" types seemed to inject new life into a moribund conservatism, and for a time there might have been hope. But what was among the first things Trump did once in office? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Dave Rubin has gone from being Mr. Freeze Peach to a warmed over reboot of any boomer-con you can name repeating the same anti-socialist talking points over and over and over and over and over again. And in this, Rubin is merely standard bearer for the whole cohort. The new trad-con superstar Jordan Peterson has been in drug rehab for how long now? Again, this kind of stuff gets noticed. Conservatives itch for a messiah, and never seem to get one. Their rugged individualist political philosophy, if it can be called that, inoculates them against the propensity to organize at the grass roots level so as to eventually build a movement that can actually effect the culture. So they'd better get used to having their statues being toppled and their books being removed from college libraries, among other things. Because, despite their hopes, things ain't changing on their own. The young radicals won't be coming to their senses any time soon. Why should they? They're winning.

 

Where is the philosophy? Where is the thing they had from the late 70s to the late 90s, whereby they were able to actually win people's hearts and minds? Gone, it would seem. People are eager to march in the streets for the sake of black lives in a way they aren't keen to march in the streets to demand that the super rich keep as much of their own money (ha!) as possible while the rest of us slowly spiral into the crapper. Wow! Color me shocked. In the last three years, I haven't dealt with a right winger who wasn't a total macho, boisterous, swaggering arsehole. And these people think they're deserving of power? Pah!

 

The anger we're seeing stems, I suspect, from the fact that neither progressives nor conservatives have what it takes anymore. Democrats and republicans take turns in the Oval Office, yet nothing ever seems to change on Main Street, in the ghettos and barrios or in the heartland. The people lack the wherewithal - though they haven't always - to create their own political alternatives to the failing status quo. They're unwilling to put the effort into doing so and would be unwilling to vote for such an alternative were it to emerge. Because voters are driven firstly and foremostly by name and brand recognition and perceived trustworthiness. So if you don't change anything, expect nothing to change.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm 110% all in on defunding the police. I also like the idea of disbanding departments and rebuilding them from the ground up, not necessarily with rookies though. But disbanding offers the opportunity to renegotiate union demands which are a major reason it's so hard to weed out the bad ones.

 

Overall police departments are bloated. They're too expensive, too big, too demanding (of the officers and the citizenry), and too militarized. Reforms aren't having enough of an effect, so something drastic needs to happen. (Also, have you seen the results of things like bodycams? It's obvious that being on camera doesn't phase them and doesn't change any behavior or aid in any (non existent) prosecution. We've seen much more evidence of that this past week as well.)

 

The absolute first thing that needs to happen is a national shift in perspective regarding "crime" including what it is and what it isn't and what actually causes it. Police forces have always been mostly a bandaid to deeper societal ills. We can't continue to criminalize mental illness, poverty, drug addiction, etc. and expect that any sort of internal "war on" anything is going to fix them. If we don't focus our cures on the actual problems we'll always find ourselves right back here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

The rhetoric has changed. At first it was ABOLISH ALL POLICE and I asked my questions, even as a good liberal, and now it's become DEFUND THE POLICE and I am an idiot for not knowing exactly what a multi tiered plan was from the start.

 

I'm truly feeling like the liberal movement is hashtag rage and fervor with its heart in the right place and a democratic leadership that is clueless as to how to stop it.

 

I am constantly finding myself in this center space of a venn diagram while the rest of the world is in one of two circle moving away from each other.

 

When it comes to people's freedoms and rights I am 100% liberal. When it comes to how those rights are protected and upheld I find myself vacillating between sides.

When it comes to fiscal matters, the older I get, the more conservative I become.

 

The Democratic party owns the media and is corrupt as hell, and his shown itself to owned and controlled by the elite when it claims to be the party of the common man.

 

The GOP is so deeply worried about keeping it's fundamentalist core, that it spends all its energy trying to control and legislate old fashioned morals and values that only serve a segment of the population. They have also proven it is more important to win than serve when they actually endorsed Trump.

 

I live and work in the super liberal Hollywood bubble, which is fine and comfortable for me-- but if I voiced these thoughts on social media it would cost me friends and jobs. There is a cult of hashtag mob mentality amongst liberals that I find just as unsettling as conservative thinly veiled racist nationalism.

 

Obviously I support BLM, obviously I support change-- but to be told I MUST announce this or I am the enemy, or that I must vote blue no matter who, or any other group think hive mentality decree, is a bunch of crap.

Hate to say I told you so. :p

 

That said, it's worrying that there's no "side" in this whole matter that seems to actually have any real grip on things.

 

The progressives are simply becoming more openly and obviously what I've been saying they were for a long time now: a mythology based as opposed to a fact and policy based movement. They took everything they once "deconstructed" while in the universities: western media, the nuclear family, American exceptionalism, the protestant work ethic, conservatism, whatever - and simply turned it on its head and made a civic religion out of the outcome.

 

Critical theory, while it does have its uses, doesn't then become a theory on how to actually effect real change. For all their rage and visibility, they're demonstrably poor at electoral politics, for example, and from what I've read, progressives aren't posed to do well come November. Because of this, they degenerate into communities of ongoing toxic rage. Yet because it is a mythos, and because people are attracted to the initially positive themes of racial and gender based justice and fairness, it never seems to want for newcomers who see doubling down on the tried and true (and failed) methods of performative radicalism as the way to push things forward. Sometimes they're partially successful, but since this group is so self loathing at heart, it can't abide long term success and ends up sabotaging itself somehow.

 

Rinse, lather, repeat.

 

The conservatives, well, abandon hope all ye who enter here. At present, the G.O.P just seems to be the port-of-call for anyone frustrated with millennial radicalism, as well as boomer-cons who've long since lost the real contest for the heart and mind of America. The religious right has fully endorsed Trump, which is ridiculous on the face of it. We might as well have Hugh Hefner in the White House. Yet the religious right wants to overturn Roe v. Wade and Trump will give the SCOTUS the justices it needs to do that. So what we see here is expediency prevail over principle. This isn't strictly a conservative thing - observe how quickly MeToo shriveled and died on the altar of protecting the democrat's avatar-savior sleepy Joe Biden from scrutiny surrounding his own past conduct (expect the current race hysteria to suffer a comparable fate). But the center-right in America is now the more calm, cool and collected side of things, and they notice stuff like this. The American people notice stuff like this. Not to mention Trump's other numerous failings.

 

Back in 2015, the whole Trump/Bannon machine alongside the cultural libertarian "alt-lite" types seemed to inject new life into a moribund conservatism, and for a time there might have been hope. But what was among the first things Trump did once in office? The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Dave Rubin has gone from being Mr. Freeze Peach to a warmed over reboot of any boomer-con you can name repeating the same anti-socialist talking points over and over and over and over and over again. And in this, Rubin is merely standard bearer for the whole cohort. The new trad-con superstar Jordan Peterson has been in drug rehab for how long now? Again, this kind of stuff gets noticed. Conservatives itch for a messiah, and never seem to get one. Their rugged individualist political philosophy, if it can be called that, inoculates them against the propensity to organize at the grass roots level so as to eventually build a movement that can actually effect the culture. So they'd better get used to having their statues being toppled and their books being removed from college libraries, among other things. Because, despite their hopes, things ain't changing on their own. The young radicals won't be coming to their senses any time soon. Why should they? They're winning.

 

Where is the philosophy? Where is the thing they had from the late 70s to the late 90s, whereby they were able to actually win people's hearts and minds? Gone, it would seem. People are eager to march in the streets for the sake of black lives in a way they aren't keen to march in the streets to demand that the super rich keep as much of their own money (ha!) as possible while the rest of us slowly spiral into the crapper. Wow! Color me shocked. In the last three years, I haven't dealt with a right winger who wasn't a total macho, boisterous, swaggering arsehole. And these people think they're deserving of power? Pah!

 

The anger we're seeing stems, I suspect, from the fact that neither progressives nor conservatives have what it takes anymore. Democrats and republicans take turns in the Oval Office, yet nothing ever seems to change on Main Street, in the ghettos and barrios or in the heartland. The people lack the wherewithal - though they haven't always - to create their own political alternatives to the failing status quo. They're unwilling to put the effort into doing so and would be unwilling to vote for such an alternative were it to emerge. Because voters are driven firstly and foremostly by name and brand recognition and perceived trustworthiness. So if you don't change anything, expect nothing to change.

 

You know as I was typing my rant, I thought... aww crap. The Kurgan was RIGHT LL ALONG.

 

Thanks for giving my cogent thoughts to my bluster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm 110% all in on defunding the police. I also like the idea of disbanding departments and rebuilding them from the ground up, not necessarily with rookies though. But disbanding offers the opportunity to renegotiate union demands which are a major reason it's so hard to weed out the bad ones.

 

Overall police departments are bloated. They're too expensive, too big, too demanding (of the officers and the citizenry), and too militarized. Reforms aren't having enough of an effect, so something drastic needs to happen. (Also, have you seen the results of things like bodycams? It's obvious that being on camera doesn't phase them and doesn't change any behavior or aid in any (non existent) prosecution. We've seen much more evidence of that this past week as well.)

 

The absolute first thing that needs to happen is a national shift in perspective regarding "crime" including what it is and what it isn't and what actually causes it. Police forces have always been mostly a bandaid to deeper societal ills. We can't continue to criminalize mental illness, poverty, drug addiction, etc. and expect that any sort of internal "war on" anything is going to fix them. If we don't focus our cures on the actual problems we'll always find ourselves right back here.

I agree with to a large extent. Especially your last paragraph.

 

However, how do you propose to make all these changes if you defund police departments? What are you going to replace police departments with that are dismantled altogether? People who argue for defund and dismantle often fail to come up with answers to those followup questions.

 

As I see it the existence of police departments is not the problem. It is a lack of leadership. It is the thin blue line crap when cops cover for other cops. From law enforcement leaders who continue to police as if they are an occupying force, rather than public servants. From lawmakers and politicians who continually kick the can down the road. And, quite frankly, we need to get real. Minorities are disproportionately punished thanks to the inequality of our racist legal system that favors the rich. Justice is not equal in the USA, rather it is the land where you can get the best justice money can buy.

 

But we still need police departments. We need real leaders. We need a public that keeps pressure on said leaders. This is a priority problem and lack of leadership problem. I think creating a federal cabinet level office that is charged with making sure all police departments meet new federal standards, and ensures that institutionalized racism is eradicated. I also support the idea of going back to "walking" beats, rather than patrols more akin to the marines taking Fallujah, and as I said in an earlier post, there should be more unarmed/lightly armed police assistants (EG they can carry pepper spray for self defense, but no guns or tasers) to handle the more routine, non violent crimes. Have these police assistance do walking beats and get to know the people they serve.

 

One last thing. I am for targeting some police departments and clean house that been the worst offenders of civil rights and corruption, like the LAPD, Chicago PD, and NYPD as examples. But you can't just dismantle and get rid of police departments altogether. Change leadership and priorities, not throw out the baby with the bath water.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do like the Camden example (what little I know of it). They hit a giant reset on their entire force, fired everyone, and made them reapply. It's not a perfectly executed example, but it's been very effective nonetheless and worth studying. I wouldn't just keep a city or county with no law enforcement at all. And I highly doubt many people think that's a good idea.

 

I'm no expert on any of this, but I do generally favor the "tear it down and start over" course of action when things get too convoluted to even begin enacting change. The "good" cops might have to jump through a few hoops, but I'd be happy to have them back on the streets. (You're not on my FB, so you haven't seen my gushy love letters to the Houston Police Chief, Art Acevedo, but, as imperfect as he may be, I would clone him for other major cities. There's a reason that Houston, the home of George Floyd, 4th largest city in America, and a minority-majority city has not seen the level of rioting and destruction and anger as many other major cities this past week or so, and he's a large part of that reason.)

 

So, defunding isn't the same as disbanding, and it's likely to be better and easier for the larger cities. But the defunding I support would be a major redistribution of city budgets. As I said, police departments are bloated. Instead of supplying and outfitting local law enforcement to be a mini-military, we could give significant portions of their budgets to community and social programs that would effect actual crime prevention at its roots. Now, defunding would sting (as it does when schools, libraries, SNAP assistance, Medicare, etc. are all defunded...regularly no less), but seeing as how local police are currently expected to handle sooooooo much that is completely outside of the boundaries of "law enforcement" anyway, they have the room to cut back without seriously affecting their main objective and duty to the community. (Seriously, on our neighborhood FB page people were just whining that the cops here don't investigate or "go after" a lot of smaller crimes, e.g. identity theft, hit and runs, vehicle burglaries, etc., but do you know how many times they've run off and "cleaned up" the 2 homeless guys who live under the overpass a mile from here?? Earlier this year they demolished a small garden that the homeless guys planted! But they don't have time to investigate crimes where people were actually harmed?!) Much of what cops respond to would be better handled by social workers, specially trained mental health professionals, crisis interventionists, hell even good old fashioned paramedics!** It's like we've forgotten that other professions or organizations exist.

 

But then, and I'm really not qualified to speak on this much, I've seen a lot of people from impoverished black communities say that they largely "police" themselves with the help of community non-profits because they distrust the police so much. The way they tell it, they don't call the police on each other as much as they turn to local church groups, clergy, community leaders, etc. to help with things like domestic disputes, the crazy dude talking to the stop signs, rising teen addictions, and the like. A lot of this is just anecdotal that I've seen in various FB groups, and some it is also hearsay, but I completely understand why black communities would avoid calling police and how the local minister would be a safer-for-everyone choice when someone sees the neighbors fighting at a custody exchange.

 

 

 

 

**So literally yesterday an officer from my precinct saved a 2 year-old with CPR after being called to an emergency. People on the FB page were like "and who would have saved that baby if they were defunded?!" And I just want to say, "uhh...a paramedic?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.