Checking that out now. I’m curious in what way Stanford was debunked?
Edit: sorry, just catching up and saw ggoreo’s post now. Interesting. Should probably read my own links before I post them! Oopsie.
Since most Republicans hate unions, I’m surprised that the Defund movement hasn’t considered trying to push the narrative that decertifying police unions would save cities a lot of money and make it much easier to fire bad cops, individually or en masse.
The debunked SPE
Wow, does Matt Christman read this forum? They covered like everything we’ve been talking about in #426.
I feel vindicated somewhat, haha.
Unified Teachers Los Angeles has called for the elimination of the Los Angeles School Police Department
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How the fuck is that even a thing? WTH California?
School shootings.
Hell yeah reform!
I know next to nothing about the RCMP so it’s hard for me to appreciate if these begrudging “admissions” of possible systemic racism are a good thing or manifestations of the underlying problem. Probably both.
Primer
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They’re basically rural cops, but plenty go up north to reserves where they end up on a 2 person outpost basically being the only 2 white people in town.
The Mounties are the flagship national police in the other CA. The best analogy in the US is the FBI.
https://gen.medium.com/the-lifespan-of-a-lie-d869212b1f62
Worth reading in its entirety imo, the quotes from psychology professors about why they still include it in textbooks are eyebrow-raising.
Worth noting there’s ample evidence that people will conform to what is expected of them (the Asch conformity experiment, various role theory experiments) and will be abusive to people if instructed to do so by authority (the also-problematic-but-much-better-and-actually-replicated Milgram experiment). What’s unique about the Stanford experiment is that it purports to show that sadism will arise as a result of a power relationship even without the expectation of such, and without much reference to the personality of the power-wielder. When you think about this idea in real life, it’s not very convincing. In employer-employee, teacher-student, or parent-stepchild relationships, there are plenty of examples of abuses of power, but also plenty of examples of people who wouldn’t dream of abusing this power. The psychological makeup of the person holding the power appears very important in these situations.
The prison system in, well, much of the world but the US in particular, is so degraded that it can’t help but produce sadistic behaviour. Think about all the jokes that get thrown around about men getting raped in prison. The subtext, if you can even dignify it with that level of subtlety, is that people in prison are fair game to be mistreated, because after all, they’re bad people who are there to be punished. Even if the Stanford experiment had been legit, it would be hard to draw any general conclusions that apply outside the confines of that sort of culture.
Side note: My mother was a subject (meaning one of the people instructed to deliver electric shocks) in a replication of the Milgram experiment when at college. I’m not certain at what point in the experiment, whether it was the first shock or some subsequent one, but her reaction to being instructed to deliver a shock was to run out of the room.
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This poll is American politics in a nutshell. Solid majority for reform the police => neverending debate on the merits of abolish the police vs. do nothing
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Tabbai is off base here re: the Cotton piece. Cotton wass calling for the military to use violence against citizens. He wanted an “overwhelming show of force” and coupled with his twitter statements of offering “no quarter” to protestors, it’s clear how he wanted this overwhelming display of force from the military to be used to “subdue” rioters.
Yeah I agree Taibbi mischaracterises Cotton there, but I still think it’s OK to publish the op-ed. The Morning Consult poll Taibbi cites has 58% of Americans responding that they supported, quote, “Calling in the U.S. military to supplement city police forces”, with no greater qualification than that. Combining that with other polling around the protests, it seems that it’s not that a majority of Americans are fascists, but rather that they have no conception of what “calling in the military” would actually entail if carried out in the real world. Recall that the military are more or less the most-trusted institution in the country. There actually needs to be a conversation about why the military being deployed on US soil as law enforcement is a bad idea, this stuff needs to be out in the open. Suppressing discussion is not going to work when polling suggests that currently a majority of Americans would welcome troops onto the streets, that’s a situation that needs correcting.
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Very interesting, thanks for posting.
I find this whole topic really fascinating, but outside of the well-known experiments (Stanford, Milgram) know very little about it. Maybe threadworthy in its own right? I’m sure there must have been many experiments and studies done on this over time which would be interesting to learn about and discuss.
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