you know what, at least the old timey police adopted the woke capitalization here, credit where credit is due.
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I wish I’d saved the Stabby Irishman comic because finding the right keywords is impossible. It was old timey and was talking about how immigrants are good except for the Irish and had a bowl of people just laying down together with a leprechaun armed with a knife trying to jump out.
I was meaning to ask what you’d read about police abolition, since that is what is being discussed, more so than slavery abolition. Although the subjects are related.
This seemed like a point of contention for you:
So, I was curious what you had read or heard during your course of learning, since your implication was that others shouldn’t criticize your lack of interest in learning. Apparently, you read an F Douglas autobiography over a decade ago, and an average vox article. OK. If that’s the extent of your reading on abolition, then it seems fair to say that thus far you have demonstrated a lack of interest in learning about it.
Maybe your answer was incomplete, and you’ve spent more time learning than just reading one article in the past decade, if so what was an article or book or speech that really stood out to you?
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Can you recommend two or three of those links that would be most directly responsive to this post:
I’ve only read popular news items about police abolition.
Also, there is no amount of reading one can do if the problem they have is with the pure semantics of the messaging and how that relates to public policy, and not the actual nuts and bolts of the policy, because that is much, much more abstract. (And yes, a whole lotta people, especially in public, use messaging as an excuse when they actually disagree with policy… let’s assume we’re giving somebody the benefit of the doubt… if we can’t do that we might as well call the whole thing off)
Like,
“I think this abolish/defund/etc business is confusing because you’re making it confusing, because you are confused about how language communication works.”
“Well, I understand, here is some stuff to read to make it less confusing.”
“No, you don’t understand, I think they are confused also.”
This is about basic fucking praxis. Remember we’re ignoring the people who are being dishonest and disingenuous. Telling somebody to read something that repeats what you just said (assuming you didn’t totally explain it poorly) will make them smile and nod and secretly think you’re a lunatic who doesn’t care to understand their confusion.
That’s probably what’s already has happened countless times when an interaction ended with, “Thank you friend for the reading list! I see there’s nothing here about linguistics and etymology but that’s ok!”
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This is truly disgusting. The cop is quite proud of himself getting his first hog tie. Oh and giggles when they hear the ‘pop’ of the woman’s bones. Its hard to contain my rage, the guy cop in particular is a true embarassment to humanity and needs a thorough beating, complete with lots of ‘pops’.
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I’ll admit that I’ve never been part of a community where non-police community defense seemed possible. And that might be a “me” problem as a perpetual outsider.
It’s not that I can’t imagine what it would be like; it just seems like a fantasy to me. My ideas about the establishment of justice are going to rely on fundamentally statist ideas of how the world works and how society should be organized.
My position is that modern American society is complex and that we need division of labor to cope with that. One problem with police is insufficient division of labor. Police are assigned several functions that government is rightly charged with, but some of those functions seem incompatible and we shouldn’t be requiring cops to be one-size-fits-all solutions to social disturbances.
I’m not sure if that’s meant to be a rebuttal or a cosign to my post, but it is what I mean. Nip that shit in the bud and tell them they’re wrong. If that sounds like it will just devolve into “no you’re wrong and confused” vs “no YOU’re WRONG and CONFUSED” then that’s how it was meant to be.
It reminds me of when I used to pop in to politics on 22 way, way back, when the right-libertarians were coming in the windows. I’d occasionally hop in and post troll post something like, “Really, is sharing so bad?” or “Honestly, it seems like you guys have a big ol’ problem with sharing.” And multiple replies would always be “yes, I/we do”. Then the posts would get deleted without a discussion.
But if there were to be a discussion, it would go towards that, not away. “Why do you think sharing is bad?” Not, oh here’s a reading list explaining exactly what I mean by sharing and reiterating what I implied about sharing being good. They know what sharing is and why others think it’s good and they don’t agree.
This whole semantics debate is kiddie game stuff compared to the real shit that people don’t agree with and will never agree with, and that concept scares a lot of people.
By laws, I mean formal rules governing human behavior. Assume that they are good laws that you approve of, established by a process that you approve of, adjudicated in a manner you approve of.
Without some sort of enforcement, the laws are merely suggestions, so I start with the assumption that people believe in having some sort of rules that are more than just guidelines. There is wide disagreement over what those rules should be and what the penalties should be for not following the law, but number of people who believe the world should work without any laws is probably relatively small.
I mean, look, I can only truly speak from experience, but my thing was/is prison abolition, not police abolition…
(who cares if there’s cops if there are no jails to put the arrestees in CHESSMATE!)
…and you’d better fucking believe if somebody was like “oh ok I agree with that I just think it’s weird to call it ‘abolition’” I didn’t fight them over that shit! I haven’t really weighed in because like I said I have little to no experience talking shop about police abolition, aside from how the police and prison abolition concepts have obvious connections, but from the perspective I just described, this is absolutely insane to me. If they push back about calling it abolition from a semantic standpoint, let them have it, holy fucking God in heaven.
Maybe it’s this way in America, but the teacher’s union is actually relatively competent in the Czech Republic. I think it’s because unions in general here have more leverage to start with when negotiating.
Hell I got a raise my first year at my job because of a negotiated raise the previous year.
How do you feel about the idea that the reason we have a disgusting, racist, unjust, brutal system is because we have a disgusting, racist, unjust, brutal society composed of disgusting, racist, unjust, brutal people and, while there are individual outliers who are not disgusting and not racist, nothing built on that foundation will ever be truly just? Maybe we can only have a just society by imposing it upon the brutes and coercing them into behaving, which causes difficulty if you believe in democracy as a value.
Some days, I think this is true, some days I don’t.
Lol nice, though I was hoping you might have the tweets it was responding to.
I’d still prefer that tweeter just let them have the point if they were operating in good faith, but if not then I’d prefer that tack over anything else.
Don’t make me go full misanthropic nihilistic pessimist up in here.
That seems more like a social norm than a law.
How would you address climate change without laws?
Damn it! But lol.
I’m gonna wait before I click that tweet and come up with the best guesses about the topic they were discussing.
No, I know, but I’m also talking about all my travels all over the internet. I’m just venting here. I haven’t even finished the thread yet, keep getting distracted and grunching.