I mean overall messaging & activism not this message or slogan in particular.
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clicking sounds
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It’s tactic 101
What Scotland started, its not perfect but it’s a start, I’m sure when we get independence we will move further forward reform of policing policy.
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Just to clarify, I didn’t mean that as getting mad, I meant as in posting like you’re on a big public forum vs the horde of dumbass lunatics.
Like, I’ve read Louis’s posts for years, I’ve read Ked’s posts for years. I know what they think and believe. If they post something that doesn’t sound like it lines up with that, then I defer to what I already know.
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You don’t say.
(lol once more, I’m venting about things during my travels throughout the internet, not specific posters on this forum)
FYP
The activists who have spent the most time in thought on this topic have chosen ATP and DTP. Perhaps they are better able to determine how they should advance their efforts than you are? Like, what do you think the ratio is of “time spent thinking on this topic”, if you were to compare the time you’ve spent to say Angela Davis? 1:1,000?
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Defund?
I’m gonna confess something: I kinda just realized this isn’t the “abolish the police” thread and that there’s an actual separate thread with traffic, and that I don’t think I’ve read too many posts there.
Lol so I might have to retract a whole lotta shit I’ve said today about The State Of The Discourse On Unstuck Politics.
That said…
I feel like this goes both ways, and getting somebody to acknowledge this,
shouldn’t be like pulling teeth.
“That doesn’t sound like what I thought ‘abolish’ meant…”
“You’re right, it’s not actually, but ‘abolish’ is a sweet ass provocative ass term we like.”
“Oh ok, gotcha, like artistic license? Nice.”
Now’s the time when I read the other thread and find out that this already happened and I look really, really dumb. Preemptive THANKS A LOT KED ET AL.
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I might’ve told this story before in this exact thread, but I initially thought “Black Lives Matter” was a terrible slogan because it wasn’t provocative enough and that if I was hired I might’ve just made an abridged version of Fuck The Police by NWA. Shortly thereafter I did a complete 180 and thought it was the most subtly genius thing I’d heard it a long time, like, on my best day I dream of coming up with something that clever.
And even though I’m a super special little boy, there’s no way I was the only one in the world who had that same experience.
So, flash forward to this past year and all the rhetoric surrounding slogans, this entirely one-dimensional debate… I’m not really sure what conclusion to draw.
We really should just call it “Decimate The Police” so we can have cool conversations like:
“OMG you want to kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of the police?!?!?”
“Um, no, you plebian, we’re using the historical definition of ‘decimate’. We want to kill one in every ten as a punishment for the whole group, until we figure out what’s going on.”
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Still not an accurate definition of decimate, they had the other nine beat the tenth to death. Romans were hardcore.
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So you’re happy with cops killing black kids huh.
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What would be good messaging that conveys a belief that cops are irredeemably bad? What sort of branding would help lead people to have a more negative view of cops than they currently have?
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I’m sorry man, I didn’t have you in mind when I posted that because I don’t consider any of your posts at that level, but I realized after that it might be construed as poking fun at you which even with the best intentions can be super insensitive. It’s kinda horrible to shame people for being passionate and angry even if it’s inadvertent.
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What I’m really trying to point out is that Basic was in here doing his thing with Chads but when Basic left and Louis and Ked popped in I feel like they received the brunt of the inertia.
I’m not trying to say that opponents to your argument don’t exist, I mean, duh, wtf, yes they look at that video of the cops laughing and laugh right along with them while being savvy enough to hide that deplorableness in public. So I’m also saying that assuming people are acting in bad faith is a good strategy in general.
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I’m trying to mediate and if it looks like I’m disagreeing with you then that’s probably because I’m doing a shitty ass job of mediating, lol.
Or maybe it’s because I’m mediating not just the specifics in this thread/on this forum but also the debates I see online and the articles I read, and I’m mashing it all together in this franksteinesque hodgepodge amalgam of an unfruitful discussion that I really want to see bear fruit. That would probably also qualify as “shitty ass job” though so eh.
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You made a post earlier that I bookmarked but this covers the same thing. Change always bears the bigger burden, that’s just how it works. And the specifics only make that burden bigger; the baseline is always that burden.
The big reason for that, in general but also hyperspecifically with this, is things can always get worse. Especially if we’re talking about USA#1, they can get so, so much worse. I don’t think I’m at the point of pulling my “check your 1st world-21st century privilege” card but it’s fucking close and I’m totally conflicted. It sounds like propaganda but that’s why that propaganda is so effective; the propoganda would be kinda milquetoast if shit couldn’t get massively worse. We fight for change and overcompensate because part of that fight is making sure things don’t get worse, and it’s a constant fight. Obviously highlighting and overstating how fucked up things are is incredibly effective rhetoric; I believe in the end goal so go fucking nuts, but I do find it incredibly worrying that so many don’t seem to grasp this duality. That might sound to some like a hard ask, balancing being grateful that it’s not way worse while knowing it could and should be so much better but holy shit nobody said this would be easy. One doesn’t get to say “a better world is possible” without acknowledging that a worse world is so, so fucking easily possible and all this shit is barely hanging on by a thread.
In theory that is, lol. In practice, do I believe that shit could get way worse for USA#1 in this current time and place over this issue? Fuck no. Rip the bandaid off, none of this qualifies as political upheaval. Some cops might have to take up pottery or some shit and maybe bring some good into the world. Make a vase or two. But I’d be an absolute maniac if I hand waved any good faith concerns (and I feel like I have to constantly stress the ‘good faith’ part… I think that has to do with USA#1 being so right wing that ‘conservative’ and ‘reactionary’ are interchangeable and the latter pretends they’re the former) about fear of change. Obviously if you’re out there doing some activism or a little praxis or even just trying to change the hearts and minds of your family and neighbors then keep up the front and never let them see you sweat, but if amongst friends and friendly acquaintances you can’t admit that change is terrifying unto itself then you’re not doing it right and just talking shit. Change should be absolutely fucking terrifying.
We’re up against the weight of “new boss same as the old boss” responsibility. It’s an incredible leak to assume that everybody who hears about abolition and retorts “ok so like a new police with a new name”, and thinks were full of shit when we dismiss them, actually likes the police and likes the status quo and not the opposite. And that the more fantastical a-wizard-did-it outcomes are, the more convincing they are in turn. It’s not that these people aren’t serious about change, it’s that they think we’re not serious about change!
(I didn’t want to make it personal in this post but I’ll admit part of that last paragraph is the one that animates me, like when last summer they tried to cancel Angela Fucking Davis after finding out prison abolition also applies to “cops who killed black people” like yeah, we’re gonna have a secret special prison for people you think really, really, really deserve it, maybe there’ll even be a little torture, that’s how this all works, lol you mfs are not serious people stop wasting other people’s time)
I should stress though that I think this is why I think I’m pretty good at spotting good faith and bad faith efforts; it’s easier when you’re the genuine article. Nobody actually thinks “oh I got disillusioned with the left and left movements so now I changed everything I ever thought and believed in my entire life, almost overnight,” like, they just said that bullshit to the wrong person. You still think and believe the same shit you always have, maybe even harder, and you don’t JAQ off all over people and try to sabotage them, even help them . But you do believe that a worrying amount of them are not serious people and you’re not holding your breath.
Aside from all that, and this post is already too long, is all the obvious semantic bullshit. If I say I’m gonna go get my car’s engine fixed and the mechanic says the engine needs to be removed and totally replaced, it wouldn’t be an absolute bastardization of language to still describe that as the engine being “fixed” even though it was totally fuckin abolished and a new one was put it to make the car go. But, just to reiterate, I get it, the language used is needed to separate the bold new ideas from the shitty status quo, the provocative titillation of thorough change; it’s incredibly effective rhetoric and I do believe it polls really well if presented accurately (the shitty poll questions are their own whole big thing). But like, just remember that some people are also magicians and know how the lady gets sawed in half. We’re talking about “ok, yeah, fine, it’d just be people, who… police stuff, like the verb… for a society not totally fucking structurally poisoned by capitalism and hate”. That should be radical enough when you’re talking amongst friends.
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I’m not really sure what thread to put this in but one thing that has become apparent to me is almost all of the systemic issues in the US are pretty much unfixable due to terrified white people syndrome.
Policing is basically unfixable as currently constructed because it is designed from the top down to protect terrified white people from brown people. Immigration is designed to assuage fears white people have of scary hoardes of brown people either literally raping or economically raping white people. This same construct extends to gun rights, health care, muslims, the world as a whole, etc.
Obviously Fox News preys on this and exacerbates it but they didn’t cause it. It’s been around long before that back to Jim Crow and before that slavery.
The crazy thing is that the Democrats are still terrified to really address this issue. And it sadly comes through in some of the arguments here. The police issue polls terribly. What are we going to so about murderers with no police? And on and on. Continuing to cater to the fears of the delicate white people is the entire problem. Policing and all the rest are just symptoms of the problem in my opinion.
I’m not exactly sure how that can be fixed. This whole campaign by the right to attack “wokeness” and “cancel culture” is a direct result of the left’s attempt to end it. Instead of ending it we now have laws in multiple states that allow you to legally murder protesters.
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I’m not sure they are unfixable, but they are unfixable in the short term.
I believe there is only so much you can do without addressing residential segregation. Some people think that means letting more brown people into white communities, but I think it also means finding ways to inject more white people into majority minority communities.
The solution is really demographic change and doing all the things that white nationalists fear in their white genocide conspiracy theory, which is why I like to say that I support white genocide.
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