this whole post is nutty af 
So this organization of 800,000 souls - men and women of all races - has been corrupted, and acts with uniformity of purpose to terrorize populations.
I just do not buy it, sorry
The primary role/purpose of the police in our society is to maintain the capitalist order.
So, law enforcement critics of the Abolish the Police variety, for the most part are not making the case that the police have been corrupted. Rather they are acknowledging that the police are doing exactly what they were created and designed to do…violently repress popular demands to change the system.
Any organization with 800k humans will necessarily have a range of personal perspectives for why any individual is a member, and further each member will have their own interpretation of the purpose of the organization and their own role within the organization. The individual members’ perceived motivations matter little when the actions they take as a group are dictated by those in command.
When we look at the collective actions of the police, a pattern emerges which somewhat relates to your point as to the uniformity of purpose to terrorize the population…well in the USA the police departments all act as front line operators in prosecuting the war on drugs & feeder system into mass incarceration, and they gas/shoot/beat those citizens who demonstrate any kind of resistance to the “profits over people” status quo.
It has not been corrupted it is working exactly as intended. Arguing that the protests aren’t for the right issue and should be about x or y is dumb. They are expressions of centuries of rage at being held as lesser. You can help steer things towards something you think is more useful or whatever but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of good. Police brutality is raw and obvious in a way that economic domination isn’t. Watching a man murder another with impunity for 8:46 is visceral. If you don’t have a violent reaction to it you’re the one who needs to change.
1 Like
Of course it hasn’t been corrupted. We have been corrupted by copaganda. We think of cops as heroes due to the media. They are not and never have been. Life isn’t NBC primetime TV.
Next you’re going to tell me that it won’t work trying to govern assuming The West Wing is accurate.
Jfc no, man. To terrorize populations is what the organization was created for in the first place.
Step back for a second and recall - - How much about what cops do have you actually learned from interactions with them among your friends and family? And how much from tv and movie portrayals?
The brutality is the point. The violent suppression of poc and the left is what their function in our society is and has always been. Everything else is window dressing to sell it to people like you.
To say that everybody would be better off demonstrating for economic justice instead - - its hard to do that with a boot on your neck. Shit, that’s not even a metaphor anymore. Its such paternalistic arrogance to second guess entire communities’ priorities. A huge part of economic justice is stopping local governments and the police from robbing people constantly. I don’t t know if you’re not American or just another middle class white dude, but maybe educate yourself about what this country is really like for marginalized communities before getting on your high horse about what crimes against them they should seek justice for first.
4 Likes
Reforming policing as an institution is also about economic justice, wtf man? Where are you getting this nonsense from?
Speaking of police robbing people and this general discussion an interesting fact I remembered from awhile back.
Police take more from people via civil forfeiture than criminals steal from people/businesses ( excluded white collar robbery ldo )
As a live poker player who carried large sums of cash on them I was always way more worried about police stopping me and taking my money than some robber. And that was even before I got super political.
3 Likes
1 Epstein. Gotta be some more examples.
I wasn’t lying to triceratops when I said he has a few fellow bootlickers around
3 Likes
Yup. Capitalism as currently structured in the US requires cheap labor. People selling their labor for cheap requires them to be desperate, and for them to be desperate they must be poor. To keep the bottom 60% of the population poor as a policy objective requires that that bottom 60% be fractured politically.
Enter racism and over policing which are both tools to fracture that bottom 60% demographic.
Capitalism in the US needs to be reformed into a whole different thing. We need to remove poverty and desperation from the system, without which our criminal justice spend should organically be a tiny fraction of the current level. (obviously drugs/prostitution/gambling should all be legal, the very notion of illegal business that isn’t based on theft or fraud is by design a way to induce over policing)
Capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be abolished.
3 Likes
Capitalism requires slavery to function. The only stable form of capitalism would be with robotic/machine slaves and with a 100% estate tax, extensively and harshly enforced (basically a good faith clause, any activity that even looks like it’s circumventing the tax gets heavily punished). With non-sentient, unfeeling slaves and no generational wealth it might be sustainable. Even then it’s not a guarantee because the winners of this generation would still be able to give their children extra human/social capital so the playing field would still be uneven.
2 Likes
you guys are clowns
policing is a non-issue for most of the country, but that sure hasn’t stopped you from tying yourself in knots these past few weeks, generalizing about a population of people. the same type generalization you would condemn if directed at your pet population.
you guys carry on like you’re beyond reproach. you’re doing the left far more harm than good.
1 Like
enjoy the insane circle jerk. you’ve all become not-bruce
1 Like
The only people for whom policing is a non-issue are people who never have to interact with police through virtue of their wealth. Every single person who interacts with the police (in a substantive way) is telling you that those interactions are pretty much uniformly terrible. Women are getting raped, lgbt people are getting beaten and poc are getting murdered.
2 Likes
Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers acted with uniformity of purpose in Iraq to bring to heel a country that was a threat to our dominance in the ME and the security of our oil interests in vassal states like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. That’s true when you look at the big picture. It’s not true when you look at each soldier individually. They each had their own motivations and many of them wanted to help oppressed Iraqis.
1 Like
define substantive way? I’ve been arrested, spent a few hours in jail before my bro bailed me out
you guys are so steeped in this fairy tale it’s a sight to behold
you think the more civilized and affluent communities don’t have a cordial relationship with police and firemen and anyone else? you’re an imbecilic fool
the vast majority of communities do not have an adversarial relationship with police, no matter how bad you wish it to be so
clean out your fucking head gear