TrickstaPriest

One of my more recent friends is likely sick with it, and has pneumonia. Given his health was bad until recently, I have no idea where this will leave him.

Understood. I definitely don't think drawing fighting lines helps discourse. Hopefully it can establish that discourse is necessary, because the only other way is for the communities to manage this on their own. I don't think an individual community has any real power or influence in those situations either, so...

My reply might have been harsh - this isn't an endemic problem in every city, but it is a major problem in cities with a huge black population. Baltimore, for example. Even outside of that, I know quite a few people who've been mistreated by officers. This is everything from highway patrol going "you don't deserve to be in the military! I'm going to call your CO!" to literal "tell us the black kids at the party brought the drugs and we'll let you off, kid". Even in 'the good ones' we've seen quite a few cities with issues when 'push comes to shove'. Slashed tires and smashed windows, people attacked out of the blue because emotions ran hot on a protest line, etc. But this is nothing compared to police unions literally negotiating 'special powers and privileges' to make it impossible to track bad behavior from specific officers. I'm sure we've seen by now that thread about an Ontario officer -trying- to report bad behavior, and being mistreated at every single authority level for it, even to the point of being threatened by death. Even in 'good' cities, that level of obstruction can exist. I think it's worth seeing just how many cities use these laws to cover for their officers, I think it's worth seeing how many cases there are of this level of malfeasance. And that, specifically, is what's incensing officers to use the government-granted authority to use violence (or withdraw protection), for daring to be upset about that. Almost all of the money that goes from you to your city goes into police budgets. If they want to say "if you don't like it, we won't protect you", for those on this thread please imagine that coming from your government. That might help you understand how someone else feels about that. "If you don't like the job we do, we'll stop allowing you to buy from the stores that exist only because of our government. We'll tell police not to go to your neighborhood. Go get supplies on your own. You want a home loan? Too bad, you were in a protest." Think about that message, please.

Literally that attitude is "if you want the services 90% of your city's budget goes to then you have to put up with us planting evidence or beating people we don't like and us putting toy guns on kids we accidentally shoot so we don't have to see a courtroom."

My feelings about this crap is well talked about by Elie Mystal here. It's quite harsh and not friendly, so view at your own risk.

Oh, the DNC regularly gets donations from police unions. Which is why there's been no effort to change any of this.

I won't get too political on this, but this is how Populism works (regardless of 'side'). The difference in how the police are treated _in the specific realm of this populism politics_ tend to be whether they are viewed as 'protectors of society' or 'protectors of elite', and whether those are good or bad things entirely. But America isn't the only problem with officers like this, as a certain story from Ontario (Canada?) appears to have gone around. Unless I'm particularly misconstruing. Yeah, it's almost like the atmosphere from the top is 'get people who don't like us killed' 😕

If we want to talk about anti science complicity, let me talk to you about Australia and climate change... XD

When you tie that to the 'brotherhoods/gangs' post earlier, you begin to see why there might be real fears about police behavior and brutality. Planting drugs is a thing. Police in Florida were recorded talking about how much they liked doing it. Take a minute to think how much it does to a single family, to have that happen once. Emotionally and financially. Then think about what happens to a community that has even a single police officer doing this, even just once a month. Over the course of ten years. A single bad officer can crush an entire community into poverty for multiple generations this way. It's not a surprise to me that people feel upset. It's not universal, but where it's a problem, it's an incredibly impossible problem to solve.

My father was a uni professor until retirement. Don't talk to him about No Child Left Behind. Or especially how students have been in the last five years.

Literally the 'a civil war is coming' rhetoric is something that I find extremely concerning. If a number of police officers decide to do what was going on in Mexico, I don't think anyone in control of the current political situation is going to push against that. I'm not even sure the people in control of the police stations will stop it. Ordinary citizens will -not- stand up for each other in that kind of violence. It does not happen. It did not happen in Germany (it is a valid example of house-to-house violence), it will not happen here. The only ones who might are associated with the army, and I'm not sure they'll move without orders. And that'll be days, if not weeks, too late.

Oh, I wholly agree on that. Which is why I'm going to be moving in the next ten years no matter what happens.

This is why I give him no slack. This, and actually reading his twitter. So, so, so, SO many people are excusing him of doing things that are literally tearing apart the foundation of how the federal government works, especially equitably. This is establishing precedent that will ruin government function in this country for decades to come if it is followed. No matter who inherits it.

They're making it clear they find it fun to be called or make people outraged about them being fascists too. It's an entertaining game to the people they encourage and direct, 'getting back at those obnoxious libs' so to speak. Except it's not a game, and what they are doing is towing a very dangerous line. Any such organization seems effective... at first. But it rots like hell, because it's always rife with infighting. I remember someone referring to Donald Trump being the only 'authority' in the WH, with no chain of command... and that's the exact situation that makes third world countries such a mess to begin with. It's why our military has a hell of a time training armies in the Middle East, and why even the autobahn was a mess (with striking workers thrown in certain well known camps). We don't need a direct comparison with past countries, it's just that this way of doing things doesn't work. It looks attractive, but only because of desperately wild marketing. When it has to do anything (like, prepare for coronavirus during the entire month of February), it falls apart bad. It seems like there's still more effort in damage control right now at the Federal level than any kind of direction? But maybe that's just my opinion, and not well established facts to others.