Are you kidding? You think agents of the state suffer from state violence anywhere near the rate of productive members of society?
You mean non-harmful as in a drunk driver who hasn’t killed anyone yet? I’m pretty much okay with locking them up.
Ah yes, I’m sure Mueller will reveal some earth-shattering collusion, that helped Trump a great deal according to you, and not simply hit Trump and/or associates with money-laundering charges or something similar that is irrelevant to Russian collusion.
You aren’t exactly explaining how I exercise my privilege. Do cops just know instinctually that I’m a statist? Does it show up on my driving record? Am I supposed to let them know somehow that I’m a fellow oppressor of liberty?
Seriously, tell me how this works. Nobody let me in on a big perk of my profession, and I want to make sure I’m doing it right.
Yes, there’s probably a whole lot you are okay with.
You get a paycheck that comes from productive members of society. Is that privilege enough for you?
Statistically, you are safe from the law. The mechanism is unknown to a commoner like myself.
Oh dear, you’re serious about all this, aren’t you?
I’d be okay with a non-harmful person stealing your only keyboard.
But you believe that there is some formalized system which protects me from the police doing unjustified things to me, on the basis of my job. I mean a formalized system like a rulebook, code of conduct, or something similar, to which I and the police are all on the same page, procedure-wise.
Is that a fair summation of your views?
I haven’t said anything to that effect. I said you are statistically less likely to be a victim.
I would have to know specifically your role with the state. It is possible you have some formal exemptions from state violence under the law.
To be clear, your extorted paycheck is not enough privilege. You also spend much of the workday spreading pro-government rhetoric.
Technically, it is only innocent people who get locked up in this country, at least initially, as suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty. If there is a better way, we might as well hear it.
I am not going to say the system is perfect- the war on drugs often looks a lot like a war on minorities, for example. Even then, people aren’t just being locked up willy nilly. And it isn’t torture by any normal definition.
You haven’t experienced being locked up.
Are you okay with the police arresting drunk drivers? If not, why?
Removing them from the roadways is understandable. Preventing them from using the roadways is also understandable. Putting them in prison, no.
The state “owns” the roadways. Until this changes, there is no reason they shouldn’t be able to do what a private road owner would be permitted to do.
A private road system would have better ways of dealing with the problem.
How do you propose preventing them using the roadways, then?
What would a private road system look like?
And what are the ‘better ways’ they’d deal with drunk drivers, exactly?
The non-sequitur nature of it.
There’s two different questions:
- Is it okay to torture the guilty?
- Is it possible, definitionally, to torture the guilty?
Your question about confining non-harmful people, and whether it’s torture, looked like you were confused about #2. Your statement about not liking to torture guilty people answered #1. But these two are not the same question.
This is why I posed it as a question. So you agree that there’s no system whereby government employees are exempted from poor treatment by police; it’s just that government employees are not often abused by police, and that’s… a problem?
This is where I’d be crazy to get any more specific about my job in a conversation with you. I really do think you’re the kind of person who would seek to harass your statist enemies in real life. But suffice it to say, I have never even come close to committing any act of physical violence in the course of my work, nor have I ever been in a position where directing someone to do so would be in any way legitimate. It is absurd to suggest otherwise.
What have you been locked up for?