No, GIGO. The polling cited by the NY Times is recent, since George Floyd’s death. And while it finds overwhelming support for other reforms, the very weak 16% support is not for “abolishing police everywhere”, but for “cut(ting) funding for police”. That means cutting even a single dollar.
And in fact, I’d argue that it’s a better policy to *increase *funding for police but significantly raise standards. I don’t believe it’s possible even on the same budget we have now to insist on hiring people with an educated, enlightened understanding of human rights and ask them to engage in a tiring, stressful, dangerous job, while still keeping the public safe. We are going to need people with college degrees, preferably graduate degrees, and compete with the employers that hire such.
The kind of applicant pool we have now for police academies cannot, en masse, be tamed into the kind of humane, enlightened force we need. But there are always going to be dangerous criminals who need to be confronted with force, so we can’t just get rid of the bad cops and expect to be able to hire good ones on the budgets we are working with.
ETA: At the very least, if we can’t have educated/enlightened cops out on the beat in large numbers (and maybe we can’t make that job appealing for such people no matter how much we pay), we need to have much greater continuous surveillance of the ones who *are *out there. And we’re going to have to pay for the technology to make that possible, as well as for the well-educated and well-paid overseers back at the station (or, I suppose, maybe even working remotely from home) to keep a close eye on them and to yank them from the streets if they deviate even slightly from protocol.
Nope again, you are still ignoring that I do not propose a complete defunding of all the police departments, neither the Democrats being accused of that. Again what I have referred is the stupid talking point that democrats demanding reform are talking about defuning all police functions when that is not the case.
So, no, many are smart enough to realize that increasing the funds to the police is not a great idea. Defunding them is more supported once it is understood what is all about and not the straw man. And fawning over a seemingly clever tweet that is really a dumb one is very underwhelming.
There was nothing “dumb” about the tweet. But you provided polling information that tells a different story. Well done! Both sets of numbers strike me as equally valid; we need more data as a tiebreaker but what you provided certainly muddies the waters.
I don’t think that was muddling the waters, somehow you are missing that the early poll was not nuanced, hence the result you see. BTW that lack of nuance is why that “lesson” that tweet gave was dumb.
You are almost literally saying “obviously the one poll that had a result I didn’t like had some kind of flaw in its methodology, but the one I liked was obviously much more scientific”. :rolleyes:
And FYI the idiom is “muddying the waters” not “muddling the waters”.
I went looking for the precise question wording on the poll from the tweet, and Google instead found me this more recent one from the same pollster, conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (the same exact days the Reuters/Ipsos poll you cited was conducted, as it happens) and released on Thursday. Looks pretty nuanced to me, although I’m sure you can suggest some wording that massages the issue more to your liking:
Now let’s look at the crosstabs from the Reuters/Ipsos poll **GIGO **cited.
Yup, still looks like a loser.
OTOH, from the same poll:
Ding ding ding! We’ve got winners, folks!
Another idea I heard today that I would like to see polled: vastly increase the role of cameras and AI in enforcing traffic laws. For taillights out, minor-level speeding, etc., just photograph the license plate and send the ticket/summons in the mail. Save the police for emergency crime calls and people driving 30MPH or more over the speed limit, plus dangerously reckless drivers who are weaving all over the place. The one major downside I see here is a likelihood of catching fewer drunk drivers, but the net benefit to society in a utilitarian sense might make that worth it. (We could also push for greater technology in terms of testing people’s breath when they sit behind the steering wheel, as is done now for people on probation for DUIs.)
Yup, still looks like you ignore my point for a reason.
Again the extreme idea is not really what is driving the democratic demands, it is mostly moving “some money currently going to police budgets into better officer training, local programs for homelessness, mental health assistance, and domestic violence.” and depending on the location, solutions that look a bit more extreme were used or considered in some places when corruption is obvious.
What is pushed by your spin IMHO is the reverse of what any progressive is proposing, a way to discourage also the efforts to deal with the identified corrupt departments.
It is depending a lot from the spin from the right and conservative moderates that are muddling the waters.
I said “muddying the waters”. No one says “muddling the waters”.
And I’m not the one spinning. That’s you! I’m showing poll numbers that demonstrate that people who are keen to undertake other reforms of police departments are overwhelmingly thumbs-down on “defund the police”. Your only answer is “well, if we could just explain to them why it’s not so bad, the numbers would be better”. :smack: That’s your notion of politics, that you should start with a slogan that arouses significantly more negative reactions than the underlying policies you have in mind? Maybe you’re not familar with the wisdom of the political maxim “if you’re explaining, you’re losing”.
Well, you need to complain to the Oxford dictionary and the autocrats tactics. And I did say it by checking before replying, not my fault that you did not know that way before.
Like trying to explain away a dictionary definition :).
And there you go again avoiding that I’m not in favor of being an absolutist about defunding the police, strawmaning still needs a lot explaining from you to keep going.
Granted, they also published that bullshit by Tom Cotton. But the Times staff seem to have publicly walked it back almost as soon as it came out.
I think this is a really terrible message to be leaning into for Democrats and the left. It’s playing directly into the fears of not just Trump’s base, who are going to be pro-authoritarian police no matter what, but more importantly also a lot of swing voters and undecideds who are frankly not going to ever get on board with the idea of “abolish the police.” The concept seems manifestly absurd on its face. If your house gets broken into, who are you going to call? A social worker?
I’m calling it here and now, this is a big fucking mistake. It’s playing right into Trump’s hands and the election is going to be upon us before we know it, and now is not the time to fuck around.
You know that the writer of that piece is an activist and not a politician? Tom cotton is in Congress, point here is that since Biden is not for it is clearly what the Republicans want the straw man to go. But it shows to many what party has absolutists that are being voted into power. As I pointed before, I don’t agree with that opinion piece. Radical solutions need to be used (and were used even in the USA in the past) only in places were the evidence points to corruption, not a size fits all like that activist proposes.
As for playing into Trumps hand, it would be worrisome if this was a normal Republican president, but this is Trump. One thing to remember is that he already made the situation worse for him and the police. Talk about hitting two endangered birds with one stone, an ugly feat, but he managed to do it.
I think triggered white people’s fears are overblown.
I would agree we shouldn’t nuke the police - instead the “abolish the police” movement should be used as leverage, and perhaps there should be some coordination within the movement. But it would actually be a good thing if we could go to police departments with a history of problems (there are many) and say:
"Okay, we won’t abolish the police now - instead we will give you, the police, a chance to clean up your fucking act. We’ll give police unions a choice of accepting sweeping reforms that include abolition of “broken windows” and ‘busted tail light’ policing, getting rid of stop-and-frisk, and substantively changing procedures and training so that police violence is only used to respond to clear and compelling threats to police officers or to others, not “I thought he might have had a gun” or “He moved suddenly” – fuck that. Fuck anyone who doesn’t insist on changing that kind of mentality right fucking now. Fuck what triggered suburbanites might think - because they’re part of the problem frankly. And yes, it’s absolutely worth losing some of those voters because when systems are absolutely broken they need to be completely changed and you can’t stop change just because some “moderates” might not be ready for it. Some moderates worried we “weren’t ready” for a range of other civil rights and gender equity changes - if we worried about when people are ready to accept greater equality, we’d never fucking have any.
You either believe that people should have control over their taxpayer funded police departments or you don’t. You either believe that people should have the right to have their civil liberties respected or you don’t. You either believe that these rights apply to everyone whether they’re white people living in gated suburban communities or people living in housing projects, or you don’t. You either believe that killing someone over a minor infraction or nonviolent felony is grossly disproportionate to the crime, or you don’t.
I think it’s perfectly appropriate - past time in fact - for cities to take control of the situation and offer law enforcement agencies an ultimatum. Clean it up, or we will, and we’ll start by dissolving the current law enforcement agency, and replacing it with something completely different and more accountable to the people. And get this: in the end, this reform won’t just prevent black men from getting choked to death, it’ll also prevent white men from getting shot up in a Mesa, Arizona hotel room because “Uh oh, you lose! Simon didn’t say crawl.”:rolleyes:
Controlling the behavior of a local police agency is a local issue first. I think a city that comes together to act in unison against police abuse has some leverage - if they choose to use it, if they have the will to do it. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that we have no options and that people have to tolerate police misconduct, but as it turns out, there is an option: disbanding the police department and rebuilding it into something else.
I agree that it should be a last resort. Cities can use the threat of disbanding the force or laying off the force as a way to apply pressure.
That itself was pretty hard to parse, but it seems you are stubbornly doubling down instead of taking a note from a native speaker that you got an idiom wrong. I speak French quite well, but if a native speaker corrects me on an idiom I don’t insist the dictionary proves me right when it doesn’t.
You can google “muddling the waters” and Google will literally ask you if you meant “muddying the waters”!
This is true as far as it goes, but it’s incredibly shortsighted. I’m sure there were plenty of Democrats saying similar things in say 1974, that Nixon had so tainted the GOP that Democrats didn’t really need to worry about tending their own brand. But by 1980, a relative blink of the eye, the Reagain revolution was in full swing.
A mere two years from now, Trump will (hopefully!!) be gone, and we will have to defend House and Senate seats in a midterm with a Democratic incumbent in the White House. That’s never an easy task, but it certainly won’t be any easier if Democrats have at all been tarred with the “defund” brush, even a little.