Yeah.
“I believe and repeat whatever I kinda remember I heard while I wasn’t really paying attention” is what passes for “thinking” for a vast swathe of humanity.
There’s also a huge contingent of suburbanites, at least here in Texas. And as best I can tell, they basically have drunk huge quantities of the right-wing media kool-aid, and truly believe that liberals/Democrats want to take away liberties and let criminals run riot in the name of racial equity and/or defunding the police. They seem to be entirely motivated by being afraid of everything- crime and the loss of rights/liberties, and ultimately change more than anything. They have a specific fear that a Democrat-led government is gunning to take away their rights and tax the crap out of them to fund stuff intended for “other” groups.
These are really the deplorables; they’re not dumb-ass uneducated rednecks living in trailers in small towns who are low information voters. On the whole, they’re college educated professionals who are reasonably successful, and should know better. But they’re so het up about tax increases, crime or the perceived loss of rights that they can’t think past it. I mean, they should know that not giving special consideration to Christian stuff at the courthouse, or prohibiting public school prayer (of ANY religion) isn’t removing anyone’s rights, it’s enforcing everyone else’s. But they see it as an attack on their religion and a loss of religious freedom, not as a way to put all religions on the same level vis-a-vis the government.
That is a really dumb phrase. Instead, we should try, “Fire the policemen who like to hurt people, and hire guys who worked for the Peace Corps”.
I think that had the GOP invested a million dollars, held dozens of focus groups, and held a seance to commune with the great villains of history, they couldn’t actually have come up with a MORE inflammatory and divisive slogan for that concept, than the actual people involved did.
Very simply, until Trump, the train had no engine. Trump gave it an engine and they know that it’s better to have that engine than no engine. Trump said a lot of fucked up things but he was actually dead right when he used the catchphrase “low-energy” to describe the old Republican Party represented by people like Jeb Bush. He kickstarted a tremendous momentum and they are not going to give that up.
If I put myself into the mindset of the very real communities where police are very really a violent and unwelcome presence who are perceived as active threats to the people in the community, “defund the police” sounds downright tame.
After all, the policemen are left not only alive but basically unpunished at the end of that. Could be worse - and I can easily see how to some, worse could seem justified.
Honestly, even as an old white guy I don’t see “defund” as being synonymous with “eradicate”. And it’s probably not just because I know what words mean - I’m also not the sort of person who thinks that the police are fighting a constant pitched battle with criminals who are only held back by the police fighting to the last man.
The ACLU likes “Divest and re-invest”. Sounds a lot better.
Gub’m’nt Bad! Fuck Gub’m’nt! Fuck it up the ass hard 'til it bleeds out the ears! Throw corpse in swamp!
What would you think “defund” means? Maybe not eradicate in the sense of abolish, but certainly it could potentially mean that police departments would be hamstrung in their ability to perform their duties, depending on the depth of the defunding.
While I agree with the sentiment and the actual proposals, the actual wording of the slogan was and is terrible from an optics perspective as far as the Democratic party was concerned. It’s almost like it was calibrated to instantly turn off the largest possible number of people who might have been on the fence about how to vote in November, by appealing to their FUD with relation to crime and criminals.
‘Demilitarize the police’ is more appropriate.
I concede that my brain doesn’t stop after a single thought.
My first thought is that it means “reduce the funding available to the police”
And my second thought is “Hmm, why would we do that? Because they’re not doing what we want them to, maybe? That their behavior is bad and maybe, rather than paying for it, we should reassess whose behavior we should be funding?”
I suppose if I stopped with only the first thought, the message might sound bad.
Can we not do the defund the police debate again here, please?
I think a lot of people jump to a different conclusion with their second thought, straight to “If we reduce their funding, they won’t be able to effectively do their duty. OH no!” Of course, this is all fueled by police propaganda in cities about how they’re already perpetually underfunded/undermanned, and need more to keep us all safe from the hordes of hardened criminals out there. If you’ve bought into that idea, reducing funding seems like a uniquely terrible idea, even if it means less police killings, etc…
I will drop the topic. I apologize.
Yes, but they failed.
They invested far more than that in militarizing the police and encouraging them to be quick to violence in order to get people to react to the police in such a manner.
I think the issue with people like that is deep inside they are motivated by bigotry and a desire to maintain the status that comes from their race, gender, religion, nationality, etc. However they aren’t comfortable coming out and saying thats what motivates them.
Having said that there are some valid concerns about democratic rule. Homelessness and riots are a problem in some deep blue cities and the GOP hits those things pretty hard.
Is it the policies of deep blue cities that causes homelessness, or is it the fact that they have some level of compassion, have services for the homeless, and don’t run them out of the city?
And I disagree that “riots are a problem.” It’s not like they have constant riots, that’s just what you see on TV, where the smallest amount of any sort of issue is magnified and repeated over and over. Riots themselves are pretty rare.
This is very much how I see it as well. I often like to point people at an article called “Why do so many terrorists have engineering degrees.”.
Give him a name like “Larry” instead of “Abdulmutallab”, and substitute “Christian Constitutional Originalism” for “Islamic Law” and the above quote seems too close for comfort. The above quote is about engineers, but the traits described can apply to a number of white-collar professions who could know better and should know better, but they do not need to, and strive not to. Engineers, attorneys, CEO’s. Real estate professionals.
The crazies on TV are just the tip of the iceberg. The bulk of the iceberg is property-owning petit-bourgeois sociopaths who have amassed a nest egg of property thanks to their marketable profession, but outside the confines of work, they have bad intellectual habits and terrible media consumption habits.
Maybe, but I doubt that was a directed plan from on high. From what I gather, police have pretty much always been heavy handed at best with minorities, and murderous at worst. I mean, what has changed since 1950 in that regard really?
My point was that the unfortunate word choice gave ammunition to anyone who was already against minorities or who was very pro-police, and that for anyone who might have been on the fence, it let the debate be framed as a contest between the champions of law and order (i.e. the police), and an ill-defined opposition who seemed to be proposing to do away with policing altogether.
That’s my point- the choice of words let the debate be framed a certain way in which it never was intended to be framed, and never would have been, had things gone differently. I mean, the basic concept is sound- there are lots of situations when due to their role as the state’s monopoly on violence, they aren’t helpful, and some other method/group to handle them would be a good thing.
But by framing it as basically a choice between law and order with our current police on one hand, and defunding the police (to use the phrase as-is) on the other, it made people assess just how afraid they are, and to choose on that basis. Which in today’s America is a choice that’s favorable to the GOP. Had the slogan been different, the debate could have been framed more appropriately.