The message the left needed was one that encouraged more people to think of cops as the bad guys, that the police are rotten to the core and that incidents are not the result of a few bad apples. Defunding the police is one step you consider taking once you get everyone on board with that.

I think you should consider how racists who don't want it pointed out they are racist should be treated.

I'm very willing to describe the Republican Party as a racist political party. People who identify as Republican might take great personal offense at that, since they perceive an attack on Republicans as an attack on them. Racist Republicans might not want it acknowledged that they belong to a racist party because it makes it harder for them to be effectively racist.

Politics is boring without rhetorical devices.


The concept of homophobia should include the irrational fear that the active and open presence of gay people in society, especially around children, will make children become gay (with the implied belief that this is a bad thing). It doesn't have to mean that you are scared to be around homosexuals, although part of it is that some people seem to fear that exposure to gays might turn themselves gay.

I'm sure they knew that not many people would get on board with that.

Personally, as I have stated recently, I firmly believe some people become police because they want to shoot / harass / bully people, but clearly not ALL of them do, and it's very unlikely that most of them do. And I don't think society could function without some people doing at least some of the roles that the police currently do. I mean some people object to the comments I made in the Gun Control thread expressing my ideas about the police, but where I live a pretty mainstream belief seems to be that "All Cops Are Bastards" which is clearly ridiculous.

I think you ought to be allowed to argue in favor of the bolded above in this forum, if that is indeed your opinion.

Similarly, I believe I should be allowed to argue for my belief that the Democrat Party is a demonic political party.

Fair enough?

Quite so! But not for the purpose of silencing discussion.

Maybe it's not literally true that 100% of cops are bastards, but it is plausible that cop culture is a bastard culture and causes a lot of behavior that it becomes correct to treat all cops as if they are bastards.

I'm willing to throw hands. I don't care if you want to argue that Democrats are controlled by evil supernatural beings.

I think the temperature is too lukewarm and needs to be raised in political discussions and I don't need to lob direct personal attacks at other posters.

I've had friends and family members in law enforcement. I suspect that less than 50% of police officers would be aptly classified as "bastards."

When people talk about how it is a very small percentage of LEO that are actually "bad apples" irt being abusive I agree with that. The problem, IMO, is that the rest of the "good apples", because of the code of always having each others back, refuse to stop the bad apples, and either remain silent or lie about what happened to cover for a bad officer. That's how you end up things like with 4 officers putting in their official reports that the suspect was moving towards their fellow officer before he shot him. But video later shows the suspect was walking backwards away from the officer. Or multiple cops saying an officer was being dragged by a car when in fact no such thing occurred.

IMO cops can't cover for a bad cop and still be considered good cops. They are bad cops as well, and a major reason the brutality problem persists. And besides, isnt the old saying that one bad apple spoils the whole bunch? Until the "good" cops start to face real consequences for covering for bad cops, the culture isnt likely to change.

^^^ Agreed.

But it goes beyond that. The police culture also expects cops who know of serious wrong doing amongst other members (acting as gang enforcement, etc) to keep silent even if they find such illegal behaviour revolting. To be the whistleblower or the 'rat' even if on the side of right, is often seen as the biggest offense one can do.

That is not just a whole cloth fabrication of tv and movies and has been outed in many police internal investigation reports.


When the 'us versus them' dynamic stretches to protect cops from brazen illegality you can understand how every day interactions with society where the cop says 'person X did Y' as a way to keep the cop from getting in trouble is going to get a pass the majority of times. I don't even like imagining, in the pre body cam days, how many innocent people ended up in jail and with lives ruined with a false police report of 'he threw a punch and assaulted the officer' when no such thing happened.

Now that we've established a culture can be bad and that justifies treating all people in that group as bastards, what are the other bad cultures? Or is it a weird thing that only this specific culture is this way?

You're free to discuss other cultures that you wish to discuss. (Maybe start a separate thread?) I'm not sure if we have exhausted all that we can say about cop culture, so I don't know that we need to derail this course of thought.

I'm inclined to think poorly of cops until we get cases where a cop is convicted of police brutality on the strength of testimony from other cops without any bodycam video.

Conservative culture is pretty awful.

Just US conservatives or worldwide?

What exactly would be involved in treating cops as if they were bastards? Not wanting to be their friend? I can't think of any other way I would treat someone who I considered to be a bastard.

If that kind of thing happens, those guys are not good cops, and they should be prosecuted severely and sent to prison for lying in court.
Maybe that would judge the needed cultural change.

All cultures are pretty awful. Different cultures just manifest their awfulness in different ways.

Take how right-wingers treat most parts of the government that aren't cops or the military and treat cops that way. Or worse.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

Someone's been reading Tolstoy.

I disagree though that all cultures are awful.

Lol that's a common tactic but facile. "Well nobody's perfect" isn't a great argument just because you don't want to defend people who elected Trump and some of the worst representatives in our lifetimes.

I agree with you that "Well nobody's perfect" isn't a great argument.

That being the case, I'm delighted that nobody in this thread is advancing that argument.

Tolstoy is one of my favorite anarchists.

Was with a French girl and an Israeli girl today and the French girl used "girls" to refer to me and the Israeli. I got over it quickly.

Read Anna Karenina and loved it but tried War and Peace twice and made it about 1/4th of the way both times but couldn't keep going

What language was she speaking? Was it a linguistic quirk?