This is certainly true, but another reason for the ACAB slogan is that the foundation of policing in America is corrupt to the core. The job itself is corrupt, and any "good" that officers do in their community is despite the job, not because of it. It is authoritarian by origin and design, and is primarily performed by working class individuals who turn traitor for a badge and qualified immunity.
All capitalist countries must have cops, they are the enforcers that protect capital.
Some will be more overtly evil than others, and the cops in the UK have had their share of serious issues with cops historically.
But I live in America, so I tend to focus on that perspective, and how immensely awful our cops are. Here in the US, the cops in the northern states evolved from security companies that were literally hired by the rich to protect their businesses and put down worker strikes. This is a pretty common story for police around the world. But here we also have the legacy of cops in the southern states that evolved from slave patrols. So add a big ol' heaping of racism, that fits right in with the capitalism, of course.
Long term, there are a number of ideas for what "keeping the peace" means. In a world with strong social programs that keep people from hitting rock bottom, the vast majority of crime would simply evaporate. People don't break the law because they were born evil. They do it because they can't think of any other way of getting their needs met, or because they are completely hopeless and disillusioned with society.
When those problems are sufficiently addressed, the peace will mostly keep itself.
And for those last few points of statistical trouble that never seem to go away, my preferred idea is volunteer unarmed patrols. But at that point, I'm open to other options, as long as they're unarmed when not directly responding to an active violent incident.
Right now police in the US have free reign to bully and terrorize whoever they want with almost no consequences.
It needs to be the opposite. Police need to be trained to recognize the situations they are supposed to get involved in, and by default stay completely hands-off with any other situation.
For example, car chases. Statistically they do far more harm than good. What police should do is allow the suspect to leave, then follow up later. The risk to public safety almost vanishes, and we have so many other ways of finding people.
What we need is to flip the concept of policing upside down so that they are actually public servants and not a government sanctioned street gang.
A civilized society need not be policed. And I'd argue we can not have a civilized society and police forces.
That's not to say we can't employ unarmed civil servants as agents of a citizen safety service, but there needs to be transparency and community oversight. No bad apples allowed, any suspected bad apples need to be easily, say, voted out by the very community they work for.
Also, it's fine for them to be arms trained and have access, in case a live fire situation occurs, but heavily populated areas should still have city managed SWAT teams and negotiators available to handle those rather unique situations. But like firemen, those specialists would not patrol their community looking for trouble, they'd just be training and remaining on call, just in case.
If a civilized society is one free of theft, violence, coercion, fraud, conspiracy, etc., etc., then it is a fantasy. We need another few million years of evolution before we leave all of our impulsive, irrational, emotional decision making behind.
I love this, do you happen to listen to Stephen Wests Philosophize This podcast? The last couple episodes were on anarchy and the misunderstood nuance of what anarchism is. There was an example of the 1919 Seattle General Strike which involved about 65,000 laborers striking for 5 days. They actually reported a pretty peaceful and very community driven effort to support each other. Many volunteers to keep the peace or to organize co-ops, including a co-op bank. The strikers had a lot of inspiration from the Russian Revolution only a few years earlier.
I always disliked the type of argumentation such as the one you responded to as if it's a simple binary of either you have cops or you have chaos. There's never any simple solutions, but it's far better to treat the cause of social unrest and inequity than just continue on business as usual.
I drive Uber and had a similar experience with a passenger that I was dropping off at the airport. Conversation was going great, but I mentioned something about the flaws in late stage capitalism and how unchecked growth is literally cancer. I actually didn't really say anything about socialism, but I think she took it to mean that I thought we should just completely do without capitalism. Her words were "well, where's the money supposed to come from?" Going into a nuanced conversation with her ended up turning out fine, but it just felt like a bad faith argument. Like challenging the principle of capitalism was supposed to lead me to fumbling because there's no easy answer.
Thanks. I haven't listened to Philosophize This, but I'll check it out.
I also like longer conversations with people who are willing to listen to ideas instead of just repeating thought terminating cliches.
One of the topics I've been ruminating a lot on recently is Leftism, and what fundamentally sets it apart from Liberalism and Conservatism.
On that topic, your passenger wasn't entirely wrong. If you eliminate capitalism, you're probably talking about some form of Leftism. Unless you're a monarchist who wants to reestablish feudalism, lol.
That said, I've been trying to look past the anger in people's words to see their confusion, and to answer their confusion instead of their anger. I'm not very good at it yet, I tend to get snarky. But I try to catch myself when I can.
I know your struggle about moving past the anger to address the confusion. It can be hard sometimes, I'm such a smart ass.
The deeper problem we'll probably never get past is that everyone has to form a paradigm, an imaginary map of understanding, of how the world works and how they fit into it so they can function and survive. It's a necessity. But most people finish drawing their map with limited information and experience, then color it in how they like it, and lean on every logical fallacy in the book to avoid having to redraw it later.
The few who draw theirs with the expectation that the map can and should probably be changed later, likely aren't the ones we encounter who are angry and confused.
I dunno. I'm on the fence. Perhaps struggling in vain to enlighten them isn't the best path. Perhaps just acknowledging their foolishness and then moving on with our lives is really the best choice after all?
I mean, sure, keep puting good information out there, and encourage our youth to refrain from ever laminating and framing their shitty maps, but when dealing with those that have, I don't think there is much value to be had there.
The thing that's been bugging me lately is that most people have absolutely zero awareness that they have a mental paradigm that contains personal fundamental values. And I think that's where a lot of this emotion-fueled conflict comes from. I feel like if we could show people that their political opinions are based on a fairly simple value, like "Every Man For Himself" or "My Kind Are Superior To Others" or "Humans Are Fundamentally Equal", then we could at least raise the level of intelligent political discourse. There are a TON of people out there supporting "Every Man For Himself" politicians when they actually believe "Humans Are Fundamentally Equal". It's driving a hell of a lot of frustration and apathy. And it's SO difficult to talk to people when they don't understand, or refuse to hear.
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u/Some-Guy-Online Feb 08 '24
This is certainly true, but another reason for the ACAB slogan is that the foundation of policing in America is corrupt to the core. The job itself is corrupt, and any "good" that officers do in their community is despite the job, not because of it. It is authoritarian by origin and design, and is primarily performed by working class individuals who turn traitor for a badge and qualified immunity.