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I think many posts in this thread provide valuable commentary and mine won't add as much value, but I'd like to share a viewpoint about how it's interesting tha
by dmos62 8y ago
I think many posts in this thread provide valuable commentary and mine won't add as much value, but I'd like to share a viewpoint about how it's interesting that in many countries it's considered quite normal that the police/state are antagonistic to citizens, but in U.S., while the same tension exists, there's a sense of Americans being continually surprised by that fact, as if some sense of idealism partly counteracts the media and acts as a sort of mild denial.
I don't mean to be critical; I'm quite sympathetic.
I grew up in a post-Soviet Bloc country, and while things have definitely changed a lot since 1980s, the mistrust in police and state was still something you could sense. However, that sense of mistrust was dramatically different, because there was no conflicting sense of "it shouldn't be like that". There was a sense of acceptance. Maybe you could call that Soviet defeatism.
The only lesson I can draw from that is that it's easier to look at what's happening in U.S. if you don't presume that the state is your friend.
- zzzcpan 8y agoWell, most post-Soviet countries are also not police countries. People there are not used seeing police act much and police using weapons would be a massive news worthy story.
- coolspot 8y agoMaybe western ones are not, but most coming to my mind are non-free police states - Belarus[1], Tajikistan[2], Kazakhstan[3], Azerbaijan[4], Kyrgyzstan[5], Uzbekistan[6] and so on. [1] - https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/belarus https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/belarus [2] - https://freedomhouse.org/country/tajikistan https://freedomhouse.org/country/tajikistan [3] - https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/kazakhstan https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/kazakhsta... [4] - https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/azerbaijan https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/azerbaija... [5] - https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/kyrgyzstan https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/kyrgyzsta... [6] - https://freedomhouse.org/country/uzbekistan https://freedomhouse.org/country/uzbekistan
- zzzcpan 8y agoYeah, I was hesitating whether to write most. The thing is though, even those non-free states are not as brutal on policing as the US.
- coolspot 8y agoAs someone who lived in Russia first 23 years and now living in US, I can not agree. US has one of the lowest ratios of police force per capita - 284 officers per 100k citizens [1]. Compare to Belarus - 1442 per 100k citizens and Russia’s 515 per 100k. [1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...
- aplummer 8y agoI mean, I don’t know how many police New Zealand has per capita (I think regarded as the most “free” country) however isn’t it more the application of force than the quantity of police? If they are all directing traffic it’s not a police state.
- hippich 8y agoThey are there to protect the state from the population. Since population doesn't have much means to harm the state, hence police are acting more "mildly", but no way they are doing traffic regulation mostly (in fact I can count on fingers of one hand seeing cops regulating traffic in Belarus)
- newname2018 8y agoThe scariest thing a person in this world can hear is : I'm the police, and I'm here to help
- chrisseaton 8y ago> in many countries it's considered quite normal that the police/state are antagonistic to citizens I suppose so, if you consider all countries. But I'm not sure that's reasonable to compare The US and, for example, Mexico, like that. If you consider peer countries to The US, with similar cultures, like Australia, The UK, France, then it is not normal that the police are antagonistic to citizens. In The UK most police don't even carry guns.
- dmos62 8y agoWell my point was that maybe U.S. shouldn't be thought of as aligned to those countries. I'm not saying it's the polar opposite or that it should be aligned to North Korea or Belarus, but that maybe some of our ingrained presumptions are wrong. This comes off like saying that a country is a one-dimensional object, and all countries can be adequately compared on a straight line spectrum. Just to be clear, I think it's much more complicated than that.