I agree - it's perfectly reasonable to take it literally. It's not equivalent to the mostly-willing-misinterpretation of the phrase "black lives matter". Howeve

I agree - it's perfectly reasonable to take it literally. It's not equivalent to the mostly-willing-misinterpretation of the phrase "black lives matter". However, I don't think it's as simple as "complaining when taken literally". My point is that people should be more charitable - this phrase didn't originate from a committee's meditations. The situation it arose from is terrifying, disastrous, intolerable, an emergency, etc. On scales smaller than the national one, e.g. at community level, it's quite literally a fight for life and civilization. The extremity of the phrase is commensurate with the extremity of the circumstances - this is a spontaneous cry, not a diplomatic thought. We should talk about this situation with that reality in mind. Of course despite all this qualification, the phrase is used, if far from ubiquitously, and if you add onto that the way news and human drama naturally works, then the phrase never had a chance to not be a widespread part of the image of the national movement. We should not allow people to attempt to literally abolish the police, but we should try to understand why that has become one of their slogans, and not use it as a catch-all for dismissing the movement in a single repeated sentence (e.g. how the root post of this thread has done - not something you've done).