6 ms·

It's gonna die because the leadership of the democratic party is mostly authoritarians and the leadership of the republican party is in the back pocket of law e

It's gonna die because the leadership of the democratic party is mostly authoritarians and the leadership of the republican party is in the back pocket of law enforcement and party leadership is who controls the pac dollars which controls who gets reelected and who loses their primary.

throw0238 6y ago
It will get even bigger. "Defund the police" will turn police into for-profit self-funded organization :-)
- justinzollars 6y ago
  That might not be a bad thing. The police would be responsible for their actions, rather than shielded by law.
  - quadrangle 6y ago
    Huh? Defunding the police doesn't change whether they are shielded by laws. Did you imagine the parent comment was describing "defund the police" meaning no more police and only having private security companies? That's not how I read it.
    - justinzollars 6y ago
      Huh? Read the comment above. This is in response.
      - quadrangle 6y ago
        > It will get even bigger. "Defund the police" will turn police into for-profit self-funded organization I don't read that to mean that there will be no police and just private security companies. I read it to suggest there will still be police, protected by the same laws, able to abuse things in the same way, except they will rely entirely on their own funding via shit like Civil Asset Forfeiture
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    I used to wonder how cyberpunk scenarios of for profit police who would only investigate crimes if the victim paid them could ever come about. Thanks for clearing up this confusion, I never would have guessed that it would be motivated by warped social justice, not end-game libertarianism.
m12k 6y ago
Man, for a nation founded by rebelling against a tyrant, and known for its can-do mentality, you sure have a pretty defeatists attitude when it comes to defeating authoritarians...
- potta_coffee 6y ago
  Short of having a revolution like the people who started this country, what's your suggestion for defeating authoritarians? It's difficult (more like impossible) to do on a legal basis when all branches of government are corrupted.
  - skrtskrt 6y ago
    America is full of bootlickers. The following quote is framed around the debate around social democracy in the US which you may or may not agree with, but the main point is how Americans happily accept a super-strong centralized state that does virtually nothing for them. """Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions. This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover). One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy?"""
93po 6y ago
To be fair there are a ton of cop-sympathizing democratic politicians. Even the supposed super progressive Mayor of Seattle who claims to have a track record of police reform is extremely pro-cop and constantly authorized the use of flash bags, tear gas, and other extreme measures for BLM protests.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  I doubt we'll ever see any influential politician make a real push for police reform. That would be suicide, and not of the political kind.
- mainstreemm 6y ago
  The mayor of Seattle where they tolerated an occupation for several weeks by an insurgent force, waiting until two children were murdered within the zone to break it up, and now facing a new autonomous zone at Cal Anderson, has frankly not done enough to end the insurgent behavior in Seattle. I'm fine with tear gas against militants who capture parts of our cities and hold them hostage, destroying businesses, committing mass vandalization, harassment of bystanders, LARPing revolution, and inevitably getting innocent children -- two at CHAZ in separate incidents -- killed, and then preventing police from investigating those murders. Much of the same can be said for Portland. We don't need to defund police, we need to defund educational programs teaching Critical Race Theory, which argues that the US is illegitimate and the land should be "returned" to indigenous nations, which I guess means removing or killing people of European descent. Look up the claims of the Red House in Portland if you don't believe me. Look up "LAND BACK".
  - brendoelfrendo 6y ago
    I'm impressed you can type with your tongue so deep in that boot.
    - dang 6y ago
      We've banned the GP account, but comments like yours here and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25462166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25462166 are not acceptable on HN. If you keep doing that we will ban your account as well, so please don't, and please stop posting unsubstantive comments in general. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN, we'd be grateful.

throw0238 6y ago

It will get even bigger. "Defund the police" will turn police into for-profit self-funded organization :-)

justinzollars 6y ago
That might not be a bad thing. The police would be responsible for their actions, rather than shielded by law.
- quadrangle 6y ago
  Huh? Defunding the police doesn't change whether they are shielded by laws. Did you imagine the parent comment was describing "defund the police" meaning no more police and only having private security companies? That's not how I read it.
  - justinzollars 6y ago
    Huh? Read the comment above. This is in response.
    - quadrangle 6y ago
      > It will get even bigger. "Defund the police" will turn police into for-profit self-funded organization I don't read that to mean that there will be no police and just private security companies. I read it to suggest there will still be police, protected by the same laws, able to abuse things in the same way, except they will rely entirely on their own funding via shit like Civil Asset Forfeiture
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I used to wonder how cyberpunk scenarios of for profit police who would only investigate crimes if the victim paid them could ever come about. Thanks for clearing up this confusion, I never would have guessed that it would be motivated by warped social justice, not end-game libertarianism.

m12k 6y ago

Man, for a nation founded by rebelling against a tyrant, and known for its can-do mentality, you sure have a pretty defeatists attitude when it comes to defeating authoritarians...

potta_coffee 6y ago
Short of having a revolution like the people who started this country, what's your suggestion for defeating authoritarians? It's difficult (more like impossible) to do on a legal basis when all branches of government are corrupted.
- skrtskrt 6y ago
  America is full of bootlickers. The following quote is framed around the debate around social democracy in the US which you may or may not agree with, but the main point is how Americans happily accept a super-strong centralized state that does virtually nothing for them. """Americans are, of course, the most thoroughly and passively indoctrinated people on earth. They know next to nothing as a rule about their own history, or the histories of other nations, or the histories of the various social movements that have risen and fallen in the past, and they certainly know little or nothing of the complexities and contradictions comprised within words like “socialism” and “capitalism.” Chiefly, what they have been trained not to know or even suspect is that, in many ways, they enjoy far fewer freedoms, and suffer under a more intrusive centralized state, than do the citizens of countries with more vigorous social-democratic institutions. This is at once the most comic and most tragic aspect of the excitable alarm that talk of social democracy or democratic socialism can elicit on these shores. An enormous number of Americans have been persuaded to believe that they are freer in the abstract than, say, Germans or Danes precisely because they possess far fewer freedoms in the concrete. They are far more vulnerable to medical and financial crisis, far more likely to receive inadequate health coverage, far more prone to irreparable insolvency, far more unprotected against predatory creditors, far more subject to income inequality, and so forth, while effectively paying more in tax (when one figures in federal, state, local, and sales taxes, and then compounds those by all the expenditures that in this country, as almost nowhere else, their taxes do not cover). One might think that a people who once rebelled against the mightiest empire on earth on the principle of no taxation without representation would not meekly accept taxation without adequate government services. But we accept what we have become used to, I suppose. Even so, one has to ask, what state apparatus in the “free” world could be more powerful and tyrannical than the one that taxes its citizens while providing no substantial civic benefits in return, solely in order to enrich a piratically overinflated military-industrial complex and to ease the tax burdens of the immensely wealthy?"""

93po 6y ago

To be fair there are a ton of cop-sympathizing democratic politicians. Even the supposed super progressive Mayor of Seattle who claims to have a track record of police reform is extremely pro-cop and constantly authorized the use of flash bags, tear gas, and other extreme measures for BLM protests.

mywittyname 6y ago
I doubt we'll ever see any influential politician make a real push for police reform. That would be suicide, and not of the political kind.
mainstreemm 6y ago
The mayor of Seattle where they tolerated an occupation for several weeks by an insurgent force, waiting until two children were murdered within the zone to break it up, and now facing a new autonomous zone at Cal Anderson, has frankly not done enough to end the insurgent behavior in Seattle. I'm fine with tear gas against militants who capture parts of our cities and hold them hostage, destroying businesses, committing mass vandalization, harassment of bystanders, LARPing revolution, and inevitably getting innocent children -- two at CHAZ in separate incidents -- killed, and then preventing police from investigating those murders. Much of the same can be said for Portland. We don't need to defund police, we need to defund educational programs teaching Critical Race Theory, which argues that the US is illegitimate and the land should be "returned" to indigenous nations, which I guess means removing or killing people of European descent. Look up the claims of the Red House in Portland if you don't believe me. Look up "LAND BACK".
- brendoelfrendo 6y ago
  I'm impressed you can type with your tongue so deep in that boot.
  - dang 6y ago
    We've banned the GP account, but comments like yours here and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25462166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25462166 are not acceptable on HN. If you keep doing that we will ban your account as well, so please don't, and please stop posting unsubstantive comments in general. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting to HN, we'd be grateful.