5 ms·

The problem is that "defund" means remove all funding. So these people are playing word games.

by travisoneill1 6y ago

_jal 6y ago
The problem is people who would rather whine about word choice in protest slogans instead the underlying issues.
- tertius 6y ago
  No, the real problem is people getting angry because they think they understand the underlying issues. There is no reasoning that will allow down that anger. No looking at actual facts and statistics.
ardy42 6y ago
> The problem is that "defund" means remove all funding. So these people are playing word games. You have to that with slogans. They're low resolution, so there's an inevitable loss of fidelity. No one marches with a legislative proposal on a placard, and it would be unreasonable to do so.
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  "Reform the police" is a slogan and accurate.
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-police-reform-a-fundamentally-flawed-idea/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-police-reform-a-fund...
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    It's not accurate, unfortunately. Reform is as ambiguous as defund. Do you mean totally eradicate and then reform a department? Or do you mean just telling them "do better"? Are you talking about re-forming the police or reforms for police?
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > "Reform the police" is a slogan and accurate. IIRC, "defund the police" grew out of frustration with various police reform efforts that failed to address these problems [1]. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to take up the slogan of one of the things you're opposing. [1] For instance I watch a video of some police deescalation training (in Seattle, IIRC), where the rank-and-file were talking back and not taking it seriously, and the instructors were not very enthusiastic or in control. I can't imagine that reform effort did a lot of good.
- pluto9 6y ago
  That's a poor excuse. They're low resolution, but not so low resolution that you can chant a slogan and then claim you meant something else entirely. Why not "reform the police", or hell, even "disarm the police"?
  - abathur 6y ago
    Do you think "disarm the police" would be going better than "defund the police"? (I suspect it would actually be quite a bit more incendiary.) Communication (even at length) is hard. We all bring different baggage to every attempt to speak and listen. It's probably ~impossible once you mix in uncharitable readers/listeners. I can't speak for the campaigners, but I suspect "reform the police" won't cut the mustard for them because it's the sort of thing the establishment says before it fails to deliver meaningful change. "Today I'm calling for the establishment of a bipartisan commission on police reform", and its short imperative slogan--"reform the police"--could be an inspiring message if people had the impression that is how the gears sound when they're spinning up to change something. But it's not very fair to insist people should be chanting a demand that seems to translate to "promise to look busy for a few months so that we'll go home and hope we don't notice when you don't solve the problem."
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    "Reform the police" has long been the tagline for ineffective measures. We've been trying to do it for decades; "defund the police" is in part a response to the reform argument. "Disarm the police" would receive the exact same pearl clutching responses.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    People talked about defunding education and the military for years. Both for and against. Everyone understood what it meant.
    - pluto9 6y ago
      They talked about reducing funding.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  When you march with something that’s objectively false and materially misleading, you lose my good faith engagement. “Defund the police” is misleading in a way that “Trump Train” and “Ridin’ with Biden” are not. It’s not a real train and Biden isn’t with you, but people are not misled.
- naveen99 6y ago
  “Reduce police funding” ?
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > “Reduce police funding”? Better in some ways, worse in others. It avoids the confusion with abolishment, but it looses the connotations of seriously changing the status quo. Because of that, it's less attention-grabbing.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      The truth is often less attention grabbing than falsehoods. It’s “one crazy trick” or “you’re not going to believe #7” but for matters that are actually important to discuss and debate in specifics.
      - ardy42 6y ago
        > The truth is often less attention grabbing than falsehoods. Pretty much every slogan is a falsehood, if you want to quibble.
ryguytilidie 6y ago
I mean, you're basically the problem here. You're very clearly being disingenuous and playing word games at the exact moment you're accusing others of doing the same.
throwaway894345 6y ago
They originally meant “remove all funding” which is why you would see this intermixed with “abolish the police”. It was an initial emotional overreaction that they’re trying to walk back. It would even be understandable (indeed, commendable) if they simply said, “we reacted emotionally to some troubling videos; we regret advocating for the abolition of police altogether, but we do want to see these other, more moderate reforms”. Instead you have some people doubling down i.e., “no, we actually meant ‘abolish the police’” and others who are cringingly pretending that “abolish the police” was some sort of metaphor. Both camps are more preoccupied with appearing to be correct than with actually being correct. Of course, someone will inevitably try to deflect to the errors of some other group, as though no one can be criticized except the worst group, which is the kind of race-to-the-bottom thinking that landed us here in the first place.
- jancsika 6y ago
  > “we reacted emotionally to some troubling videos; we regret advocating for the abolition of police altogether, but we do want to see these other, more moderate reforms” Have you ever participated in politics? Because even in a small town government meeting, a board member stating they are changing their view because they "reacted emotionally" initially is going to immediately be followed by a call for them to resign. I'm not opining on the issue at hand. It's just that when I read the suggestions here on HN about political messaging, many of them don't line up with any political reality I'm familiar with.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    Even still, the appropriate response isn’t to double down or lie. If you don’t like those options, consider your response before expressing it in the first place. I agree that we should normalize honesty though.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  > It was an initial emotional overreaction This one line summarizes the broken nature of our political conversation. We are in a cycle of emotional overreactions, amplified by social media, and escalating in severity.
pera 6y ago
English is not my first language, but it seems an ambiguous slogan as the prefix de- not only means to remove but also to reduce / degrade. For instance, there were some recent calls for "defunding the Pentagon", in the sense of reducing military spending. > Defund > to deplete the financial resources of https://www.dictionary.com/browse/defund https://www.dictionary.com/browse/defund
- travisoneill1 6y ago
  You left out the first definition: > to withdraw financial support from, especially as an instrument of legislative control
  - pera 6y ago
    Correct, that's why I used the word "ambiguous" (i.e. having or expressing more than one possible meaning).
pseudalopex 6y ago
People talked about defunding education and the military for years. Both for and against. Everyone understood what it meant.

The problem is that "defund" means remove all funding. So these people are playing word games.

_jal 6y ago

The problem is people who would rather whine about word choice in protest slogans instead the underlying issues.

tertius 6y ago
No, the real problem is people getting angry because they think they understand the underlying issues. There is no reasoning that will allow down that anger. No looking at actual facts and statistics.

ardy42 6y ago

> The problem is that "defund" means remove all funding. So these people are playing word games. You have to that with slogans. They're low resolution, so there's an inevitable loss of fidelity. No one marches with a legislative proposal on a placard, and it would be unreasonable to do so.

travisoneill1 6y ago
"Reform the police" is a slogan and accurate.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-police-reform-a-fundamentally-flawed-idea/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/is-police-reform-a-fund...
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  It's not accurate, unfortunately. Reform is as ambiguous as defund. Do you mean totally eradicate and then reform a department? Or do you mean just telling them "do better"? Are you talking about re-forming the police or reforms for police?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > "Reform the police" is a slogan and accurate. IIRC, "defund the police" grew out of frustration with various police reform efforts that failed to address these problems [1]. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to take up the slogan of one of the things you're opposing. [1] For instance I watch a video of some police deescalation training (in Seattle, IIRC), where the rank-and-file were talking back and not taking it seriously, and the instructors were not very enthusiastic or in control. I can't imagine that reform effort did a lot of good.
pluto9 6y ago
That's a poor excuse. They're low resolution, but not so low resolution that you can chant a slogan and then claim you meant something else entirely. Why not "reform the police", or hell, even "disarm the police"?
- abathur 6y ago
  Do you think "disarm the police" would be going better than "defund the police"? (I suspect it would actually be quite a bit more incendiary.) Communication (even at length) is hard. We all bring different baggage to every attempt to speak and listen. It's probably ~impossible once you mix in uncharitable readers/listeners. I can't speak for the campaigners, but I suspect "reform the police" won't cut the mustard for them because it's the sort of thing the establishment says before it fails to deliver meaningful change. "Today I'm calling for the establishment of a bipartisan commission on police reform", and its short imperative slogan--"reform the police"--could be an inspiring message if people had the impression that is how the gears sound when they're spinning up to change something. But it's not very fair to insist people should be chanting a demand that seems to translate to "promise to look busy for a few months so that we'll go home and hope we don't notice when you don't solve the problem."
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  "Reform the police" has long been the tagline for ineffective measures. We've been trying to do it for decades; "defund the police" is in part a response to the reform argument. "Disarm the police" would receive the exact same pearl clutching responses.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  People talked about defunding education and the military for years. Both for and against. Everyone understood what it meant.
  - pluto9 6y ago
    They talked about reducing funding.
sokoloff 6y ago
When you march with something that’s objectively false and materially misleading, you lose my good faith engagement. “Defund the police” is misleading in a way that “Trump Train” and “Ridin’ with Biden” are not. It’s not a real train and Biden isn’t with you, but people are not misled.
naveen99 6y ago
“Reduce police funding” ?
- ardy42 6y ago
  > “Reduce police funding”? Better in some ways, worse in others. It avoids the confusion with abolishment, but it looses the connotations of seriously changing the status quo. Because of that, it's less attention-grabbing.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    The truth is often less attention grabbing than falsehoods. It’s “one crazy trick” or “you’re not going to believe #7” but for matters that are actually important to discuss and debate in specifics.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > The truth is often less attention grabbing than falsehoods. Pretty much every slogan is a falsehood, if you want to quibble.

ryguytilidie 6y ago

I mean, you're basically the problem here. You're very clearly being disingenuous and playing word games at the exact moment you're accusing others of doing the same.

throwaway894345 6y ago

They originally meant “remove all funding” which is why you would see this intermixed with “abolish the police”. It was an initial emotional overreaction that they’re trying to walk back. It would even be understandable (indeed, commendable) if they simply said, “we reacted emotionally to some troubling videos; we regret advocating for the abolition of police altogether, but we do want to see these other, more moderate reforms”. Instead you have some people doubling down i.e., “no, we actually meant ‘abolish the police’” and others who are cringingly pretending that “abolish the police” was some sort of metaphor. Both camps are more preoccupied with appearing to be correct than with actually being correct. Of course, someone will inevitably try to deflect to the errors of some other group, as though no one can be criticized except the worst group, which is the kind of race-to-the-bottom thinking that landed us here in the first place.

jancsika 6y ago
> “we reacted emotionally to some troubling videos; we regret advocating for the abolition of police altogether, but we do want to see these other, more moderate reforms” Have you ever participated in politics? Because even in a small town government meeting, a board member stating they are changing their view because they "reacted emotionally" initially is going to immediately be followed by a call for them to resign. I'm not opining on the issue at hand. It's just that when I read the suggestions here on HN about political messaging, many of them don't line up with any political reality I'm familiar with.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Even still, the appropriate response isn’t to double down or lie. If you don’t like those options, consider your response before expressing it in the first place. I agree that we should normalize honesty though.
koheripbal 6y ago
> It was an initial emotional overreaction This one line summarizes the broken nature of our political conversation. We are in a cycle of emotional overreactions, amplified by social media, and escalating in severity.

pera 6y ago

English is not my first language, but it seems an ambiguous slogan as the prefix de- not only means to remove but also to reduce / degrade. For instance, there were some recent calls for "defunding the Pentagon", in the sense of reducing military spending. > Defund > to deplete the financial resources of https://www.dictionary.com/browse/defund https://www.dictionary.com/browse/defund

travisoneill1 6y ago
You left out the first definition: > to withdraw financial support from, especially as an instrument of legislative control
- pera 6y ago
  Correct, that's why I used the word "ambiguous" (i.e. having or expressing more than one possible meaning).

pseudalopex 6y ago

People talked about defunding education and the military for years. Both for and against. Everyone understood what it meant.