5 ms·

> Maybe let's try "don't have police" instead. Maybe you should work on your phrasing then.

by vlunkr 4y ago

maxbond 4y ago
I think the problem is actually that you can't imagine a world where we have rules and governance without a militarized force which uses violence to enforce those laws, and so when someone suggests getting rid of the police, you assume they want to get rid of the rule of law.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  That's putting lots of words in my mouth. I agree that police reform is desperately needed, but people saying we don't need police are sabotaging their own argument. If they had any nuance at all people might actually listen to them.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    Well forgive me if I'm misrepresenting you, but "I would have listened to your argument if you phrased it differently, you just aren't expressing yourself well" is something people often say when they're being dismissive, and I don't believe significantly more people would be receptive to "defund the police" if it has been phrased a little differently. The requests to water down the rhetoric would simply continue until it was diluted down to, "we should do something nonspecific about this problem which may exist."
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      >>I don't believe significantly more people would be receptive to "defund the police" if it has been phrased a little differently. FWIW, anecdata, per my other comment [1]: I and large majority of my friends & family (Canadian lower-case-liberals by and large) all fall into that category. It took us a LOOOOONG time (I mean weeks and months) to give the platform and movement enough benefit of doubt to investigate underlying proposals (and then largely agree with them), after having immediate and strong negative reaction to "defund the police". And most people will not give it benefit of doubt. I literally to this day have conversations with acquaintances of the sort: "No, they're not actually advocating anarchy and everybody fend for themselves! No, I'm serious! Yes, I know that's what the term implies. Hear me out, this is what I think they're saying..." It's a horrible horrible term that does horrible horrible disservice to the intent. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927430
      - maxbond 4y ago
        Most people won't give you the benefit of the doubt anyway. If you only express ideas that are agreeable, you won't be expressing much at all. If the movement hadn't existed, you wouldn't have had those conversations in the first place. You giving it the benefit of the doubt, and reaching people who were just shy of doing so, _is_ the rhetoric being effective.
        einherjae 4y ago
        Wouldnt «Safer Police!» or «Demiliarize the police» be better ways to start a conversation thats effective towards the end goal that’s wanted? There’s being right, and there’s being effective (to steal a quote from Obama). The current phrasing is worse at turning public opinion than some of the more us/them-rhetoric that comes from I.e. vegans in that regard. Sure eating lots of meat is bad, and animals should probably be treated better, but screaming “meat is murder” won’t actually make any carnivores drop a single steak of their menu, whereas measures that don’t immediately make the respondent feel attacked might. Yes, “defund the police” will turn heads, but it also immediately leads to being written off as fringe madness. A better slogan should be possible, that actually contains the message of demilitarization.
        maxbond 4y ago
        Those are good slogans, but they represent different, parallel ideas. This is what I'm getting at; in changing the language, you change the idea, and an abolitionist agenda becomes a reformist one. If you want to advocate for reform, then that's great, that makes sense. But telling people who are advocating abolition, "you're doing it wrong because you aren't doing it my way or appealing to my sensibilities," is patronizing. And it won't be long until someone says, "Safer Police alienates law enforcement, we should call it 'Better Policing', that way we're sure to be taken seriously," and after a few rounds of this you're left with nothing. It's a losing game. Society at large will take you seriously when they can't pretend otherwise anymore, because you have repeatedly demonstrated the veracity of your views, often for decades. There is no end to the excuses people can come up with to dismiss you if that is what they want to do. People either won't change their minds, will change their own mind, or will have some experience that shakes up their world view. The rhetoric you use almost doesn't matter; you can't change someone's mind _for them_, no matter what you say. The most you can do is share your ideas, giving them the opportunity to change their mind, if they so choose. What matters is that you're a part of the conversation, and that what you're demanding is just. People will come around. The ones who don't will get old and die. "Safer Police" would've been radical 20 years ago. Many people's world views were shaken up by repeated videos of police misconduct. "Defund the Police" is radical currently; in 10, 20 years, it might well be mainstream.
- HanClinto 4y ago
  You're right. Saying that you don't want to use violence to enforce laws sounds a lot like you don't want to enforce laws. If one is not willing to use force for enforcement... does one have enforcement?
  - maxbond 4y ago
    Has no one in your life ever corrected you on something without striking you? "Enforcement" already presupposes violence. I'd suggest "governance" as a better term. Violence is an exceptionally poor mechanism of governance. It creates an outsized amount of unjust outcomes without working especially well. Police are often called on to force homeless people out of an area, for instance. This often results in violence but never results in solving the problem that people need homes. The war on drugs has resulted in the over policing of impoverished areas and an inestimable amount of misery, but it hasn't helped a single addict to recover and has only enhanced the power of drug cartels. The question I think people need to ask themselves is, do the police accomplish the goals I believe they accomplish? Am I bringing a lot of preconceived notions to the discussion that I should examine more carefully? Are there better ways to achieve governance? I'd encourage this thought experiment. Let's say there's a stoop outside your apartment where people smoke, and they litter their cigarette butts. You want them not to litter. What's going to be more effective; threatening them with violence, or putting a trash can out there?
    - quacked 4y ago
      Please explain how you'd govern your way out of a string of armed robberies committed by someone who goes from town to town.
      - maxbond 4y ago
        Please explain why you think the conversation must boil down to this question, when police respond to a wide variety of incidents, very few of which involve violent crimes. Violent crimes are an important subset, but you seem unwilling to acknowledge the breadth of this topic. Armed robberies would probably require an armed response, which would certainly imply we'd need an organization with the resources to investigate this & dispatch armed people to interdict this robber. That doesn't imply this force should be patrolling the streets or have the power to pull people over arbitrarily, and if you believe we need people serving in those roles, it didn't imply they should be armed or that lethal authority should seamlessly blend from responding to armed robbers to responding to a noise complaint.
- quacked 4y ago
  If you don't think that the rule of law requires violence, you are deeply, deeply naive. Nonviolent people are almost immediately terrorized by violent people and have always been throughout history. Even if you are capable of creating a peaceful society where no violent crimes ever occur, the threat of invasion from an outside society that desires your land for resources or living space still exists.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    If someone threatens you with violence, you are obliged to defend yourself. The police often respond to completely nonviolent incidents, bringing guns into the situation, and then people die. That's entirely needless. In Uvalde, the police arrived, armed and prepared, to a violent situation, and were unable to organize an effective response. School shootings should be a slam dunk to justify a militarized police, it's the literal "bad guy with a gun." But time and again they fail to respond effectively. Violence is a one trick pony. Hurting people is the only thing it does well.
    - quacked 4y ago
      This is a separate discussion from whether or not there ought to be a paramilitary force. Anyone with a modicum of sense can see they modern police forces are full of under-trained thugs and brutes, who in many cases cause much more harm than they prevent. This does not prove that a police force shouldn't exist at all any more that a corrupt business proves that businesses shouldn't exist at all. > Violence is a one trick pony. Hurting people is the only thing it does well. Yes, and when your community is faced with organized violence perpetrated by people residing in your community, what is your non-violent solution? The only way to prevent further violence once it has occurred is by tracking people who committed the violence and detaining, reeducating, exiling, or killing them.
      - maxbond 4y ago
        I'd encourage you to consider what communities should do about an organized, violent police force which has and will continue to perpetrate violence against them, while claiming their purpose was to protect them. I think dispanding them and creating different services in their place is what follow naturally from your list of potential solutions.

> Maybe let's try "don't have police" instead. Maybe you should work on your phrasing then.

by vlunkr 4y ago

> Maybe let's try "don't have police" instead. Maybe you should work on your phrasing then.

I think the problem is actually that you can't imagine a world where we have rules and governance without a militarized force which uses violence to enforce those laws, and so when someone suggests getting rid of the police, you assume they want to get rid of the rule of law.

vlunkr 4y ago
That's putting lots of words in my mouth. I agree that police reform is desperately needed, but people saying we don't need police are sabotaging their own argument. If they had any nuance at all people might actually listen to them.
- maxbond 4y ago
  Well forgive me if I'm misrepresenting you, but "I would have listened to your argument if you phrased it differently, you just aren't expressing yourself well" is something people often say when they're being dismissive, and I don't believe significantly more people would be receptive to "defund the police" if it has been phrased a little differently. The requests to water down the rhetoric would simply continue until it was diluted down to, "we should do something nonspecific about this problem which may exist."
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    >>I don't believe significantly more people would be receptive to "defund the police" if it has been phrased a little differently. FWIW, anecdata, per my other comment [1]: I and large majority of my friends & family (Canadian lower-case-liberals by and large) all fall into that category. It took us a LOOOOONG time (I mean weeks and months) to give the platform and movement enough benefit of doubt to investigate underlying proposals (and then largely agree with them), after having immediate and strong negative reaction to "defund the police". And most people will not give it benefit of doubt. I literally to this day have conversations with acquaintances of the sort: "No, they're not actually advocating anarchy and everybody fend for themselves! No, I'm serious! Yes, I know that's what the term implies. Hear me out, this is what I think they're saying..." It's a horrible horrible term that does horrible horrible disservice to the intent. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927430 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32927430
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Most people won't give you the benefit of the doubt anyway. If you only express ideas that are agreeable, you won't be expressing much at all. If the movement hadn't existed, you wouldn't have had those conversations in the first place. You giving it the benefit of the doubt, and reaching people who were just shy of doing so, _is_ the rhetoric being effective.
      - einherjae 4y ago
        Wouldnt «Safer Police!» or «Demiliarize the police» be better ways to start a conversation thats effective towards the end goal that’s wanted? There’s being right, and there’s being effective (to steal a quote from Obama). The current phrasing is worse at turning public opinion than some of the more us/them-rhetoric that comes from I.e. vegans in that regard. Sure eating lots of meat is bad, and animals should probably be treated better, but screaming “meat is murder” won’t actually make any carnivores drop a single steak of their menu, whereas measures that don’t immediately make the respondent feel attacked might. Yes, “defund the police” will turn heads, but it also immediately leads to being written off as fringe madness. A better slogan should be possible, that actually contains the message of demilitarization.
        maxbond 4y ago
        Those are good slogans, but they represent different, parallel ideas. This is what I'm getting at; in changing the language, you change the idea, and an abolitionist agenda becomes a reformist one. If you want to advocate for reform, then that's great, that makes sense. But telling people who are advocating abolition, "you're doing it wrong because you aren't doing it my way or appealing to my sensibilities," is patronizing. And it won't be long until someone says, "Safer Police alienates law enforcement, we should call it 'Better Policing', that way we're sure to be taken seriously," and after a few rounds of this you're left with nothing. It's a losing game. Society at large will take you seriously when they can't pretend otherwise anymore, because you have repeatedly demonstrated the veracity of your views, often for decades. There is no end to the excuses people can come up with to dismiss you if that is what they want to do. People either won't change their minds, will change their own mind, or will have some experience that shakes up their world view. The rhetoric you use almost doesn't matter; you can't change someone's mind _for them_, no matter what you say. The most you can do is share your ideas, giving them the opportunity to change their mind, if they so choose. What matters is that you're a part of the conversation, and that what you're demanding is just. People will come around. The ones who don't will get old and die. "Safer Police" would've been radical 20 years ago. Many people's world views were shaken up by repeated videos of police misconduct. "Defund the Police" is radical currently; in 10, 20 years, it might well be mainstream.
HanClinto 4y ago
You're right. Saying that you don't want to use violence to enforce laws sounds a lot like you don't want to enforce laws. If one is not willing to use force for enforcement... does one have enforcement?
- maxbond 4y ago
  Has no one in your life ever corrected you on something without striking you? "Enforcement" already presupposes violence. I'd suggest "governance" as a better term. Violence is an exceptionally poor mechanism of governance. It creates an outsized amount of unjust outcomes without working especially well. Police are often called on to force homeless people out of an area, for instance. This often results in violence but never results in solving the problem that people need homes. The war on drugs has resulted in the over policing of impoverished areas and an inestimable amount of misery, but it hasn't helped a single addict to recover and has only enhanced the power of drug cartels. The question I think people need to ask themselves is, do the police accomplish the goals I believe they accomplish? Am I bringing a lot of preconceived notions to the discussion that I should examine more carefully? Are there better ways to achieve governance? I'd encourage this thought experiment. Let's say there's a stoop outside your apartment where people smoke, and they litter their cigarette butts. You want them not to litter. What's going to be more effective; threatening them with violence, or putting a trash can out there?
  - quacked 4y ago
    Please explain how you'd govern your way out of a string of armed robberies committed by someone who goes from town to town.
    - maxbond 4y ago
      Please explain why you think the conversation must boil down to this question, when police respond to a wide variety of incidents, very few of which involve violent crimes. Violent crimes are an important subset, but you seem unwilling to acknowledge the breadth of this topic. Armed robberies would probably require an armed response, which would certainly imply we'd need an organization with the resources to investigate this & dispatch armed people to interdict this robber. That doesn't imply this force should be patrolling the streets or have the power to pull people over arbitrarily, and if you believe we need people serving in those roles, it didn't imply they should be armed or that lethal authority should seamlessly blend from responding to armed robbers to responding to a noise complaint.
quacked 4y ago
If you don't think that the rule of law requires violence, you are deeply, deeply naive. Nonviolent people are almost immediately terrorized by violent people and have always been throughout history. Even if you are capable of creating a peaceful society where no violent crimes ever occur, the threat of invasion from an outside society that desires your land for resources or living space still exists.
- maxbond 4y ago
  If someone threatens you with violence, you are obliged to defend yourself. The police often respond to completely nonviolent incidents, bringing guns into the situation, and then people die. That's entirely needless. In Uvalde, the police arrived, armed and prepared, to a violent situation, and were unable to organize an effective response. School shootings should be a slam dunk to justify a militarized police, it's the literal "bad guy with a gun." But time and again they fail to respond effectively. Violence is a one trick pony. Hurting people is the only thing it does well.
  - quacked 4y ago
    This is a separate discussion from whether or not there ought to be a paramilitary force. Anyone with a modicum of sense can see they modern police forces are full of under-trained thugs and brutes, who in many cases cause much more harm than they prevent. This does not prove that a police force shouldn't exist at all any more that a corrupt business proves that businesses shouldn't exist at all. > Violence is a one trick pony. Hurting people is the only thing it does well. Yes, and when your community is faced with organized violence perpetrated by people residing in your community, what is your non-violent solution? The only way to prevent further violence once it has occurred is by tracking people who committed the violence and detaining, reeducating, exiling, or killing them.
    - maxbond 4y ago
      I'd encourage you to consider what communities should do about an organized, violent police force which has and will continue to perpetrate violence against them, while claiming their purpose was to protect them. I think dispanding them and creating different services in their place is what follow naturally from your list of potential solutions.