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Sounds like the citizens have a problem with their government. Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let's break this issue down to about the 2nd grade:

Sounds like the citizens have a problem with their government. Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let's break this issue down to about the 2nd grade: Here in the US we have a democracy, a Constitution, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. We are supposed to have free elections and a free enterprise system. Soooo, Step 1: When government is doing bad things -- illegal, unethical, violent, nasty -- with freedom of speech, some people should complain and with freedom of the press journalism should present the information, say, meeting common high school term paper standards, to the voters. If the journalism is not doing that, then it looks like there is a business opportunity in the US free enterprise system. Step 2: Seeing the information, the voters are supposed to complain to their elected representatives in government. If the voters do not complain, then the representatives might wonder if many voters care and, thus, be reluctant to take action. Step 3: The elected representatives are supposed to correct the problem. If the representatives don't do this work, then it looks like in our democracy there is an opportunity for some new representatives. Sooo, why don't these three steps work, i.e., why don't the problems get reported by the journalists and corrected by the representatives? For an answer, my guess is that journalists believe that, for their ad revenue per hour of work as journalists, they have more profitable places to allocate their time than reporting on problems with government. For a change, we might guess that the journalists will change and report about (A) representatives lying, police beating up citizens for no good reason, graft, kickbacks, wasteful spending, dangerous infrastructure, payoffs, no-show jobs, unfairly serving powerful special interests, cushy contracts, ignoring crime, etc., i.e., problems with government, instead of (B) police saving baby ducks as soon as voters and readers insist they want such change. So, in my opinion, given our democracy and Constitution, the real, basic fault lies with the voters who don't give strong feedback to the journalists and representatives.

pksebben 4y ago
the three steps you mention do not operate like that, in reality. 1 - most news is published by one of a few conglomerates. It is impossible to be competitive in this space without a staggeringly large bankroll, and most 'competition' is just the illusion of, not the genuine article. An example of this is the chairman of the Associated Press (nominally a non profit news organization) also being the CEO of Hearst Communications (named for William Randolph Hearst - one of those conglomerates I'm referring to) 2 - Things getting in between your opinion (that is, anyone's opinion) and enacted policy: first-past-the-post elections, the two party system, gerrymandering, the Senate (unless you live in Vermont, Wyoming, or one of the Dakotas), the DNC, the RNC, primaries, voting happening on a single day, voting not being a national holiday, the supreme court, relying on representatives rather than voting directly, corporations are people, and money buys elections.This list is incomplete but touches on most of the key players. You get the picture. 3 - Not quite sure where to start with this. see (1) and (2) above. The thing is, it's a really complicated mess and like any sufficiently complex system, it's nearly impossible to reason about without making some deep assumptions. For a light introduction to the scope of the situation, I recommend reading Republic Lost, by Lawrence Lessig. He's a constitutional scholar who started talking about all this before the system started to show late-stage symptoms of what's probably terminal cancer, from a societal perspective.
- graycat 4y ago
  > the three steps you mention do not operate like that, in reality. Uh, my post had > Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let's break this issue down to about the 2nd grade: and you went to at least the high school level!!! > 3 - Not quite sure where to start with this. see (1) and (2) above. Moving up to, say, the high school level where the students can drive a car and might have an after school job to pay for the gas, if everyone who, say, wanted $2 a gallon gas again would just write their Representative and two Senators, then ... something would happen!! Congress, i.e., a MAJORITY in Congress, has a LOT of power. Wanting $2 a gallon of gas again sounds to me like a MAJORITY!! If 90+% of the voters would write about gas prices, or grocery prices, or whatever, then, yup, things would happen. That's my explanation of Step 3 -- not complicated or weak, both simple and strong, voters just WRITE. I wrote: Each Rep/Sen has a Web site with features that make sending an email really easy. I got back messages, canned from my Senators and a personal one from my Rep. Didn't notice much change in grocery prices yet!! For Step 3, my guess is that simple can be strong and actually work. But, I don't know why Step 3 seems not to work. I would have thought, guessed, bet, going back to some of the wars, economic situations, inflation, interest rates, etc. people would be packed together on the Mall from Congress (the Capitol building) to the Washington Monument protesting. But, nope, doesn't/didn't happen, not very densely "packed". For responding to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it seems that there was a strong majority right away, and it was a big change -- draft, blood, money, war production, ships, planes, supplies, The Bomb, having a LOT of women in factories, ..., and all from just that one attack. Soooo, we have some data: Gas prices, inflation, interest rates, massive violation of immigration laws, ... don't quickly yield a majority but bombing Pearl Harbor did. Soooo, the necessary condition for a majority is somewhere between those two!!! Soooo, for Step 3, can still keep it simple: When enough people are angry enough, they WILL complain enough, and then things WILL change.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    God, I wish you were right. I felt the same way for a long time. At this stage, the only way I see it going is the system collapses on itself. There's no reason for them to listen and there's nothing we can do about it, though. We can get as mad as we like, they have militarized police with MRAPs and drones. Heck, there were protests. Recently. All over the place - but the police have been defunded of nothing whatsoever and they still have qualified immunity. Congress just kinda doesn't need to care, so they don't; with one or two exceptions.
pjc50 4y ago
Hidden at the bottom of the US policing problem is indeed a set of beliefs by the electorate that are in favor of police brutality. It's like gun deaths: the voters want it that way and will not countenance thinking that it might be different.
- graycat 4y ago
  > Hidden at the bottom of the US policing problem Actually, it turns out, I grew up in Memphis. Was thrilled leave. Went back for 18 months at FedEx, wrote software to schedule the fleet, etc. then went to grad school and again was thrilled to leave. I wanted to leave out that recent Memphis police stuff and possible main reasons of just why. But since YOU brought up the issue, as I recall there are some forms of rather strict segregation in Memphis. Sooo, housing neighborhoods are (were) segregated. How? Nearly all the houses are under a tricky contract in an organization, maybe an actual corporation. I don't have the details just right but do have the important point right: All house purchases have to be approved by the relevant organization. So, wonder of wonders, presto, bingo, housing is segregated. Next, the K-12 schools are neighborhood schools. Again, wonders of wonders, presto, bingo, .... Then, let me guess: Policing is organized by neighborhoods and, again, presto, bingo. Now, with that background, two tiny baby steps in real political politics can explain much of the recent situation. For a little more, when I was there, Dad, who knew a lot about education, looked for a house with good schools and, then, bought a house in a neighborhood with the best elementary through high school in the city. Yup, as a 1-12 it was relatively good! It was flatly, bluntly, intentionally, strongly a college prep school: The architecture had tall Greek style columns and was a big U with in the middle some walks in a geometric pattern borrowed from, maybe, some French chateaux. 97% of the students went on to college. MIT came recruiting. The year before me, three students went to Princeton and two of them ran against some third student from somewhere for President of the Freshman Class. Some years later, after some, call them riots, the college prep school(s) moved 15 miles or so east, and the school I went to had courses not there when I was, e.g., "cosmetology". Soooo, in simple, crude, blunt terms, it appears that the powers that be decided that there are two parts to Memphis, Black and White. The Whites have nearly all the money and power (but maybe not a majority!). The Blacks have their own areas and neighborhoods, and there the Blacks are free to have their own lives and problems and their own police run however they want. The Whites? They don't have problems with the police. After I left Memphis and FedEx, I haven't been back and don't want to go back. Maybe the best thing I got from Memphis was a taste for their chopped picnic pork shoulder BBQ and do a version of that myself.

pksebben 4y ago

the three steps you mention do not operate like that, in reality. 1 - most news is published by one of a few conglomerates. It is impossible to be competitive in this space without a staggeringly large bankroll, and most 'competition' is just the illusion of, not the genuine article. An example of this is the chairman of the Associated Press (nominally a non profit news organization) also being the CEO of Hearst Communications (named for William Randolph Hearst - one of those conglomerates I'm referring to) 2 - Things getting in between your opinion (that is, anyone's opinion) and enacted policy: first-past-the-post elections, the two party system, gerrymandering, the Senate (unless you live in Vermont, Wyoming, or one of the Dakotas), the DNC, the RNC, primaries, voting happening on a single day, voting not being a national holiday, the supreme court, relying on representatives rather than voting directly, corporations are people, and money buys elections.This list is incomplete but touches on most of the key players. You get the picture. 3 - Not quite sure where to start with this. see (1) and (2) above. The thing is, it's a really complicated mess and like any sufficiently complex system, it's nearly impossible to reason about without making some deep assumptions. For a light introduction to the scope of the situation, I recommend reading Republic Lost, by Lawrence Lessig. He's a constitutional scholar who started talking about all this before the system started to show late-stage symptoms of what's probably terminal cancer, from a societal perspective.

graycat 4y ago
> the three steps you mention do not operate like that, in reality. Uh, my post had > Sooo, so for extreme clarity and simplicity, let's break this issue down to about the 2nd grade: and you went to at least the high school level!!! > 3 - Not quite sure where to start with this. see (1) and (2) above. Moving up to, say, the high school level where the students can drive a car and might have an after school job to pay for the gas, if everyone who, say, wanted $2 a gallon gas again would just write their Representative and two Senators, then ... something would happen!! Congress, i.e., a MAJORITY in Congress, has a LOT of power. Wanting $2 a gallon of gas again sounds to me like a MAJORITY!! If 90+% of the voters would write about gas prices, or grocery prices, or whatever, then, yup, things would happen. That's my explanation of Step 3 -- not complicated or weak, both simple and strong, voters just WRITE. I wrote: Each Rep/Sen has a Web site with features that make sending an email really easy. I got back messages, canned from my Senators and a personal one from my Rep. Didn't notice much change in grocery prices yet!! For Step 3, my guess is that simple can be strong and actually work. But, I don't know why Step 3 seems not to work. I would have thought, guessed, bet, going back to some of the wars, economic situations, inflation, interest rates, etc. people would be packed together on the Mall from Congress (the Capitol building) to the Washington Monument protesting. But, nope, doesn't/didn't happen, not very densely "packed". For responding to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it seems that there was a strong majority right away, and it was a big change -- draft, blood, money, war production, ships, planes, supplies, The Bomb, having a LOT of women in factories, ..., and all from just that one attack. Soooo, we have some data: Gas prices, inflation, interest rates, massive violation of immigration laws, ... don't quickly yield a majority but bombing Pearl Harbor did. Soooo, the necessary condition for a majority is somewhere between those two!!! Soooo, for Step 3, can still keep it simple: When enough people are angry enough, they WILL complain enough, and then things WILL change.
- pksebben 4y ago
  God, I wish you were right. I felt the same way for a long time. At this stage, the only way I see it going is the system collapses on itself. There's no reason for them to listen and there's nothing we can do about it, though. We can get as mad as we like, they have militarized police with MRAPs and drones. Heck, there were protests. Recently. All over the place - but the police have been defunded of nothing whatsoever and they still have qualified immunity. Congress just kinda doesn't need to care, so they don't; with one or two exceptions.

pjc50 4y ago

Hidden at the bottom of the US policing problem is indeed a set of beliefs by the electorate that are in favor of police brutality. It's like gun deaths: the voters want it that way and will not countenance thinking that it might be different.

graycat 4y ago
> Hidden at the bottom of the US policing problem Actually, it turns out, I grew up in Memphis. Was thrilled leave. Went back for 18 months at FedEx, wrote software to schedule the fleet, etc. then went to grad school and again was thrilled to leave. I wanted to leave out that recent Memphis police stuff and possible main reasons of just why. But since YOU brought up the issue, as I recall there are some forms of rather strict segregation in Memphis. Sooo, housing neighborhoods are (were) segregated. How? Nearly all the houses are under a tricky contract in an organization, maybe an actual corporation. I don't have the details just right but do have the important point right: All house purchases have to be approved by the relevant organization. So, wonder of wonders, presto, bingo, housing is segregated. Next, the K-12 schools are neighborhood schools. Again, wonders of wonders, presto, bingo, .... Then, let me guess: Policing is organized by neighborhoods and, again, presto, bingo. Now, with that background, two tiny baby steps in real political politics can explain much of the recent situation. For a little more, when I was there, Dad, who knew a lot about education, looked for a house with good schools and, then, bought a house in a neighborhood with the best elementary through high school in the city. Yup, as a 1-12 it was relatively good! It was flatly, bluntly, intentionally, strongly a college prep school: The architecture had tall Greek style columns and was a big U with in the middle some walks in a geometric pattern borrowed from, maybe, some French chateaux. 97% of the students went on to college. MIT came recruiting. The year before me, three students went to Princeton and two of them ran against some third student from somewhere for President of the Freshman Class. Some years later, after some, call them riots, the college prep school(s) moved 15 miles or so east, and the school I went to had courses not there when I was, e.g., "cosmetology". Soooo, in simple, crude, blunt terms, it appears that the powers that be decided that there are two parts to Memphis, Black and White. The Whites have nearly all the money and power (but maybe not a majority!). The Blacks have their own areas and neighborhoods, and there the Blacks are free to have their own lives and problems and their own police run however they want. The Whites? They don't have problems with the police. After I left Memphis and FedEx, I haven't been back and don't want to go back. Maybe the best thing I got from Memphis was a taste for their chopped picnic pork shoulder BBQ and do a version of that myself.