5 ms·

This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally. This lets people at t

by jwally 1y ago

This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally. This lets people at the top do whatever now since the eventual consequences (if any) are way out in the future and punitive to the gains they get now. Its like being a bank robber with a Ferrari when the cops are stuck using horse-and-buggies.

komali2 1y ago
> This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally. My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another. Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  > never backtalk the cops This is advice my parents gave me too. It's generally sound advice.
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    I think it really matters how you talk bad. Telling the police ACAB won't fly anywhere. Asking them to inform you about the law (which you think is different than there interpretation of it), might be a start of a conversation. They are also just humans who do their job and want to be treated nicely like everyone else.
    - komali2 1y ago
      > I think it really matters how you talk bad. Telling the police ACAB won't fly anywhere. Asking them to inform you about the law (which you think is different than there interpretation of it), might be a start of a conversation. They are also just humans who do their job and want to be treated nicely like everyone else. One of the goals of ACAB folks is to help people understand that this isn't true. Yes, police are humans, but no, you can't reason with them. You as an individual aren't going to overcome the might of the state's propagandizing and training of them to treat you like a potential threat to their life, or at best, a criminal. Modern police training revolves heavily around hyper paranoia around how any interaction could lead to their sudden death. For whatever reason, the apparatus has chosen to create an army of armed, nervous, below-a-defined-level IQ thugs. I personally believe all humans deserve a minimum of respect, but ACAB isn't just a statement of ideology, it's a warning: All bears are hungry, all cops are bastards. You wouldn't try to reason with a bear, you wouldn't make sudden movements around a bear, nor should you do that with a cop. With a cop you should simply say nothing other than wanting to maintain your 5th amendment right to remain silent, and then try to leave an interaction with them or wait for them to take you to jail. ACAB is a warning against attempting for any other outcome, because no other outcome is statistically probable enough to justify taking a risk to achieve. The moment a cop engages with you, you are dealing with a potentially hungry bear.
      - 1718627440 1y ago
        So it isn't just an insult, it is a propaganda to treat the representation of your fellow citizens like wild animals, which will cause harm for the believers of the propaganda. That is even more concerning than the literal meaning I took it to mean. I basically disagree with you on all fronts there. You essentially wage civil war. "You know, those guys that come when you are in a live threatening situation (fire, assault), those guys who are regulating your daily activity so that not too much people die by doing dangerous and stupid stuff (speed limit penalties, vehicle checks), those who tell your 'corporate slave master' that you also have rights (workers rights, minimal wage, cartel breakup), yeah they are aliens, enemies. They are merely wild animals not really humans at all, so you can treat them like shit. When they are friendly, don't trust them, don't trust you eyes. When they will fight back, now you see how they truly are." Seriously how can you expect such a society to work? No wonder when you don't have pleasant police encounters. You are actively sabotaging your society. How can you expect it to stay peaceful with your behaviour? So today I learned that the social struggles of the United States are not solely due to politicians and corruption. You guys have way bigger issues there. I can only hope that this is a minority opinion, otherwise civil war will be inevitable.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  That's a notion I have read several times now on HN by seemingly US Americans. While it might or might not be true that your judicial system has always worked like that, when you just accept that as a fact, you are endorsing it. No I don't think that such a judicial system is normal. > the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice That is NOT a myth. That is what it is supposed to be. When you start to say "yeah, that's just how it always has been", that IS when radical ideologies start to rise. How public opinion treats thinks that is how they tend to become. That is true with humans and that is true with systems. I heard it is quite less regulated to become a police man and there are quite a lot of black police mans* already. I heard you have a system where there is a jury that can overrule the judge. Why isn't there a massive influx of black/other-wise-suppressed people into the judicial or executive branch? * yeah and woman of course
  - komali2 1y ago
    > when you just accept that as a fact, you are endorsing it I strongly disagree. > No I don't think that such a judicial system is normal. I believe we have enough evidence now to indicate that it is in fact normal. Americans believe their constitution is written about this - aggregation of power inevitably leading to tyranny, thus such aggregations must be prevented. The contradiction is believing a bureaucratized aggregation of power (the United States government or individual state governments) would function as an effective regulation. We have 250 years of evidence now that it does not. 250 years, and a significant portion of the time a large portion of the population was enslaved. Half the time, more than half the population couldn't even vote. In living memory, portions of the population were marched into concentration camps. Actually, that's happening again. 250 years and the largest per capita prison population. The experiment was successful - now we know these systems don't work. Time to trust the American instinct's true origins, in an enlightenment triggered by Western confrontation with indigenous American ideology, best described as "anarchism." Most values Americans falsely believe their institutions are upholding can be traced back to this root of American history, when colonists were intermingling with indigenous Americans.
    - 1718627440 1y ago

by jwally 1y ago

komali2 1y ago

> This is the key to everything in the US right now I feel. Laws exist, but they're not being enforced or are difficult to enforce legally. My hope is that this situation wakes Americans up to the fact that laws were always this way. I'm hoping this breaks the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice. In reality the legal system of the USA is enforced at the whim of incredibly biased cops, judges, and politicians. I really think a day in a county courthouse should be a requirement for all American kids so they can see just how arbitrarily sentencing is applied or how whether someone ends up in trial at all can hinge on whether a judge agrees or disagrees there was probable cause, and the judge will do like 20 of these hearings one after another. Not to mention the fact that any black American can tell you that there's two justice systems in the USA: the one for white people, and the one for everyone else. Hence why so many black kids can tell you about when their parents gave them "The Talk," and no, it's not the birds and bees one, it's the one about how your white friends can get up to mischief that you can't and there's nothing you can do about it so don't bother getting mad about it, just keep your head down and never backtalk the cops.

chrisco255 1y ago
> never backtalk the cops This is advice my parents gave me too. It's generally sound advice.
- 1718627440 1y ago
  I think it really matters how you talk bad. Telling the police ACAB won't fly anywhere. Asking them to inform you about the law (which you think is different than there interpretation of it), might be a start of a conversation. They are also just humans who do their job and want to be treated nicely like everyone else.
  - komali2 1y ago
    > I think it really matters how you talk bad. Telling the police ACAB won't fly anywhere. Asking them to inform you about the law (which you think is different than there interpretation of it), might be a start of a conversation. They are also just humans who do their job and want to be treated nicely like everyone else. One of the goals of ACAB folks is to help people understand that this isn't true. Yes, police are humans, but no, you can't reason with them. You as an individual aren't going to overcome the might of the state's propagandizing and training of them to treat you like a potential threat to their life, or at best, a criminal. Modern police training revolves heavily around hyper paranoia around how any interaction could lead to their sudden death. For whatever reason, the apparatus has chosen to create an army of armed, nervous, below-a-defined-level IQ thugs. I personally believe all humans deserve a minimum of respect, but ACAB isn't just a statement of ideology, it's a warning: All bears are hungry, all cops are bastards. You wouldn't try to reason with a bear, you wouldn't make sudden movements around a bear, nor should you do that with a cop. With a cop you should simply say nothing other than wanting to maintain your 5th amendment right to remain silent, and then try to leave an interaction with them or wait for them to take you to jail. ACAB is a warning against attempting for any other outcome, because no other outcome is statistically probable enough to justify taking a risk to achieve. The moment a cop engages with you, you are dealing with a potentially hungry bear.
    - 1718627440 1y ago
      So it isn't just an insult, it is a propaganda to treat the representation of your fellow citizens like wild animals, which will cause harm for the believers of the propaganda. That is even more concerning than the literal meaning I took it to mean. I basically disagree with you on all fronts there. You essentially wage civil war. "You know, those guys that come when you are in a live threatening situation (fire, assault), those guys who are regulating your daily activity so that not too much people die by doing dangerous and stupid stuff (speed limit penalties, vehicle checks), those who tell your 'corporate slave master' that you also have rights (workers rights, minimal wage, cartel breakup), yeah they are aliens, enemies. They are merely wild animals not really humans at all, so you can treat them like shit. When they are friendly, don't trust them, don't trust you eyes. When they will fight back, now you see how they truly are." Seriously how can you expect such a society to work? No wonder when you don't have pleasant police encounters. You are actively sabotaging your society. How can you expect it to stay peaceful with your behaviour? So today I learned that the social struggles of the United States are not solely due to politicians and corruption. You guys have way bigger issues there. I can only hope that this is a minority opinion, otherwise civil war will be inevitable.
1718627440 1y ago
That's a notion I have read several times now on HN by seemingly US Americans. While it might or might not be true that your judicial system has always worked like that, when you just accept that as a fact, you are endorsing it. No I don't think that such a judicial system is normal. > the myth of the law as a fair arbiter of justice That is NOT a myth. That is what it is supposed to be. When you start to say "yeah, that's just how it always has been", that IS when radical ideologies start to rise. How public opinion treats thinks that is how they tend to become. That is true with humans and that is true with systems. I heard it is quite less regulated to become a police man and there are quite a lot of black police mans* already. I heard you have a system where there is a jury that can overrule the judge. Why isn't there a massive influx of black/other-wise-suppressed people into the judicial or executive branch? * yeah and woman of course
- komali2 1y ago
  > when you just accept that as a fact, you are endorsing it I strongly disagree. > No I don't think that such a judicial system is normal. I believe we have enough evidence now to indicate that it is in fact normal. Americans believe their constitution is written about this - aggregation of power inevitably leading to tyranny, thus such aggregations must be prevented. The contradiction is believing a bureaucratized aggregation of power (the United States government or individual state governments) would function as an effective regulation. We have 250 years of evidence now that it does not. 250 years, and a significant portion of the time a large portion of the population was enslaved. Half the time, more than half the population couldn't even vote. In living memory, portions of the population were marched into concentration camps. Actually, that's happening again. 250 years and the largest per capita prison population. The experiment was successful - now we know these systems don't work. Time to trust the American instinct's true origins, in an enlightenment triggered by Western confrontation with indigenous American ideology, best described as "anarchism." Most values Americans falsely believe their institutions are upholding can be traced back to this root of American history, when colonists were intermingling with indigenous Americans.
  - 1718627440 1y ago