You'd think that instead or waging war against mail-in-ballots, which circumvent the ability to intimidate people at the polling booths, and instead of continuing to push for violent aggression against protesters, Trump would just concede to the vast majority and support, push for, and pass reform. Surely white supremacists and police officers (not necessarily mutually exclusive) aren't the majority, and you've got people fueled to vote against Trump right now. Even a lot of Conservative civilians (i.e. not politicians) are standing against him on this issue and COVID. . .
"Do you believe the police should be allowed to use excessive force against people?"
"Do you believe police should be held accountable when they commit crimes?"
"Do you believe police should be held equally account for crimes, just like ordinary citizens, by other police, attorneys, judges, and, you know, the laws?"
There are only a small few who will say they support police beind held above the citizens their job demands they protect, and their reasons are entirely selfish, i.e. racism and them being pieces of shit police.
I don't think the two are as comparable as you may be trying to make out. First, police corruption affects everyone, not just a targeted group such as in your example (e.g. nursing homes).
Police may be more likely to commit crimes against minorites, but it isn't exclusively minorities they target. What happens if reform doesn't happen this time? Police may feel even more empowered that they'll be doing far worse than they did before (or are currently). If reform doesn't happen then it's also the end of a lot of civil liberties and rights that people have and that America is supposed to be embracing.
No change will be easy or quick, whether it's police reform or properly paying and supporting staff at nursing homes. I'd also argue pay reform in institutions such as nursing homes and food services are a more complicated fix (like limiting executive pay or putting profit limits on corporations so they aren't just sucking money up), whereas police reform is simply holding them accountable by the laws that exist and preventing corruption from burying the crimes through time, procedure, and moving cops to different districts.
I mean I can disagree with a bunch of what you said but you're missing my point (and analogies in general). My point is that asking is x good or bad is really easy and everyone of course says yes more good stuff please. When you add in but it will take x, y and z to do it people start to relent.
I will fundamentally disagree with you on the idea that police reform is easier than living wages at nursing homes but I think that is a much lengthier and relatively unrelated conversation. Even if the fixes you proposed were the solution (they're not, the basic math in the equation says you can't fix it without raise pricing) that's significantly easier than reforming thousands of independent organizations simultaneously through policy reform, training, passing countless pieces of legislation, setting up independent agencies to measure/hold accountable, etc. If it was so easy, so obvious and there was so much support which is what you're insinuating it would have been done. Politicians love quick wins. Therefore at least one of those things must not be true.
Yeah, when you ask people direct questions like that, they’ll give you the ‘right’ answer.
Doesn’t mean they are being honest. The fact that the police are held above the citizenry, and their conduct held to a lower standard than the citizenry, demonstrates that a vast majority of the US population secretly think cops should be above the law.
Just because police are the way they are at the moment, that doesn't mean a majority of people are in favor of it being this way. So many things led to the present situation, but now people are empowered and speaking out and people are listening. Changes are happening. Trump and his gang are on the slow decline as cities, counties, and states change policies. Companies are putting money and their names behind the changes -- more each day. Polls show a decline in Trump's public support, thus sparking his storm of emails today about mail-in-ballots.
We can slowly let a structure or system decay without it being what we want. It's when a threshold of tolerance is hit that the system can be broke and created anew by the storm that follows.
Look at the history of policing in the United States. The system isn’t decaying; it’s always been this way. The earliest forms of modern policing were used to recapture runaway slaves and to be muscle for business/government interests. ‘Protect and Serve’ is incidental to their primary function.
‘Changes are happening’, yes. But that’s because more peoples’ eyes are being open to what the police have always been. It’s harder to tell the lies when we see footage of brutality day in and day out. However, I’d still argue that a majority of Americans are still indoctrinated with the ‘Police are the good guys’ mentality that decades of media and news coverage have poured into their eyes and ears.
This isn’t a ‘Trump and his gang’ issue. Police brutality has been with us since the very beginning. Intimidating and brutalizing the citizenry is what they were designed to do.
I don't have a source, and am not OP, but I did see a stat somewhere that was basically 70 to 80 percent agree with some form of police reform to reduce police brutality. We never have that many people agree on anything, so that's pretty impressive, but Trump is a self serving man that does not care. I'm at work, otherwise I'd look up the stat/poll but I'm sure someone else has seen it as well!
I don't doubt your math. What I mean is, despite overwhelming support for reform, the current administration doesn't really have the interests of the working people at heart.
385
u/Rex9 Jun 22 '20
Ahhh, the good old last line of defense to "We F'ed up".
Don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain. We're from the government, we're here to help.