08-01-2021, 04:34 PM
(07-30-2021, 02:15 PM)hollodero Wrote: Yeah well, the GOP behaviour increases said perception for me. That isn't helped by the selection of people the party chooses to censure.
That is difficult to answer fully. Policy-wise, it's probably to some extent you, or your takes and the many links you provided. Eg. showing that my initial perception how "defund the police" was well-intentioned and just incredibly badly phrased isn't that universally true. Right now, it rather seems as if the term was chosen intentionally to serve/include the more radical takes on the left on this.
Sure enough, I got more aware how radical many takes are, that these radical views get more and more mainstreamed. Examples for that are many, from youtubers (I do not follow youtubers) and especially to the media narratives (I do follow the media). Police is often getting villified beyond reason, and gross exaggerations are quite common.
For sure though, my perspective is severely hampered, as you yourself rightfully pointed out. I am a media animal mostly, I mainly see the hysteria there. Like activists shouting over every reasonable person making incendiary claims of black people being chased like animals and stupid stuff like that - and apparently no one daring to tell these voices to stop radicalizing people by saying such unhelpful nonsense.
[Regarding youtube, as some anecdotal story, I did come across a guy who was asked about someone's relative who is police, and how to handle said relative, who apparently just by being police has to be a bad, repressive, racist and violent person. Said youtuber tried the "maybe not every policeman is inherently bad" defense and got smoked in the chat by his left-leaning followership for it. This is imho just crazy, but from my multiple impressions on multiple outlets seeing all police as inherently fascist (or whatever) seems way more common place than I initially could imagine.]
My take as an European is even more complicated to describe. For one, even in Europe I live in a blessed country regarding crime in general. Our crime rate is particularly low. Most people here are law-abiding and usually respect authorities. And also most residents, including criminal ones, don't carry deadly weapons around. Therefore, being a policeman in Austria is usually, while still dangerous at times for sure, not a constantly life-threatening tenure. This is quite different in other places of Europe of course, eg. in the southern parts of Italy. For my part, whoever chooses to be a policeman there is some kind of hero that risks his life for the community (or is out for bribes).
In the US, it's probably closer to that situation than to the tranquility of my country. That factors into my perception a lot, for my take has to take this into account. That being said, many people here consider US-American cops and US-American police encounters as frightening, starting from traffic stops, but generally including the power American cops seem to possess (that, as far as I can tell, often go way further than what our police is allowed to do). Then again, being police in America is definitely way more dangerous and threatening, and for that reason alone it's clear that methods differ, even though some methods appear scary and overpowered (eg at what point it's ok to gun someone down).
Generally, like many people I do see a certain problematic tendency in America regarding police and racism. On the one hand, I might understand some forms of racism. Eg. if I had the task to find as many drugs or illegal weapons as possible on the streets, I sure would apply implicit racial profiling (eg. search more young black people than old white people) to fulfil that task. Not because I'm racist, but because that just logically increases my chances. Thoughts and realities like this do play a role, and I get more aware of that in time and tend to be less idealistic - same goes for use of lethal force (not least your imho well-argued explanations changed my mind on that). The accumulation of police brutality towards black people is still hard to negate though, imho. I still see serious issues there. But first and foremost, I see an incredibly dishonest and exaggerated debate about this, from both sides, about this and many other things really. Eg. regarding the mostly peaceful protests, a conservative often goes full "all protesters bad, all police good" and laughs about the mostly peaceful part, and a more leftist person tends to go the "all protesters good, all police bad" route and points to the peacefulness of protesters and the brutality of police, and both sides dig in and throw bad faith arguments at each other. I'd think the truth would lay somewhere in the middle, there's good and bad on both sides and it varies from specific instance to specific instance, but that hardly is a position anyone with a distinct political leaning would back up apparently.
Lastly and in general, I am happy police exists, police makes communities work and protects them, police risk their own well-being to keep them safe, I rather consider them heroes than villains and I find it incomprehensible to see it any other way. I follow the "a few bad apples" narrative rather than the "it's an inherently racist/fascist/badist organisation" narrative. I'm not so sure how many other people still do, in the US and in Europe (we tend to take over liberal American views from time to time, eg. we have black lives matter protests even though we hardly have any blacks here) and I am especially unsure if this take isn't rather suited to earn disagreement from both sides of the american spectrum.
I hope I answered your question in a crucially overboarding manner. :)
My sincere thanks for this take and time it took to type it out. Very informative and I always enjoy getting an outside perspective on these hot button issues. Also, I appreciate your talking the time to digest what I've tried to provide on this topic and give it an honest look. I've said numerous times on here, if I can bring some perspective to just one person then the sniping with those disinclined to even consider the information is well worth it.
