Vaccines, Infrastructure, and Kids In Cages: US Politics April 2021

and i'm anxious about all the shit you are!!!! but you can take your projections elsewhere

call in to your favorite lefty podcast or whatever

once again can't tell if you're having a conversation with the ppl on this board or if you are really fuckin projecting

Well, I mean, I quoted jaymc there and responded to it, and various other posters have referred to anxiety that must be felt by always being mad about the US government.

it's kinda odd that ppl

I didn't say that at all? I'm responding to the presumption (stated multiple times in this thread) that hostile leftists must be constantly wracked with anxiety because of their beliefs, constantly outraged and mad at the world. I'm saying it doesn't work like that - that when your default political position is that 'American politicians are all guilty until proved otherwise' there's less anxiety.

re more cop $$$ — to be clear I’m not talking about “defunding”, which is obv v controversial. I should have been more clear in my post.

I simply have a hard time believing that a majority of people who voted for Biden — white or not — think cops need more $$$. I may be totally off base here. I don’t have poll data; just the ‘intuition’ that anyone trying to backslap cops is definitely not voting Democratic Party in the post-Trump era.

.... this is extremely fuckin tedious xp

afaict the goalposts have been moved all the way up the hill and i'm out

or i misunderstood milo's point bc it's like nested within overlapping conversations. jaymc seems fine with us thinking that all politicians are murders or whatever

Has there been a poll to see how many people are/were/have been all 'Biden is my guy, my #1 choice, we got the best man in the WH!'? Because I'm willing to bet that % is a one-digit number, maybe low two-digits at best. And Biden has a pretty big family, so you gotta figure they're making up a lot of that demographic.

there's a guy down the street who has the Trump flag where he's photoshopped onto Rambo's body. if someone did that with Biden I'd think they were either an incredible troll or an insane person. even more insane than the guy with the Trump flag.

Has there been a poll to see how many people are/were/have been all 'Biden is my guy, my #1 choice, we got the best man in the WH!'?

Thousands of older Black voters in the South want a word.

I am wracked with anxiety and constantly outraged and mad at the world though xps

Adding one more person or party to the list for the gallows adds no extra weight, though.

Who does this? Again, you went down this line because jaymc brought it up as something he disagrees with and table reiterated that he agrees with it. No one spiked a football in your face and said PRESIDENTS SHOULD ALL BE SENT TO THE GALLOWS.

I know it's beside the point, but...it's less that I *disagree* with it than that I don't find the rhetoric useful. Do nearly all presidents contribute to the suffering of others through their policies? Yes, but I object to framing this as a personal quality of amoral malevolence (which is what "war criminal" implies) rather than an inevitable consequence of the structures of state power that have been in place for decades.

Thousands of older Black voters in the South want a word.

I know there was an article on this, was it because they legitimately thought he was the best man for the job or because they thought he was the candidate most likely to get white people's votes?

The line between those two explanations is thin in politics.

Yes, but I object to framing this as a personal quality of amoral malevolence (which is what "war criminal" implies) rather than an inevitable consequence of the structures of state power that have been in place for decades.

whynotboth.gif?

You have to be willing to blow up the Doctors Without Borders hospital or aid and abet ethnic cleansing to want the job in the first place - and each of those Presidents you want to see in their best light has done their utmost to uphold and expand the structures of state power. It's an ouroboros of human misery.

. I'm saying it doesn't work like that - that when your default political position is that 'American politicians are all guilty until proved otherwise' there's less anxiety.

I'll have to take your word for it. I guess I'm not ready to accept the premise, which seems depressing and dispiriting.

Rather ouroboros than theiroboros

re more cop $$$ — to be clear I’m not talking about “defunding”, which is obv v controversial. I should have been more clear in my post.

I simply have a hard time believing that a majority of people who voted for Biden — white or not — think cops need more $$$. I may be totally off base here. I don’t have poll data; just the ‘intuition’ that anyone trying to backslap cops is definitely not voting Democratic Party in the post-Trump era.

I'm not sure about more recent data but this is from August 2020:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx

This is also from August 2020:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/317114/black-white-adults-confidence-diverges-police.aspx

That being said, I think increasing spending on the police in 2021 is fucking stupid. I am not convinced it's unpopular.

Obama and Carter probably didn’t enter office looking forward to presiding over the deaths of innocent people but it wasn’t a dealbreaker and they didn’t exactly take steps to stop their successors to preside over the deaths of innocent people.

All of which is beside the point that leaving rights issues up to polling numbers is tyranny and we should be doing it because it's the right thing to do.

Yes.

I would take this tactic off the table immediately.

Yes, perhaps I should have said how many, or what proportion of satisfactory encounters - or asking how many positive encounters? Either way it's a personal messaging / campaigning tactic, not a policy-marketing one.

(I do consider getting pulled over and ticketed for having expired registration to be a satisfactory encounter, and giving an officer directions to be neutral. But reporting a theft, or reporting an assault, or protesting a named officer's inconsistent application of restraint, or being lightly swatted by a harassing neighbour (who eventually broke through his own floor and smashed the ceiling onto a housemate's bed, after the police refused to respond to any of our own reports about him), or engaging in discussion about policy with officers on the barricades at the protests last year, or being repeatedly tear-gassed and pepper-gassed, or getting bottlenecked with 700 ppl at the train station bcz the cops are running sniffer dogs at the top of the stairs, or working in an office with ex-cops and having to engage in polite discussion about how all juries should be abolished and how great it is just to work for fun because of your $100k pension at age 50, have all been unsatisfactory ime.)

((I had to cross the road twice on one block yesterday to pass the huge concrete barriers topped with cyclone fences that they still have on the road around the cop shop, nine months after "retaking" the street from taco stands, mutual aid lawayers, free food tables and dancers. Didn't encounter any actual officers, but it's still an unsatisfactory way to get to a door on the same block.))

i agree with milo and often find interesting information in what he posts but it's pretty clear to me that he's always in fight mode and it gets fuckin old, not least because doing that is like a complete refusal to actually like or engage in positive terms with anyone here and quelle surprise, people don't like that - unless you've got some deep seated anger / hardman issues.

also, the biggest empire on earth isn't going to reform itself and its violence by any significant amount, which would lead to it no longer being an empire. so shocking it needs to be posted 5,000,000 times i guess.

Yes, perhaps I should have said how many, or what proportion of satisfactory encounters - or asking how many positive encounters? Either way it's a personal messaging / campaigning tactic, not a policy-marketing one.

I think it's a perilous road to go down in a society that, by majority across demographics, wants to trust cops more than distrust them. If you give people the opportunity to personalize their interaction with police, people who have had bad experiences will have had REALLY BAD experiences but A) I don't think data supports that being the experience of the majority of the country, which would cause the messaging to backfire, and B) I would be surprised if American psychology didn't warp inconveniences or bad situations that should be blamed on police not handling things correctly onto a nebulous, diffuse array of Other (read: ANTIFA these days, but also GANGS and STRANGERS and basically whatever the adult version of the scary thing that was hiding in your closet when you were a kid is) because people want to believe that mental image of a competent organization that will help them if they find themselves victimized by a criminal situation.

This is part of why I think positive messaging would work better as a personal campaigning tactic; talk about funding and empowering social workers trained in de-escalation and crisis management, talk about funding medical professionals who can render aid to people causing a disturbance, talk about funding risk analysts who can interpret a situation and line up the correct resources to deal with it in the correct priority order, etc etc etc. You can even pitch it as streamlining the responsibilities of the police so they can focus their training on fewer things and be more effective and less dangerous when they do need to be involved.

(Whether that last bit is actually true or not kind of doesn't matter as long as you can convince people that keeping armed police off the streets in interminable, unending training sessions will make everyone safer)

here are the 4 police encounters I can recall:

1) when I was 13, I got arrested for shoplifting, had both of my parents come into school so they could watch footage of me NOT ACTUALLY STEALING ANYTHING, then was told they had footage of me shoplifting the next day even though I wasn't at the store. I was given a $350 fine but was told if I didn't push back I'd be eligible for a "second chance" program. I had to actually go into this convenience store (which "banned" me for a year) and apologize to the owner, not even knowing what the hell it was they thought I stole (on second thought, I absolutely should have fought this, but I was 13 and scared). It was humiliating and I kept having to hear my parents say how disappointed they were. I really wish I had pushed back but I was 13 and $350 seemed like SO MUCH MONEY.

2) pulled over for expired plates. the cop made me walk home in the cold and told me he'd be waiting around the block for me. prick.

3) a buddy had a brick thrown through his car window, so he called the cops, not knowing what to do. they didn't do anything nor did they really try but they did breathalyze him and gave him a ticket for blowing a 0.02, literally a month away from his 21st birthday

4) got a speeding ticket on the highway. this cop was actually pretty nice. what can I say, I was speeding.

here's what's infuriating about it - some of the people I know who are the staunchest Blue Lives Matter and It Wouldn't Have Happened If They'd Just Complied idiots are the same people who tense up the hardest every time they see a cop car behind them. I had a Crown Vic for a while and these are the exact people who called me an asshole for driving it (tbf, they kind of had a point). Seems to me that it's got nothing to do with "supporting the law".

xp 2 Dan

Good post.

(And part of the idea is that you follow up the initial question by focusing on what these people have had go well with cops, what hasn't (eg did they get your stolen shit back?), and how reallocating resources can emphasize the things that go well, above the tanks and violence.)

Oh yeah, being breathalysed is a positive encounter. It's a public good, and the cops are usually polite.

i’m probably pretty unusual on this board for having had lengthy interactions with a number of police detectives about a pretty serious crime. i was very impressed by them. they didn’t believe my story at first, and eventually they did. i don’t doubt that my skin color and social background helped in that regard. but once they believed me they were... how do i say this? straight fire. detailed, patient, persistent, dependable. just a world away from the lunkheads on the beat. there’s got to be a way to nurture this specialist investigation strand of policing while basically getting rid of the lunkhead aspect? surely?

I feel like even cops would welcome being relieved of a lot of those functions of their job that they aren't really prepared for

but then I don't know really know the mentality of who becomes a cop now, violence seems to be the point so I don't know how to reform

yeah.

Oh yeah, being breathalysed is a positive encounter. It's a public good, and the cops are usually polite.

well, not in the situation I mentioned. someone damaged his car, he called the cops because he couldn't afford to fix it, and instead of helping him they gave him a $200 citation because he drank a Bud Lite a month early. the cops were polite, sure, but what's the public good?

I think you really have to consider both the background a police officer is coming from and which job they’re doing; beat cops and detectives and station administrators aren’t all coming into their jobs by the same avenue or with the same perspectives.

There’s a guy from my college class who is a police chief in New Hampshire and I would really like to corner him at a reunion and ask him what he *really* thinks of American policing

Being relieved of functions weakens cops’ social position. Even if they made the same money for less work they’d oppose it reflexively (as a body, maybe not individually) because it drains their base of power.

like sometimes we get ants in the house because the kids drop food on the floor. if I were to deal with the problem using America's policing philosophy instead of telling them "you gotta stop dropping food and not cleaning it up" I'd say "I'll give you a buck for every 10 ants you kill" and once they got smart they'd be leaving raisins everywhere

applying for grants to open a for-profit private ant farm

We’ve known the danger of letting internal security forces build up independence since ~41CE.

thank u I’ve never been otm before feels good
― Washington Generals D-League affiliate (will), Wednesday, April 14, 2021 7:59 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

don't OD on the otm, nabisco rip

it's repetitive and annoying, doubly so because it's always posted as if it's a big truth bomb that has never been posted before

As others brought up, I was merely agreeing with our dearly departed Morbz.

But also as others have brought up, it's just as annoying when people post what amounts to state propaganda about "our enemies" or whatever.

When posters here say "we already know all of this and agree with you" to more hard-left posters, what I often read is, "we wish you wouldn't keep bringing us down," or alternately, "we disagree with your rhetorical tactics." Both are fair responses, but to be quite honest, I don't actually know that many of you "know all of this," because otherwise I would expect many of you to take very different positions on sociopolitical matters. Sometimes when I vent frustration here, that's what it's about--.

In any case, I've never had a positive interaction with a cop, and I'm a white cis guy who grew up middle-class.

To be fair, though, I've been arrested a number of times, and have spent some time in different parts of the carceral system, so my experience is different.

(One of these times was when I was thrown in juvie for four days for protesting the RNC in 2000. A lovely time that was)

6 years ago I had a close buddy overdose on fentanyl and I'm getting pissed off all over again thinking of the way the cops essentially terrorized one of my closest friends - he was the guy's roommate, who'd just returned from Afghanistan all fucked up, and since some of the drug paraphernalia was his they made a deal where they wouldn't arrest him if he agreed to do some recorded phone calls, including one to me, after which he felt so guilty and wrecked that he started franticly calling his friends saying he was about to kill himself. apparently the cops were just badgering him relentlessly and as far as I can tell he really did tell him everything he knew, which was not much, because the guy who OD'd kept a number of secrets. at the end of the day they wound up jailing 3 people, one of whom was just selling his prescription meds to pay his child support, none of which provided any sense of "justice" to the family, but it did make a lot of people's lives much worse. go ahead and count the levels of systematic failure there.

Well!

https://theintercept.com/2021/04/14/house-and-senate-democrats-plan-bill-to-add-four-justices-to-supreme-court/

I don't actually know that many of you "know all of this," because otherwise I would expect many of you to take very different positions on sociopolitical matters.
― it's like edging for your mind (the table is the table), Wednesday, April 14, 2021 6:04 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In reality, people react differently to matters, each of us can care in a different way. It would be a little more peaceful if some here gave the benefit of the doubt that we are all mostly good people here who don't approve of death and destruction abroad.

We probably all have a personal list of which issues are most important to us, and those lists are probably all over the place. Doesn't necessarily mean there's huge differences on where we stand on individual issues, but the order in which we want them addressed could be very different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQEq75y18

It occurred to me last night that I care about politics because I believe change is possible, and I believe change is possible because I believe there are good, well-intentioned people who are capable of effecting it within the halls of power.

I don't see how one can believe change is possible without believing in the people who can make it happen, and I don't see why one would care about politics without believing change is possible (except, I suppose, as a perverse spectator sport).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/14/daunte-wright-minneapolis-police-shooting/#click=https://t.co/OStVguFlrx

Minneapolis police union continues to be fascist shitbags even after Bob Kroll is gone

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/14/daunte-wright-minneapolis-police-shooting/#click=https://t.co/OStVguFlrx

fucking asshole FL Republicans

We gave everything we had to give. We reasoned, we shouted, we pleaded, we cried, we broke down & left the House Floor. But today, FL Republicans passed a bill not only banning trans kids from playing sports but subjecting kids whose sex may be disputed to genital inspections.

— Rep. Omari Hardy (@OmariJHardy) April 15, 2021

I was in a rage last night.

Jesus.