The Killer Inside Me is a brilliant and frightening book. I used to teach it in a college course called Heroes and Villains, and even when I warned the students what was coming, it always made a serious impact. I went through a heavy Jim Thompson period many years ago, and still have all of his books. Savage Night was the one that got me the most.
An aside: I continue to marvel that the basic message of Black Lives Matter--"Stop killing us"-- has broken so many brains. It's almost like to concede to BLM would violate the Constitution or something. (Un-ratified 28th Amendment: "Black life may be criminalized, and blacks may be hunted for sport, within the United States and the territories under its jurisdiction.")
Yeah. And the rejoinder “but what about WHITE lives?” is straining so hard to miss the point it must be causing injuries. Nobody would miss the point in any other context: if I’m wearing a Save The Whales t-shirt it doesn’t mean I’m saying to hell with dolphins.
There was a good cognitive exercise recently for the All Lives crowd: You're celebrating your Glorious Leader & his Fascist Circle Jerk on Lake Travis. Suddenly your boat starts to sink. Would it be best the park rangers saved all the boats, or focused on yours for the moment?
Actually, I think I know the answer: in the abstract, "All Lives Matter" is a eugenics argument. If all lives are to thrive, some lives have to sacrificed...
My sympathies to Roy for putting himself through such thought processes as needed to right this post. The huge amount of toxic(!) bullshit at the foundation of the post made it difficult to read.
But all these chiefs and police commissioners quitting are, for me, proof of how small c corrupt far too many police departments are. To put it in Blue Lives Matter lingo, the few bad apples are in control. I suppose it makes sense: Can't or won't do what's needed to be done because, well, police forces are essentially lawless.
But have a thought experiment: If police forces were defunded 50%, such a reduction would result in what exactly?
I totally agree -- I was writing a satirical piece recently and found the experience of putting myself into this character's head threatening, not only because I don't want to think that way, but also to recognize how one might...
Sympathy for the devil, I guess. It's much less perilous to write satire in the Pope or Dryden model: I'm superior, and my target is stupid.
Lol, no worries! MP is absolutely amazing, esp. since basically every Tory and GOPer and libertarian would make this exact same argument totally seriously.
Whoever came up with "defund the police" should be publicly expelled from Democratic politics and BLM. It is the worst, most counter-productive slogan ever uttered. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was invented by a Trump loyalist.
You mean as opposed to "abolish the police"? What I would like to defund is the myth that cops are the only safeguard for acceptable society from the dusky hordes. That force & oppression leads to peace & justice.
"Abolish the police" is what the average voter hears when "defund the police" gets uttered.
"Ooh! But that's not what we mean!"
Yeah, well, unfortunately that's what the plain meaning of the phrase "defund the police" actually means. And as sympathetic as the average person might be to the BLM movement, they are NOT disposed to getting rid of the police for some concept to be named later. They look at this as some wild-eyed radical anarchist thing. And rightly so.
Joe Average agrees the police need to be reformed, recast, redirected. Joe Average supports that. And if the slogan du jour stated THAT, Joe Average would back it 100%. But that's not what the slogan says. So Joe Average now sees the choices as complete anarchy or Donald Trump. Guess which one Mr. Comfortable middle-class White Guy is going to choose?
So "defund the police" sure is catchy. And it is absolutely perfect for pushing otherwise sympathetic voters right back into Trumpland.
So you assume, and so Joe Biden hopes. What will play into Trump's hands is not that there is unrest, but because the Democrats have no real plan to address the causes of that unrest, so it will continue. And then he can say the US needs him to re-establish order. Enter Fourth Reich.
I agree that people don't understand the issue, and like you appear to be doing, incorrectly assume that "anarchist" means "chaos". (Thank William Randolph Hearst for that, if you're into antiques at all...)
I'm not trying to call anybody out & understand the process to justice is tricky & takes actual dialogue, which I am offering here. Status quo bias is a big issue here, plus several lifetimes of marginalization of actual leftist ideas. If they seem strange to you or others, its because there are almost no mainstream outlets that offer good-faith discussion.
Also, not for nothing, but avoiding progress because it makes "Joe Average" uncomfortable is a) precisely why the system is so fucked up, and b) an excuse to justify inaction. What like 75% of white Americans were uncomfortable with the Civil Rights Movement. Should we have copped to that fear & inertia?
Absolutely not.
Joe Biden has a chance to be an LBJ here. Right now, he's looking more like Fillmore. (And I'm going to vote for him anyways, don't worry)
[And please please know: I challenge this idea not out of disrespect for you, but comradeship.]
I get it. And I'm definitely not saying we need to hold still or even retreat. What I'm saying is that the SLOGAN is the shits. It doesn't matter what the actual movement is or wants if its slogan sucks. And that's the problem--the slogan says "get rid of the police." I know that's not what the movement wants--but it is most definitely what their slogan says they want.
As for "anarchy," it falls into the same elephant trap that libertarianism and communism fall into: It's really outstanding as an intellectual exercise, but collapses into incoherence the instant you introduce humans into it. My transgender niece was a staunch anarchist--right up until the time her boyfriend got badly beaten, at which time she became a believer in having the police around and a functioning state to keep people from just being predatory assholes.
That is totally fair, and I appreciate you clarifying, D. I understand you better and that's the whole point of this.
I guess my issue is that the Dems too often obsess over "optics" when they should focus on "justice". I'm not sure what to do about that, & I understand that it is somewhat a result of really mealy-mouthed coverage of their efforts & policies by the media...
"Demilitarize the police" would work quite well. Many BLM-sympathetic voters are extremely uncomfortable with what their local PD has turned into. It's more like an occupying force than the local gendarmes they're supposed to be. So a slogan like that keeps those voters in the camp while you explain that, look, along with taking away the MRAPS and up-armored HUMVEEs and M-30 machine guns, we ALSO need to get police officers training on how to de-escalate, how to recognize and deal with the mentally ill, how to get out of the "everyone's out to kill me" mindset, and how to relate to the community.
I don’t have a better word myself, but a disadvantage of words like “demilitarize” is they start sounding wonky and less relatable to average people, like when politicians talk about “obstructionism.” (I don’t know what to replace that word with either, except maybe “vandalism)
What I hear in Defund The Police is "Re-Fund Social Services", and that's totally what we need, but the phrase itself is poisonous to much of the electorate. Social Services are one of the things we're supposed to drown in the bath tub. I want to say "Stop Dumping Work On The Police That Should Be Done By Other Agencies and Services, and To Do That, We Have to Add Money, Because Otherwise It Doesn't Work, Remember Reagan?" but oh boy, is that not catchy.
Very much THIS! Every time there's a mass shooting, Republicans blame it on mental illness. I wish just once some prominent Democrat would say "Okay. If you really think these events are all due to mental illness, here's my $2 billion legislation fully funding social and psychiatric services for all who need them."<br>
Really, though, I think we'll have to settle for getting cops more classroom time on how to deal with the mentally ill. If we can also get them less time on the shooting range, that would help!
People should say, “reallocation of funding of the police force budget” instead of “defunding” or “abolishing” the police.
Of COURSE we all want a police force, firefighters, and all other municipal workers...we just want the cops to not be militarized (there weren’t any TANKS owned by police forces in the ‘60s) have better training (learn how to apprehend a suspect without murdering them), have the obvious KKK members rooted out, and get back to REAL NEIGHBORHOOD POLICING, instead of having a majority of the cops living on Long Island and never truly walking a beat and LIVING in the area (any ghetto you choose) they’re SUPPOSED to be SERVING AND PROTECTING.
But thanks to decades of racism and “White flight” the old ways have been destroyed.
Why isn’t the model program that’s been working in In Camden - what was at one time “the most dangerous city in the US” being used everywhere?
THEY REALLY DID ABOLISH THE POLICE, AND IT WORKED!
They rebuilt the system, and it’s been working for a long time now.
Why isn’t it featured on the news every day? Why don’t the powers that be adopt the very successful program?🤔🧐🤨
Systems That Actually Work, in policing and in health care and in welfare policy, in Camden and all over the civilized world, are too heavy a lift for the United States of America -- because of the moneybags who keep weighing us down.
It’s a variation of the Peter Principle - the Putrid Principle, when the worst floats to the top in a toxic environment more decent persons can’t tolerate.
That's why the "defund" and "reform" arguments are counter-productive, just attempts by centrist liberals to suck the air out of the movement for liberation. That it is does not seem to be working must fill them with angst.
During my years in Rochester (yeah, seems like I’ve lived in every infamous part of America), there was the Attica prison uprising, violently ended by state police. All the reports of inmates killing each other, guards and cops screeched to a halt when the medical examiner in Rochester emerged from around the clock autopsies to announce that all the deaths were caused by state police bullets. Forget history, doomed to repeat, and all that.
Police are a construct of the industrial age and the need by capital to suppress and control the labor pool. They aren't needed at all outside that context. They are occupiers and are justly hated by the people who are the targets of their oppression.
Restorative justice for a free citizenry treated with dignity.
The police are not a construct of the Industrial Age, America’s law enforcement system was born from Slavery, which is why it’s thick with the KKK, which is why there are more Black Americans harassed/chased down/shot/jailed/incarcerated/murdered than anyone else in this country.
The whole solar system needs to watch the documentary, “13th” for a dose of reality.
I'm going to disagree with this statement but I don't argue with people on the internet so I'll just leave it at that.
In comments below Grouchy Medievalist points out some historical sources that might be of help.
I will say this - once the slaves were "freed" (such as that freedom was...) and they became part of the labor pool then yes, the police set about oppressing them with particular gusto. No doubt racism played a big role.
Golly, Roy, whatever happened to Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina (what a guy) and how come 30% (non-white) of the population don't make it on to the show?
The Killer Inside Me is a brilliant and frightening book. I used to teach it in a college course called Heroes and Villains, and even when I warned the students what was coming, it always made a serious impact. I went through a heavy Jim Thompson period many years ago, and still have all of his books. Savage Night was the one that got me the most.
Jim Thompson makes Quentin Tarantino look like Beatrix Potter.
"This World, Then the Fireworks" is hands down the darkest short story in existence. They made a movie of it, which I've never seen.
Quentin kills bunnies?
I've read a lot of Thompson and missed Savage Night. It's on my list now.
As the late Leonard Cohen said before he found rest at last: "You want it dark"
An aside: I continue to marvel that the basic message of Black Lives Matter--"Stop killing us"-- has broken so many brains. It's almost like to concede to BLM would violate the Constitution or something. (Un-ratified 28th Amendment: "Black life may be criminalized, and blacks may be hunted for sport, within the United States and the territories under its jurisdiction.")
Yeah. And the rejoinder “but what about WHITE lives?” is straining so hard to miss the point it must be causing injuries. Nobody would miss the point in any other context: if I’m wearing a Save The Whales t-shirt it doesn’t mean I’m saying to hell with dolphins.
It does for me: fuck those over-rated, chittery, fuck-lusting, greazy bastards...
The Union of Baitfish endorses this message!
Thanks, chum
Trolling again?
Ugh!
Can’t argue with this. Arrogant little bastards. “Oooh, look at me, I’m a mammal, I’m soooo intelligent.”
Dolphins also have incredibly bad breath. (Really--what comes out of their blowholes is just horrible.)
Lucky they've got nice smiles.
There was a good cognitive exercise recently for the All Lives crowd: You're celebrating your Glorious Leader & his Fascist Circle Jerk on Lake Travis. Suddenly your boat starts to sink. Would it be best the park rangers saved all the boats, or focused on yours for the moment?
Actually, I think I know the answer: in the abstract, "All Lives Matter" is a eugenics argument. If all lives are to thrive, some lives have to sacrificed...
The BLM message has broken RACISTS' brains. But those brains were already broken.
My sympathies to Roy for putting himself through such thought processes as needed to right this post. The huge amount of toxic(!) bullshit at the foundation of the post made it difficult to read.
But all these chiefs and police commissioners quitting are, for me, proof of how small c corrupt far too many police departments are. To put it in Blue Lives Matter lingo, the few bad apples are in control. I suppose it makes sense: Can't or won't do what's needed to be done because, well, police forces are essentially lawless.
But have a thought experiment: If police forces were defunded 50%, such a reduction would result in what exactly?
I totally agree -- I was writing a satirical piece recently and found the experience of putting myself into this character's head threatening, not only because I don't want to think that way, but also to recognize how one might...
Sympathy for the devil, I guess. It's much less perilous to write satire in the Pope or Dryden model: I'm superior, and my target is stupid.
I'm not sure that A Modest Proposal is an I'm superior and my target is stupid point of view.
That's by Swift right? And also why I didn't invoke it. :)
Ooops, you're right. OK, time for some more coffee.
Lol, no worries! MP is absolutely amazing, esp. since basically every Tory and GOPer and libertarian would make this exact same argument totally seriously.
I was thinking more like "MacFlecknoe" or "The Dunciad"
Ken Dryden was a fine goalie back in the day, but I did not know that he wrote satire
Whoever came up with "defund the police" should be publicly expelled from Democratic politics and BLM. It is the worst, most counter-productive slogan ever uttered. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was invented by a Trump loyalist.
You mean as opposed to "abolish the police"? What I would like to defund is the myth that cops are the only safeguard for acceptable society from the dusky hordes. That force & oppression leads to peace & justice.
"Abolish the police" is what the average voter hears when "defund the police" gets uttered.
"Ooh! But that's not what we mean!"
Yeah, well, unfortunately that's what the plain meaning of the phrase "defund the police" actually means. And as sympathetic as the average person might be to the BLM movement, they are NOT disposed to getting rid of the police for some concept to be named later. They look at this as some wild-eyed radical anarchist thing. And rightly so.
Joe Average agrees the police need to be reformed, recast, redirected. Joe Average supports that. And if the slogan du jour stated THAT, Joe Average would back it 100%. But that's not what the slogan says. So Joe Average now sees the choices as complete anarchy or Donald Trump. Guess which one Mr. Comfortable middle-class White Guy is going to choose?
So "defund the police" sure is catchy. And it is absolutely perfect for pushing otherwise sympathetic voters right back into Trumpland.
So you assume, and so Joe Biden hopes. What will play into Trump's hands is not that there is unrest, but because the Democrats have no real plan to address the causes of that unrest, so it will continue. And then he can say the US needs him to re-establish order. Enter Fourth Reich.
I agree that people don't understand the issue, and like you appear to be doing, incorrectly assume that "anarchist" means "chaos". (Thank William Randolph Hearst for that, if you're into antiques at all...)
I'm not trying to call anybody out & understand the process to justice is tricky & takes actual dialogue, which I am offering here. Status quo bias is a big issue here, plus several lifetimes of marginalization of actual leftist ideas. If they seem strange to you or others, its because there are almost no mainstream outlets that offer good-faith discussion.
Also, not for nothing, but avoiding progress because it makes "Joe Average" uncomfortable is a) precisely why the system is so fucked up, and b) an excuse to justify inaction. What like 75% of white Americans were uncomfortable with the Civil Rights Movement. Should we have copped to that fear & inertia?
Absolutely not.
Joe Biden has a chance to be an LBJ here. Right now, he's looking more like Fillmore. (And I'm going to vote for him anyways, don't worry)
[And please please know: I challenge this idea not out of disrespect for you, but comradeship.]
I get it. And I'm definitely not saying we need to hold still or even retreat. What I'm saying is that the SLOGAN is the shits. It doesn't matter what the actual movement is or wants if its slogan sucks. And that's the problem--the slogan says "get rid of the police." I know that's not what the movement wants--but it is most definitely what their slogan says they want.
As for "anarchy," it falls into the same elephant trap that libertarianism and communism fall into: It's really outstanding as an intellectual exercise, but collapses into incoherence the instant you introduce humans into it. My transgender niece was a staunch anarchist--right up until the time her boyfriend got badly beaten, at which time she became a believer in having the police around and a functioning state to keep people from just being predatory assholes.
That is totally fair, and I appreciate you clarifying, D. I understand you better and that's the whole point of this.
I guess my issue is that the Dems too often obsess over "optics" when they should focus on "justice". I'm not sure what to do about that, & I understand that it is somewhat a result of really mealy-mouthed coverage of their efforts & policies by the media...
I get what you’re saying, but what’s the better slogan that should be used instead?
"Demilitarize the police" would work quite well. Many BLM-sympathetic voters are extremely uncomfortable with what their local PD has turned into. It's more like an occupying force than the local gendarmes they're supposed to be. So a slogan like that keeps those voters in the camp while you explain that, look, along with taking away the MRAPS and up-armored HUMVEEs and M-30 machine guns, we ALSO need to get police officers training on how to de-escalate, how to recognize and deal with the mentally ill, how to get out of the "everyone's out to kill me" mindset, and how to relate to the community.
On a related note, I read an article suggesting the frat bro mindset of the police is a root problem: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/americas-brotherhood-of-police-officers
I don’t have a better word myself, but a disadvantage of words like “demilitarize” is they start sounding wonky and less relatable to average people, like when politicians talk about “obstructionism.” (I don’t know what to replace that word with either, except maybe “vandalism)
What I hear in Defund The Police is "Re-Fund Social Services", and that's totally what we need, but the phrase itself is poisonous to much of the electorate. Social Services are one of the things we're supposed to drown in the bath tub. I want to say "Stop Dumping Work On The Police That Should Be Done By Other Agencies and Services, and To Do That, We Have to Add Money, Because Otherwise It Doesn't Work, Remember Reagan?" but oh boy, is that not catchy.
Very much THIS! Every time there's a mass shooting, Republicans blame it on mental illness. I wish just once some prominent Democrat would say "Okay. If you really think these events are all due to mental illness, here's my $2 billion legislation fully funding social and psychiatric services for all who need them."<br>
Really, though, I think we'll have to settle for getting cops more classroom time on how to deal with the mentally ill. If we can also get them less time on the shooting range, that would help!
The BIG problem here is the terminology.
People should say, “reallocation of funding of the police force budget” instead of “defunding” or “abolishing” the police.
Of COURSE we all want a police force, firefighters, and all other municipal workers...we just want the cops to not be militarized (there weren’t any TANKS owned by police forces in the ‘60s) have better training (learn how to apprehend a suspect without murdering them), have the obvious KKK members rooted out, and get back to REAL NEIGHBORHOOD POLICING, instead of having a majority of the cops living on Long Island and never truly walking a beat and LIVING in the area (any ghetto you choose) they’re SUPPOSED to be SERVING AND PROTECTING.
But thanks to decades of racism and “White flight” the old ways have been destroyed.
Why isn’t the model program that’s been working in In Camden - what was at one time “the most dangerous city in the US” being used everywhere?
THEY REALLY DID ABOLISH THE POLICE, AND IT WORKED!
They rebuilt the system, and it’s been working for a long time now.
Why isn’t it featured on the news every day? Why don’t the powers that be adopt the very successful program?🤔🧐🤨
Ohhhhh, riiiiiiiiiight...never mind.
Systems That Actually Work, in policing and in health care and in welfare policy, in Camden and all over the civilized world, are too heavy a lift for the United States of America -- because of the moneybags who keep weighing us down.
It’s a variation of the Peter Principle - the Putrid Principle, when the worst floats to the top in a toxic environment more decent persons can’t tolerate.
The Dillinger 4 had a song about this -- A Floater Left with Pride in the Executive Washroom
That's why the "defund" and "reform" arguments are counter-productive, just attempts by centrist liberals to suck the air out of the movement for liberation. That it is does not seem to be working must fill them with angst.
During my years in Rochester (yeah, seems like I’ve lived in every infamous part of America), there was the Attica prison uprising, violently ended by state police. All the reports of inmates killing each other, guards and cops screeched to a halt when the medical examiner in Rochester emerged from around the clock autopsies to announce that all the deaths were caused by state police bullets. Forget history, doomed to repeat, and all that.
Like the first part of the 2d amendment, they ignore the law part of law and order.
De-militarizing the police is essential.
Police are a construct of the industrial age and the need by capital to suppress and control the labor pool. They aren't needed at all outside that context. They are occupiers and are justly hated by the people who are the targets of their oppression.
Restorative justice for a free citizenry treated with dignity.
http://restorativejustice.org/
And fuck the police.
Here's a good link by a historian colleague on the relatively recent "innovation" of police:
https://going-medieval.com/2020/06/17/on-a-world-without-police/
I'd say the start (at least in England) is the period Marx identified as "primitive accumulation".
To be more clear, roughly 1400-1600, right around the Enclosure movement
The police are not a construct of the Industrial Age, America’s law enforcement system was born from Slavery, which is why it’s thick with the KKK, which is why there are more Black Americans harassed/chased down/shot/jailed/incarcerated/murdered than anyone else in this country.
The whole solar system needs to watch the documentary, “13th” for a dose of reality.
I'm going to disagree with this statement but I don't argue with people on the internet so I'll just leave it at that.
In comments below Grouchy Medievalist points out some historical sources that might be of help.
I will say this - once the slaves were "freed" (such as that freedom was...) and they became part of the labor pool then yes, the police set about oppressing them with particular gusto. No doubt racism played a big role.
https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing
Golly, Roy, whatever happened to Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, North Carolina (what a guy) and how come 30% (non-white) of the population don't make it on to the show?
Seems like a reasonable fellow! Allow me please to thank him for his service.