georgioz
3d ago
Seems reasonable. I understand the complaints, but sorry, if you're signing up to carry out the violence of the state your face is on the line. That's the deal.
You skipped quite a lot here. How adamant are you about this principle? Should this be a federal law: no facemasks for SWAT teams, Delta Force members or any police officers making high profile arrests of dangerous gangs, cartel members or other members of organized crime who routinely come after families of police officers? How do you feel abut undercover agents getting the ultimate mask in form of whole new identities during their operations so they can escape any accountability from public including those that sympathize with criminals they targeted?
Where is the boundary and how does it apply for ICE agents in now in year 2026?
georgioz
3d ago
One of the main effects of body cameras is for defense to use discriminatory policing angle. Lawyers can sift through months of bodycam footage of any given policeman and prove that he let some other offender on the same charge thus proving racial profiling etc.
I think this is one of the more insidious aspects that bodycams have. In a sense they turn policemen into modern robocops, they know that they are constantly surveilled and that the smallest mistake can be used against them. So their policing may turn into a procedural nightmare - you are not talking to a police officer, you are talking to a Moloch that now controls policeman's actions. You rob policemen of their agency, they will no longer rely on their intuition, experience or hunches. They will be less likely to utilize their judgment when it comes to leniency or more strict policing if needed.
I think it completely changes the meaning of many laws, which were designed on assumption that some things will be fuzzy and that they will rely on personal judgement. It is similar effect to may other laws. Your anti-jaywalking or littering or loud noise laws may be fine if they require some action on part of offended party and randomness of police officers being around. The same laws will look differently in some future city full of cameras and drones with capacity to be personally assigned to every citizen on the streets.
This is an interesting analogy. The Scottish clan was a weird kind of mannerbund-family hybrid. There was a lot of fictive kinship involved - the clan included all male-line descendants of the founding chief plus their wives and daughters, but it also included a bunch of people living under the chief's protection who accepted him as a symbolic father-figure.
It is similar with Roman system. Unsurprisingly it really was something like Italian mafia family. The core of the clan was based on blood relation, with some space made for adoption - but even adoption was mostly family related e.g. when Augustus was Caesar's great-nephew (grandson of Caesars sister Julia). Augustus did not even carry the Julia family name, as his father was just plebeian.
Nevertheless Roman society was based on complicated structure of patronage and master/client relationship of various plebeians and freemen around the clan with family at its core. Many of these positions were hereditary, these clients were part of the clan structure for generations and their service was rewarded. They were something like extended family and in many cases they actually were, given the power of exponential growth just in a few generations. I believe that Scottish clans had similar structure and they provided patronage when it came to valuable people with necessary human capital such as blacksmiths, or people who distinguished themselves in some other way.
Roman society revolved around fraternal organizations
As others said, this is absolute ignorance of historical realities. Power structure of ancient Rome was more akin to power struggle between huge mafia clans Godfather style. Roman social life revolved around atrium which contained literal altars to ancestors, with portraits and masks of the most important family members who attained some high position or success. Your relation to your clan (gens) was paramount to your identity even as a client of such a powerful clan. Again, if you want some parallel it would be that of huge Scottish clans.
ll striving was done by men, with men, and for men, negotiated among men outside the family fold. I’m not really sure where this idea originates that the “family” is the bedrock of the West.
They were not just random men. They were true patriarchs - father figures to extended clans and their clients and vassals, with membership in thousands or even tens of thousands. The most powerful clans such as gens Cornelia which produced numerous consuls and dictators including Sulla were so powerful, that they even had powerful offshoot clans such as Cornelii Scipiones. You have it exactly the other way around. The relationship between strangers mimicked that of the family, with all the subtle status games and structure given. You literally talk about brotherhood and fraternity - which is family related concept. Brotherhoods have older brothers and fathers. If you were accepted into such a fraternity, you had to accept family obligations including being a bitch to your more senior brothers.
I think that they still have a point. The liberal ethos was all about equal access to opportunity to achieve American dream of happiness and success. Except that we have a problem - if you believe in liberal tabula rasa, then there is no other way to measure equal access to opportunity other than outcome. Unequal outcome means unequal opportunity and thus DEI is good. The only liberal defense was that we did not achieve true
socialismmeritocracy. We need more education or welfare etc. and we will see the meritocratic utopia maybe next generation. In a sense DEI people claim the same - except that they want to accelerate these gains by redistribution now on grounds that we will achieve true meritocracy maybe even sooner by magic of representation and other DEI effects.Or you do not believe in tabula rasa and you believe that some differences in opportunity are inevitable or ingrained etc. But then you are no longer believing in the same meaning of the word "merit", which than catches too medieval of a flavor of having certain classes or people who are inherently more meritorious as opposed to common uneducated plebeian caste. This is too right coded and in fact plays toward lefties sensibilities as they see this obviously as hated ancien régime which needs to be fought at every step for true progress.
More options
Context Copy link