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Indifference is insidious. Indifference to riots or thinking they're worth the tradeoffs is close enough for my tastes. Being unwilling to stop a bad thing or otherwise too high on your ideological supply to realize how easily it could backfire or otherwise go wrong is close enough.
The extra 6000ish black murders were really worth it, to the eyes of those unaffected by them but liked the aesthetics of protests and huffing that tire-burning smell, I'm sure.
Interesting. How shall we assess indifference to police brutality? Why is it that when people protest unambiguous police brutality and the police respond by refusing to do their job, it's the fault of the protestors for failing to lick the boot hard enough? Should we be worried that one of the central institutions for public order will mutiny if not granted impunity for their crimes?
Seen from across the Atlantic, it seemed pretty egregious. At a time when people were being told to lock themselves indoors and cease all activity lest we all die horribly, an exception was carved out for one of the left's sacred cows. And a particularly unsympathetic one at that - blacks being escorted to violent riots by their leftist allies, because a black drug addict had died when a white policeman bungled his arrest and the left then invented an utterly fabricated narrative about tens of thousands of blacks being murdered every year. This is of course the uncharitable perspective on the matter - I'm sure blacks will see it differently, as will leftists.
But what lessons might the Right learn from this?
And, bonus for us Euros:
And yes, this is the maximally conflict-seeking description. But with this in play, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the period of those riots was both very memorable and foundational for the current phase of the Culture Wars.
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You know, if you seemed like you were interested in a real conversation I'd be happy to both-sides the indifference problem, but this and your example seem like nice big flags that you're not. Let's try anyways-
I'm considerably more worried that the public order will mutiny if the police across the entire country are not universally perfect, since that's actually what happened. One bad cop treating one possibly-ODing drug addict badly means the necessary response is... billions of dollars in property damage across the country and a couple dozen extra murders? Damn, that's a heck of an exchange rate.
How many unarmed people do the police shoot, and how many do liberals think they shoot?
If you want to talk about red flags, lets talk about the insistent conflation of protests and riots being used to excuse the violent suppression of the former.
And let me be blunt: the consequences of bad policing in the US have eclipsed both the human and financial costs of anti-police rioting pretty much every single year, and that includes 2020, which included by far the most dramatic anti-police rioting in ~30 years (hell, the fact that we have anti-police riots in the US is a strong signal that there are serious problems with American policing). The reflexive deference to police authority, even when they are clearly abusing it, is both undignified and immoral. The fact that the police frequently mutiny if threatened with accountability is just straight up a threat to democracy. A riot is an ephemeral public order problem. An uncontrollable law enforcement apparatus is systemic governance problem.
Do you genuinely think that this arose from a singular incident? There's a steady drumbeat of cops murdering people*, but behind the murders is an parade of harassment, dishonesty, and casual brutality so pervasive that many don't even register it as abuse. It's just sort of taken as a given that the police might rough you up a bit if they feel like it, or they might lie about what happened to hide their misconduct.
And, importantly: extremely limited accountability. 'Paid administrative leave' became a punchline for a reason. There'd be a lot less resentment and hostility if brutal or reckless cops were consistently punished for transgressions, but overwhelmingly they are not.
*The unarmed aspect doesn't really matter much. As it must be understood that being unarmed does not mean it was a bad shoot, it must also be understood that being armed does not mean it was a good shoot. And the fact that it was legally a good shoot does not mean it actually was.
We could, on a good day, probably have a nice and well-thought conversation on police reform, and I get the feeling that we'd agree on more than you might expect, though certainly not everything. Unfortunately for both of us, basically no one out in the real world wanted to have a well-thought and careful conversation; they all wanted to go insane or turn a blind eye to the insanity. So whatever I say here is less about police reform in general, and more about a particular form of racism and insanity that afflicts American culture and had an explosion in 2020.
No, it's a strong signal that there is the perception of serious problems with American policing. The reality of the problems is, afaict, almost entirely disconnected from the perception and reactions to it.
Ehh... sort of? I think, clearly, bad police exist, but BLM and in particular the 2020 riots weren't really about bad police. BLM is about pie-in-the-sky pro-criminal advocacy, the about-face on bodycams being my primary evidence for this sentiment, and the 2020 riots were about people looking for a socially-sanctioned excuse to go out and get crazy on a spectrum between "block party" and "looting and revolution."
Video is powerful, everyone had cabin fever, and white-on-black crime makes American media go full stupid. If Chauvin had kneed Floyd in some camera-free back alley, it probably wouldn't have risen above local news. If Alexander Keung had been the primary cop instead of Chauvin, it probably wouldn't have risen above local news.
I agree that they should be, but most of the resentment and hostility is downstream of other problems (ie, disparate impact and the confrontation clause). I think if cops policed themselves perfectly we'd still see much of the resentment and hostility.
I'm just commenting there on well-meaning liberals that have an aesthetic and moral privileging of certain populations based on race to being orders of magnitude wrong about reality.
I disagree. Some people did and ditched Qualified Immunity. Colororado, New Mexico, Nevada comes to mind. But I agree that a lot of people went full stupid.
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*Thousand.
There may have been only dozens of deaths directly connected to the riots, but the increase in the murder rate following the police withdrawal (which not only merely followed the riots, but was explicitly demanded by the protesters) accounted for thousands of lives lost.
I was trying to go with the "safe" answer, but yeah, I think there's a lot of merit to how much the rioting affected the murder rate. But Beej did post a recent update based on a Brookings analysis that the murder rate was already increasing in 2020 before The Happening, starting in early to mid March.
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It would be helpful if at least half the high profile stories of brutality actually fit the bill before the mass protests and riots occur. How much of the 'indifference' that you detect is just a plain disagreement regarding what's being depicted?
Structurally this is a hard ask, because one of the things that makes a story high profile is controversy, and things that are only debatably police misbehavior are more controversial than things that are blatant police misbehavior. And so the big name cases are George Floyd rather than Justine Damond.
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Bending over backwards to make excuses for police murdering people and undermining efforts to hold them accountable is an extreme and hostile form of indifference (and it produces more crime). I used to be more charitably inclined, until 2020 made it abundantly clear that many right-wingers were not simply credulous of police excuses and actively supported police brutality as long as it was directed against their idea of someone who deserved it.
I don't doubt your account of what you saw in terms of RW reactions, but I'm not sure youre modeling the general critique that I recall? To be clear, even I'M not conviced that what I saw wrt to Floyd and Chauvin was 'murder'. And that's the most high profile example of the issue you're alleging. Everything else from Mike Brown, to Jacob Blake, to Trayvon Martin - I am even less persuaded. In fact, seeing this narrative of police brutality extended even to Blake is what transitoned by skepticism to outright disbelief. Which isn’t to say it doesn't exist, but I'm not buying the package being sold.
The most clear-cut example of police brutality I witnessed was with Tyre Nichols. This came and went in the span of a week for reasons that are probably unsurprising to anybody here who looks into it or remembers the details. If we're trying to assess 'who is more caring/indifferent regarding police brutality', I will give everybody a fat Zero based on that. It seems we are only interested in this phenomenon as ammunition to hurt the other side.
I don't remember RWers condoning 'murder'. I remember them saying that many of those alleged victims led lives and expressed behavior that made their demises seem inevitable. Things like fighting the cops, not following commands, escalating hostilities, and generally living lives up to that point that reliably produce these outcomes.
You may still find that ugly, callous, or mistaken. Whatever it is, it's FAR away from dancing when a professional TALKER gets sniped in the throat.
Martin wasn't killed by LE, so is irrelevant to this subject. Laquan McDonald, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner immediately leap to mind as unambiguously unjustified police homicides which were widely excused on grounds that the victims were lowlife scum who wouldn't be missed. But the point here is not to trade anecdotes, it is to point out that there is a widespread attitude that is at best indifferent to and frequently outright celebratory of police brutality. Never mind dubious police shootings, the amount of times I've seen people cheer for law enforcement assaulting protestors is disturbing.
Obviously, justified and unjustified uses of force exist. The problem, which I am trying to get across, is that a lot of people subscribe to the Tango and Cash Theory of Criminal Justice. Their concept of what constitutes acceptable/justified use of force includes a great of deal of unambiguous police brutality, they tend to have a negative view of civil liberties, and they are willing to cut LE a ton of slack when they cross the already generous line as long as the victims fit into a category of acceptable targets. Attendantly, criticizing the conduct of law enforcement is often construed as being pro-crime.
I suspect what you're trying to hint at here is that the perpetrators were also black, but a) that didn't stop people from protesting b) you're understating the scope of the reaction. It's pretty clear that people who care about reducing police violence did care about it. It is somewhat plausible that people who would ordinarily defend cops to the hilt passed on the issue because they were black, although I think (a la Daniel Shaver) it is more likely because the incident was so clear cut and indefensible that there was nothing to argue about. If the cops pull a guy out of out of his car and throw him to the ground and rough him up a bit, T&C Theorists might say "well, he should've been more compliant and it's not a big deal if the cops knock a suspect around a bit anyway". CJRers say "that's appalling", and we're off to the races. If they pull him out of the car, throw him to the ground, and then beat him to death, there's nothing to argue about.
I don't actually think that it is. Excusing (and frequently endorsing) police brutality as a matter of regular practice because you have little regard for their victims' rights or welfare is significantly worse than dancing on a metaphorical grave. One is indecorous. The other contributes to perpetuating unjustified violence (and, it bears repeating, detracts from public safety).
Am I reading you correctly, that you're implying celebrating an assassination of a nonviolent activist doesn't "[contribute] to perpetuating unjustified violence" or "[detract] from public safety"? Even in a causal sense, rather than a criminal responsibility sense?
Because, well, that seems obviously untrue, insofar as the elasticity of terrorist attacks with respect to celebration of terrorist attacks sure seems like it should be positive, and "shooting people for their political views" seems pretty damned unjustified outside a literal war.
I think the marginal impact of post-mortem rudeness about a guy who was murdered by a lone wolf terrorist on future acts of terrorism is functionally, and in practice completely swamped by other effects arising from the act (e.g. I think the use of Kirk's assassination as a pretext for a crackdown is orders of magnitude more likely to produce further violence).
This would probably bear credibility wrt to Mangione, who attracted significant direct praise for his actions. The closest Robinson got was a lot of people saying "good riddance" about his victim. But in either case (as with lone wolf terrorism more general), you were looking at strong internal motives, not seeking adulation or other social factors.
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The thing about holding people accountable you actually have to hold them accountable for the stuff they did, and not the stuff they didn't. Complaining that defending them when they perhaps did not do wrong is "undermining efforts to hold them accountable" is bad faith.
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