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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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