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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   26622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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While I disagree on the object level towards ACAB, I have some sympathy towards people who dismiss all cops as being bastards as I have a similar attitude towards all mainstream journalists. The rationale for that attitude is that even if one journalist, multiple journalists or even a majority of them, are hardworking and try hard to report the truth, as a group my observation is that they are unwilling to push back against the large contingent of liars and frauds in their profession, and when outsiders push against them the wagons circle and end up pointing in a predictable direction, leading me to believe there is a tacit endorsement of the bad aspects. I can easily imagine someone making a similar argument against the police, that they are unwilling to truly clean up their profession in the eyes of the public, that there is a culture of silence and an anti-snitch mentality within the profession. As with journalists, they are performing a duty to society that is sacred and requires the population's absolute confidence so they cannot afford in-group loyalty when it clashes with their duty.

I guess one distinction could be that one could argue that cops are not always aware of specific actionable, denounceable action by bad apples in their group. I don't think journalists can use that argument.

I can easily imagine someone making a similar argument against the police, that they are unwilling to truly clean up their profession in the eyes of the public, that there is a culture of silence and an anti-snitch mentality within the profession.

I actually more-or-less still hold this position, it's just that resorting to the slogan does a very poor job of conveying the specific concern and assumes that every officer is equally and uniformly responsible.

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