So, here's the problem with "standing up to the bullies", explorable with one question:
How did you feel about the shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge of officers?
How did you feel about the shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge of officers?
Ever heard of non-violent civil disobedience? It was popularized by a little known guy named Martin Luther King Jr. He got it from another guy who went by the name of Mahatma Gandhi.
To dispatch the examples of Gandhi and MLK--please ask yourselves how their civil disobedience would be handled in modern America. Ask yourselves how their messages would be mocked, subverted, and distorted with modern social media, even without state intervention. These are different times, my friends.
(Also, mentioning MLK while glossing over the credible threat of armed domestic terrorism posed by Malcom X, the Black Panthers, and many other factions at that time in American history is inaccurate--you miss a lot of the background political pressure brought to bear by people "standing up to bullies".)
The reason I asked the parent question was not to be ghoulish or edgy, and I mean that sincerely.
The fact of the matter is that the quaint notion of "standing up to the bullies" is completely out of date. You probably imagine telling some guard to fuck off, and when they return with a cop, what then?
You'd give the officer (who is probably of less-than-amazing intelligence, because of a court case years ago allowing PDs to discriminate on that) a lecture on the freedom of panorama, and they'd let you be? If not, then what?
If you don't resist, you hardly have "stood up to the bullies".
If you resist and lose--and remember, resisting can be anything as simple as bleeding on the officer's uniform when they decide to truncheon you--you will then be rewarded with the slow grinding gears of American "justice". At the very least, even if found innocent, you'll be out major court costs and time, while the bullies go about their business unimpeded.
If you resist and win--say, by beating the shit out of the bullies--then they'll summon additional forces until you are subdued. Subdued repeatedly. There may be an investigation later, but that'll be of academic interest to you while you're handcuffed to a hospital bed recuperating to be in good shape for your prison sentence.
So, again, bearing that escalation in mind, think about my earlier question--because that's the inevitable chain of actions that start with "standing up to the bullies".
And that's why when a poster points out that maybe standing up is just not a good idea, we shouldn't downvote them.
In reality all those court cases you hear about and investigations happen because a patron (opposing political party, deep pocketed advocacy group, millionaire/billionaire activist) has decided to help you for their own ends. There is no "police justice" hotline you call and if you think resisting arrest or arguing with the cops in public is going to make you some kind of HN/Reddit hero, then you'll be in a surprise when you end up on the local police blotter and later with an open/shut case conviction and unable to get anything but a mcJob.
Life isn't Judge Judy or Hollywood SJW movies. Unless you have significant backing from wealth and the media, you don't become successful against the justice system, regardless of how wronged you were.
> you resist and win--say, by beating the shit out of the bullies
These are not the only two outcomes of resisting, and that is not the only way to win.
I reject your false binary of "submit to anyone who might summon authority | murder policemen" as the only possible choices when faced with this scenario.
I've sketched out my logic and reasoning, please do the same.
Also, the false binary you presented is indeed false--because that's not what I wrote. My thesis is exactly that "standing up to the bullies" will lead to escalation of force in the short term which leads to violence and loss, and that failure to "stand up to the bullies" is achieved by doing anything other than continuing what you were doing when they told you to stop.
Please stop the bluster and explain this magical thinking that somehow lets us both "stand up to the bullies" without consequences of escalation.
In my other comments, I've acknowledged that standing up to bullies isn't free, and that some people may suffer more than others as a result due to how our society works.
Killing police officers is still murder, and it not being state-sponsored violence doesn't make it any less of a bullying tactic - if bullying is the right word to use for a horrific crime.
I don't think I can really make my case any clearer.
That may be so... history is written by the victors.
I do know this: the path to success for any minority movement is the path to becoming accepted by the majority.
A growing violent movement gives a virtually infinitely powerful state legal and moral justification for wiping you out.
A peaceful movement gives the state no justification for stamping it out with force. It must be challenged at an intellectual level.
Sure the current media environment is manipulative... but it's nowhere near as bad as it was in the past. Watch national news from the 60s, you'll see what I'm talking about. Also we have the internet now, every falsehood the media spreads is immediate debunked and it seems they know that.
The truth can't be suppressed forever. As MLK said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."
This is why I think non-violent resistance as a tactic is the best chance any movement has for success when normal legislative channels have failed.
Otherwise, though, I agree that for progress to be made a non-violent movement must be present. Being a violent movement doesn't really work unless you've got outside support against your state.
That said, and to speak to the implications you mention, it is my firm belief that while a violent movement is doomed to fail it still must exist for the non-violent movement to make progress.
If the choice is between listening to the vocal but peaceful minorities and ignoring them, the choice historically is to ignore them. Once the minority's voice is seen as a less-costly alternative to dealing with violence, the state tends to listen.
MLK had Malcolm X. The LGBTQ folks had the Stonewall Riots.
It's a bloody and inefficient way of making policy, but it seems to be the course of things.
I believe they can, furthermore I believe that the state is unable to ignore a majority non-violent movement. One example is the gay rights movement. Once critical mass is reached and culture is changed, politicians change their tune, and laws practically unwrite themselves.
In the case where a minority non-violent movement necessarily stays just that, then yes I think there is a valid tactical argument to be made in having a complementary movement.
Sure, but they are the only people (other than soldiers) endorsed explicitly by the state to commit acts of physical violence.
If you cannot see the issues with using the same standards in regards to them as to normal citizens, you do not understand human nature.
If police violence is the problem (and it is), then my violence isn't the solution. Worse, it removes me from any kind of moral high ground where I can try to help end police violence by trying to change police policy, training, or character. Instead, it leads me in the direction of civil war.
Is starting a civil war really your best answer to police violence? Or do you think "just kill a few and things will straighten out"?
I have not advocated for that position here, because like you I think that there are better ways of fixing the problem--policy, training, and recruitment.
That all said, I think we have to acknowledge that we can't use the same moral calculus for officers (read: agents of state violence) that we do for common citizens.
You even mention as much when you invoke "the moral high ground", because there is a qualitative difference between an act of violence committed by a citizen on their own (presumably limited to their own resources and defensible only by circumstance) and a one committed by an agent of the state (limited only by the resources allocated by the state and defensible by the blank check of "I'm a police officer").
For what it's worth, I don't have a strong alternative code to present at this time--I merely think that one is necessary.
One could make the argument that, for example, officers forfeit the right to appeal in the event of a complaint against them, that they should be imprisoned immediately if found doing wrong and executed publicly if found falsifying evidence. This heavy burden--especially if eagerly applied--would serve to help limit the number of people who merely want to be a thug with a badge.
And that's not a great plan for a number of reasons--consider the case where criminals just cry foul to remove officers from circulation. But we have to start thinking beyond the simple idea that an officer is in the same moral calculus as a citizen.
It's precisely to avoid civil war that change has to happen: when a private citizen commits murder, it is an isolated tragedy. When an agent of the state that does the same, it is cause to question the validity of that state. A lying citizen is not a sign of societal decay, but a lying officer or agent of the state is.
Criminals will try to game the system. I agree on that as well.
> A lying citizen is not a sign of societal decay, but a lying officer or agent of the state is.
A lying citizen is a sign of societal decay. A lying officer or agent of the state is a bigger sign.
The first step towards change is acknowledging you have a problem.
Attempting to pull that into this conversation isn't going to lead to anything except grief.
Is your question genuine, or are you trying to bait us into saying something that could be construed as an endorsement of murder?