It's surreal to me how little political or public support there is for ending these kinds of egregious government overreaches.
I.e. screw slightly fewer people so public forgets about it but law enforcement gets to keep screwing people. They'll never get rid of it completely.
If the progressive Democrats could take over the party and control it then I'd agree with you about a), but effectively what the Democrats can do is controlled by Krysten Sinema, not the progressive wing.
And both Trump and the progressive wing of the Democrats shows how untenable the current situation is, and how insufficient the Democratic party has been.
If you start to view the Democratic party (aside from the progressive insurgents) as being bought for by large corporations, and then understand that all the failings and excuses of the Democratic party are really just delivering to the customer what they want, it all makes a lot more sense.
And when it comes to the failings of the Democratic party -- like Krysten Sinema -- the trick is to stop going "oh if only she wasn't in the way we could have fixed everything, we have failed due to this externality" to realize that she's playing the role that the people who have bought the Democratic party want her to play and she's a feature, not a bug. And there's always been an excuse like that for the past 30 years.
Hopefully the progressives do eventually succeed or else we're likely to get some actually competent fascist on the right wing.
People who've never carried a sum of cash on their person are often terrified of the prospect and assume everyone is as frighted of as they are.
I used to walk cash from a retail store safe to the bank as part of the morning routine. I've had so many lectures about why I should have never done it. I should have forgone my paid leisurely stroll and "just" arranged an armored truck. Or I should have quit over principal, like it was some sort of uniquely risky job compared to all the risky jobs out there and no owner should ever put on an employee. It wasn't even that much money. One day's worth of cash transactions from a small store in the age of credit cards.
The real risk in ghat endeavor was the manager convincing me to split the cash and run off with it…
1. If there was some civil asset forfeiture, the victim must've done something wrong because cops certainly can't be wrong.
2. If you've committed even a minor, non violent, crime, it doesn't matter how harsh the penalty is, you deserve it.
3. A majority of voters don't see themselves as criminals and aren't hassled by cops like some segments of the population are. They think this will never affect them, so they pay it little mind - until the day it does affect them.
The police are powerful though, and proceeds from this don't seem to terribly well accounted for in every PD. We know the feds and the local prosecutors get their cut, but after that... They are going to throw everything they can at keeping this gravy train alive.
Though the Democrats would probably come up with some sophisticated explanation why this particular case does not fall under BLM.
Remember that Biden is the guy who pushed the Clipper Chip.