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Comment by wonderwonder | Hacker News Reader

This is what has always amazed me about the political party which are very much supposed to be for smaller government yet it whole heartedly supports the police in almost every instance. The police are a militia with almost complete power over life and death and very limited oversight. They can literally kill you for any reason and 9 times out of 10, that's it, case shut. We investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong. I would think the party of less government control would be all for more police oversight and a reduction of police power. Instead they fly 'thin blue line' flags and campaign on 'back the blue'. I really don't get it. I don't state this to attack that political group, I just very much don't understand.

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The Right is really about maintaining existing power structures, meaning property, businesses, and religion. The police oppose all of the things that would challenge those, including both petty crime, and non violent protests alike. Therefore, the police and the Right agree on most issues and on the response. Naturally if the police overreach in their authority, it is very likely to be ignored or given the benefit of all doubt.

That's such a simple notion yet I was in my 30's when I read an article (wish I could find it but it wasn't necessarily unique) that basically said "the most fundamental definition of conservative is desire to keep status quo; the most fundamental definition of progressive is to change status quo". This goes a long way to explain both the motivations and the behaviour, but also why/how many seemingly disparate groups come together under these large Right/Conservative/Republican vs Left/Liberal/Democrat banners.

It also explained to me why in most countries I've been to, the "Right" comes together and unites whereas "Left/Liberals/Progressives" have multitude of semi-in-fighting parties: "Stay the same" is more universal than "Change!" (change to what ? )

This made sense up until Trumpism. Now, it can no longer be said that the red team is "conservative" in the actual sense of the word, despite ongoing usage of the label. While the indignant rabble rousing has been there for decades (eg Rush Limbaugh), moving it onto the main stage and trying to do things like discredit and disrupt the election process (regardless of its validity!) is about as anti-conservative as you can get. The best explanation I've come up with is that they were conservative, then they got angry because things changed anyway, and now they want to disrupt society so that their prescriptions can make sense again.

(spoken as a libertarian who has no love for the system and would love to disrupt it, but not like that. sheesh)

This becomes interesting in post-communist countries. Trying to keep the communist status quo... is that right or left? From your perspective right (and I believe you make a good point), but they will identify as left, and their opponents will identify as right.

Indeed, in postcommunist nations you are more likely to see a division between left-leaning traditionalist conservatives and right-leaning progressives. This was much more obvious decades ago. As time went on, left and right sort of lost meaning. Right now in Poland, Hungary and Romania, there is a resurgence of right-leaning to right-extremist conservatives.

I wonder if this is because right-leaning is a more natural fit for conservativism?

> This is what has always amazed me about the political party which are very much supposed to be for smaller government yet it whole heartedly supports the police in almost every instance.

That's because the Republican ideology is actually not about small government. If you trace their ideology's history, you'll find it's about limiting the government's ability to protect the most vulnerable so as to create an environment that's ripe for exploitation by existing wealth holders. Every Republican political stance is either in service to this greater goal or propaganda stating that the US is exceptional (and you should feel good about the status quo as a result!).

> I really don't get it. I don't state this to attack that political group, I just very much don't understand.

"Are you the party that believes in the right to bear arms because you're distrustful of all authority and what if we need to overthrow the government someday? Or do you believe that cops are civil servants and we should trust their version of events whenever they shoot a black man for looking like he might have a gun?"[0]

[0]The Card Says Moops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4&list=PLJA_jUddXv...

I think this quote identifies it all and summarizes quite well.

Frank Wilhoit: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

[1] https://twitter.com/heerjeet/status/1002266261529690112?lang...

First of all, why do so many feel the need to polarize everything and turn it into a a partisan battle? We need less of this not more!

Second, police are local. Generally conservative opposition is to large federal government. This is a purely subjective take, I'm not taking sides.

Neither is it helpful to pretend that there isn't a clear political divide in support for the police.

So far I'm not convinced there is other than the one manufactured in the media. Far left attempts at revamping police have largely failed from what I have seen (ex. Minneapolis, which is a rather left leaning city). But I'd love to see actual evidence to the contrary. As in cases where police defunding/change has actually been voted in/implemented in the U.S.

Defund the police is a loser of a political campaign and really does not make sense. Democrats are targeting the far left with that and losing the middle. What makes sense is reducing the power of police unions to essentially negotiate police powers and an increase of independent police oversight and use of force investigations. Mandate body cameras, and force them to release them promptly via public information requests, no exceptions. Get rid of qualified immunity.

Edit: With that said I am pro police and think they perform a vital role in society. They do a job very few people want to and deal with the worst of us. I just don't want them to have immunity from the very laws they are supposed to enforce.

"Defund the police" is a far-left position that people tried (and failed) to get Democrats as a whole to accept. I find it weird that people keep getting the cause-and-effect there backwards.

Leftist ideas don't get very far in US politics because our "left" party is pretty centrist. Every time something "socialist" gets passed (like the ACA), it's super watered-down by folks from both parties and often stripped of key provisions (as is the case with the ACA) that made it at least somewhat workable.

If anywhere did defund the police, aside from police tactics to prevent that (see my other post in this conversation), it would only work if the social services were stepped-up to work toward crime-prevention (instead of crime-punishment, which is what police do), which isn't generally talked about in conjunction with defunding the police because "defund the police and replace it with a not-racist crime-prevention strategy involving community and social engagement and support" doesn't roll of the tongue.

Did the Heritage Foundation Invent ObamaCare?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/did-the-heritage-foundati_b_5...

That's interesting, but what does it have to do with what I commented above? That comment got a few downvotes, and I don't really understand the connection between what I said and this article, but that usually means I'm not understanding something.

If you could clarify, I'd really appreciate that.

I don’t think there’s a meaningful divide in “support for the police.”

Maybe in pro police stickers and social media posts, but if you look at legislation and policy I think there’s clear support of police from the current party in power as well as the previous.

There's absolutely a meaningful divide along party-political lines on confidence in the police and belief that they are doing a good job in protecting the population from crime.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/13/republicans...

I think the divide is PR to shepherd people into the Democratic party https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-squad-enables-pelosis-m...

In voters, but not in their political representatives, who are pretty unanimous.

James Carville said, on PBS News Hour, that defunding the police was a losing strategy, which effectively told the voters where the establishment (even the left-leaning establishment) stands.

US politics are conservative. The "left" is middling-at-best.

There's also the concern of how police react to the "defund" movement. There have been a ton of accusations that the police slow down on purpose when their budgets get threatened because an increase in visible "crime" (in quotes because I don't think homelessness should be criminalized, but seems to be the underlying factor of a lot of what gets called crime near where I live) gets all sorts of people to call for an increase in funding.

What I meant is that both parties fund the police so it seems like pew polls don’t seem to affect policy much.

Biden literally pushed crime bills way back when. And I don’t have any hope that the democrats will pass any police reform given they control Congress and the executive. There’s such easy reform too that could be done by executive order like stopping police from purchasing military equipment or linking funding to reporting police violence stats.

It isn't helpful to pretend that the LAPD and NYPD are somehow the fault of conservatives. The fact is the largest police forces which receive the most criticism are mostly free of conservative input into how they are ran.

You should probably look up the people in charge of the police unions in those cities (Chicago too) before making that statement.

Okay, conservatives control the unions. That's what you're going with? And also the unions are more powerful than the legislature.

Alternative hypothesis. The executive and legislative branches of government in these areas have completely screwed up law enforcement over the last few years but successfully ran a scapegoat campaign to blame the police.

The unions are absolutely more powerful than the executive. That's true of basically every government union. Teacher, cops, road workers, etc. Not just functionally, but politically.

Your hypothesis would have to be based on some type of facts. HOW did those branches screw up policing? What policies did they enact that changed the shape of policing in their cities, and how did those changes "screw things up".

Keeping in mind that crime rates, even today, are at historic lows.

Conservatives control those police departments even though conservatives have effectively no power over the civilian government in those cities. Just look at the outcomes of union leadership elections. The difficulty of effective civilian oversight over police departments is basically the root cause of all policing problems in America.

Large cities would probably be well-served by copying the US constitution's solution to this problem by making the Mayor also the Chief of Police (or something similar). After all, NYC/LA are larger than the US was in 1776, and, in terms of size, those PDs are the same order of magnitude as the Continental Army.

> Large cities would probably be well-served by copying the US constitution's solution to this problem by making the Mayor also the Chief of Police (or something similar). After all, NYC/LA are larger than the US was in 1776, and, in terms of size, those PDs are the same order of magnitude as the Continental Army.

An interesting approach that I haven't come across before. Do you know of any legal/constitutional/poli-sci analyses of this solution for cities or greater-metropolitan-areas?

What do you even mean by control? The legislature makes the laws the and the mayor often appoints the police commissioner. Just because the job often appeals to conservatives doesn't mean they get to set policy, law, and not get fired if they piss off the mayor or city government.

If you think city government "runs" the police forces in large cities, you may not be paying full attention. I invite you to look at what happened when, in late 2014, Bill de Blasio went on the record with the observation that he told his biracial son to be careful around the police.

Two police officers were killed (in completely unrelated circumstances) shortly afterwards, and the NYPD patrolman's union representative declared that the mayor "had blood on his hands". Subsequently, police officers at the funeral turned their back to the mayor and a massive bout of the "blue flu" affected the city, with arrests down 90% vs the previous year over the holiday period and into the new year.

Police unions also donate millions of dollars to state political candidates in order to diffuse oversight responsibilities of the NYPD.

Side Note: Both chambers of NY State government as well as the Governorship were in Democratic hands then.

I don't recall the exact dates those events took place but the New York state senate was not in democratic hands in 2014. Republicans won the majority in the 2014 general election. Prior to that, the IDC worked with the republicans and that coalition had control.

Even if democrats had been in control at the time what difference would that make? The GP was pointing out the police union and NYPD actively being against the people in civilian oversight roles.

Conservatives control the unions. Got it. Totally believable.

There are three major police unions in New York City. The Police Benevolent Association (which represents line officers), the Detectives' Endowment Association (detectives) and the Sergeants Benevolent Association (supervisory officers).

In 2020, the leader of the New York City Police Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, endorsed Trump in the presidential election, and appeared at the Republic National Convention to support him.

The Sergeants Benevolent Association also endorsed Trump; their leader at the time, Ed Mullins, appeared in an interview on Fox News with a QAnon mug, but has since left the position after his home was raided by the FBI. Prior to that, he was docked vacation time after he tweeted a screenshot of confidential police records concerning the mayor's daughter.

The Detectives' Endowment Association endorsed ... please attempt to suppress your surprise ... Trump as well.

In short: if your perspective is that police unions are run by liberals simply because they're unions, you are not paying attention to the facts.

Not really, support for reducing police is actually quite small among both liberals and conservatives. Only 25% of liberals want to reduce police in the US [1]. 34% want more police and 40% don't want either more or less.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-sha...

Pretty much both left and right support the police. Only some extremists don't. All those cities that defunded in the police in enthusiasm are busy refunding the police today.

What have I polarized? If one group is openly for more police regulation and one is not, then its already politicized. Calling for less polarization does not fix this? Your point is very much a strawman.

Their branding is all about being the protectors of individual freedom. Sure, they want government power concentrated toward the local end of the spectrum, but they also—say—they want less government power in general.

Individual freedom is championed more by libertarians than by Republicans as a whole, especially on matters such as policing, criminal justice, recreational drugs, immigration, and LGBT issues. The Libertarian Party does not have a strong presence in the two-party dominated U.S., so many libertarians in the U.S. subscribe to a major party (Republican or Democratic) that emphasizes the libertarian positions they are most interested in, at the cost of opposing other libertarian positions they consider a lower priority. Far from ideal, but some believe it is the best option in the short term until this two-party system evolves into something better.

The right (and the left to an only _slightly_ less degree) represent the elite in this country. The elite use the right and the left for several purposes.

The right exist to cut their taxes, extract subsidies, maintain global military dominance, and control the population. They use jingoism, religious zeal, and race/gender wedge issues to form their voting bloc. Elites have an ironclad hold over the hierarchical Republican party. <-- this is where the support of the police comes in.

The left exist to maintain the illusion of a functioning free democracy, to enact necessary reforms as tolerated by the right, to extract subsidies, to impose market entry barrier regulation, and to keep the economy upright. Elites have a strong control over the Democratic party, and tolerate their lack of control over the rest of it for the "illusion of a functioning free democracy" reasons, etc.

This is the reason that the elections are so close. Elites control the elections with campaign finance, and will only pay the exhorbitant costs of elections to the degree that they can maintain control: ideally with a president + 1 of the congressional halls (they own the supreme court already), but if they don't have the president they want, they have enough flunkies on the democratic "center" to maintain status quo until they have full control, and get what they need passed.

The elites only pay for 51% victories. So all the elections are 50% +/- one point.

I abhor calling these people "elites", it is a term of political science and economics, from two areas of study completely beholden to sucking the teats of the rich for status and approval.

You're referring to the administrators of the Democratic and Republican parties as the "left" and the "right." It's better to be specific when we talk about these things, because they're far less philosophical than material. This is about two tiny private clubs; US parties don't even have memberships, they have donors, employees, volunteers, and candidates who can apply to run in party internal elections and to associate themselves with the party in general elections.

Big if true.

My fav. Milton Friedman often use to say that "Democracy is not about winning 51% of votes, it is about finding 5% of people who say they will vote for you if you take up their pet issue and they do not care how you vote on other issues. Then you selected another 5% of people with some other pet issue and so on. Together it should come to 51%".

What you are describing however is the opposite of this. People do not care how horrible a policy being proposed is, if it does not impact them or their loved ones. The conservatives who are flying "thin blue line" are the same people who are claiming that Jan 6 capitol riots were actually orchestrated by FBI and other branches of law enforcements. Conservative love for cops is not based on principles but it is more of a trick to "own the libs". Sooner or later the cops are going to come for the conservatives, for example Biden sending FBI after parents of schoolchildren will eventually be a template for states and cities to target conservatives of different stripes and you will quickly see those "thin blue line" flags going down.

Note how people who smoke marijuana are "addicts" and "junkies" who should be thrown in a pit as per many conservatives even though most of these "junkies" are productive members of society. But when it comes to opioid crisis they claim it is a "health crisis" for which "big pharma" must be held accountable. No one calls the addicts "junkies" or insists they should be sent to jail even though some of them are addicted to a point where they simply can not function normally.

> This is what has always amazed me about the political party which are very much supposed to be for smaller government yet it whole heartedly supports the police in almost every instance.

There's a world of difference between what someone says and what someone does.

AKA: Never listen to what a politician says, only pay attention to what they do.

> I would think the party of less government control would be all for more police oversight and a reduction of police power. Instead they fly 'thin blue line' flags and campaign on 'back the blue'. I really don't get it.

You only won't get it if you listen to what they say. If you just look at the voting record and ignore anything non-binding you'll see pretty quickly that this is a party of Big Government and Thought Control (via Doublespeak).

What they say is finely tailored to their voting base, which is largely ignorant of what they actually do.

They're not actually for that, it's just rhetoric for their followers. What the Republicans are actually for is authoritarian state power, a society entirely for the wealthy and ethno-christian values.

"small govt" is just a talking point used to justify cutting social spending and bailouts for wealthy donors.

The right has plenty of people who see police as evil agents of the state the same way there's a sub group on the left who see the police as evil protectors of capital.

It's an interesting lesson in HN demographics that pretty much all the replies to your comment are examples of out-group homogeneity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity

It is interesting and I have not seen these terms before. Its not really surprising though as the majority of tech workers tend to lean left.

The Republican party stands for one thing and one thing only: power. Nothing else matters.

People may like the idea of small government, but that's probably the top issue of only a handful of Connor Roy types and college libertarians, and tangible issues like "property values" or "safety" probably matter a lot more to real people, and that cuts across party lines. For example, look at the racial segregation of every city in the US [0]. Nearly every city solidly votes for Democratic candidates (I personally am solidly liberal), but our cities are still brutally segregated. There are systemic reasons for this (namely in the Jim Crow era, the govt's FHA started a program that underwrote home loans and its criteria explicitly penalized areas where Black people lived, attended schools, or could easily access [1], and by backing home loans only to white people, the consistent, dramatic increase in home values created a massive racial wealth gap [2] that preserves segregation and trapped millions of Black Americans into clusters that could then be denied equal resources) and the side effects of asymmetrically depriving millions of people of many good choices is that a disproportionately large of that subpopulation (yet still extremely small percent of the entire subpopulation) will make bad choices (eg to rob or engage in violent crime). Hence the divergence between a cities political values on a national level and on a local level (ie quiet acceptance of segregation and the corresponding enforcement mechanisms).

This isn't to say Dems are worse than Republicans; a far larger percent of Republicans are explicitly opposed to even hearing about these grotesque racial injustices, let alone attempting to correct these injustices.

TL,DR: people don't form their beliefs from grand principles; we've evolved to pick positions that help us satisfy needs (ie from Maslow's hierarchy of needs). If we want less police brutality, we should endure the cost needed to repair the injustices of the past, rather than what we are doing (ie perpetuating that injustice).

[0] https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2021/us/census-race-ethnicit...

[1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Feder...

[2] https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/weal...

It’s because republicans want the police to uphold their values (subjugate minorities, maintain their power etc.) which the crooked cops currently do. If the cops as a general monolith actually upheld the law and treated everyone equally, republicans would turn on them in an instant.

If police can't do their job, which is restrain criminals and protect the general public, because they're hamstrung by ticky-tacky legalisms at every turn then they... won't do their job.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homi...

Good thing we’ve removed some of those ticky-tacky legalisms in the form of qualified immunity and civil asset forfeiture.

preventing homicides was never their job.

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