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Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Poll after poll shows that the military is the most respected institution in American life. Crucially for this conversation, it has an excellent esprit de corp. The kind of self-pity that we now see among the police is something that would not be tolerated for even 5 minutes in the military. So it is an excellent model when we consider how to reform the police.

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> Poll after poll shows that the military is the most respected institution in American life.

Not even the military is safe anymore:

>Trust in the military is dropping significantly, new survey suggests

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/03...

While the numbers might bounce around from year to year, we should look at the long-term trend, which is that the military has been the most trusted institution in the USA at least since 1992:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/06/29/the-in...

> Crucially for this conversation, it has an excellent esprit de corp.

There have been plenty of scandals in the USA military that have sullied its reputation. "Poll after poll" is just anecdotal, and not born out in practice.

> So it is an excellent model when we consider how to reform the police.

Militarizing the police is not the answer. Imagine if the police acted like those MPs at Abu Ghraib.

I don't think the parent is suggesting the police be militarized; rather that they could look to the US military's experience in combatting organizational racism and improving both professionalism and cohesion.

The US military has had its share of scandals but I have yet to see that degrade the normative US opinion of our "soldiers," namely that they do a hard job on our behalf and deserve respect and gratitude for that.

I don’t think soldiers have any kind of special reputation, at least among non southern urbanites. They do a job that they get paid for, some of them are good, a few are bad, etc… there is a swath of the country that holds that in high regard, especially in the south and in rural areas, but that isn’t normative in all areas.

While the numbers might bounce around from year to year, we should look at the long-term trend, which is that the military has been the most trusted institution in the USA at least since 1992:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/06/29/the-in...

Soldiers have a special reputation.

Imagine if the police acted with the military's ROE. I think I'd have seen a lot less civilians murdered by police in the past few years.

These are the ROE's that permits them to bomb a car with water bottles and kill 10 civilians without recourse?

Careful what you wish for there...

You should look up the ROE for a roadblock.

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