Saying all cops are anything is exactly the same thing as saying all blacks are thieves, all Jews are greedy, or any of the other blanket statements that can never apply to any large group of people. It’s disgusting.
Comparing that to skin color or someone's ethnicity is absolutely ridiculous.
What technique are you using? Who was the good concentration camp guard?
Yeah, and every coal miner can just stop complaining about tough working conditions and decreasing number of jobs in their field, and instead learn how to code. It is that simple[0].
0. https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/47...
Binary positions like "every cop out there can just...not be a cop" are a form of false choice fallacy and ignore the reality of what this would actually entail.
"Just don't be a cop" is not a solution to the systemic problems, and introduces a whole new set of problems that I think most would argue are just as bad, and likely far worse.
Ultimately all of this distracts from real policy discussion.
Just because someone says you are a Christian because you were baptized or whatever doesn't make it so. Religion is just as much a choice as an occupation.
That is a bit tricky.
Religion is definitely a choice if you're enough willing to make a choice, but most people just keep their parent's religion. People just believe what they were taught as children.
I'm atheist from atheist country so I don't necessarily get it, but it seems to be that way - see ratios of Muslim and Christians in Saudi Arabia versus Europe, for example.
Then there's more tricky cases where religion and ethnicity are heavily correlated or tied in even stronger way (e.g. Jews).
Is that not a choice? Choosing atheism is arguably easier.
Hard disagree here. I didn't choose to be born to parents of a fundamental baptist cult. I didn't choose to be subjected to physical abuse in the name of that religion, or to be sent to seminars ingraining deeply harmful ideas about self and the roles of men/women. I didn't choose to spend my entire adult life in therapy unwinding the bizarre ideas that had been hammered into me as a kid.
Yes, you can "choose" to leave your religion behind, but many cannot choose to avoid the indoctrination, abuse and twisted mental models that can come from the experience.
I left my faith behind around age 18. 20 years later I'm still actively working on getting rid of the rest of the baggage.
I know that sounds idealistic... but what are the alternatives? - A "new" police? What should make this better on second try? - No Police? I cannot imagine what would happen with people - A police that plays within the rules? Now i extend my argument on law people involved. They also have many bad actors and again the only chance i see is to be a good actor.
I'd be delighted to hear alternatives.
Every cop, at least in the US, made the conscious decision to join a broken system where they would be rewarded for greed and corruption, and be allowed to dehumanize any group they decide they don't like. People who sign up to be cops who try to change any of this end up not being cops anymore, so the tautology holds true.
Bring up the FOP under RICO charges and prevent people with a history of violence and drug abuse from being put into positions of authority, and then we can re-evaluate the situation, but until then, police can not and should not be trusted.
This seems rather incompatible with:
> Every cop, at least in the US, made the conscious decision to join a broken system
If you believe the system is broken, and if you believe police are necessary at least in some form, how is extending your dislike to every cop not similar structurally to disliking people for the circumstances they were born into? (I'm not making a claim of equivalence in terms of the impact - racism is clearly worse - but of a similarly fallacious generalization).
In other words, if prospective cops could join a different system, they would, but no such system exists. Many join thinking they can influence/change the system, and I don't doubt that they try, but clearly this doesn't work well. This is not the same as joining a system for the purpose of benefiting from its rottenness.
Don't get me wrong: the system is clearly broken. But it seems deeply problematic to throw out all nuance and embrace a binary position here. Categorical statements like "joining automatically means you plan to dehumanize people you don't like and reap the rewards of corruption" does not withstand rational scrutiny.
True lawlessness is not less oppressive than the current system.
ACAB might be a bit hyperbolic, but the sentiment (that policing in the US is fundamentally broken) isn’t off base.
ACAB doesn't mean that your cop neighbor that raises puppies is a bastard, it means that the institution he works with and for is lacking any kind of oversight. And as other said, good luck on stopping being black. I don't think you can send in a resignation letter for that.
If you think that's true, you don't understand how racism works. People choose to be cops every day. It's irrelevant what black people choose.
I can definitely say all killers are rotten inside, and it's a blanket statement.