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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

We are in the third scenario: institutions are flawed like everything humans do and would need continuous criticism and fixing, but at the same time they are being targeted by partisan propaganda which target them not for their actual flaws (for which you need to understand how they operate) but make things up in a grotesque but effective way (Yes I'm talking about Fox News and a big part of the GOP since Trump, they're not the sole culprits of that, but definitely the worse because they are the most mainsteam).

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"Defund the police" is a large attack on an institution that's not coming from the GOP. It's unfortunate that people immediately blame the other side in a knee-jerk reaction.

"defund the police" wasn't a call to get rid of the police or cut their funding in a vacuum, but instead to spend less on police while spending that money on social services that would handle many of mental health and domestic issues that police are called to but ill-equiped to handle.

It was a terrible/name slogan.

I don't think it is just a marketing problem. Lots of evidence to conclude that as a policy initiative it is flawed and detrimental to the communities that adopt that approach.

Nuance is not something that exists in most of the conservative universe.

Not to defend the conservatives in any way, but nuance is a scarce good when discussing about politics with most people, no matter their political orientation.

I think you missed the part where the parent post said (emphasis mine):

”Yes I'm talking about Fox News and a big part of the GOP since Trump, they're not the sole culprits of that, but definitely the worse because they are the most mainsteam”

And institutions often have multiple goals for which they are more or less capable/flawed. And not all goals are equal: some things are intrinsically hard and we should expect failures that don’t undermine either the goal or the institution.

Institutions are in many cases just names for necessary functions: if you got rid of the institution then you would need to recreate something like it with a different name (i.e., if you abolish the police/irs you still need people to enforce laws, collect taxes).

Abolish is a stronger claim than reform therefore it requires much more evidence, however, reform is apparently less sexy in our current cultural context. It seems the default view for any problem (and there will be problems) is abolish.

> not for their actual flaws (for which you need to understand how they operate)...

People who say that go to Washington then vote to start new wars. Being a well known member of the military industrial complex works is not a selling point. There may be a need to understand the system, but the consequences of America's forever wars are getting so disastrous that smashing things is starting to look like a sensible option. The financial burden of the ongoing death and destruction is starting to bleed the US out soviet-style.

"Well, he lied. He got us into the war with lies" may not be the whole truth, but it is a lot closer to useful than the people who want tweaks around the edges to the US foreign policy.

Real life isn't like a simplified story. No one's 100% good or evil, nor entirely perfect of imperfect. That's the third option, somewhere in the middle / "well, it's complicated".

Government is particularly bad as inherently if an exception to a rule is required for society to function well that's where it has to happen.

An active process to strive to be better and to fix problems, constant vigilance, is the best stance for a high quality organization. To strive for that (reasonable) perfection.

So, you choose option 1, but decided to call it option 3…

I don't think his comment implied that all institutions are capable and trustworthy which option 1 did.

Don't you see the difference between:

> 1. The institutions are tremendously capable and trustworthy

And this:

> institutions are flawed like everything humans do and would need continuous criticism and fixing

"They are not perfect, but doing as well as you might expect given the difficult job they have" is basically option 1, in that it doesn't prescribe radical changes.

You write this sentence inside quotes, but that's not a quote, I never said that.

I've never said that they do poorly because their job is hard. I said that they are flawed because all humans endevor is, and need to be actively criticized and fixed. Even though they will nevers be perfect no matter what, that doesn't mean we shouldn't work on it.

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