Calling yourself the “thin blue line” like a reference to police really doesn’t seem like a way to have an enduring community. Police don’t serve the community; I guess they think in the same way then.
>The thin blue line U.S. flag has been banned by some police departments in the United States for its associations with ideologies described as "undemocratic, racist, and bigoted."
>According to a 2018 law review article, "thin blue line" also refers to an unwritten code of silence used to cover up police misconduct, also known as the blue wall of silence, a term dating back to 1978
We still let people use the Swastika if they had a harmless tradition of using it beforetime. But if anybody new uses it, we assume it's because of the murder.
I don't know how Tso was using it and don't care nor have any reason to defend him, don't mistake me.
You mean its popularisation and heavy use by William Henry Parker III, Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department (from 1950 to 1966)?
He very much used it in a loaded manner to portray police as bastions of good and the last defence against "the criminal element".
From his wikipedia page:
Parker himself was known for his "unambiguous racism".
Do you think that Rowan Atkinson was dogwhistling about undemocratic, racist, bigoted police violence when he named his police sitcom "The Thin Blue Line" or do you think perhaps your dislike of the police has led to you associating negative attributes with anyone that happens to use any phrase related to the police?
Where I am from, the police is a respected, largely unarmed institution. Imperfect, as all institutions are. American left-political dislike of law enforcement isn't universal and most people don't have instant negative mental associations with everything police-related...
No, but Ben Elton certainly was when he created and wrote it, even before hiring Atkinson to star in it . . .
When I last spoke to him Elton didn't view the entire UK Police force with disdain but he absolutely felt it was riddled with clusters of bigoted and violent police. You can see that in his other works such as the The Young Ones and various novels.
are you? what for?
> but have you actually seen the program?
Yes.
> There isn't a hint of any of thise feelings.
It comes some 15 years after his angriest socialist days .. and it's a well crafted comedy played for laughs. You'll recall, I trust, that it mocks the police pretty heavily.
Detective Inspector Derek Grim isn't a lovable pussycat.
Have you seen it? Did you read the credits? What made you think Rowan created the show?
>far-right authoritarianism
Get a grip. Even if it were a reference to what you say it is, that has nothing to do with the "far right". It is stock standard centre-right (and centre-left for that matter) position in the US to support the police in principle (if not, obviously, in every action theyve ever taken). The "defund the police" types are a minority of a minority.
[0] how do you think police get so biased against everyone else to begin with? they're effectively dealing with the shittiest rungs of society on repeat, so they form a pattern and end up applying it to everyone they meet
So yes, to make it concrete and cut past the bullshit euphemisms, sometimes the police will shoot an "unarmed" black man. Sometimes, very rarely, the so-called "unarmed" person not only doesn't have a gun but doesn't pose a real threat to the life or limb of another person. That sucks. But we cannot get rid of those "type I errors" without curtailing the use of force in a way that produces more "type II errors" in the sense that the police don't use force in a scenario where they should have, and someone gets hurt unnecessarily by someone that should have been disarmed or killed by a policeman earlier.
That is in no sense a defence of those extremely rare cases where a policeman just murders someone and there is no justification or excuse.
It is not unreasonable for them to point out that if they are held to an impossible standard where they get blamed if they don't perfectly protect the public but they also get blamed if they ever have to make a split second decision with limited information, choose to use force, and it turns out not to have been necessary, that that impossible standard is not fair.
None of that has anything to do with "neofascism" or "authoritarianism", which are simply bogeymen invented by the left.
Whom do they serve?
Within capitalist societies police protect the interests of the state, which itself exists to serve and benefit the capitalist class. Police "maintain order" to ensure the proletariat continues to submit to the state and participate in the capitalist machine, and they commit violence against anyone who does otherwise.
In fact, don't even sleep inside your own home!