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Comment by DrJones1098 | Hacker News Reader

Are you being serious?

In Mexico the narco terrorists pulled innocent people off of a bus and made them pit fight to the death for their amusement.

http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Mexican-crook...

In the middle ages they would impale you on a spike so that you died slowly over days.

In Rwanda one tribe butchered 5 million people of another tribe with machetes.

An that's just examples I can think of off the top of my head.

And you have trouble believing that a few cops wouldn't let a mother comfort her child?

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You do realize you're comparing the present day United States law enforcement with Rwandean tribes, Mexican narco-terrorists and the middle ages?

Are you blind?

Until recently America had child labor and would lynch black people. A FEDERAL judge in my hometown of New Orleans is famous for saying "We like to try our niggers before we hang them".

Human nature is human nature.

We live in a 'veneer' of civilization.

Underneath are still the same old animal instincts honed over millions of years of evolution.

Don't ever forget that. Or forget it at your peril.

A society like the one you describe should not have nuclear weapons. Now I'm afraid that if it weren't for the MAD (mutual assured destruction) US would have been much more genocidal.

Oh, we probably would have invaded/nuked the Soviet Union. It's not like MAD stopped us from sowing destruction and chaos around the globe, either. It just made us fight proxy wars instead of real ones with other nuclear powers.

> You do realize you're comparing the present day United States law enforcement with Rwandean tribes, Mexican narco-terrorists and the middle ages?

Yes, they are all members of the same species. "Humanity" is a thin veneer over the top of a very selfish, very violent animal.

It's kind of sad to realize that modern day police are comparable (at least in terms of inhumanity) to middle age torture.

Not really, he was saying people have been and continue to be capable of terrible things.

United States law enforcement included, as described in the article.

People separated by a few thousand miles or a few hundred years aren't all that different.

It's become very popular to compare the United States to undeveloped countries and countries in civil war, then declare everything is fine because, comparatively, it looks OK.

It's a very, very sad state of affairs when you have to compare a developed country to undeveloped ones.

I think what he's trying to say is that all those things seem so surreal. We believe them, but reading the stories feels like you're reading something out of a movie. For people living in normal circumstances it's hard to imagine that some people are so cruel.

Exactly. I always read these stories and think... Is this the onion? Am I reading comedy?

For example, there was a story where a school aged child was suspended for using his hand as a gun and aiming it at other children. I just couldn't comprehend the idea that a principal would think that action justified suspending a child. Perhaps a detention and a stern warning, maybe.

I want to believe that journalists will leave out part of the stories that explains the harsh actions, that makes you say "Ok, I can understand why the principal did that", but when more and more of these stories are published, it becomes harder to believe.

You are providing examples of aggressors, not protectors.

Every police officer on active duty right now begin their career with the idea they are to protect their citizens. This doesn't seem like the case in the original article. To me it sounds like people that have lost the intent of their job.

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