Minor typo to note: the University of Austin is a private institution founded in 2021 and accredited in 2023. Presumably you meant the University of Texas at Austin.
"colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism," writes Aimé Césaire, quotes here. 🙏🏻🍉📢
War and violence are human nature. Too long a peace and people forget. And get restless.
Oh, and the actual colonialism has been long inward - it’s called the social justice state. Welfare if you like.
The descendants of colonial administrations colonize their own countries.
As for the campus protests, that’s a put up gig job by the Deep State- Intel, DOJ, like BLM it has topcover. A nice gig job to pad out the resume on the way to professional activism, rather like… some people here…
These protesters at UCLA have shift change, of course.
You’re just doing this for money and the scent of power, whom you serve.
I'm right. Pretty much every law enforcement agency in Texas showed up to Uvalde. Border patrol, county sheriffs, Uvalde PD, and Texas state troopers (the ones who attacked UT Austin).
It's a good essay. My only criticism would be that I wouldn't criticise the police for the historical failings of your elite and educated political class, willing to sell entire communities down the river in order to get elected and never willing to admit a single collective mistake in the entire history of America. The Texas example of leadership cowardice was an outlier. The only thing which American police officers have proven recently, whether it be a refusal to engage in the type of proactive discretionary policing proven to be a vital element of Scottish Public Health Youth Reform policing, or the enforcement of unconstitutional lockdown measures proven, by Sweden (as the alternative), to be not only ineffective, but also catastrophically harmful in the long-term- is that most of America's one million strong Law Enforcement establishment are far more willing to risk their lives to protect public safety than they are to risk their pensions and the financial futures of their families.
It's not the police. It's your political, legal and media establishment. And why does your country lack the institutional wisdom to produce politicians who are able to establish the atmosphere of compromise and negotiation across the political divide which created a system in Scotland which not only used proactive policing as a measure to usher young dissolute and disillusioned men and teenage boys away from knife crime and gang violence and into healthy, productive and, above all, well-paid blue collar trades? Because compromise and concession- the desire to actually improve the world, stripping away the narrowing blinkers of prescribed ideological mentalities- doesn't sell with the voters. Or at least that's the presumption. In fact, it's that your two party corporate duopoly won't brook any opposition- whether it be Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Jill Stein, Marianne Williamson, Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Junior.
Only in America could a ridiculous figure like Donald Trump be elected. Why? Because your political class and permanent bureaucratic government won't tolerate the slightest popular dissent to their reign of inadequacy, ineptitude and occasional casual evil. Your police officers are the janitors of the catastrophic failure of public policy. Here in the UK, we've almost entirely eliminated racial disparities in educational attainment under exam conditions, whilst you guys squabble over whether charters or public are better. It wasn't politics that did it, but rather that our politicians were finally willing to realise that the improvement of those with little prospect was a moral imperative. It's culture, not politics that your country desperately needs. A culture of conciliation between opposing political ideologies more intent upon winning than achieving the promise of true greatness.
And yes- the transformation in education did require public investment, but mainly through an insistence that new teachers spend more time learning how to teach in a classroom, instead of learning unfalsifiable educational theories.
I disagree. It 100% is the police, as they are the enforcers of the political class you mention. Policing has roots in slave patrols and strike busting. They are, and always have been the foot soldiers of the government. You cannot detach them from the political elite.
That's a fiction. Modern policing in America is mainly based upon the British model, as is most policing around the world these days. I'm not denying your point- especially in the way that reconstruction was negated by the introduction of the first mass carceral prison systems.
However, there are three areas of concern in the American system of policing. First, the failure to adopt policing by consent in which the default setting to force or coercion is gentle persuasion, only escalating with an explanation for the results of non-compliance. Second, the institutional refusal to exercise discretion- to make a bust and leave it all for the courts to decide- in many American jurisdictions it's even a disciplinary or worse to exercise discretion and give the citizen a choice between the voluntary change in behaviour and the likelihood of an arrest. Policing discretion, despite the pitfalls of favouritism, is still a vital check and balance against the use of unjust force and coercion. Third, there is no ground-up feedback system for introducing radical reforms into the mix.
You have plenty of good reformers on hand. Peter Moskos with his Violence Reduction Project, for example. But nobody listens to them. What does America have to lose when the Scottish model proving that if you fund BOTH proactive reform-based policing and community resources you can actually achieve the halving of societal violence within a decade, whilst simultaneously keeping teenage boys and young men out of jail and putting them into gainful employment.
Here's the thing. On the point about following orders what you ascribe specifically to police officers is almost a human universal. Between 1% and 3% of the population is evil- either instrumentally or malignantly. The rest are broadly speaking good- but only in a very weak sense. They can be hacked and subverted by group dynamics and social pressures.
A rare few stand alone, literally. They've forsaken all forms of tribalism. But honestly, how many people do you know on the topic of Israel and Gaza who have managed to maintain humanitarian sympathy for BOTH the Israelis and Palestinians, whilst maintaining varying levels of condemnation for both Hamas and the Netanyahu government? How many people do you know have the personal strength to realise that in order to maintain a logical justification for the ability of the European farmers to engage in civic disruption to protest a government trying to take away their livelihoods one also has to offer the same form of rights to protest and disrupt caused by Just Stop Oil?
Morality is like gravity for most people- a weak force. It takes either an innate sense of civic libertarianism born on the playground through the willingness to fight older bullies, or a lifetime of being surrounded by good people and good reading material in order to be able to achieve true moral strength. Most people desperately want to be liked by the group. In one experiment only one person in thirteen will contradict a group who have been instructed by the researcher to lie about the number of claps heard.
As individuals people can be kind, nice, sublime in their generosity to others, but in groups people are just plain nasty. Unlike many of my conservative and libertarian friends, I don't think that their is a problem with collective action provided it's not backed by government force and coercion. Work to rules are generally more effective than strikes though- they can terrify employers, without damaging the interests of both capital and labour. They can even garner immense public support as well.
One of the best industrial actions was transport workers in Japan. They didn't decide to stop showing up to work or become surly towards customers. They simply let it be known that they wouldn't be checking for tickets and the non-payment of fares could be read as support for their cause. The industrial action was swiftly resolved in their favour. On the other hand, force and coercion can just as readily be deployed through the tyranny of others. Picket lines can be the tyranny of others.
With the level of force and coercion currently being deployed by government, the WEF, the NGOs and the rest of the Blob, I think we are necessarily heading towards the need to set up parallel societies of the type seen during the Solidarity movement.
Did you here they debanked Yanis Varoufakis over his support for Julian Assange? Imagine having all your accounts shut with no explanation. What's even more chilling is that in my region the only mention of it on Google is a YouTube clip. The Left laughed when it was Nigel Farage. When will people learn that if they can do it to a dissenter on the other side, they can do it to you!
Do you actually know any cops? I’m on fourth generation in my household and that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Elites favourite tactic right now is defunding and demonizing the police but hiring their own security. The problem with theories, especially those around colonialism, is that can’t stand up to what is actually happening in the real world. Case in point, the deluded, privileged losers rioting on college campuses for a foreign conflict they know nothing about.
Grew up around cops…….like brothers, fathers, grandmasters, aunts, nieces - people who sat at your table and tucked you in at night or neighbourhood pals? Let’s define defund, if you mean cut the police force entirely you would be correct. If you mean cut millions of dollars from budgets and also hire progressive DA’s with extremely dubious records on catch and release, there is loads of data from California, Oregon, Washington State. Vancouver in Canada also experienced budgetary limitations. DA actions and progressive legislation around theft, drugs, homelessness have made policing orders of magnitude more difficult. Pick any exclusive enclave in LA and they have private security in droves. I’m not playing the word game on defund. It’s sophomoric and silly and doesn’t address anything.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Baltimore and a dozen other cities have all also reduced police spending. Portland specifically cut $15 million from their police budget.
You literally have no idea what colour I am. For the record, defunding police hurts radicalized communities the most but facts don’t matter to ideologues. It’s no surprise that rich white people can afford private security but fuck you brown people if you can’t.
Is that adjusted for inflation? How does that compare on a per capita basis from 2020 to 2024. How does increasing population, especially through asylum seeking change the parameters by which public dollars must be spent to account for a bulge in new vulnerable people requiring services? Have you gone into black communities infested with gun and gang violence in Chicago and ask those people if they think the city should pull back on policing?
Not at all. If you are going to deal with numbers and data and be precise in your analysis of situations, a person interested in policy prescriptions will look at the complexity of the situation and not select numbers without giving a whiff for material conditions on the ground that make a measurable difference to what 5% actually means in the span of four years. If this is not your process, you’re ideological, not interested in truth seeking and society is full of that kind of mindset right now with the shitty outcomes to demonstrate that.
Minor typo to note: the University of Austin is a private institution founded in 2021 and accredited in 2023. Presumably you meant the University of Texas at Austin.
Oops! Thanks for catching that.
"colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism," writes Aimé Césaire, quotes here. 🙏🏻🍉📢
Shout it from the rooftops!
War and violence are human nature. Too long a peace and people forget. And get restless.
Oh, and the actual colonialism has been long inward - it’s called the social justice state. Welfare if you like.
The descendants of colonial administrations colonize their own countries.
As for the campus protests, that’s a put up gig job by the Deep State- Intel, DOJ, like BLM it has topcover. A nice gig job to pad out the resume on the way to professional activism, rather like… some people here…
These protesters at UCLA have shift change, of course.
You’re just doing this for money and the scent of power, whom you serve.
“At UT Austin, the very cops who sat idle while 17 children were murdered at Uvalde charged students without warning.”
Fuck sake. Seriously ? The”very cops..”? Uvalde is a 3.5 hour drive from Austin. Check your facts.
I'm right. Pretty much every law enforcement agency in Texas showed up to Uvalde. Border patrol, county sheriffs, Uvalde PD, and Texas state troopers (the ones who attacked UT Austin).
You ever risk your life for others, Joe?
Cops don't risk their lives. Pizza delivery drivers and bar tenders are more likely to be killed on the job than cops.
I’m taking that’s a NO, you don’t and haven’t, right? And won’t?
A man should not criticize others for the chances he won’t take.
Amen
Actually no, you are full of shit. Furthermore no one was attacked at UT. That’s just you misusing your words.
We are become that which we hate. Welcome to TexBanistan
It's a good essay. My only criticism would be that I wouldn't criticise the police for the historical failings of your elite and educated political class, willing to sell entire communities down the river in order to get elected and never willing to admit a single collective mistake in the entire history of America. The Texas example of leadership cowardice was an outlier. The only thing which American police officers have proven recently, whether it be a refusal to engage in the type of proactive discretionary policing proven to be a vital element of Scottish Public Health Youth Reform policing, or the enforcement of unconstitutional lockdown measures proven, by Sweden (as the alternative), to be not only ineffective, but also catastrophically harmful in the long-term- is that most of America's one million strong Law Enforcement establishment are far more willing to risk their lives to protect public safety than they are to risk their pensions and the financial futures of their families.
It's not the police. It's your political, legal and media establishment. And why does your country lack the institutional wisdom to produce politicians who are able to establish the atmosphere of compromise and negotiation across the political divide which created a system in Scotland which not only used proactive policing as a measure to usher young dissolute and disillusioned men and teenage boys away from knife crime and gang violence and into healthy, productive and, above all, well-paid blue collar trades? Because compromise and concession- the desire to actually improve the world, stripping away the narrowing blinkers of prescribed ideological mentalities- doesn't sell with the voters. Or at least that's the presumption. In fact, it's that your two party corporate duopoly won't brook any opposition- whether it be Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Jill Stein, Marianne Williamson, Tulsi Gabbard or RFK Junior.
Only in America could a ridiculous figure like Donald Trump be elected. Why? Because your political class and permanent bureaucratic government won't tolerate the slightest popular dissent to their reign of inadequacy, ineptitude and occasional casual evil. Your police officers are the janitors of the catastrophic failure of public policy. Here in the UK, we've almost entirely eliminated racial disparities in educational attainment under exam conditions, whilst you guys squabble over whether charters or public are better. It wasn't politics that did it, but rather that our politicians were finally willing to realise that the improvement of those with little prospect was a moral imperative. It's culture, not politics that your country desperately needs. A culture of conciliation between opposing political ideologies more intent upon winning than achieving the promise of true greatness.
And yes- the transformation in education did require public investment, but mainly through an insistence that new teachers spend more time learning how to teach in a classroom, instead of learning unfalsifiable educational theories.
I disagree. It 100% is the police, as they are the enforcers of the political class you mention. Policing has roots in slave patrols and strike busting. They are, and always have been the foot soldiers of the government. You cannot detach them from the political elite.
That's a fiction. Modern policing in America is mainly based upon the British model, as is most policing around the world these days. I'm not denying your point- especially in the way that reconstruction was negated by the introduction of the first mass carceral prison systems.
However, there are three areas of concern in the American system of policing. First, the failure to adopt policing by consent in which the default setting to force or coercion is gentle persuasion, only escalating with an explanation for the results of non-compliance. Second, the institutional refusal to exercise discretion- to make a bust and leave it all for the courts to decide- in many American jurisdictions it's even a disciplinary or worse to exercise discretion and give the citizen a choice between the voluntary change in behaviour and the likelihood of an arrest. Policing discretion, despite the pitfalls of favouritism, is still a vital check and balance against the use of unjust force and coercion. Third, there is no ground-up feedback system for introducing radical reforms into the mix.
You have plenty of good reformers on hand. Peter Moskos with his Violence Reduction Project, for example. But nobody listens to them. What does America have to lose when the Scottish model proving that if you fund BOTH proactive reform-based policing and community resources you can actually achieve the halving of societal violence within a decade, whilst simultaneously keeping teenage boys and young men out of jail and putting them into gainful employment.
Here's the thing. On the point about following orders what you ascribe specifically to police officers is almost a human universal. Between 1% and 3% of the population is evil- either instrumentally or malignantly. The rest are broadly speaking good- but only in a very weak sense. They can be hacked and subverted by group dynamics and social pressures.
A rare few stand alone, literally. They've forsaken all forms of tribalism. But honestly, how many people do you know on the topic of Israel and Gaza who have managed to maintain humanitarian sympathy for BOTH the Israelis and Palestinians, whilst maintaining varying levels of condemnation for both Hamas and the Netanyahu government? How many people do you know have the personal strength to realise that in order to maintain a logical justification for the ability of the European farmers to engage in civic disruption to protest a government trying to take away their livelihoods one also has to offer the same form of rights to protest and disrupt caused by Just Stop Oil?
Morality is like gravity for most people- a weak force. It takes either an innate sense of civic libertarianism born on the playground through the willingness to fight older bullies, or a lifetime of being surrounded by good people and good reading material in order to be able to achieve true moral strength. Most people desperately want to be liked by the group. In one experiment only one person in thirteen will contradict a group who have been instructed by the researcher to lie about the number of claps heard.
As individuals people can be kind, nice, sublime in their generosity to others, but in groups people are just plain nasty. Unlike many of my conservative and libertarian friends, I don't think that their is a problem with collective action provided it's not backed by government force and coercion. Work to rules are generally more effective than strikes though- they can terrify employers, without damaging the interests of both capital and labour. They can even garner immense public support as well.
One of the best industrial actions was transport workers in Japan. They didn't decide to stop showing up to work or become surly towards customers. They simply let it be known that they wouldn't be checking for tickets and the non-payment of fares could be read as support for their cause. The industrial action was swiftly resolved in their favour. On the other hand, force and coercion can just as readily be deployed through the tyranny of others. Picket lines can be the tyranny of others.
With the level of force and coercion currently being deployed by government, the WEF, the NGOs and the rest of the Blob, I think we are necessarily heading towards the need to set up parallel societies of the type seen during the Solidarity movement.
Did you here they debanked Yanis Varoufakis over his support for Julian Assange? Imagine having all your accounts shut with no explanation. What's even more chilling is that in my region the only mention of it on Google is a YouTube clip. The Left laughed when it was Nigel Farage. When will people learn that if they can do it to a dissenter on the other side, they can do it to you!
Do you actually know any cops? I’m on fourth generation in my household and that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Elites favourite tactic right now is defunding and demonizing the police but hiring their own security. The problem with theories, especially those around colonialism, is that can’t stand up to what is actually happening in the real world. Case in point, the deluded, privileged losers rioting on college campuses for a foreign conflict they know nothing about.
I grew up around cops, which is why I'm staunchly against the current form of policing.
To your point, please name 3 major cities that have defunded the police.
Grew up around cops…….like brothers, fathers, grandmasters, aunts, nieces - people who sat at your table and tucked you in at night or neighbourhood pals? Let’s define defund, if you mean cut the police force entirely you would be correct. If you mean cut millions of dollars from budgets and also hire progressive DA’s with extremely dubious records on catch and release, there is loads of data from California, Oregon, Washington State. Vancouver in Canada also experienced budgetary limitations. DA actions and progressive legislation around theft, drugs, homelessness have made policing orders of magnitude more difficult. Pick any exclusive enclave in LA and they have private security in droves. I’m not playing the word game on defund. It’s sophomoric and silly and doesn’t address anything.
Name 3 major cities that cut millions from their police budgets.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Baltimore and a dozen other cities have all also reduced police spending. Portland specifically cut $15 million from their police budget.
You literally have no idea what colour I am. For the record, defunding police hurts radicalized communities the most but facts don’t matter to ideologues. It’s no surprise that rich white people can afford private security but fuck you brown people if you can’t.
Is that adjusted for inflation? How does that compare on a per capita basis from 2020 to 2024. How does increasing population, especially through asylum seeking change the parameters by which public dollars must be spent to account for a bulge in new vulnerable people requiring services? Have you gone into black communities infested with gun and gang violence in Chicago and ask those people if they think the city should pull back on policing?
You're moving goalposts.
Not at all. If you are going to deal with numbers and data and be precise in your analysis of situations, a person interested in policy prescriptions will look at the complexity of the situation and not select numbers without giving a whiff for material conditions on the ground that make a measurable difference to what 5% actually means in the span of four years. If this is not your process, you’re ideological, not interested in truth seeking and society is full of that kind of mindset right now with the shitty outcomes to demonstrate that.