“Careful what you wish for.”
MP3: 15MinPhi Anarchy
There’s been talk these days about “dismantling” police forces across the nation, with cities like Minneapolis actually passing legislation to do just that. Meanwhile up here in Cascadia, while most of the street shutting down protests have ceased, part of the gay side of the superhub has been walled off and declared a new “nation”, including it’s own abandoned police precinct. All is peaceful outside my own windows, but there’s talk of civil wars yet again, primarily online, since as far as my own experience goes no one is talking about it in real life. So about this whole disband the cops movement: what’s the driver behind it?
“What is this “morning” you speak of?”
It started just as most if not all of these cases do: 1. An altercation between a (usually white) police officer or other security detail and a person of color ends poorly, often deadly. Of note: this almost exclusively happens in major metropolitan areas that are democratically run, at least the one’s that make the headlines, which brings me to 2. The major news networks pick up on the story and immediately label it as “white police brutality”, whether the perpetrators were white or not, often using footage showing carefully selected footage of the incident. Understandably they can’t really run an entire 30 minute clip given their format, but it’s telling that the selections always happen to be of officers being the aggressors. 3. Everyone and their daughters loses their shit and takes to the streets, usually with coincidentally matching outfits and signs that all seem to have the same messages on them; same goes for the virtue signalling on social media. This goes on for a few days up to maybe a few weeks, then it dies down. 4. New information comes out, usually not in favor of the “victim” or the narrative, often during the middle of step 3: the daed person either had committed a crime or was in the process of doing so, they had a history of committing crimes and often violent ones, and they are often on some sort of drug, had an underlying health issue, was uncomplyant with the police if not outright aggressive with them, or more often than not some combo of the 3. 5. There’s a trial and the officers involved are either exonerated or convicted of any crimes they may have committed, and life goes back to normal.
“Pictured: the “New Normal”. ”
I’m sure I’m missing a few key details, but that’s the usual script I’ve watched play out over the last 8 or 9 years or so. Not this time apparently. Apparently “The Boogaloo” is upon us. So what makes this particular episode of the Black Lives Matter Show so different?
Well for starters, it happened at what I’m guessing at this time to be the tail end of the “Global Pandemic” where everyone was told if not ordered to stay in their homes, with most of everything that made it worth getting out shut down, meaning for the past few months most people, mainly in these major metropolitan areas where these things tend to happen, have been cooped up my themselves; the average person can barely handle being isolated for a couple of weeks let alone months. Another factor is this Incident happens not 2 weeks after another apparently murder of a black guy by a former detective (if you call getting shot after grabbing the detective’s shotgun “murder”), meaning there wasn’t nearly enough time between the two incidents for everyone to calm back down. Another little coincidence is that this happens to be an election year, and in my humble opinion not a very good looking one for the demographics in these major metropolitan areas. One final thing I think might be a playing factor here: aside from that incident in Nova Scotia, has anyone heard about any recent mass shootings lately? Seems those have died down, alongside calls for gun control, which is enforced by the cops in case you were unaware. Add all of this up, and it sure seems like quite a perfect storm to me for this kind of thing to happen.
“Pictured: why you never live in the actual major cities.”
Why disband the police though? Why are we now supposed to be afraid of them? Why, after all the calls for disarming the populace in favor of protection via government acengies, are we now calling for what is effectively anarchy? In case you know what that word means or associate it with warlords burning everything down on flat places on the ground that somehow will never be built again should this happen, allow me to explain it to you because the last few years of me trying apparently didn’t stick. Anarchy simply means no rulers, nothing more, nothing less. Rulers are those that have power over you or a populace, whether that deity based like religions, or secular such as government. My stances on them aside for another time, this doesn’t mean there aren’t rules (see: Stefan Molynuex’s Non-Aggression Principles for more), just no one to enforce them via violent means. This last part is particularly important, as the entire point of having rulers set the rules is they have to be enforceable: while Ancapadise as The Great One (CynLibSoc.com) puts it would enforce rules via ostracisation (example: you beat up grandma in a wheelchair and no one will do business with you until some sort of reparations are made), the government has law enforcement (you beat up grandma in a wheelchair and you get locked in a cage at gunpoint). Meaning if you remove the police, you remove what effectiveness any politician and their policies have over you.
“And then this kind of thing happens.”
Back to the call for law enforcement disbanding. For the longest time we have been told to be afraid of guys running around with AR-15s with 500 round drums shooting up schools full of precious children and that’s why only the police and other govt trained groups should be able to use them. But a couple of incidents happen within a few weeks of each other, and suddenly everyone is now realising just what putting all the power in the hands of the state looks like, albeit only focusing on the guns of the state and not how it’s funded (hint: your tax dollars at work!). Now I’m not sure what they think getting rid of all LEOs will look like in real life, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they haven’t thought that far ahead: these kinds of movements tend to be a tad more reactionary rather than logical. But I guess the question here is whether this a good or bad idea.
“I guess white guys writing “Black Trans” in chalk on city streets is a way to… help?”
I for one am siding with this, and not just because I enjoy the ensuing chaos it brings. Those of you that might be surprised, hear me out here:
1. For those of you that are fighting against the death via 1,000,000 cuts against the second amendment (amongst others), all of that goes right out of the window. It no longer matters what gun laws are on the books if there are no police officers to enforce them, meaning you can protect your front door with an M249 belt fed SAW if you want, and if that’s not enough to make any kind of mob think twice about raiding your compound you have bigger problems that might need to be upgraded to an M320 grenade launcher at the very least. 2. Related to the first point, but this overnight would force the average citizen to realise how important it really is to be able to defend themselves and those that depend on them to do so, rather than relying on 911; talk about a way to really make America great again, let alone invasion proof circa 1942. Finally, why in the world would you want to be in law enforcement these days, especially in the major metropolitan areas? Sure, the image, especially if you grew up before the millenial generation, was at worst something out of the COPS TV show, at best a Hollywood production: a profession where exciting shit happens and you get to carry a gun, shoot first and take names later, all while being seen as a hero to society.
“Pictured: Society. That stands for All Cops Are Bad by the way.”
These days, as Thrill of MensRooomLive.com has said before, your job is to tackle naked people at best. At worst, and I’ll see if I can find this article I read the other day, is that, just as we’re seeing in Seattle and Portland and Minneapolis and New York and yet again every major metropolitan area in the country that also happens to be almost exclusively democratic and democratically run, the population actively hates you. Now maybe, if this were a private job like being a repo man where the juice is worth the squeeze and everyone you interact with is going to want to kill you or otherwise not be enthused of your presence (process server also comes to mind although I’m not sure if that’s private or public), I could understand taking that job. But presumably if you’re going to take the job of wearing a badge and a gun and quite possibly putting your life on the line to “protect and serve” your city or county or even state, that implies you care about the community you signed up to help. Tell me just why the fuck would any sane person would sign up to possibly lose his life to protect and serve a community that hates him for his profession. Hell, there are a lot of senior officers getting out of the force as I type this, possibly foregoing their own pensions in the process, the reason of which I’ll leave to your imagination. Alternatively, if you actively hated the community and vice versa, what better job to take and hide your bigotry behind a badge and a gun than becoming part of the ever thinning blue line that might let you get away with murder? All proper procedures aside and not considering the military since that requires a more strict contract and your bogitry would have to be overseas, I can’t think of a more legally sanctioned way to abuse the populace in your own city or county or state than becoming a LEO. Again, given my own experiences with LEOs of all shapes sizes colours and genders, they’ve been pretty positive for the most part: as I’ve said before, those with combat training let alone experience of just about any kind of background will recognise each other and end up getting along quite well, although that just may be my own version of earned privilege(though now that I think of it, I wasn’t as seasoned as I am now when I had the majority of my encounters with the cops). But given the actual numbers of actual police induced incidents lethal or otherwise, let’s just say I tend to lean with what encounters I’ve had so far and believe most cops don’t want to passively let alone actively murder me and people that look like me. But if that’s the case, and especially if you like the community that hates the police, why would you want to join that force? These days, you might as well be Ted Smith and join the Klan.
“By day: they’re all out” jogging” in the streets…”
“… And come nightfall, behind particle board protected sheets.”
Of course, it is highly unlikely that every police force ever will be disbanded and well be forced (SEE WHAT I DID THERE!?) to police ourselves. And there the dark reason I think that would happen. The reality is that, despite the current view of the blue line these days, their mere presence not only protects those that follow the law for the most part, but quite a few that not only don’t, but those that have done quite a few things to others they wouldn’t do otherwise if there wasn’t said blue line to hide behind. There are people I interact with almost everyday that, if there wasn’t the probability of me getting arrested, let’s just say I’ve been waiting to see what 6.5lbs of extra weight behind a punch does to a human body. Probably the most minor offence I can think of is vendors asking me what the order code is even though she’s holding the only fucking order in the building, but I personally have a whole list up here in the bacontainer of humans I’d like to “confront” should the shit really hit the fan: certain neighbours that have caused me to have to look for a new place to rent, several businesses that have pissed me off in various different manners, old classmates from elementary and high school I managed to track down that bullied me in my childhood, even people online that talk a mean game behind the safety of their smartphones but I have a feeling would be on their knees begging for mercy if I showed up in real life on their doorstep. So no, as much as people now say they hate and are afraid of law enforcement and want them to never be a thing again, they know people like me are just waiting for that to happen, and not only is it ain’t just me, but guess what now banished but likely we’ll trained force is most likely to be on my side should they actually get what they ask for?
“Bring me a wench that looks like this and I just might consider sparing a few of you.”
Update: here’s the article referrenced earlier:
https://www.lawofficer.com/america-we-are-leaving/?amp&__twitter_impression=true