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> Democratize access to police.

That's not what's happening here, for a few reasons. The first being that these are mercenaries (or "security contractors" if you want to use euphemisms), not police. Furthermore, nothing is being "democratized" here. They only work for you if you pay them. This has nothing to do with democracy.

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Agreed. I really detest how the word "democratize" got buzzed to death. It's become a zombie marketing term, and it wraps familiar ideology with vague associations of a rallying cry. Better phrasing maybe: it's a zombie marketing term that became a persistent and damaging bit of propaganda/ ideological meme.

Democratized means cheap enough that an upper middle class person can afford it. Disrupted means fucked up. I also hate this language.

Well put!

Even if we allow ourselves to imagine policing as a commodity in the most charitable way possible, what citizen did is still way out of bounds. Rabble rousing an anonymous mob to chase people down is something different from buying security on the open market. I'm against even the most charitable take on private policing because it requires an incredibly childish understanding of society to even take seriously, but these psychopaths are just forming random lynch mobs and should have their funding pulled.

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