Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> We have police that are federal in this country.

of course we have federal officers, but "the police" are not federalized, and hopefully that distinction and the reason for making it are clear. there is a huge difference between the current state of affairs vs. a world where our nation's police force was actually federalized & centrally managed. we don't live in that world, and pretending that we do, when we don't, but we easily could, isn't a very good idea.

> I feel like it's a weird and reductionist to say we can't address systemic issues with police as a group.

I never said that. where did I say that?

> Also - who cares if someone picks a side?

the problem isn't so much picking a side as it is in presenting any sort of political rhetoric in black-and-white, zero-or-one, left-or-right binaries—especially when distortionary, obfuscating memes/slogans are used to do so. this is literally the single biggest problem in contemporary politics. all nuanced discussion on an issue is lost when you frame things in terms of, "pick a side, you're either with us, or you're with the Nazis/etc. etc." ("well actually I take issue with this one aspect of what you're saying." "you would, Nazi! I knew you weren't really on Our Side.")

overgeneralizing issues and using propagandistic slogans literally designed to inflame and polarize, specifically in order to bifurcate the perception of reality among the general populace, has yet to be proven to actually solve anything—it really just seems like it makes people feel good for joining Team A or Team B, feeling righteous about being on The Correct Side Of The Issue, and vitriolic toward The Other Side. it's a great way to lead a country into a downward spiral nosedive toward destruction, and it's been highly effective so far—maybe we should stop and take notice of this phenomenon and take steps to rectify it!

> of course we have federal officers, but "the police" are not federalized

Huge swaths of police officers in this country are federal police officers - that was my only point. You made a claim that made it seem like police officers were not "federalized" yet and I rebutted that federal police are absolutely a thing.

I don't want to go off on a hypothetical tangent about a centrally managed police force.

---

> me: I feel like it's a weird and reductionist to say we can't address systemic issues with police as a group.

> you: I never said that. where did I say that?

The comment I responded to is as-follows (your words):

1. why do you consider "the police" a single unified group (aside from some "individual officers")?

2. "the police" are not a federalized entity (yet(??))

3. it seems at the very least disingenuous, but also possibly dangerous, to lump tens of thousands of people from disparate cities and counties and states into a single amorphous group

You are making a very clear argument against addressing police as a group, to the point of calling it "disingenuous" and "possibly dangerous." You make a very direct argument here and I think it's disingenuous to claim that you "never said that."

And with that specific bit - I'm done reading your post, and I'm done conversing with you on this topic.

> Huge swaths of police officers in this country are federal police officers - that was my only point.

right which is why "defund the police" is once again such a ridiculously overgeneralized thing to say! there's 17985 police agencies in the country, which includes federal, state, county, and city officers. each one of these things is wildly different from the other, and you're just throwing them all together and saying "defund 'em all," as though that could possibly be a solution to such a complex problem.

here's where the miscommunication lies, I believe:

put aside for a second why "reform the police" isn't a great slogan to get anything done (I agree btw)—let's say the idea of reforming police corruption had never been floated before, and then when "defund the police" came about, instead the slogan was "reform the police." in this hypothetical world, I would have much, much less of an issue with the idea of collecting all the police from all the disparate parts of the country and lumping them together. the reason for this is that if you live in a small town with a small local police department that is well-liked and good and fair and all that, then the locals could very easily agree that "the police," in general, should be reformed, but that the local cops are doing fine as is. you wouldn't be choosing them to "pick a side" ("for the police" or "against the police"), you're merely asking people to acknowledge that, in many places in the country, the police are not as just and good as your local cops, and as long as we can all agree that that's the case, then we can maybe start to work together to make things better for everyone.

instead, when you say "defund the police," you're alienating these same people who don't have a problem at all with their local police, especially in smaller towns and cities, because you're essentially instilling cognitive dissonance upon them, asking them to hold both "all police should be defunded" and "but idk I think my local cops are alright" in their heads at the same time. cognitive dissonance in values like this leads to political/ideological zealotry which doesn't accomplish anything other than dividing people and making everyone feel worse, while nothing really changes because your movement's explicitly stated goals (even if you don't actually mean "defund," it's what you're saying) are beyond the pale for many, many people. this is how you bifurcate and demoralize a population, and it's working fantastically.

---

response to below comment:

> This is textbook moving the goalpost. Your original point was that we shouldn't make general statements about police, which is clearly nonsense. If you have other problems with "defund the police" as a slogan that's a separate issue.

how are any goalposts being moved when my initial post ended with

> has anything good come from this pattern of overgeneralizing and then generating purposefully disingenuous propagandistic terms to force people to "pick a side"?

it's called establishing a position and then building it up over the course of debate, I thought I made my overarching position here pretty clear: propagandistic overgeneralizations and slogans specifically designed to inflame and divide rather than unite are the single biggest threat we face as a nation today, and are quite rapidly bringing about the decline of the Republic as our perception of reality splits roughly in two.

This is textbook moving the goalpost. Your original point was that we shouldn't make general statements about police, which is clearly nonsense. If you have other problems with "defund the police" as a slogan that's a separate issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com