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@Sonic Youth fucking sucks#7777 tg:@onehallyu tw:@llwydd

"Not all cops are bad." 

This suggests that only the police officers who carry out flagrant acts of police brutality should be punished or come under fire. Is it be wrong to subject them to the same violations of human rights and liberties that they subject the general public to on a daily basis? Very often, people who believe this concern is valid will say 'yes, we (you) should learn to be compassionate to all.' Yet those same people, more often than not (though this is not necessarily true in every case), are the ones that would support the eye-for-an-eye punishment the minute it is flipped on the head of the protesters involved in making their stolen voices heard. "Oh, these rioters who burn buildings should suffer; those rioters who attack police officers should be attacked by the police." In their defense of unconditional power they often float towards a sadistic endorsement of the horrific actions (specifically criminal) carried out by those in power, against the weak. And yet, they are often conservative. They will often support the Second Amendment and the instant that any threat is posed to the conservative government or body of beliefs they are militarized in protest just as fast as the liberals they condemn are. 


But deeper than this, there is no reason to show sympathy to the police. They are, fundamentally, complicit, as long as they do not denounce, decry, and — this is the most important fact — punish those of their breed that commit wrongdoing. The police, since they were solidified as a constituent body in the public consciousness, operate in enforcement of laws that are organized and designed in order to cause as much suffering and harm to the lower classes and marginalized groups as humanly possible. Very conveniently, these lower classes and marginalized groups that are so oppressed are (due to the very nature of their isolation from movements that actually care about their livelihoods and securities and promise to endorse them in an electoral fashion) often robbed of any way to make significant change without destroying, without inciting fear. And this moves us to our next point on this issue: fear. 

What is fear? More specifically, how does fear relate to this issue?

The police have shown throughout their entire history that they are here to silence dissent and to produce fear. Paranoia and fear, though they are not the same, function very similarly, and they both begin a cycle. When the police, militarized as they are, systematically and structurally oppress the marginalized and present constant threats to their safety and security - as well as present a complete absence of guilt or accountability in any way - this creates a world and an atmosphere which is fundamentally paranoid and afraid, and unable to trust the police. Not much elaboration is needed on why this creates cycles of crime and avoidance of law enforcement, or at least insularity for marginalized groups; they shut down and shut out the possibility of humane law enforcement - and rightfully so. And this distrust passes itself on to the law enforcement themselves. The difference between the fear a police officer has and the fear a member of the public has is power. 


Power defines everything. It is how the cops stand above others to the extent that they do. Though a police officer may very well feel afraid when he has to respond to a call in an area populated by people who fundamentally have zero trust in his ability to defend the peace or their rights, if he acts — callously, and incorrectly — on this fear, he (more often than not) will be completely absolved of any guilt by the courts of law and the "thin blue line" that he constitutes a part of. If the police are not to be held accountable for their rapes of justice and their assaults on the innocent (and the use of excessive force and hatred against those who commit wrongdoings), then why should the citizenry be held accountable for their violation of the peace? 


More generally, why should peace be used to promote social change? Has it worked for anyone? Has it ever worked for anyone in America today? Generally, the answer is resoundingly: NO! Peace has won nothing. It won nothing in Watts. It won nothing on Florence and Normandie in 1992. It continues to win nothing to this day. Because as much as the people in control say that they are listening to the cries of the public, they are completely isolated from the experiences of that very same public. They are removed in every possible way from having to feel the fear and shame and betrayal that the marginalized in America feel every day! They have no obligation, then, and face no pressure at all, which would encourage their representation of the needy. They feel nothing because they need not feel anything by the very nature of their existence. And if peace has won nothing today, then why continue on its road? Did peace win "independence" from the British Empire in the American revolution? No! Did peace win the Civil War? No! Did peace win freedom for the slaves of Haiti? NO! Peace has exhausted itself.

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