7mo ago

Big Bad Wolf Thought

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/553

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So... If the police force is made of local people who are from your community and the sheriff is an elected official from the community...? It's not like the feds are coming for these purposes.
The cops are always around, and seems like a pretty systemic fix to me.
- Then the cops/sherrif cease to be members of the community, since you've introduced a hierarchy. You always know that the cop has power over you or they wouldn't be a cop.
  The "fix" is about as systemic as constantly taking pain meds for when you alway bonk your head on something. It adresses the symptom, not the underlying issue.
  
  I guess I don't understand how hierarchy and community are mutually exclusive especially if hierarchy is granted by and from the community itself.
  If this isn't the case, why respect family hierarchy either? At 16 if I'm bigger than my dad, fuck him it's my house now. Basically the only point of removing all hierarchy I can see is that we pass the "violence" part down to everyone instead of deciding to isolate it in the enforcement group.
  
  I think we have different definitions of hierarchy here. To me, if I have a higher hierarchical position than you, then you ought to do what I tell you, due to my status. If a community delegates violence to a militia, it doesn't necessarily mean that the militia gets to issue commands on their own.
  
  Are you highlighting the "ought" because it isn't mandatory to comply?
  Maybe the difference is that you think a policing force makes their own rules or decisions because of the nature of the hierarchy? It sounds like a variant of "who polices the police" and that the answer is the police can never outnumber or overpower the full community from which they are derived. Which I mean yeah I guess that's fine.
  I personally don't see the enforcement hierarchy (police or militia) as having power over anyone outside the granted scope of enforcement. That's bordering on the discussion of police misconduct and government that is too large, which are valid concerns but not really the core issues.
  
  No, I write "ought", because it is considered a moral imperative
  
  Okay, let's just let communities take justice into their own hands. I'm sure that's never had negative consequences in the past
  
  You do realize that those were condoned by the state, right? That the state actively enabled racism in the so-called US?
  
  No, they were extrajudicial killings, which by definition means not using the justice system. They were condoned by the communities who performed them. And yeah the state enabled them by not punishing them, but it was the community who made them happen. If the communities hadn't wanted to lynch people, people wouldn't have been getting lynched. You think things would have been different in those cases if those southern towns were self-governing collectives?
  Hell, do you think that desegregation ever would have happened in southern towns if there hasn't been a hierarchical government? The US literally had to send the military to protect black schoolkids in southern towns when they desegregated schools. What do you think would have happened if those communities didn't have a hierarchical state governing them?
  
  No, I think that those killings wouldn't have happened if there weren't people in power whose private interests where best served by reinforcing racism. Anger against minorities is usually fostered in order to distract people from class conflict.
  I don't know. Maybe the Black Panthers would have entered these communities if the state didn't sabotage their right for self-defence?

226 comments