/me rolls his eyes. Police forces are a fairly modern invention. More, they don’t exist most places in the world. You can easily flip open a history book, or travel to a failed state, and see what the world is like without a police force.

None of those places are 21st Century America. I’m also not sure why you think failed states don’t have police. They do. Some are failed states in part because of police participation in corruption.

Yes, I agreed with that. But they are a lot of other things too. To say, “The police are X, and exactly X, and no more than X” — this is juveline and easily refuted.

Nobody is saying the police are oppressors and only oppressors and nothing else. However, these other things are irrelevant to the argument in question. You would need to make an argument demonstrating it is possible to be a benevolent oppressor. You are welcome to attempt that argument, but I think being an oppressor is inherently immoral, so it’s unlikely to be possible to be a good oppressor.

Sorry, thought I was talking to a rational person here. Ah, well.

I am not the one getting worked up and calling someone on the internet names because we disagree. I am simply making the case there is an undeniable logic to Blake Dont Crack’s position and arguments. It’s a logic that people don’t want to hear, but that doesn’t make it untrue. If you think the analogies to the KKK and slavers are harsh and unfair (I’ll admit that’s a hard line to take), feel free to disprove them. I happen to think the modern day prison system is slavery and, as the captors of future inmates, the police, then, are slavers. They are literally paid money to arrest people.

Now, you can make the same argument again that they’re more than just slavers. Sure, probably so. The police are oppressors, slavers, and also other stuff. But can you really be a good person if you’re in the business of oppression and slavery?

Your screed is equivalent to “Let’s tear down all of law enforcement because they have no value whatsoever.” Even very radical people will not agree with you here. You’re just wasting everyone’s time with this juvie shit.

I don’t think you should speak for “very radical people.” Let them speak for themselves. Maybe you don’t agree, and that’s fine, but, like me, you are just one person.

You have acknowledged the police are a force for oppression, and I’m certain you do not advocate oppression. Are you advocating incremental reform, then, as a means to resolve this problem? Do you think that is fair to the victims of the police? You appear to view an oppressive police force as the lesser of two evils, and you’re prepared to accept this because you believe the chaos that would ensue were there no police would be worse. You’re welcome to that belief, and you may be right, but you also may be wrong. In terms of concrete, undeniable fact, all we can say for sure is the police are a force for oppression. In some cases, it is also a fact that we can say we are afraid of what will happen if we eradicate this force for oppression, but we have to admit that fear is based on speculation, and is a “better the devil you know” kind of argument.

I’m of the opinion there are other ways to implement law enforcement that don’t require a police department but, even if there weren’t, I’m also of the opinion that the police have got to go if there is ever to be justice in this world. When you look back at what happened at Standing Rock, you see that the police is a fundamentally corrupt and oppressive institution. It is rotten to the core and cannot be salvaged. And, if you believe even half of what Blake Dont Crack said, you realize it was designed from day one to be this way. Even if there had been zero violence at Standing Rock (and, of course, that’s a fantasy), the fact is the police showed up to intimidate protestors at the behest of big oil. We can see from all the videos and read from all the accounts who the criminals in that confrontation were. We understand what the purpose of the police was at Standing Rock and what it is in general, and we witnessed in broad daylight that it was for the absolute dead opposite of justice. The police were the agents of injustice. This is what NWA said in 1988 in “Fuck tha Police,” and it hasn’t changed at all.

This will all be moot soon anyway, because automation isn’t going to stop in the factories, vehicle fleets, and restaurants. It will, in due time, come down to who is programming the police robots and what those robots are being instructed to do.