Let's hear it for citizen initiatives!

[Twangbanger]

Not a rabbit hole I'm willing to spend the time looking for specific threads or rehashing to deal with the resulting butthurt (not from you, mind you) that inevitably comes with these conversations. If you see it differently or believe I'm way off base, I'm ok with that.

Fair enough, and reasonable people can have different opinions on this. And maybe I do agree with your position after all, because what I fear is that this is no longer a far-right or far-left concept, but rather has become a "center-left" and "center-right" position, the newly-redefined "responsible center" with people like Ryan Mears and Joe Hogsett being in perfect alignment with each other, and no room for anyone who thinks otherwise. In another 10 years, it will probably lose any ideological flavor it ever had and just be the accepted normal, but it will not be normal for citizens who have to live with the consequences of it and they will literally have no options to represent their views.

Law enforcement is mostly reactive, and the "new managerial mindset" is to hate anything that is reactive. When in reality, a properly functioning system needs both proactive and reactive elements. The "managerial center-left" is so obsessed with proactive, systemic preventive measures, they've gotten confused and see anything reactive as wrong-minded and a poor use of resources. But without reactive enforcement to "keep the bushes pruned," all that proactive money and solutions just gets swallowed by a jungle.

It is a shame, because people who support the police, are eventually going to come to not really support the police, not because of any particular animosity toward them, but simply due to the practical realization that since the Civil Rights Lawfare Machine won't allow law enforcement to actually be effective (because it's reactive and deals with things that already happened and entails risk or the possible violation of someone's rights or both), it's essentially pointless. Once the people see the police can't do much for them, it's a small jump to "we might as well just cut their budget and replace them all with social workers." Law Enforcement becomes like a gun you don't have ammo for.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Once the people see the police can't do much for them, it's a small jump to "we might as well just cut their budget and replace them all with social workers." Law Enforcement becomes like a gun you don't have ammo for.

One could argue that's the goal. Same with the military. Or, hell, the US manufacturing base. The ability to maintain order internally, the ability to project power externally, and an economic heart that keeps it all moving. Undercutting those three things is suicide, or murder, depending on who's pushing it. I don't think there's any overarching conspiracy, I think it's multiple sources, some malovent to us and some well-meaning but woefully un/mis-informed, trotting us happily to the decline of a strong US middle class society.

Can you imagine if social media had existed in 1960s? Along with skillful foreign and domestic misinformation / psyops campaigns? With a dose of well-meaning bored Karens, etc? Ranging abroad from the topic, but I doubt we'd have won the Cold War and the notion of a 'super power' would have been dead in both the east and west.