A: We need to do something about our rotten criminal justice system. B: Absolutely. We need major reform - police reform, sentencing reform, reform of our jails and prisons, robust programs for rehabilitation and reintegration. A: No, we need to tear it all down. Defund the police, abolish prisons, and end the carceral state.
When the PMC say "Defund The Police!" what they mean is "take money away from the undeserving (blue-collar collar unionized cops, most of whom do not have Serious College Degrees and are famously unwoke, besides) and give to the deserving (white collar non-unionized degreed social workers who can be counted on to uphold the most up to the minute tenets of Political Correctness).
Personally not a fan of sock-puppet theater. Hard for dialogues not to end up this way; after all the author invariably is on one particular side of the issue. But when it shakes out this way it's hard to see what's gained from it, writing wise, over simply presenting your argument the ordinary way. At the risk of offering unwanted advice, had I written this, I would have started out making the defunder a bit more nuanced and the reformer a bit less. The former could take much more seriously just how brutal the American criminal justice system is, the latter could be much more dismissive of that aspect. That would be a fairly realistic conversation in my experience. You could still take it to where you want to take it but could better highlight the moral instincts at work and end up with something that would be IMO much more persuasive. Otherwise you might as well just write a straight polemic; that would be better even just from an entertainment point of view.
Apr 17, 2023·edited Apr 17, 2023Liked by Freddie deBoer
There’s a Father Brown short story by G. K. Chesterton I’ve always enjoyed- the series is basically Sherlock Holmes, but with a priest as a detective and more focused on theology than deduction.
Two aristocratic brothers were having a feud in a village way back in the day. One was a stand up guy beloved by all, the other was a universally reviled prick. They fought a duel; the prick died; the golden child ran to escape the law.
Fast forward to the present day, and the golden child has returned. The townspeople rejoice to have him back and insist that the crime is water under the bridge. All except Father Brown, who insists that the murderer must stand trial to uphold the law, and on a spiritual level offers God’s forgiveness only after repentance is offered. The townspeople chide the priest for being so cruel and hardhearted and remind him of Christian mercy.
Well, a few deductions later, the priest proves that the returned exile is in fact the prick brother- turns out the golden child is the one who died all those years ago and cunning disguises and the weight of years allowed the prick to take his hated brother’s place.
The townspeople are outraged and insist that he must hang for the murder. All except Father Brown, who insists that the murderer must stand trial to uphold the law, and on a spiritual level offers God’s forgiveness only after repentance is offered.
Whenever police reform comes up I think of a guy I met in Denmark who’s an ambulance driver. He became an ambulance driver after training to be a policeman and being rejected because he was too short-tempered (something he himself admitted). I think about the implications about that a lot. The police force there is professionalized, well trained, and well staffed enough that they can reject people who may be too impulsive in a tense situation. I hope we can get to that place.
The cognitive dissonance of leftists who brush off most violent crime as inconsequential but think men (especially straight white guys) should get the death penalty if accused of sexual misconduct is one of the dumbest phenomena of the last decade. I can only speak for myself but it is profoundly alienating when the loudest self-proclaimed leftists online hold steadfast to demented takes like this.
From the inside though, at least for me, it didn't quite feel like that. I'm a bit autistic, so my experience with it was: "okay none of this seems to make sense. But a lot of people I admire are all saying the same thing, so maybe I'm just not getting it. Plus I'm a cis straight white dude and know for a fact I'm extremely privileged, so my job is really just to listen and let others speak."
In kindergarten I was the left-handed kid who got an F in arts & crafts because nobody explained to me the scissors were all made for right-handed people. I had just accepted that scissors don't work for me for some reason, and this was probably my fault. I feel like the same thing happened to my politics over time.
The struggle for me is to remember that I'm still actually a progressive. Like, I want to make the world a better, kinder, gentler place. I want to end poverty. I want to help people. None of that has changed. I don't want to become some grumpy curmudgeon reactionary who constantly whines about wokeness or whatever. But it's so much work. I'm constantly at edge when politics gets brought up, regardless of who does it, because I know my only options are to keep my mouth shut or start a huge fight over something stupid.
I remember being in a party in L.A. back in the late 90s having a similar conversation with two people. Very nice, earnest people. Educated, one was an attorney, the other a paralegal. And they were essentially A. We were at a party, so I didn't want to argue with them in order to be polite to the host. I'm sure that if I did decide to argue with them, I would have become B and the argument would have sounded a lot like this.
Their argument struck me as really, really out there back then. Now that it's mainstream, I don't know what to do except for mock it, and I probably wouldn't be polite about it.
Freddie I really enjoy when you do stuff like this but I also feel that it's weird when you find it shocking that most leftists who claim the various labels you claim actually haven't done the reading. Most have no ethical model whatsoever. You gotta understand that most PEOPLE have no ethical model beyond just what their society tells them. It's like, all Sartre ever wrote about, it's the whole moral problem of the 20th century. Yes, people will not do their homework. This is why you have to capture the various nodes of social control that they use to shortcut doing their homework and just tell them what to believe. Yes this is evil to do. Yes we are all fucked either way.
When the PMC say "Defund The Police!" what they mean is "take money away from the undeserving (blue-collar collar unionized cops, most of whom do not have Serious College Degrees and are famously unwoke, besides) and give to the deserving (white collar non-unionized degreed social workers who can be counted on to uphold the most up to the minute tenets of Political Correctness).
Personally not a fan of sock-puppet theater. Hard for dialogues not to end up this way; after all the author invariably is on one particular side of the issue. But when it shakes out this way it's hard to see what's gained from it, writing wise, over simply presenting your argument the ordinary way. At the risk of offering unwanted advice, had I written this, I would have started out making the defunder a bit more nuanced and the reformer a bit less. The former could take much more seriously just how brutal the American criminal justice system is, the latter could be much more dismissive of that aspect. That would be a fairly realistic conversation in my experience. You could still take it to where you want to take it but could better highlight the moral instincts at work and end up with something that would be IMO much more persuasive. Otherwise you might as well just write a straight polemic; that would be better even just from an entertainment point of view.
There’s a Father Brown short story by G. K. Chesterton I’ve always enjoyed- the series is basically Sherlock Holmes, but with a priest as a detective and more focused on theology than deduction.
Two aristocratic brothers were having a feud in a village way back in the day. One was a stand up guy beloved by all, the other was a universally reviled prick. They fought a duel; the prick died; the golden child ran to escape the law.
Fast forward to the present day, and the golden child has returned. The townspeople rejoice to have him back and insist that the crime is water under the bridge. All except Father Brown, who insists that the murderer must stand trial to uphold the law, and on a spiritual level offers God’s forgiveness only after repentance is offered. The townspeople chide the priest for being so cruel and hardhearted and remind him of Christian mercy.
Well, a few deductions later, the priest proves that the returned exile is in fact the prick brother- turns out the golden child is the one who died all those years ago and cunning disguises and the weight of years allowed the prick to take his hated brother’s place.
The townspeople are outraged and insist that he must hang for the murder. All except Father Brown, who insists that the murderer must stand trial to uphold the law, and on a spiritual level offers God’s forgiveness only after repentance is offered.
"Violence Interrupters" has got to be one of the looniest terms they've come up with so far. How can anyone take that seriously?
The next time I have to go to court, I think I'm going to try using the Gini coefficient defense. I'll let everyone know if it works.
Whenever police reform comes up I think of a guy I met in Denmark who’s an ambulance driver. He became an ambulance driver after training to be a policeman and being rejected because he was too short-tempered (something he himself admitted). I think about the implications about that a lot. The police force there is professionalized, well trained, and well staffed enough that they can reject people who may be too impulsive in a tense situation. I hope we can get to that place.
The cognitive dissonance of leftists who brush off most violent crime as inconsequential but think men (especially straight white guys) should get the death penalty if accused of sexual misconduct is one of the dumbest phenomena of the last decade. I can only speak for myself but it is profoundly alienating when the loudest self-proclaimed leftists online hold steadfast to demented takes like this.
I was "A" for a while.
From the inside though, at least for me, it didn't quite feel like that. I'm a bit autistic, so my experience with it was: "okay none of this seems to make sense. But a lot of people I admire are all saying the same thing, so maybe I'm just not getting it. Plus I'm a cis straight white dude and know for a fact I'm extremely privileged, so my job is really just to listen and let others speak."
In kindergarten I was the left-handed kid who got an F in arts & crafts because nobody explained to me the scissors were all made for right-handed people. I had just accepted that scissors don't work for me for some reason, and this was probably my fault. I feel like the same thing happened to my politics over time.
The struggle for me is to remember that I'm still actually a progressive. Like, I want to make the world a better, kinder, gentler place. I want to end poverty. I want to help people. None of that has changed. I don't want to become some grumpy curmudgeon reactionary who constantly whines about wokeness or whatever. But it's so much work. I'm constantly at edge when politics gets brought up, regardless of who does it, because I know my only options are to keep my mouth shut or start a huge fight over something stupid.
Excellent!
I remember being in a party in L.A. back in the late 90s having a similar conversation with two people. Very nice, earnest people. Educated, one was an attorney, the other a paralegal. And they were essentially A. We were at a party, so I didn't want to argue with them in order to be polite to the host. I'm sure that if I did decide to argue with them, I would have become B and the argument would have sounded a lot like this.
Their argument struck me as really, really out there back then. Now that it's mainstream, I don't know what to do except for mock it, and I probably wouldn't be polite about it.
Give up the ghost. At this point in history progressives aren’t capable of building anything or succeeding in any complex technocratic undertaking.
The job of progressives is to manage decline with *correct* ideological aesthetics.
"A: It’s not my job to educate you."
"B: How do they stop the school shooter? Throw copies of White Fragility at him?"
Thanks. I needed some good laughs this morning.
That last paragraph was just brutal.
Excellent writing as always.
Freddie I really enjoy when you do stuff like this but I also feel that it's weird when you find it shocking that most leftists who claim the various labels you claim actually haven't done the reading. Most have no ethical model whatsoever. You gotta understand that most PEOPLE have no ethical model beyond just what their society tells them. It's like, all Sartre ever wrote about, it's the whole moral problem of the 20th century. Yes, people will not do their homework. This is why you have to capture the various nodes of social control that they use to shortcut doing their homework and just tell them what to believe. Yes this is evil to do. Yes we are all fucked either way.
No one thinks this way. Who are you talking to in your head? A high schooler with an anarchy sticker on their math folder?