Punching Nazis

[Commodore]

I believe my concocted scenario meets all those requirements

I don't think it meets the "no reasonable alternative" requirement. In your scenario, it would be perfectly reasonable to remove yourself from the situation and/or inform local authorities so they could get a handle on any violence that may occur from Mr. Megaphone's words before it gets out of hand.

I also don't think it meets the "he did not himself create the danger he sought to avoid" requirement. By punching Mr. Megaphone because you fear his words would incite violence, you have just engaged in the violence you were hoping to stop.

This is probably a whole other huge argument in itself

It is, and I personally don't feel very comfortable with the idea of using potentially lethal force to protect property. However, there are jurisdictions here in the US where it is legally acceptable to use force to protect property and it would be considered self-defense. Whether or not it should be though is, as you already stated, a whole other debate by itself.

 

[Mise]

METAGAME COMMENT #2: Perfection's position is a perfectly reasonable one that all sides ought to be able to accept. Unless you're really committed to either punching or defending Nazis, it seems weird to me that people might bother arguing against it, when there are a whole host of much worse and more dangerous things to argue against.


(hat tip to Hygro for getting me to think about metagame, and also for making the term acceptable in political threads)

 

[metalhead]

Training, accountability, laws, regulations, and oversight. A citizen taking independent action has none of those things to curb their violence. Also, it is not the job of individual citizens to maintain public order, whereas that is arguably the primary function of any government.

That's an odd statement to make. Nobody in our society is less restrained in their use of violence than cops. So if the purpose of all that training and accountability is to restrain the violence wrought on citizens in protecting social order, I have to say that it has been a huge embarrassing failure.

I get the point you are trying to make, but your hypothetical police force of good guys doesn't exist in the real world. Not even close. And police don't exist to maintain order or to protect rights, because there aren't nearly enough police officers around to provide that service. Their mandate is to enforce laws, and that's it. Social order is much more a product of individual civic engagement by citizens than it is a product of the police. In fact police officers often work to destroy the social order, not protect it.

 

[Perfection]

I don't think it meets the "no reasonable alternative" requirement. In your scenario, it would be perfectly reasonable to remove yourself from the situation and/or inform local authorities so they could get a handle on any violence that may occur from Mr. Megaphone's words before it gets out of hand.

In the scenario I assume that once the words are spoken on the megaphone, any police action will likely result in much more injury than a mere punch.

I also don't think it meets the "he did not himself create the danger he sought to avoid" requirement. By punching Mr. Megaphone because you fear his words would incite violence, you have just engaged in the violence you were hoping to stop.

The violence created is a mere punch which pales into comparison to the sort of violence the crowd would create if whipped into a mob by Mr. Megaphone.

BTW, I like the name Mr. Megaphone

 

[Farm Boy]

That's an odd statement to make. Nobody in our society is less restrained in their use of violence than cops. So if the purpose of all that training and accountability is to restrain the violence wrought on citizens in protecting social order, I have to say that it has been a huge embarrassing failure.

I get the point you are trying to make, but your hypothetical police force of good guys doesn't exist in the real world. Not even close. And police don't exist to maintain order or to protect rights, because there aren't nearly enough police officers around to provide that service. Their mandate is to enforce laws, and that's it. Social order is much more a product of individual civic engagement by citizens than it is a product of the police. In fact police officers often work to destroy the social order, not protect it.

Agreed on the source of social order. But of course the police are less restrained when it comes to practicing violence, they're the police. They're paid to practice violence, among other things. The among other things is the social order part, and they do a lot of that. People who think they do not are being selectively blind. Or hell, maybe their PD sucks a lot and is super under-funded so that all it can do is the most violent(ie urgent priority) job functions. But officers respond to all sorts of accidents, emergencies, loose dogs and injured wildlife, they act as first responders, and when functioning healthily often choose non-maximum enforcement of the penalties of law in order to maintain healthy social interaction. They've become too militarized and don't do enough low-level beat walking, which I'd guess is the product of the underfunding/overfocus on toys not manpower. But it's a predictable outcome when police are funded locally and that tax base rots. Cops still have mostly functional unions, solid blue collar wages, and solid blue collar pensions*. If the tax base looses those things then it is hard to afford paying the professionals to do any more than the urgent priority job functions. Then more and more the interactions are violent/adversarial by share, responding in an economic environment that will be increasingly illicit + government issued. Now that should sound familiar. I'm not trying to make any grand point on the nature of the interaction between police and civilian or lionize anyone. There is a necessary tension that exists, but the quality of the interaction and the degree of tension is mutable.

*And they're even government employees!

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Are you really serious in this statement????

Some random guy on the street has the same legitimacy as an officer of the law, duly sworn in and appointed by the government of the people, by the people and for the people, trained and committed to protect and serve. This is just mind boggling that you can possibly believe this.

The random guy on the street probably has a better track record of abiding by the law than the average officer of the law.

I find it absolutely hilarious whenever someone uses the "protect and serve" chestnut. It makes me laugh every time I see it on the side of their cars.

 

[metalhead]

Perhaps they oughtn't be paid to practice violence, though. Perhaps they ought to be paid to withhold violence where others might be justified in using it. I mean sure, things like apprehending suspects and whatnot requires a certain level of violence, but police are empowered to use violence often times where they ought to be using restraint in the name of "protecting and serving" the public. The public should include all of the public, even those suspected of wrongdoing. Even a guy you think might be reaching for a gun. Similarly situated blue collar government workers - namely, soldiers - are tasked with making those kinds of "protect" decisions with potentially hostile subjects all the time, under much more stressful conditions, and are taught to err on the side of "protect" and face consequences if they don't, even if it means putting themselves at risk.

 

[Lexicus]

I find it absolutely hilarious whenever someone uses the "protect and serve" chestnut. It makes me laugh every time I see it on the side of their cars.

Now in the squad car, CPR supposed to be the motto,
but in their minds they be like "yo I'ma do Diallo"

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, that's boring news Metal. IE, not news. It doesn't make the news past the very forgettable blip in the unread local paper when one of our local guys tazes(tazed) somebody pulling a handgun. It makes almost no noise when a cop is injured. It makes slightly more when a suspect is killed. It makes the most when an officer is killed. The aftereffects scale up according to that order, as well.

That goes back to the original point, though. If you want the police to increase the share of their work that is nonviolent in order to increase the power of that internalized norm, you need more of them around doing boring stuff that staves it off and builds relationships(and corruption, life isn't perfect).

 

[metalhead]

Cops have killed 1,100-1,400 people per year in the United States over the last few years. I don't pretend to know how many of those people could have been protected from dying without posing an unreasonable risk of injury or death to the officer or bystanders, but surely it is more than zero. I mean hell man, that's a lot of people dead at the hands of police.

I do agree though that a lot of the other work they do is not police work at all, and shouldn't be foisted on them just because we have nobody else to do things like intervene in an acute mental health crisis. Those statistics are not clearly a fault of just the police.

 

[Farm Boy]

Agreed. That's actually lower than I thought the number was going to be. The mental health angle is significant and I agree with you there too. A lot of their time is spent responding to mental health issues, at least from what I see. I don't know how universal that is nationwide.

I'll keep bringing up beat cops over and over on this issue. If you want the institutions to have more than adversarial norms when it comes to interacting with the public, the people who comprise those institutions need to be acclimated to a significant portion of their job not actually being constantly adversarial. Ideally, it'd be as low as possible. You don't roll SWAT and expect to have a nice conversation with granny about the 16 year old who occasionally drives too fast down the street, there's kids around here you know, and somebody hit my dog 4 years ago, she still walks with a limp. You especially don't roll SWAT to go talk to the 16 year old. Who might be smoking weed when you show up. Which has a nonzero chance to affect the outcome, I'd guess.

 

[Akka]

It is, and I personally don't feel very comfortable with the idea of using potentially lethal force to protect property.

Well, it says "violence", not "lethal". I do feel totally acceptable to tackle/punch someone who is trying to steal your wallet.

Also, I'm pretty vindicative, but the feeling of personal violation due to having your home vandalized doesn't make me upset if a burglar get killed.

 

[Flying Pig]

I'll keep bringing up beat cops over and over on this issue. If you want the institutions to have more than adversarial norms when it comes to interacting with the public, the people who comprise those institutions need to be acclimated to a significant portion of their job not actually being constantly adversarial. Ideally, it'd be as low as possible. You don't roll SWAT and expect to have a nice conversation with granny about the 16 year old who occasionally drives too fast down the street, there's kids around here you know, and somebody hit my dog 4 years ago, she still walks with a limp. You especially don't roll SWAT to go talk to the 16 year old. Who might be smoking weed when you show up. Which has a nonzero chance to affect the outcome, I'd guess.

This is, incidentally, a fairly major part of how British police forces think.

 

[Traitorfish]

My conclusion form this thread is punching Nazis is a mixed bag. You lose some non-violence cred but you gain some "I'm not screwing around" cred. However, since Trump's current MO is to act without respect to democratic norms and the law, it is more consistent to try to act within democratic norms and the law. We must work to reinforce the system that Trump is attempting to smash apart by working within it. So for that reason I'm on the nix the punches angle.

That said, I'm still going to enjoy watching them get punched.

American democracy wasn't won by scrupulous adherence to the law, though, not at any point. That's a fabrication built after the fact by those who regard democracy with distrust. To throw barricades around the law is to declare democracy, as an historical project, finished and settled, and that the only task for democrats is to defend it against marauding barbarians. That isn't true, and Trump is the proof.

Whether that translates into straight up Nazi-fightin', I don't know. But let's keep a clear head.

This is, incidentally, a fairly major part of how British police forces think.

 

[Farm Boy]

This is, incidentally, a fairly major part of how British police forces think.

Does it seem to be a reasonably effective part of the planning? It seems to be harder to implement from the squad car than it is on foot, or even horseback. Which seems a fairly significant complication. Wouldn't work out here, stuff is too spread out, they couldn't respond without a proximal vehicle. Conservation officers have the tendency to show up to stuff when they're the ones in the right part of the county. Bicycles do seem to work around universities(also helped by the fact that university police don't typically seem to be keen on actually arresting students for minor consumption/possession based offenses despite the increased incidence of those activities?). Municipal Gators maybe?

 

[Berzerker]

But officers respond to all sorts of accidents, emergencies, loose dogs and injured wildlife, they act as first responders, and when functioning healthily often choose non-maximum enforcement of the penalties of law in order to maintain healthy social interaction. They've become too militarized and don't do enough low-level beat walking, which I'd guess is the product of the underfunding/overfocus on toys not manpower.

http://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article131233704.html

and some get to play William Tell

Nixon wanted payback on the hippies and blacks, so the cops have been fighting a drug war for nearly 5 decades and something like 1 in 10 black men have done time, mostly for drugs. That has coarsened society as we became a nation of suspects policed by increasingly afraid, trigger happy cops.

 

[Lexicus]

Nixon wanted payback on the hippies and blacks, so the cops have been fighting a drug war for nearly 5 decades and something like 1 in 10 black men have done time, mostly for drugs. That has coarsened society as we became a nation of suspects policed by increasingly afraid, trigger happy cops.

The social consequences of allowing this malignancy to exist are probably much more far-reaching than is commonly presumed. The US prison system isn't that substantially different from the Gulag Archipelago, except I guess we at least don't constantly work and starve our prisoners to death.

 

[Berzerker]

yup, destroyed inner cities, middle class flight, burgeoning prison population, high crime rates, children with fathers sitting in cages, just one bad thing after the next. And for what? I'm told the drug war reduces consumption, if thats what we're buying for all the misery caused by prohibition I'd like to see the proof.

 

[Farm Boy]

You'll have to note the drug war really shifted into high gear with mass incarcerations pretty much as manufacturing blue collar job rot caught and settled in the black sections of manufacturing cities under Clinton. The later expansion into methwar out in hickstown USA came with the blue collar job rot's expansion into white America. Dude, lets face it, at this point the War on Drugs has pretty much been a jobs program. You're not unemployed when you're incarcerated and the fact that you've been incarcerated is a justification for your later unemployment. Eventually, you'll just be unemployable and thus not unemployed. I don't think it's a very good program. I think it's going to wrap up too. I believe the temptation to legitimize and corporatize the illicit substances economic streams to white collar professional America out of the unemployables hands and out of blue collar union cop shops will win out. I can really hope that What will actually be better than what we have now, even if the actual Why of it working(if it works) is pretty disgusting.

Unless I'm just wrong. That' be ok too. Excellent, even! Pound away and give me a little faith back if appropriate.

 

[bernie14]

so far, the best excuses we have to punch nazis are vigilantism and dehumanization, that's rich...