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You clearly know why the right says it's for police.
"Thin blue line" is not a content free slogan, it doesn't just mean "pro-cop". It says something about the right's view of society that explains why they're pro-cop. The right has told you why and you clearly heard them.
Is the right so insincere that their given explanation doesn't suffice and we need to speculate ?
Why does the right say it, then?
If I had to guess at a bog-standard conservative belief… The average Republican voter probably thinks policing is difficult and unpleasant but necessary for a social contract, that they’d prefer a heavy hand to an absent one, and that the consequences of policing mostly fall on criminals who asked for it. But I’m not an average Republican voter, and I’m sure plenty of them would give a different explanation.
What’s yours?
More or less, with a side of 'the alternative to a social contract is a brutal failed state' and 'policing is the first job of the state' and 'the difference between an absent hand and a light one is not real'. Also fuck criminals. Especially with increasing education polarization there's a substantial undercurrent of 'well thieves should get hanged anyways, so if the police knock them around a little harder than they're supposed to they're still getting off light'.
I agree with this. People who don’t like the police tend to assume that the alternative to over-policing is peace. But if the cops cannot stop crime (or more properly are not permitted to use tools at their disposal to effectively stop crime) the alternative is this falling on the general public. Which has none of the advantages of using police (who can be controlled to some degree because they’re deputized to enforce actual laws, and to respect the rights of citizens) and thus becomes a problem of every person in the general public carrying a weapon and deciding based on only concern for themselves and their families whether or not to use that weapon. Vigilante Justice will become the norm, to approval of normal people who want law and order so that they can safely go to the store or even to the park without fear. They’ll approve because they don’t want their stuff stolen and will protect it.
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They literally think the police are the bulwark between order and chaos, as the phrase implies?
I'm asking why we shouldn't take them at their word. If progressives say "teachers shape the future" enough that it becomes a cliche that their enemies use to describe their position do we need to wonder why progressives are still on the pro-teacher bandwagon despite obvious problems with the educational system? Do we need to wonder what progressives mean by this? Shit happens, no institution is perfect but if you believe in it you don't throw out the baby.
More or less my model but, as with anything in America, sharpened by partisanship and the perception of bad faith on the other side.
I think you can get many conservatives on board for certain things like civil forfeiture being bad. Or even that something like what happened to George Floyd Sonya Massey was wrong. The problem is that it's an iterated game and it never stops at that cop.
Same reason progressives don't want to yield on teachers or public schools.
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It's just a difference in which criminals you're more OK with roaming the streets.
If we grant that these police are themselves criminals, and I honestly don't think the Right has much problem seeing that if presented in a sufficiently neutral way, the Left simply has a different view of which criminals should be permitted to [burn, loot, murder, etc.] and why that is preferable, and use every justification you listed to argue for that.
Which implies that the rank comes with certain privileges. The reasons people will give the "snarky" answer get at this but I think it's actually the most realistic answer, and is also why there's very little movement on ending the practice of no-knock raids and other property destruction [burning], civil forfeiture [looting], and qualified immunity [murdering].
The Left functions exactly the same way, they simply assign those ranks differently.
Most republicans admit that problem cops should face consequences/be dismissed before they literally kill someone.
Yes, but they generally don't believe in problem cops. Unless the cop is literally caught doing rape or murder, they side with the cop in all cop/citizen interactions.
Even this is not really true. The right wing gives police grace in the face of criticism because they, imo rightly, don't believe their opponents are acting in good faith.
The discussion is not really about whether there're bad cops, anymore than the education debate is about there're bad teachers (where I'm sure a right-winger can accuse progressives of refusing to grant this when it comes time to defend teacher's unions)
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Which mirrors how the Democrats generally don't believe in problem criminals and side with the criminal in all criminal/citizen interactions (rape or murder can make either D or R reconsider, but is far from guaranteed to do so).
In fairness, polite society has basically zero crime [and zero desire to commit crime] to the point that the populace's demand for crime exceeds its supply (and this has been true for most of the last 60 years, though it did spike hard in the '80s; the State filled some of the power vacuum with a massive expansion in regulations, saw that nobody pushed back, and as such continually seeks new and exciting criminals per popular demand). Much like one's choice of beer, traditionalists prefer domestic perpetrators of crime where progressives prefer the imported stuff.
IIRC, if you actually look at beer preferences by brand, republicans drink better beer than democrats. I suspect that a big part of this is race effects.
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That's a big stretch to do both-sidesism. Not believing in problem criminals is a whole lot less understandable than not believing in bad cops.
The Left wants society to be punished for breaking their desired laws.
Criminals happen to be the perfect vehicle for this. Therefore we should expect the Left to treat criminals the same way [they will complain about how] the Right treats police, and is what we observe.
It doesn't actually matter what those desired laws are (or how obviously destructive, corrupt, and selfish that desire is). The fact they are desired is the only factor.
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