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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30012 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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Progressives do not want criminals to turn into the law enforcement mechanism because progressives do not believe crime is real in the first place. Or at least progressives have convinced themselves that crime isnt real, hence the logical next step of abolishing law enforcement.

Self actualization for progressives is contingent on having an oppressive force to actively resist, because their set worldview is already perfect and does not require convincing externals. Said oppressive force must be manifestly engaging in oppression, and so law enforcement against criminal minorities is coopted by progressives to be proof of their worldviews conception. People being criminal assholes isn't because they are shitheads, its because they are systematically oppressed by the big bad state.

In the progressive conception there is never any need for law enforcement labor, and it is impossible for minorities to commit crime when there is no oppressive force incentivizing them to do so. Manifest failures like Christiania, CHAZ, East Hastings, Kensington, etc etc are simply proof of how oppression is so systemic that criminal minorities absorb the culture of white oppressors to oppress themselves.

The labor of law enforcement is false labor for the progressive. It was never needed, and so should never be compensated. Ironically, law enforcement is required for the progressive worldview to continue existing. Without law enforcement, progressives have no manifestation of the oppressive structure and no external force blameable for progressive failures. The progressive worldview requires law enforcement to exist more than it wants it to be abolished, because if law enforcement is gone the progressive ideas have to stand on their own, and deep down all progressives know their pet minorities will find it easier to scalp defenseless dangerhairs than armed magasuburbs.

Everyone loves a nice hot dump on progressives. It's practically the easy-mode for scoring upvotes.

You still need to actually be making an argument or saying something factual and defensible. This post is just pure boo-lighting with a bunch of uncharitable straw men. Do you think any progressive would agree with your characterization of what they believe and what their real motives are? It's one thing to argue that "This is the end result of their policies," it's another to argue "Actually, progressives are all zombie idiots with a worldview that says crime doesn't exist and minorities only ever do bad things because they are oppressed."

If this was a one-off, I'd chide you for weakmanning and ask you to put more effort into your inveighing against progressives in the future. But this isn't a one-off. You have a long, bad history of this sort of post, and being told to stop it.

You actually have a couple of notes to the effect of "last warning, permaban next time." Somehow you skated in the past, and then you went and earned a couple of AAQCs.

You seem to be able to post interesting things when you aren't choking on bile about your outgroup. We would like you to focus on your strengths. By that I do not mean "entertaining rants about how your outgroup is pure stupid evil."

Banned for 2 weeks, and next time will be a permaban.

Since the poster is banned and thus cannot respond, I'll ask the question here: what failures in East Hastings and Kensington is he(?) referring to? What is the significance of these places, wherever they are?

Hastings is a street in Vancouver that at one time (60s-ish) was core shopping district, but for something like 30 years has been a centre for drug addled homelessness, prostitution, open sales of drugs and stolen goods, plus assorted crazies. (the major decline was contemporaneous with the shutdown of a large mental hospital, fancy that)

This:

https://preview.redd.it/p1658ejufvp41.jpg?width=640&auto=webp&s=58cb9c9f1e4253daa55db438873c181ec7797b15

vs this:

https://www.vmcdn.ca/f/files/via/import/2019/08/19141502_dtes8-min.jpg;w=960

I assume this is what he's talking about; Kensington is a street in Toronto that used to be kind of... bohemian and funky but has maybe gone the same way? I don't know, I don't care about Toronto at all.

But there are similar areas in all the West Coast Cities -- substitute "Tenderloin" if you are in SF or "Skid Row" in LA. (although I think Skid Row has maybe always been bad? "Skid Row" in Vancouver is now full of gentrified brew-pubs and lofts, IDK)

the major decline was contemporaneous with the shutdown of a large mental hospital

Which was in the vicinity, I suppose.

No, it was in a neighbouring borough as it happens -- but serviced the whole province for serious cases AFAICR.

They probably mean Kensington in Philadelphia, which looks roughly like the aftermath of a zombie movie.

While I agree with the ban, progressives have frequently openly used this guy's characterization of what they believe as rallying slogans.

I mean, sure, hypocrisy is the only modern sin, being two faced is feature-not-bug, nobody actually believes what they say, etc. but his argument's pretty self-evident. He's saying that the (unspoken: white, neoliberal) progressive's opinions on policing through force can only exist in a gated community or bubble where (non white-collar) crime is non-visible and a fargroup concern.

What am I supposed to take away from this other than that "Defund the police!" people are either lying liars or burying their heads in the sand so hard that they're prospecting for lithium? I have to frequently express to Americans that in most of the rest of the world when people are openly telling them what they believe, their goals and aims, they should actually listen; "river to the sea" is one such recent example. When people say they want sharia law, they really want sharia law.

Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent & are scared to pay their rent & so they go out & they need to feed their child & they don't have money so... they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry - AOC

The idea that crime is fake and that societal factors explain all observable group differences is stock standard progressive thought, actively taught in sociology departments all around the country. I was personally taught this in a university sociology class, and in a criminology class(at the same university).

I am curious, what, other than oppression, would a progressive accept as an explanation for why minorities do bad things? At the population level, at the national level, what other explanation is even compatible with progressive ideas? You could argue culture, but of course a criminal culture is a natural response to an oppressive society. You could argue socio economic factors, but again you are going to very quickly run into the root cause for those difference, oppression. When I brought up the crime-lead theory in my sociology class, my professor countered with, 'and why did certain groups have to live in the areas of high lead concentration?? tut tut tut'. It's oppression all the way down.

Sure, they might not be as frank as the original poster, but the underlying belief structure obviously leads to the same conclusion.

I feel like one of us must be WILDLY failing the ideological Turing test, for you to call this a 'zombie idiot' view.

I feel like one of us must be WILDLY failing the ideological Turing test, for you to call this a 'zombie idiot' view.

It's you. I know lots of progressives. Exactly zero of them believe that literally no minorities would ever commit crimes if not for oppression, or that crime doesn't exist.

I'm not going to debate progressive criminal theory because I don't subscribe to it, but I'm pretty sure even AOC would not say there would be zero crime if the economy were better. If you cannot steelman their perspective in a way they themselves would agree is what they believe (not "this is what your beliefs lead to" but "this is what you literally believe") then you are weak manning, and the OP was being obnoxious about it and has a long history of being obnoxious.

  • -10

From Emile DeWeaver at the Brennan Center for Justice: "Crime, the Myth":

Crime is not real. This assertion flies in the face of common sense and consensus. Of course crime is real, one would be justified in thinking — we see “crime” every day on the news. Charles Manson was, in fact, responsible for nine murders. Dylann Roof did, in fact, enter the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and kill nine people. Crime rates are, in fact, either up or down or stable on a given day in every city in the United States.

So how could crime be a fiction? The reader and I likely agree that people hurt others and transgress moral boundaries. We may also agree that communities have the job of figuring out how to prevent and remedy such transgressions because a basic precondition for happiness is safety. If, however, we are actually to create a society that is safe for everyone, we’ll profit from challenging our belief in the “reality” of crime.

Begin this challenge by considering race. For hundreds of years, race’s realness was a “fact,” but today, scientists understand that race is not real. What “real” means is well described by journalist Jenée Desmond-Harris. “By ‘real,’ I mean based on facts that people can even begin to agree on. Permanent. Scientific. Objective. Logical. Consistent. Able to stand up to scrutiny.” Racism is real, as real as Dylann Roof. Race, however, is a fiction, and the creation of this fiction was a political project aimed at a political end.

…

The national conversation about crime engages a similar mythology: prevailing narratives routinely deny us the ability to make the distinction between myth and reality. These narratives are, like racial narratives, political projects aimed at political ends. Given the conflation between myth and reality, it makes as much sense to call crime real as it does to call the legend of King Arthur real. If we want to call crime real, we have to locate the truth of what it is and what it isn’t. We have to dispel the mythologies of crime.

One myth is that we punish people for committing crimes. The truth is we punish people less because of what they do and more because of who they are. If I kill a stranger on the street for disobeying my orders, I’m a murderer. Police officers routinely kill unarmed people for, according to police claims, resisting arrest — arrests, as in the case of George Floyd, where no meaningful “crime” has been committed — but we don’t treat police forces like criminal institutions.

…

Then there’s a second myth, that crime is an act committed by an individual. Calling an act a crime is instead a choice we make as a society about how we respond to harms committed in our community. I recently experienced how this myth operates while standing in line at a local Walgreens.

I was about to check out at the cash register when I looked up from my phone and noticed a security guard becoming excited, even agitated. He alternated between whispering to a store clerk and positioning himself to track someone in the surveillance mirrors on the store’s ceiling.

The scene awakened trauma in my body. I remembered all the times I’d been caught shoplifting as a child, how quickly and easily our criminal legal system could destroy a young life, family, and community in the name of justice. I began to scan the security mirrors too, thinking please don’t let this be some kid. The security guard ducked into an aisle. I tracked him in the mirrors to determine his target. The person stealing wasn’t a kid.

…

“Hey, man,” I tried to sound as casually authoritative as I could. “Go back, get whatever you want, and I’ll pay for it.”

Something quite phenomenal happened.

The store’s tense, fearful atmosphere evaporated. A look of deep relief washed over the security guard, and he stepped back without protest. The people standing in line relaxed. A woman working in the photo department left her post to open a third checkout stand specifically to get this homeless man checked out. She smiled and treated him like a human being. It’s true that I had to buy this treatment for him ($30 for toilet paper, food, and a razor), but that did not make the decisions everyone made in that store any less real or less important. All it would have taken is for one person to insist on police involvement, and that homeless man would have been arrested. It took the entire community waiting in that store to save this man.

The homeless man had in one second gone from a criminal whom people feared and even reviled to a member of a community who needed support. Not only did this community — the people in the store — choose to support him, they seemed hungry to do it. They’d just needed to be shown a path and given the opportunity to be the community that the man deserved. The difference between crime and not-crime wasn’t the homeless man’s actions or his intent. It was his community’s response.

It's you. I know lots of progressives. Exactly zero of them believe that literally no minorities would ever commit crimes if not for oppression, or that crime doesn't exist.

I don't think anyone is claiming literally that. It's the difference in criminality between various groups that is 100% ascribed to oppression. Not genes, not culture, only socioeconomic inequity and mental trauma that both stem from oppression are the reason why some groups commit more crimes than others. It's the duty of the privileged groups to compensate oppressed groups by eliminating all trauma triggers and redistributing status and equity in their favor.

I don't think what I've written is a strawman or a weakman of the progressive views on crime.

I guess this needs clarification, but when I said 'at the population level, at the national level' I was trying to preclude the 'literally zero' type objection. I did not assume that a 'most' was all the OP needed to fix their post, since you called it a 'zombie idiot' idea, which suggested a fair deal of distance from a directionally or mostly correct idea (which it seems to be, to me).

I would also really love an answer the question in my post. At the population level, what other cause, that does not reduce down to oppression, is an acceptable progressive explanation for why minorities do bad things? Full disclosure, I honestly don't even know what your answer could be. I literally can't think of one. My understanding is that, 'oppressive society' and 'genetics' covers 100% of the total possible causal factors for the question "why minorities do bad things", with 'oppressive society' containing all of the factors that a progressive would view as acceptable. Again, to me, the view expressed in the OP is stock standard progressive ideation presented in an unfavorable way.

"Directionally correct" is fine. "Expressed in an unfavorable" (meaning uncharitable and inflammatory and weakmanned) way is not. Just saying "Progressives believe all crime is caused by poverty and oppression" would be okay. (Though most progressives don't literally believe there would be zero criminals without poverty and oppression.) But the OP said a lot more than that.

Now you are engaging in a strawman of the other poster. I don’t take the hyperbole to mean that literal progressives believe there are zero criminal assholes. Instead, I think progs genuinely believe that the vast majority of criminals are just good people for whom the systems they are in led them astray. That is, criminals are a fault of society; not a blight on society.

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