Troll confirmed. The societal framework that I wish to see is one in which that kid, following his police officer fathers advice, doesn't end up getting viciously brutalized by a bully with a badge, even if he didn't immediately exit his goddamn car.
Fuck you and your pious trolling.
There is nothing inevitable about that kid's permanent brain damage stemming from his asking why he was being detained before exiting his car save the disgusting bully with a badge, a bully who had been fired from his previous police force for bragging about hunting n*****s"
Focusing on what the kid did might have slightly done wrong is a disgusting right wing troll, end of story.
You have written a response so rich with material that I almost wish to indulge it. Honestly, though, my biggest problem in doing so is that I can't really look at what is written in this thread that invited such a reaction. I am guessing this response has a lot to do with what I have written in other threads and not just this one. If so, I really don't have sufficient framework to generate a response to your words, and I really don't want to continue with tit for tat negotiation tactics until we get to the point of hashing it out.
So I'll simply state why I chose to address the validity behind buckshot & others' words in absence of the danger of losing focus on the greater issue.
Simply put, I agree with you. LEOs have been granted a great authority, and sufficient enough quantity of them have violated the sanctity of the charge to use it responsibly that the public has lost faith in their basic motives. That is coupled with a system that makes obtaining justice for such arrogance very difficult, or at a minimum not on par with the public who is at risk of being abused.
Yet, I do not wish to hitch my wagon to those who might actually make strides in providing accountability if they are unwilling to look into the eyes of people who recognize that horrible acts are committed by actual people, and as people, we have a human interaction with those who have authority over us, and the nature of that human interaction has some influence on how that goes.
In my experience, there are quite a lot of people who have lost site of their charge to wield authority responsibly who might actually be able to put it back into focus if you merely act in a way that demonstrates you have an understanding that your actions have an influence on their attention to this responsibly.
From your posts, it seems you fear that making such a concession weakens the position that such abuses of power are evil and demand a reckoning which is frustratingly ephemeral.
The reason why I attack it, however, is because, it is my firm belief that refusing to allow more complexity in this situation weakens your ability to make something useful happen from your moral position. And, believe me, your moral position is absolutely correct.
You trying to turn the tables is a transparent false equivalency, and that you do so in your faux pious way is even more dangerous and disgusting, a real authoritarian weasel move.
This last sentence is intriguing. And so interesting it appears in this context -- when we are discussing abuse of authority.
I think you might understand, form director, if you think about it, why I have chosen to disclaim that I am a physician. And it makes me curious how you feel about your own position here. One that gives you authority. An authority that you advertise. And an authority that you wield to enforce the rules here. And it is a charge in which you must provide a great deal of autonomy to the posters, and yet also places you in position to exercise that authority responsibly. And I wonder, despite all the rules, how often it is you question whether you are doing the right thing. But then there's all the rest. All the rest that surely annoys you, eats at you, where you have to police the idiocy of humanity that really ought to know better. And then those times when you really ought not intervene, but you know that people are acting like such idiots and you could fix things by doing so. It surely frustrates you. It must be hard not to lose site of that charge to use your authority responsibly.
And I ask you. Why not abdicate that authority if it frustrates you? Surely someone else would like to be forum director. Surely that authority must be enticing to someone.
Funny, though. If all the people with authority gave it away to those who did not feel conflicted about having authority and using it responsibly, then the only people we'd be left with who had any power would be narcissistic assholes.
I advertise my authority. I possess it. I put people in position to challenge me on whether I am using it responsibly. I explore those boundaries. I push buttons. Guilty as charged. Except, if I did not do that, how could I be 100% positive that I was not losing site of my charge to use it responsibly?