I hate to say it, but I had no hope at all that a second look would make the slightest difference. You live with a delusional and defective belief that everybody has the capacity to control their reactions to being disrespected. This is because your morality requites a black and white world that admits to no shades of gray. But in the real world, it wouldn't take anybody with any real skill any time at all to break you. Even I wouldn't have to push very hard to be accused of hearing voices.
Yes, I do believe that everybody has the capacity to control their reactions to being disrespected. If one does not have the capacity to control one's own reactions, why should one expect the world to make allowances for one's own shortcomings?
Possum, I think what you are missing is that most of us are arguing for what would be right in a just world. You are arguing for what people should do in the name of temporary self interest. Most of us behave exactly how you are suggesting to behave toward cops, whether there is disrespect from the cop or not. But being nice and courteous to a cop who is being abusive or condescending or an outright asshole isn't the solution to the problem. It is a band-aid that doesn't solve the bigger ailment. The bigger issue is the cops' ability to treat people unprofessionally, illegally, and inhumanely, and to get away with it. Not many other professions on Earth let you get away with that kind of behavior. Don't you have any ideas or thoughts on how we can rectify this? Do you even see it as the problem? Or should we choose to live our lives as subservient bootlickers who have given up absolute authority over our lives to people who would abuse it?
Problem is we're never going to have a perfect world, and throwing a tantrum because the world isn't perfect just makes the world materially worse. Here we have a young woman in the prime of her life who ends up dead leading from a failure to signal a lane change. Absolutely no one benefits from this; it is the poster event for making the world materially worse.
We all need to remember that we are imperfect beings in a world chock full of other imperfect beings. We can't control other people, but we CAN control ourselves. Perhaps Encenia is a perfectly nice young man who had simply had a horrible day and reacted badly. Perhaps he is an asshole to the core. I don't know, but we are all going to meet up with both categories on a daily basis, and how we react, how we control ourselves or fail to do so, determines the world we live in. WE make the world we live in, day by day.
Three more thoughts on your last few sentences. First, there is a middle ground between showing your ass to a cop and living our lives as "subservient bootlickers who have given up absolute authority over our lives to people who would abuse it." Always, always, ALWAYS pick your battles. Life is the entirety of your days, not one chance encounter. If a cop is in the wrong, decide right then whether his being in the wrong is a battle you need to fight, period. A cop being an asshole to me doesn't materially affect my life either way except to make one ten minute period less pleasant. As I am a big boy and no one promised me eternal pleasure, I am fine with that. If I decide it is something I need to fight, then I am going to do so with the odds stacked in my favor. That means ideally with a lawyer - my own professional - but at the least, in the proper venue. I literally could not care less whether that cop respects me, but if he is writing me a ticket I don't think I deserve, then I'll fight it - but not on the side of the road, because that is guaranteed to make his case stronger and mine weaker.
Second, if the cop is showing his ass, then you showing yours is guaranteed to make him show his worse. Every time. (Bullies can be sometimes backed down, but not bullies with badges.) Stop and think if that is an outcome you find desirable. On the other hand, you keeping your cool MAY make him behave more reasonably.
Third, there are many ways we can make this less of a problem. For instance:
1. Adopting the military-style training as I mentioned earlier where volunteers actively try to push the cop's buttons and get him to react poorly. This not only helps cops develop restraint, it can also be helpful in weeding out people who by temperament have no business being cops.
2. Widespread adoption of body cameras. As a representative of government a cop has the presumption of being in the right - he has to, to serve his function - but we all know he won't always be in the right. So trust, but verify. Knowing that their actions are being recorded will help keep cops honest and help keep honest cops out of court.
3. For situations such as Ferguson, get cops back to walking a beat at least part of the time. Nowadays cops too often drive by, only seeing people when there is a crime committed. Cops show up and usually can do nothing about the crime and seldom otherwise interact with the people they are nominally protecting, so the people lose faith in the cops and the cops lose faith in the people. Cops don't know the people, so they start to see them as one faceless mass rather than individuals, and the people don't know the cops so they see them as much as predator as protector.
4. Train cops to recognize that blacks especially have valid reasons to distrust cops, especially in the South, as the cops were the ones who enforced Jim Crow and often the ones who protected those who preyed on blacks both officially and criminally. Cops should understand that some black people will have unreasonable views about cops, have some legitimate reasons to hold those views, and will therefore act unreasonably toward cops. So even though in principle everyone should be treated equally, training cops to treat black people with kid gloves helps cops achieve their purpose, a safe and law-abiding society. Cops treating black people better than other people simply helps blacks understand that cops aren't intentionally treating them worse than other people.
5. Train cops and more importantly their political bosses to recognize that although arresting really bad people for minor offences like pot is a good societal thing, hassling everyone (or everyone in a particular area) for minor offences is a bad societal thing. It simply convinces the locals that the cops are their enemies. The fucking poster child for this is Eric Garner, ultimately being killed while being arrested for being the twenty-first century match girl. Yes, we all know how much you want all your tobacco taxes, but having a population that sees cops as enemies is far too high a price.
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