@mekkaokereke of course it's not about money. It's about machismo sexist b*******. Don't want the men to feel like they're not the most important thing in the entire universe.
@BetsyBeeee @FrockCoat@bassam.social @TonyStark Who is this frockcoat account? Is everyone else seeing the account is tiny? Or did the account block me and I'm seeing wrong info? Or are they already gone?
But the right wing fear machine isn't helping at all. Crime is at near historic lows and people are acting like it's Cabot Cove 1984-1996.*
*The joke, for any who don't get it, is the town murder she wrote was set in, if it were real and had that many murders, would have been the murder capital of the world right about the peak of violent crime in actual US history.
*as a scholar on here pointed out Left Wing authoritarians and Right Wing ones are demonstrably different. A Communist dictator is not the same as a fascist one.
Trump is absolutely a fascist/neofascist type of would be dictator. There is a difference between what his dictatorship will look like and what Castro and Chavez's looked like.
That said, there are a number of similarities as well that can be summed up as they're both awful.
What's more, the Democrats are NOT a far left party.
I'd argue the Democrats as a whole are actually a right of center party, not a liberal or progressive one.
The new Landslide podcast on NPR lays out how this came to be and nevermind the publisher, it's a great listen. Highly recommended.
But no matter how progressive Bernie claims to be and AOC claims to be and no matter that they're definitely to the left, no elected Federal official I'm aware of is far left in the United States.
And Bernie, if he was, isn't even a Democrat anyway.
First and most importantly, because it's accurate.
But nearly as important is the recognition that a huge part of the Spanish speaking community is more interested in Spanish speaking dictators than ones who speak Russian, Hungarian or even German.
And the GOP knows this! The GOP has successfully convinced a lot of people that *the Democrats* are the ones like Castro and Chavez. Many people here lived nightmares under these men and the GOP constantly tells them the Democrats are them.
"Preposterous in an ethical society, but we’re actually not that anymore here in the land of feverish #Trump idolatry a la Fidel #Castro in 1959. The American right-wing caudillo, who tried to derail democracy and took off with secret military documents he shared and hid from the FBI, can do no wrong."
The thing that ultimately most oftenkills people from covid is a condition called acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS.
I knew what it was because my dad survived ARDS two previous times. I don't know what the survival rate is now but in 2011 and 2016 is was 40% meaning my dad overcame a 16% chance of surviving it twice.
He is in danger of going into ARDS again today.
Thoughts, good spells and/or prayers to benevolent deities appreciated.
My dad, who has been in the hospital or rehab since April 5, was sent to the ER from rehab for shortness of breath.
My mom wasn't told for three hours.
Once at the ER for shortness of breath the hospital took a picture of his groin area because it was so inflamed and swollen from the rehab center letting him sit in his own waste so much.
My mom has demanded the rehab center address this but everyone there says "it's not my job."
@HistoPol@sinabhfuil Yes. Civilian Review Boards. In other words, DeSantis functionally ended civilian oversight of police.
In Miami Dade County we had such a horrible time with law enforcement with no civilian oversight that we abolished the sheriff's office and turned it into a countywide police department (if you ever watched Miami Vice TV this is why they were "Dade County Police").
@HistoPol@CarlG, I appreciate what I think the main arguments of the Defund the Police crowd are: take things away from the police that shouldn't be there like health and wellness checks, domestic disputes, traffic stops, nonviolent drug crimes, prostitution, etc and take the money spent on those things and give them to agencies trained to handle these needs.
We'd be better off with this.
Still, I agree, given the origins of American policing, slave society and colonialism, abolish them.
@HistoPol We absolutely need firefighters, first responders, etc. No one, other than a few anarchists (and many of these are likely paid trolls), wants no public safety entities.
But we need to break these things up and start over from their current forms.
I too have no idea what the end form would look like. I just know the current models are designed to dominate and control, not to serve and protect anything other than rich white men's money.
@HistoPol one of the biggest issues with policing, and I'm gonna really piss people off here but it's where the facts take you, fire fighters, is their unions. Because they were fraternal organizations first, and racist AF from the start, and unchecked before the late 1960s on their racism and ideology, these unions need to be replaced altogether.
The entire command structure and organization of both entities are also affected, which, comes from colonial counter-insurgency, not safety @CarlG
@HistoPol while Maryland got rid of their LEOBOR after George Floyd they did so because they had already entrenched it in their CBA contract. In fact, I found in FIU archives the labor union playbook that told unions to do exactly this because there was absolutely no way a court would allow their LEOBOR to persist. Except they did.
And Ron DeSantis just gutted all civil review boards this month while standing behind a support your police sign.
@HistoPol so the police got a detective elected to state house. First or second active cop in history elected to a state house.
He immediately got a bill introduced creating the statewide LEOBOR to insulate cops from CRBs.
Maryland passed a similar bill at the same time. I need to explore more how they influenced each other (probably via police fraternal orga that were antecedent to their CBA units that started around then).
@HistoPol for the cops they were *furious* about things like Miranda rights. They were victims of an unjust system that picked on them. LEOBORs were around at local levels but at that point civilian review boards were becoming popular--and that REALLY pissed them off.
The John Birch's biggest campaign was "support your local police" in response to CRBs. At the 1972 RNC on Miami Beach the police rioted and covered the island, an island full of old people in tear gas. People demanded CRBs.
GenXer studying American and transnational history with a focus on de jure racism in housing and policing through the lens of illiberalism.Married to an Engineering prof.He/Him#SacramentoKings fan way before it was cool.Warning: If you follow me without interacting I'll likely block you.