They (the police union) backed the person that instigated an attack on police and the capital, and are surprised that said person (trump) pardoned the attackers, when he said he would pardon the attackers.
Holy fuck, I thought I was stupid.
They thought they would always be on the “source” side of the batons and the big sprays of bear mace. There were a lot of weird little deflections and explanations what happened on January 6th and why for one reason or another it didn’t count. There were some cops and ex-cops in the crowd. Just a few. Now that it’s being made clear on a national level that any cops anywhere might find themselves on the “recipient” end, with full support all the way up the chain, it’s a whole different story and a big problem all of a sudden, I guess.
I say great. Sounds awesome. It should be a perfectly natural alignment of the local cops against the lawless maniacs who Trump wants to turn loose on America. That’s how it worked out four years ago. If Trump wants to make it loud and public that he’d like to firmly align the cops on our side of the coming divide, against his small handful of maniacs on his side, I say that sounds absolutely fantastic and I welcome the development.
to be the devils advocate. Most of them also stupidly expected them to honor his word that he would move through the list of pardons with a fine comb, and that people who participated peacefully were pardoned but the people who were violent during the protest were not.
Spoiler alert: He didn’t. I personally think his descision to just blanket pardon was done last minute, I think it was decided the moment he was told about Bidens last second pardons. He’s never had very good anger management, so I think he did it out of anger. Which also doesn’t look good.
The pardons sent the message they were supposed to send - violence committed on Trump’s behalf, even against police, will be pardoned. The police unions would still vote for Trump given another shot so their disapproval of this means less than nothing and all parties know it.
A big underappreciated part of fascism is that there’s wiring in the human brain that is designed to delegate the thinking, planning, and reasoning to some other person. I think for a lot of these people, their instincts have specifically malfunctioned in a way that prevents them from really taking their own critical look at whether Trump has their best interests at heart.
If Trump says it, it’s real. If you don’t have that type of mentality, it’s hard to wrap your head around how the person would even make such dumb decisions or trust placements, but if you’re in it, it makes perfect sense and everything is ordered and comfortable. It may take something truly shocking to make you wake up and realize what was obvious to everyone else. And, once you reach the realization, it can be terribly destabilizing and upsetting. Now you’re adrift, and you don’t know what to do or what to think, and nothing makes sense.
They’re obviously adults, I’m not trying to make it sound like they can’t make any decisions for themselves, but it is important I think to realize how powerful the suppression of separate independent judgement in that kind of hierarchy can be. And that hierarchy can form itself into a terrifying powerful force, because everyone’s acting in the same unified direction. No hesitation or loss of focus.
Well said. The satisfaction & reassurance of being in a “righteous” group is very powerful. No matter the reality, the group reinforces itself & calms dissent. Like a terrible & warm blanket. Then it’s very terrifying when you realize what you are & where you could be led. Thank you for the lesson, religious youth groups.
It’s also worth mentioning the consolation in the fact that fascism always fails, eats itself alive, and collapses. It’s inherently unstable and unsustainable. It can collectivize a lot of power real fast, and do a lot of damage as a result, but it never lasts. Human beings need to cooperate, and hyper competitive individualism creates false loyalty and betrayals, minimal trust, minimal cooperation. Great pains and efforts, and the use of their power, is always spent trying to fight against human nature to maintain their order. Human nature always prevails.
I think the dangerous message was the majority of LAW ENFORCEMENT officers voting for an anti-democratic felon rapist.
Also, an anti - Union anti-democratic felon rapist. Imagine any union doing that.
Yup. The dangerous message was also sent for the previous 4 years that they’ve been martyred and celebrated by the same person y’all backed. Idiots.
No shit Sherlock.
The message is ‘Fight for me and I’ll keep you out of jail’
Proud boys are now calling for retaliation against the cops that testified against them to put them in jail.
Fucking PLEASE.
PLEASE go after the local police. Cops are a little community. PLEASE have Trump’s people start threatening a bunch of uniformed civilian police who didn’t do anything other than work to put some violent maniacs in prison, and make it clear to them what he stands for, and in particular that they are not safe from it. That development would be a rare ray of sunshine in a pretty awful stormy time that is coming.
I don’t understand your excitement. Why do you say ‘PLEASE’ to watching Proud Boys and local police having a friendly BBQ with eachother?
I’m trying to work on being less sarcastic. Seriously. So I will make a completely serious response:
That is the exact opposite of what I was saying. I think there’s an excellent chance of the Proud Boys and the local police becoming friendly with each other. In some places, of course, they already are. Anything that undermines that alliance, and aligns the normal civilian police against Trump and his MO, will inevitably be a huge boon when some of Trump’s semi-organized maniacs come to town with aims of using street violence to accomplish some horrifying goal he and his people have got in mind.
