Humor: Plastic Gun Shuts Down Washington

[observor]

I am not in the business of having a list of do's and don'ts for cops who hate and fear the communities they haunt.

basically i have only one suggestion to them personally: they should quit their shameful and reactionary job.

You seem to insist that we should make suggestions for every pig in society.

But it is an absurd thing, that quickly shows how absurd it is by looking throughout society and asking more questions of that kind:

How should a prison guard subdue the prison rebels? How SHOULD a police spy make his lists of activists? How should an SS guard respond to an uppity jew?

The answer is that they should stop being pigs. And we should stop making excuses if they don't.

[Deleted]

The same old answer again. People are not comic book characters, it's not as simple as you are making out to be. Labeling every cop as a pig who hates his community is beyond absurd.

[eat the world]

please don't be insulting. When we disagree, don't imply that you are only getting "comic book" answers.

Let me help you understand:

This system doesn't work for the people. It is riddled with structures and forces that brutalize us -- even kill us. And there ARE NO quick little answers to make it all right.

It is possible to pose thousands of questions to class conscious people -- demanding that they tell you how this or that pig should act. There is no answer -- because the answer is we need to be free from these oppressors, and we don't have quick one line solutions that would help them be just or better or moral.

Let me put it another way:

Cops invade and occupy oppressed communities like an army. They hate and fear the youth. They brutalize the people -- jacking the kids up, demanding that they inform on each other. The cops indoctrinate each other that these are just "gang bangers," or just "the bad guys," or "the n*ggers."

And so, while they "serve and protect" the system they are paranoid and afraid among the people. some kid is playing, and they are so hyped up they blow the kid away. They are so vicious that they think making THEMSELVES utterly safe means pulling a hair trigger on kids at play.

And then YOU (sonofrage) as ME, how the cop should respond? You imply he is justified responding that way! And that "the problem" is that kids should not have toy guns.

How upside down?

It is totally unjustified. It is totally a concentration of a sick and oppressive order that criminalizes the poor, and treats our kids as if they are worthless. And a training that makes every pig cop think his life is worth a thousand of these kids.

It has nothing to do with toy cops, or lack of training of the cops, or a justified fear for his life or anything else.

It is a concentration of a world order where we are supposed to work, and suffer and die. And they are given every right to enforce that order, by the most vicious means.

So I don't have any answer for what some islated maurauding cop should do at the moment he is about to blow a way a kid in a moment of racist paranoia.

If he had an ounce of integrity he would back away, leave, take of the ugly uniform and never look back.

And anyone else looking at that scene, who had an ounce of compassion for the people, would dedicate themselves to making sure these ugly gunmen don't kill any more of us in their legal lynchings and uniformed drive-bys.

[eat the world]

one more point for clarity:

sonofrage writes: "Labeling every cop as a pig who hates his community is beyond absurd."

this is exactly the argument of conservatives. When we say "the job of the police is fundamentally to keep the oppressed in line in class societies" they answer "well not every cop is bad."


Let me deconstruct that from a two sides.

First, we don't say "every cop is bad." We say the *institution* of policing in a class society protects property, confines the poor, and is deeply involved in defending the mores, strictures, prejudices, unspoken hatreds of an unjust society.

Second, no one said that cops hate "his community." We are talking avbout cops invading the communities of the poor and black. Cops do (at a high and shocking rate) beat their wives, and pull guns on their neighbors -- cause their job selects and refines a brutish, ignorant and violent streak. But in the main, cops don't kill the kids in "his communities."

It is totally irrelevent whether "every cop is bad" -- and no one argues that (because it isn't the point), and don't put words in our mouths.

The reality is stark and clear: every cop is a cop. And the JOB of COPS in an unjust society are inevitably and demonstrably to defend injustice.

This is not a matter of this individual or that individual.
Though it is important to point out the real, and common absurdity: the false argument that it is just "a few bad apples" who make the cops bad.

And if some individual cop somewhere is not racist, is not brutal, is not corrupt, is not filled with fear and hatred of black kids or hiphop youth -- he just doesn't last long on a big city force.

This corruption, brutality and their fundamental antagonism to oppressed communities, all these routine structures of frame-up, planted evidence, police purjury, lying on the stand, the "blue wall of silence" -- all that crap is NOT a matter of racist ideas in the heads of a few "bad cops."

Their behavior is endemic and systemic -- it IS their job to brutalize the people. That's (fundamentally, overall, generally, in a sweeping way) the mission they are hired for.

[eat the void]

one final thought:

Over and over, sonofrage, you write that your ideas "should be obvious" and the revolutionary verdicts you dislike are "absurd."

Aside from the rather knee-jerk disrespect that reveals, it also seems to betray something else: That there are still pockets of the society where the official verdicts (the socalled Standard View) are so unchallenged that even questioning them seems to be madness. That even stating an opposing view triggers a "wtf? this is absurd."

I don't care so much about the repeated disrespect you show. But i do think it matters (to you and to all of us) that you learn to be more open-minded toward radical ideas, analyses, methods, and exposures.

[Deleted]

I was not being at all disrespectful. The world is not black and white and there is such a thing as common sense.

In the specific situation I was using, I don't see what else you can expect a person to do. If I had a gun, and I saw someone point a gun at me, I'm going to fear for my life. Of course I'm going to feel the need to defend myself and of cours fear is going to cloud my judgement.

On this issue, I disagree with you and I honestly find some of what you said to be absurd. This is not disrespect, this is honesty.

[more]

What i think is obvious and common sense.

What you think is absurd, and even "beyond absurd."

And as for your arguments, I don't even want to address them, but will just call them cartoonish.

and don't call me disrespectful. ok? I'm not. Ok?

any questions?

[Deleted]

I should say rather that I meant no disrespect and that some of the arguments are absurd in my opinion. I stated my reasons in previous postings, so please don't characterize my arguments in the way you have.

[eat the world]

here is an intereting window into the general cop mentality:

www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/nyc-nyblog233596709dec23,0,7836851.story

of course the newspaper (and police department) portray this as a "bad apple" -- and portray themselves as wanting to "uncover" this. But reading between the lines shows that this webblog expresses the common/generalized view of the people (and the crime vis a vis the authorities was the fact that it was nakedly expressed in public.)

[Deleted]

You're using the actions of a few to generalize over a larger population. That's no different than someone posting a story about an African-American commiting a crime then saying "see they are all criminals."

[eat the world]

wrong on both counts.

First I am generalizing not from a few incidents or individuals -- but from the general experience of the poor (over and over and over and over). We have an experience with the INSTITUTION of police.

Second: summing up that "the function of police is to defend existing property and social norms" is not equivalent to saying "all black people are criminals." One is true, the other is not.

Not all generalizations are wrong. In fact, without generalizations there is no knowledge -- we would be in a swamp of empircal fragmentation.

The issue is "who and what do the police serve and protect?" It sure ain't us.

[Deleted]

Guest-eat said:

We have an experience with the INSTITUTION of police.

I don't see how this is contrary to what I have been saying all along. My point has been from the beginning that while we may have problems with the institution we can't be "the boy who cried wolf" and automatically blame the police in every incident regardless of the situation.

In the specific situation which was being talked about in the beginning I believe that it is to be expected that a person would act in self-defense if they see what looks like a real gun pointed at them.

You gave a link to an article about one police officer and proclaimed it to be an example of the "general cop mentality." That is an over-generalization. If I wrote a paper in my graduate program and used that one article as a reference to proclaim what the general mentality of a police officer is I would get a nice, fat F on the assignment.

The world is not as black and white as some here like to make it seem. You have to recognize the shades of gray. Life would be easier if we could fit everything and everyone into little categories, but it's not the way things are in the real world.

[REDFINN]

Sonofrage gave a good issue.Banning the toy guns.There is too much violence everywhere these days:computer games, TV and in the real life.Kids shouldnt play with serious stuff like this.

And what comes to that cop killing a child.It is impossible to debate about since I wasnt there to witness the situation.There are lot of questions to be made for example Did the child point the gun on cop or not?Was it day or night?How old was the kid?etc,etc.

[heed the diff]

I have heard it said "there is too much reactionary violence and not enuf revolutionary violence."

That is a different view.

[eat da void]

redfinn wrote: "And what comes to that cop killing a child.It is impossible to debate about since I wasnt there to witness the situation.There are lot of questions to be made for example Did the child point the gun on cop or not?Was it day or night?How old was the kid?etc,etc. "

my friend redfinn, here is the shocking answer to your question:

We are not talking about a single incident. The fact is the cops in Amerikkka shoot kids in black communities over and over, and claim later that they were playing with toy guns and the cop "had to do it."

All across Amerikkka, Black mothers tell their kids not to play like other kids do, because THEY are routinely seen as an enemy and executed. (I.e. this does not happen to white suburban kids playing with super-soakers in their circle drives.)

So we are not discussing or debating a single shocking incident -- we are discussing something that is a constant "fact of life" for Black people in this pisshole.