Recognizing the issues and the rise of violence by officers in the field whilst suggesting the screening process if flawed doesn't suggest pre-judgment on my part. Everything becomes complicated when you get stuck in details. It's a bit like staring at a painting up close.
The Swiss have the 3rd or 4th highest gun ownership in the world, if memory serves me. The Finns are up there somewhere too.
And an intriguing one. I certainly think that a culture of private-use gun ownership (as opposed to a military draft one, like in Switzerland) creates a societal attitude of defensive paranoia and the notion that conflict is resolved by force. The problem with a philosophy of "the quick and the dead" is that it doesn't leave much time to think and talk... Yeah, it kind of does, in the same way that people perceive their unemployment to be linked to immigration, the decline of the neighbourhood to those Black families moving in and moral decline of society to gay people getting married. For instance. I think you'll find life is more complicated than that. The details is what it is all about. But that makes the picture so complicated, and many people don't like that. Especially those with low intelligence, low empathy, high aggression and weaker psychological constitution. They want their problems to have simple causes with simple solutions --preferably ones that absolve them from personal responsibility and blame the Other.
What I have found throughout life is that people often times make things more complicated then they are, getting bogged down in details failing to see the whole picture. I suppose that brings them a certain level of comfort. Some will be even more structured and rigid in their thinking.
Yeah, but if you have a gun, you can just shoot them. So tell me again how marriage can't be between two people of the same gender.
The screening process for cops in America is designed to weed out those of high intelligence, leaving those that do what they're told without question. It's a situation that's designed to make cops that don't as much enforce the spirit of the law as inflexibly implement what their supervisors tell them is the law, which may not be the law at all. http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 http://politicalblindspot.com/police-officially-refuse-to-hire-applicants-with-high-iq-scores/ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/08/baltimore-officer-brian-rice-freddie-gray Sources cited. You think you have problems with it? I'm not white.
Here people don't get hired for jobs if they're deemed overqualified; the fear is that they'll move on when something better comes along. Of course you can get people who are of average intelligence, but psychologically stable and mature. The police want compliant cops, but not volatile nutter ones. As for poor boundary keeping, corruption and poor impulse control, well, you'll find that in all strata of society and intelligence.
True. But it often precludes the ability to recognize when a person is following the spirit of the law if not the letter, and that's a real issue.
Hahaha you passive aggressive old ******* so that's what it's all about? Next time shoot straight instead of tiptoeing around the subject making insinuations. it's better that way. I believe I did you just didn't like the answer. If I recall it went so far that you brought up alternative family structures using remote tribes in the Amazons as an example whilst deciding that I was from Belgium in the end LOL. What ever gave you that idea I don't know but it doesn't matter. The discussion ended abruptly and the reason for that was that my wife lost her closest girlfriend, with family, to a car crash in march last year. It was total chaos all around. Now, If you wish to discuss this again I suppose you will have to necro the old thread, but as far as I'm concerned the discussion is over. Perhaps we will revisit the subject in the future.
Whoa, you're really attributing too much importance to your opinions now. I'm simply pointing out that you're living in a house of glass. But suspicion is often borne from projection. Yup, should've been you. OK, two links referring to the same individual case, and one referring to a (poorly managed) corrupt policeman with poor boundaries. Hardly conclusive proof of a national policy to hire dumb volatile psychopaths. Meanwhile, the number of US police killed in action in 2014 rose by 89% from 27 to 51. Most were killed by firearms. They are not saints. They are not paragons of wisdom and virtue. There are bad coppers, racist coppers, corrupt coppers and violent coppers, but there are such amongst the general population, and if we hold them to a higher standard, shouldn't we do the same with ourselves? These people put on their uniform every day and do a shitty job dealing with crime, seediness, despair and mess every day, so we don't have to. The reason we feel suspicious and hostile towards them is because they remind us of the darker side of ourselves; the fact that people like them are necessary to keep a society like ours from tearing itself to pieces.
I feel suspicious of police because I live in an incredibly racist town and I'm red, not white. I even shaved my beard so I'm not mistaken for an Arab, like I was last year. Someone drove by and pegged me with a 20-ounce bottle as I worked on my water pipe (the third time in a row it had been broken due to vandalism) while shouting "Pound sand, towelhead!" You can say all you want about that one, Nexxo, I distrust because of what I'm shown every day here. Here is not the whole nation. Here is just that-here, but that happens to be where I am. Police tell me to keep my guns, in case we get an officer that takes his time because I'm not white. Or the meth lab right down the road spills over. I'm the kind that would sooner strike with the butt of my shotgun than blast away, but I'm not above pulling the trigger if it's life or death. The difference is that I don't go looking for trouble-I'm simply prepared if it comes. Though, I am a warbow archer. I think that's just as effective, if not more.
I'm not disputing that, but that doesn't make all cops racist any more than all Arabs terrorist or all White people redneck racists. As soon as someone essentially says: "All cops are psychos" it sounds to me like: all Blacks are criminals, all Jews are deceitful, all Arabs are terrorists etc. Especially if it is presented as a 'simple' truth. We all know what that's about.
Oh please the reason they need to be held to a higher standard is due to the power that they have over the rest of us.
I'd say it's very relevant. What we're basically saying is: "We need you to be virtuous in keeping an eye on us because we're not". We're handing them not only power over us, but also responsibility over us. By holding them to a higher standard, we are abdicating our own. If we hold ourselves to a high standard, we are accepting responsibility over our own behaviour. Which means we don't need a police to wield power over us.
A society isn't a "we" it has no sense of ethics, that's what laws are intended to instil in it, there societies attempt to give something that has no morals, morals.
I would argue society does have a sense of morals. These morals are a necessity for a functional society --without them it soon falls apart. A small society/community polices itself. The problem with big societies is that they become impersonal --it is simply impossible for us to develop a personal relationship with every other member in it. Since morals are relational, this makes moral behaviour towards them a rather abstract concept. Such societies may therefore develop a parental proxy such as God to mediate the relationship (God wants you and me to treat each other morally) or a system of law with judges and enforcers.
