We were starting to make progress, too.
A couple of Saturdays ago, I think it was September 12th was the Trump Parade here in Ohio. It was a spectacular event; a historical show of support. My understanding is that something like this has never happened before.
Cincinnati's Interstate 275 beltway and surrounding areas showed what I would call a stunning and truly spectacular turnout in support of Trump. The entire 84 miles was literally jam packed with vehicles and an amazing amount of huge flags. I can't imagine how the Biden/ Harris ticket thinks they have a chance of winning.
The show of support for Trump is one thing, but what really surprised me is the support for Law Enforcement.
It confuses me how the "de-regulation" and "liberty" ticket is supportive of police. It didn't seem like anyone supported them a month or so ago.
** Please don't take that last sentence to mean that I believe this to be the case. I am an anarchist and don't believe in any of this nonsense, but it is how they are trying to brand themselves. **
I'm guessing that about a third of the flags were Thin Blue Line. I say again, I don't believe there was any where near this kind of support just a month or two ago, but now we have "the other side" going bat-shit crazy and driving a wedge they would really regret, if they had the brains to do so. Killing cops and burning buildings is not the solution. Not at all.
We are now more polarized.
This polarization is bolstering the Law and Order ticket and its advocates. I fear that if we do not reign in the conversation and these lunatics, we are quickly going to be seeing the pendulum swing hard toward a dystopia and chaos that we could never have imagined a year ago.
How To Actually Fix the Police Problem.
Eliminate the Majority of Laws, Starting With ALL Prohibition, but Also .
Prohibition, as a rule, makes everything worse. We should have learned this lesson when we were smacked in the face the when we tried it with alcohol. I've written extensively about it in the past on @diggndeeper.com. As long as there is not victim, there is no crime.
I sincerely believe we would see the most peace, prosperity and innovation if we stopped banning everything. This is supposed to be a free country after all.
This is my pet subject and I have a lot to say about it, but if you care to read more, please head over to the above mentioned blog.
Eliminate Qualified Immunity.
Qualified immunity was established to protect government officials from being sued for constitutional violations.
Qualified immunity says that in order to show that a law is be clearly established, the plaintiff must point to a case with similar facts. In practice, this means that unless a situation which is nearly identical has been ruled on already, you won't be able to try it. In other words, if you are the first to try a specific situation, you are out of luck.
This ridiculous legal test makes it nearly impossible to hold government employees accountable.
Included with the elimination of qualified immunity should also be any law other law that puts police or any government actor above the average citizen.
Eliminate Police Unions.
Police unions make it nearly impossible to terminate police bad actors. Even when a police officer is actually terminated for wrongdoing, unions will get them hired in another town or city.
Fee.com has a very interesting article about how one jurisdiction dissolved its police force to break the union contracts with the intention to hire even more police in the newly created police force, which in turn vastly reduced corruption within the police and the crime in the town they were policing - with largely the same police as re-hires. Very interesting.
Allow Competition in Policing.
Our current paradigm of policing, or government in general is that of a monopoly of violence in a given geographical area. How is this the best method of governing anything? We are well aware that monopolies are bad.
Is it really that radical? We need more discussion, but we certainly have the tools.
I like your ideas: eliminating police unions (I'm all in favor of it), qualified immunity (something new for me, but the way you explained it, it needs to go too), and most of all prohibition ALL prohibition (something I have been favoring since my teens).
Still, some deep feeling inside is suggesting me that all this doesn't matter any more. That we're way past all of this. That the next step will be chaos, and mayhem, and pointless violence, and brother against brother all over again. And in the end nobody will know who started it, but it's going to be an immense effort to stop it. And once the bloodshed is over, there will be a nation in ruins, and maybe seven people who will have grown richer than anything even conceivable today.
Sorry for my pessimism, especially since this is the first comment on your post. But I just spent three months in the US, and I feel for you as a country. The left and the right have both gone beyond insane, and none of them (or most of anyone) seem to notice. There is one hope though, and that is that I could be wrong. Let's hope that's the case.
I also fear you might be correct. The only bright side is that a lot of people are seeing that none of this is worth their time and many are looking for alternatives. This is very promising.
My prediction is that there is going to be a growing chasm between these people that will and are working on a better way and those that are grasping to Statism. I might be in an echo chamber that is warping my perspective, but I see it already.
It's true, I have met many good people, who like myself see themselves as far away from the dems as from the reps. (Kinda like me, who considers himself American, but not from the United States... though this takes us a bit away from the point at hand.) As many as there may be, though, it's still a marginal exception to the norm - or so it seems to me. So I really hope you are right, and they will in fact turn out to be a kind of silent majority, who will speak up at the decisive moment, so that cool heads can prevail.
As it turns out, the first article I saw a friend share on another social media site is this one: A wargame designer defines our four possible civil wars. I'm kind of a history buff (as is the author), so I couldn't help reading and enjoying this, even though one scenario described is worse than the next one.
Oh, I don't think we are even close to a silent majority. We are however formidable. I don't mean we are going to go out and win civil wars. Not at all. I think we are capable of taking care of ourselves and each other and make other powerful converts. It is a revolution of diy and philosophy.
Personally, I think open source, permaculture, crypto and makers are going in the direction of peace, prosperity and robustness that can outcompete the religion of the State. We don't need to win over everyone, we just need to keep doing what we are already doing.
We are small in number, but we are growing in real power.
Awesome! I really like what you're saying. Let's make it happen!
Lol. Well, this platform is where I think that conversation will be taking place.
So it's pretty clear that in the US police abuse authority en masse, and kill those they are sworn to protect far too frequently. This issue finally came to a head, but with a racial overtone. No one wants to talk about the many, many, white men killed by police. I use white not because I am white, but because it's a non-minority.
A clear example of this was the murder of Daniel Shaver who committed no crime. Barely was this case talked about when it should have been headline news, and worse yet the officer got off. He was let go from the force, and then temporarily re-hired to qualify for paid disability. The reason? PTSD, from killing Mr. Shaver.
Now the movement against the police is one of many agendas. It's anti-police, anti-USA, and in many ways anti-Caucasian with many white people being a part of the movement. It also has a strong left vs right paradigm.
In the end I'm not optimistic. I think that this along with the "pandemic" is a dismantling and rapid re-structuring of society and authority along with the relationship therein. The timing of all of these things was very unfortunate, but wealthy "NGO" think-tanks see this as a once in a liftime opportunity for a "Great Reset" to save the world from climate change. That's a lot of synced up agendas at once. Too many in my opinion, and just in time for Agenda 21's time table. I hate to say this but I think many of the so-called conspiracy theorists were right about multiple things.