Capco

Top-down control. Power. Men behind the curtain. Fewer individual freedoms. Assault on liberty. Things the American Right will never tolerate!!! Yadda yadda ya.

This guy is a microcosm of PPP. I always kind of assumed that PPP was reflective of many of the users of this board. But if this thread is any indication, the batshit crazy alt-right that is PPP is in fact just a very vocal minority. This guy FireChans has gotten demolished in this thread and it gives me a lot of hope seeing the once silent majority giving him hell.

... Some people just don't get it.

Because he said so:

I was literally just thinking that it was in bad taste. I removed it. It has nothing to do with you. It's difficult to communicate explicitly through text. That's not any one person's fault. It's just a fact of textual comms. The clearer I am, the clearer you (as in the general you) will understand me. I think this also applies to your groupthink comment as well, though.

I believe that rampant ignorance is the largest reason people vote No but there are others which might be valid. I do not condone or support groupthink. I believe in freedom of expression within reason. I hope that clears things up. And sorry for the sass...

And in your mind, that means I said all people need to vote one way because otherwise they are just ignorant? That's bad comprehension on your part. Admit it and move on.

Lol. This is a first. Don't put the blame on me just because you added meaning that was never present. If it's not explicitly stated, don't assume it. That's Interwebz 101.

Ding ding ding! We have a winner! Could it be that even in lieu of ignorance, people with all of the pertinent knowledge at their disposal might still vote no for a host of other reasons? Why yes, it could! We need not reduce positions into such black-and-white logic all the time, you know. Could it be that such a comment is not a reference to there being one right answer (and hence a demand for all Yes votes), but instead a reference to the surprise of the current ratio of Yes votes to No votes? Yes! It could be that, too! Again, the only one making broad brush strokes with the inability to distinguish nuance is the guy who's talking about groupthink.

I didn't proclaim that. If your reading comprehension is this bad, I think you're beyond help. I honestly feel bad for you at this point. You're embarrassing yourself.

No one has said that everyone should vote one way in the entire 7 pages of this thread. Just because you've been trained into reducing opposing viewpoints into some type of Orwellian dystopian belief doesn't mean that's the reality chief.

Oooof. Dude, this entire post is you being on your high horse. You were responding to someone who couldn't believe how many people would be opposed to this action, and your response was to reduce their sentiment to the notion that everyone should think like they do as if it were some sort of top-down mandate to coerce the masses into subjugation, which is exactly what groupthink is a reference to. You're as transparent as you are ignorant. All I did was call out your bs.

Scream buzzwords! Since that's all your mind is capable of anyway.

Because ignorance is rampant in America. It's almost 40 now.

This issue is bigger than the NFL.

A couple more questions if you have a moment, @billsfan1959 and @Sig1Hunter. The author mentions Dave Grossman: One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you. This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.” I was wondering if either of you have read this essay (https://www.killology.com/sheep-wolves-and-sheepdogs), been exposed to Dave Grossman's work either in print or in person, and what your opinions were of his view on law enforcement. I find many of his views to be extreme, and it troubles me that he contributes to law enforcement theory around the country through his seminars and books. What about you?

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/is-stupider-a-word/#:~:text=Stupider is the comparative form,stupidest or the most stupid.

Thanks. As I said, I was introducing one particular viewpoint here (which I acknowledged is anecdotal) so as to discuss it with you all, because I found the contents deeply disturbing. When you want other people to read your book, you put some juicy quotes on the back cover. It's the same concept as "getting clicks" by focusing on that which stands out. But I'm not trying to get you to click for monetary gain or anything. I'm just trying to get people to read it.

Believe what you want dude. Read the exchange between billsfan1959 and myself if you think I'm being disingenuous.

It was an eye-catching quote from the introduction that summarizes a lot of the essay. I just wanted to use the essay as a basis for discussion. There was nothing more to it than that my guy. But feel free to keep putting words in my mouth. If you think you have me all figured out, good for you I guess.

Excellent post. Thank you again for your contributions to this discussion and, especially, your service to your community. You definitely sound like you were a fine police officer.

Systemic doesn't mean absolute or unequivocal. When a disease is systemic that doesn't mean that every single cell involved in the system in question is diseased. Are all cops good? No. Are all cops bad? No. I hope that answers your questions.

On a fundamental level I disagree with this and maybe that's where some of the disconnect is. Under the appropriate environmental (read: external) circumstances anyone can be a saint or a sinner. I have some supporting arguments on this topic if you'd like to discuss it further. I appreciate you offering your personal experiences. I was just about to ask Sig to comment here as well lol. I'm not. I'm listening you as well, aren't I? So, his experiences are anecdotal. So are yours. Each can only be taken with a grain of salt, right? And yet somehow you think you can speak for the vast majority of officers when you said this: Is there something about your life experience that allows you to speak for the vast majority of officers?

With all due respect, did you read the quote? The guy came into the force wanting to do the right thing, did the right thing in training, then got called out for it instead of action being taken. If you went through that experience, what would be the lesson that you learned? Would it be that doing the right thing is what policing is all about? Or would it be to shut your mouth when it comes to the misconduct of your coworkers? That would be my guess too. But most of those people don't go through training that involves the following, do they? Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty. I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers. ... Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables. And remember, this particular officer didn't get to choose his training. It wasn't his personal choice to learn these lessons. They were taught to him by the system he was joining. If every police cadet "did the right thing" during their training, this police force wouldn't have a single cop on it. How is that not pervasive?

Racism aside, isn't something like this a systemic problem for accountability? In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.