Saturday, January 24, 2015

Do "The police exist to maintain the divide between the upper class and everyone else. Nothing more." ?

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



You can't blame some citizens for considering the overall validity of the title conjecture, given our current context.

I wonder how long it takes, on average, for the average local cop on the beat - fresh out of a police academy - to become aware of, let alone come to grips with, the default institutional lobbying that comes from perennial class competition, whether overt or "Innocent Fraud".

With current education practices, the bulk of our citizens seem to remain politically naive for most of their lives, so there's no reason to expect the bulk of police officers to catch on much faster, if ever.

Progress requires much more organizational effort to get all citizens on the same page, and realizing that we're all in this together.

There's so much to gain from social coordination (teamwork), and each year we've less to lose.

Meanwhile, it's still true that adversarial approaches are unlikely to work. In fact, they'll play into classic methods for confusing, dividing & conquering electorates by default, i.e., narrow business lobbies & politics as usual. Here's yet another example.

How FBI Illegally Stole Ross Ulbricht's Laptop & Brought Down The Silk Road

In response, a contact wrote:
"The police exist to maintain the divide between the upper class and everyone else. Nothing more."
I'm not the only one wondering why the FBI action against Ross Ulbricht & Silk Road was such a priority.

Especially given persistent unemployment levels, student loan debt, poor K-12 schools*, white collar crime, blue collar crime, etc, etc.

Not to mention money laundering & other financial terrorism by Wall St. banks

   ----



* Compare schools today with Sam Adam's early education, 200+ years ago. Read it and weep.
"Sam Adams, like five of the fifty-six signers of the Declarations of Independence, attended Boston Latin School [at ~age 7]. Required reading at the Boston Latin School for a student's first four years included Aesop's Fables, one of the first of which is a tale of a wolf who devoured a lamb despite the lamb's refutation of all the wolf's accusations against him. The moral of the story, according to Aesop, is that 'The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.' ...

In years five through seven of the school, students progressed to reading letters, essays and orations of the Roman politician Marcus Tullius Cicero.  ...
 
[Subsequently,] Sam Adams entered Harvard in 1736 at age 14." 

Which was normal for that day, at least for motivated families in and around Boston. So why isn't a similar educational rate "normal" today? After all, a human mind is a terrible thing to waste, and so is a national group mind.



11 comments:

Steve said...

Thanks Roger. Another excellent, thought-provoking commentary.

Matt Franko said...

Because Harvard is filled with students from global USD zombie elite families instead of our own who can't afford the tuition?

Peter Pan said...

Depends on your definition of "police".

mike norman said...

Do the police exist to maintain the divide between the upper class and everyone else. Nothing more?

Yes.

Tom Hickey said...

The way the uppers rationalize this is that they alone are smart enough to handle freedom. Others can't so they have to under the force of law. The uppers don't need to follow the law since they are above needing supervision.

So they can handle all the coke they can afford, while everyone else gets busted for possession of roach or an open beer on the street based on the broken windows theory and zero tolerance.

In order to do this effectively, all but the uppers have to live in a panopticon total surveillance society where the behavior of the "little people" and poors (anyone who might object) is transparent to the authorities.

Matt Franko said...

Don't forget the hookers Tom.... rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

And pedophilia.

Matt Franko said...

Right Tom!

Have you seen this thing with convicted Epstein and these elites?!?!? ("prince" Andrew, etc...)

I hope these (then) girls nail the these disgraced SOBs to the f-ing wall...

The Polemicist said...

See: The True History of the Origins of Police -- Protecting and Serving the Masters of Society | Alternet

Roger Erickson said...

So, Tom, we just need to add a "Broken Bankwindows" law to the generic "Broken Windows" law?

And keep enforcement of both adequately balanced?

And is there a Venn Diagram for the overlooked category of WhiteCollar BlueCollar crime? (where elites can get away with violence, rape and murder ... if they're willing to spend on the necessary lawyers)

Roger Erickson said...

ps: thanks for that link, Polemicist

I've used it many times.