The US Politics |OT|

[Bofferbrauer2]

SanAndreasX said:

Hiku said:

These ones are apparently military police. You'd think they would be better organized. Even if they had to be called in all of a sudden, I don't know how anyone there thought it was a good idea to do that.

And this is them trying to be on their best behavior.
They know that everyone is watching them extra carefully for brutality and excessive force. And yet they still keep doing it.

Because "support the troops" has been indoctrinated in our heads from the cradle, and if you don't blindly support the troops, you're an enemy of the state and the people. Many people who profess to hate the government and think it is evil blindly worship the two parts of the government whose job it is to kill people who won't do what the government tells them, whether at home (the police) or overseas (the military).

Fun fact: Conservatives in 1970 overwhelmingly approved of the Kent State shooting.

I blame the cold war, red scare, McCarthyism and the Comics Code for that. Under those, anything other than idolatry and mindless support for those two institutions were considered very bad, to the point that any criticisms of them, no matter how justified, were either outright banned or enough to brand you as a supporter of communism and an enemy of the state if you're unlucky.

The effects of these decades of lack of criticism, and thus the resulting meaningful reforms, can be clearly seen now by the behavior of the police and military police forces during this crisis. The gap is so large that even if serious reforms were to take place right now, it would still take decades for them to come into full effect.