Where I live I have found no such predominance. Horrible people exist but they certainly don’t abound.
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I am fully aware that BB is not journalism. Which is part of why “they’re just reporting a story” doesn’t fly as an excuse.
It was posted as entertainment, and the choice to (repeatedly) post this style of “entertainment” is a thing that carries cultural consequences and ethical implications. The denigration of the poor and the celebration of authority are not apolitical acts, particularly in a time and place when the exploitation of poverty and abuse of authority are both severe and increasing.
The USA is a country that was and is foundationally based upon white supremacy and the exploitation of poverty. Americans imprison, enslave, shoot and bomb poor people of colour at rates that are unequalled by any other nation. American labour rights and healthcare are the worst in the developed world.
Australia, where I live, is also a racist shithole founded upon genocide, forced labour and white supremacy. And yet:
And, of course, those minimum wage figures for the USA are actually much worse once you account for the huge expense of American healthcare, the general lack of socialised services compared to other countries (good public transit etc), atrocious US labour conditions and the fact that much of the US working class are actually paid sub-minimum wages (agriculture, service workers, etc).
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Having grown up in the third world and traveled most of my life, my idea of atrocious working conditions is very different than yours. I am not comparing the US to AUS but rather pointing out that as much as I disslike police, my view of our lives here in the first world seems bery different than yours.
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I was specifically talking about wealthy industrialised nations in relation to working conditions. Do you think that impoverished postcolonial nations are the appropriate reference point for the wealthiest nation in the history of the world?
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The working conditions in those impoverished postcolonial nations are themselves substantially created by the influence of white Western imperialism. The Banana Wars aren’t just history.
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- I was questioning your assertion that the US population was predominantly racist, classist, and murderous. I don’t remember anything in the post I commented on about industrialized nations. I must have missed it.
pre•dom•i•nant•ly
In a predominant manner; with superior strength or influence.
adv. In a predominant manner.
adv. In a predominant manner. Most commonly or frequently by a large margin.
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I just want to make sure I understand this. The US is totalitarian but not classist. Your experience with third world conditions gives you perspective to say that working conditions in America are not atrocious, but that same perspective confirms the police are draconian.
So America has policing equivalent to that of a third world dictatorship, and you are here to correct people calling the state “murderous”?
I’m struggling to synthesize this.
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The police behavior in the US stems from a totalitarian mentality where their culture is to believe that the US is a police state and this drives most of their bad bahavior. If you want to classify them as the police class and us as the not police class then maybe we can call it classist.
I do not believe the US population is predominantly inclined to totalitarian thinking. I sill think it’s predominantly Liberal … for now.
No. My experience with third world working conditions have shown me that working conditions there are orders of magnitude worse and police draconian level slightly more.
They are bad but far from equivalent to a dictatorship like Venezuela, China, North Korea, Cuba, Russia, etc. i did not however mention dictatorships and I’m sure you know that most third world countries are not dictatorships.
Under what conditions would we describe a country as totalitarian, then? I’m not arguing with you, I’m trying to figure out what is being argued about, because it’s really unclear to me.
We’re discussing a county where police have a totalitarian mindset, kill people at an alarming rate, are almost completely unaccountable for those killings, where those those killings disproportionately target people who are poor and/or members of racial minorities. We agree on all of that.
The people of the country vote for politicians who appoint* police chiefs, set police budgets, and manage police oversight bodies. So the people are variously voting for the existence of this totaltarian police force that kills people (disproportionately based on their class and race), not exactly voting for it but not prioritizing voting against it, or fighting against it but failing to stop it.
(* I don’t know if some police chiefs are directly elected but it hardly matters to the point I’m making)
To me, that’s a racist, classist, murderous country. All the conditions have been met and there is nothing to discuss. Comparisons to other countries don’t change the facts. That the country could be murdering twice or ten times as many people doesn’t mean they aren’t murdering people. That those killings (and voter disenfranchisement and all kinds of other problems) could be even more targeted at black and Indigenous Americans (and other racial groups) and at people without the money to defend themselves doesn’t change the fact that they clearly are targeting those people.
So that’s why I say I don’t know what is being argued here. Based on your comment that you don’t think the population is predominantly inclined to totalitarian thinking, it sounds like you are saying it’s some kind of psychology test.
I’ve heard from people who know Iranian culture that Iranians really aren’t thrilled with the Iranian government, by and large. I can’t back that up, but it doesn’t matter for the purpose of argument whether it’s true or not. Imagine it is true, and that the Iranian people are not inclined to totalitarian thinking, but rather the liberal thinking. Does that somehow make Iran not theocratic, because the people don’t think that way? I’d think we define totalitarianism/theocracy/dictatorship by the power structure of the society, not by the heart’s desires of the people of the country. A government is totalitarian by virtue of having the power to stop anyone who disagrees with them, not by virtue of having people agree with them.
I’m not trying to be dismissive here but I’m really not getting it. If a car is painted blue then it’s a blue car even though the majority of the parts of the car are not blue. The outside, top part of the car is the part we look at when we say what colour it is. If the police force is draconian and totalitarian and kills people and those people are people of certain racial groups then that’s a murderous, racist society because that’s the part of the society we look at to tell whether it is that thing.
I can’t help being feeling that this is really a discussion about how to use the word “predominantly”.
Quite right.
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I love this analogy. Thank you for it. Also, #NotAllCarParts.
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It’s a very astute analogy, though I’d attempt to ‘stupid-proof’ it by clarifying;
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♬ It wears blue on the outside, because blue is how it feels on the inside. ♬
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Your choice of Iran is a perfect choice for why, as much as I deeply disslike the general police attitude in the US and the fact that their Unions constantly and literally let them get away with murder, I don’t consider it totalitarian. For me, for a country to be totalitarian, it must have no meaningfull judiciary or path for possible redress. I will bring a single example, if Iran had something as stupidly dystopian as a no fly list there is no circumstance under which there woukd ever come to be an official way a regular human coukd ever get removed if added by error. In the US we instituted such a system if redress and eventually will eliminate the list, at least in it’s current form. Those types of political realities that we find here In this imperfect country, in my opinion, elevate it quite a bit above totelitarian.
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