I am not saying anyone directly supports that stuff, in the sense that they would opt for murder with all else equal. I’m saying many people are happy to support it indirectly because they care less about it than the perceived benefits of being tough on crime, or rationalize it away when they see it. I think you would have understood that if you were feeling at all charitable toward me.
And no, I don’t think BoingBoing is a representative sample; on the contrary, I think it a sample of people who are unusually informed about thing like police abuses or drone strikes and often care a great deal about them, and you still see people rationalize them here. I hear that from other websites, letters in the paper, callers on the radio, and people in restaurants too. If you think none of it represents the true public, it is time for you to provide some evidence.
Anyway the end result is the same. Whether people support militarized police knowing all the problems it entails, or out of total ignorance of them, that still works out to lots of people supporting it. And that enables politicians and businesses to take advantage in a way that widespread opposition would not.
