Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/07/23/two-police-officers-fired-for.html
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Beschizzaed:
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Now where have I seen this lately…
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The fake story is kind of truthy in that AOC has suggested that spending as much as the next 10 countries (combined)^ on “defence” maybe isn’t a great use of resources.
However, it is just truthy. The DOD does gets a metric shitton of money, but soldiers aren’t paid all that well. Which is, of course, the way god ordained that things should be in a late-stage capitalist system; contractors and managers and people who’ve never burnt their own faeces with a petrol-diesel mix because of a lack of functional infrastructure get paid and bonused enormously well, while those who actually do the defending have to live in mouldy housing and rely on foodstamps.
In other words, the system works!
^ or is it only the next eight?
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I think before you can even call it “truthy,” there are two facts that have to be not so disregarded:
Payroll is (rate of pay) * (# of soldiers, that could potentially go down)
Defense budget is (payroll) + (other things that are not necessarily payroll)
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meanwhile, the head white supremacist is busy doing his thing and getting away with it…
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That’s the whole definition of truthiness: it superficially sounds plausible, as long as you ignore reality.
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Police officers threatening anyone or to break any law knowingly on a public forum should be fired. That is the cost of being paid to be a so called protector of our society.
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Beschizzled?
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Of course, the flip side of that is if the budget goes down, the cuts will start at the bottom and work to the top…ish. The top itself never gets cut, except during that little dust-up in France. And the upper crust will make sure it never gets that bad again. Ho ho ho.
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the cuts will start at the bottom and work to the top…ish
To a degree, that does actually make sense.
Removing something like an IBCT from the OrBat, then spinning it up again later in response to a long term commitment, when you still have 14 others remaining, makes sense. They’re expensive to maintain, train, and operate, but relatively quick to stand up, so getting rid of four thousand baggies for a few years is a fairly straightforward decision.
On the otherhand, skilled specialists, for example the kind of welders you need to build submarines, are really hard to come by on short notice, in the ‘for want of a nail’ kind of way, so it makes sense to keep them on staff, fat, dumb and happy, even if this year you don’t have anything particular for them to do.
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It’s super easy to get really mad at the wrong people when your only news sources are also right wing nutjobs making it up as they go.
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[quote=“frauenfelder, post:1, topic:148282”]
What’s in store for the fired cops? [/quote]
Utah, probably.
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Part of what makes this such a lovely time to be alive is that, while saying this kind of thing should absolutely rule out a police career, it’s also kina horrific that anyone can get fired for liking a facebook post.
I mean, yeah, it leads to two necessary firings, but in a way that will make the remaining ~100,000 equally bad cops feel like martyrs. And if the strategy for screening out bad cops is “wait for them to be unbelievably indiscreet on Facebook”, that amounts to saying that 99.9% of evil cops will never be screened out.
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They are not normal citizens; they should not be held above the law, but to a higher standard that makes the law more stringent. They should be arrested and charged with a crime befitting their role in society (in this case, probably a misdemeanor particularly crafted for those in positions of state police powers). If convicted, they should be prevented from ever having a job in law enforcement again, though it should not effect their job prospects in civil society. Arguably, no misdemeanors should prevent someone from getting a job in civil society.
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As an aside, I think it’s overly generous to refer to that “Taters” site as parody. The articles don’t have any kind of joke to them apart from not being true. The Onion it ain’t.
As far as I can see the only purpose for the site is to give angry men on Facebook more excuses to be angry.
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I guess those two will not be happy with the fake news that they reacted too!
Although usually the provided motive is not the real one that lead to the decision, this case looks like they became scapegoats to show that something is being done.
As you said the problem is much bigger than that and it is really awful that it exist.
But, while the one that posted the comment that looks like/is a threat (does he really mean that or it is just the way he can express his anger?), what can be inferred by a like on a post?
Another sad part of it is that is strongly dependent on class/education.
They would have escaped the punishment if they used a little more veiled threat, like “If you were on fire, and I had a glass of water…I would drink it,” which is very common for more educated people and has the same meaning.
Well, it’s the modern version of one guy loudly making the claim in a public space like a park, and the other guy nodding and saying “Amen, dude!” And doing so in such a way that everyone sees it.
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