alt Hacker NewsMy point is you don't want cops with "the wrong attitude," so don't do things that exacerbate that, like wanton stereotyping.
> Who would avoid becoming a cop if I changed my rhetoric to yours? Do you believe that your "bad apples" would stop becoming cops if more people said that they "really like the cops"?
No, I believe: 1) Your "position ... that every person who wants to be a cop has 'the wrong attitude'" is wrong (it's got a strong smell of overgeneralization and black-and-white thinking). 2) The actions you're taking are (in a small way) encouraging and perpetuating the situation that neither of us want.
You and I want cops who are not "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people," but that's exactly what you'll get if you create and spread the impression that policing is only a job for people who are "look[ing] for opportunities to exert dominance over other people." To actually fix the problem, you need to encourage other types of people to become cops. Like protests against police brutality should have a booth for protesters to sign up for the police academy.
There's too much counterproductive cathartic anger going on in this society, where people get mad and say and do things to just express that anger and actually make the problems they're angry about worse.
I don't want cops at all. These institutions typically grew out of violent strike-breaking, slave catching, headsmen and the like. They're shaped like a mafia but often better armed, having little to no democratic oversight.
Do you seriously think that cops spend more time being affected by their feelings regarding stereotypes than the structures and ideology of the institution? They're trained to not care what regular people think about them, because they have to learn this to able to execute violence against vulnerable and ill people.
I'd say there isn't enough anger. Contemporary states, like the US, UK and Germany, engage openly in genocide, neo-colonial endeavours and hybrid warfare against their own populations. This should reasonably cause a deep rage in any sane person.