[madaxe]

The police are there to:

- Do you for speeding.

- Protect the establishment.

- Threaten violence.

- Prop up the prison-industrial complex for the benefit of private corporations.

They are categorically not there to help you. They never have been. This is a misapprehension that has been around since the days of Peel. A police force is the state's visible threat of violence against its populace, in order to exact control and to keep the powerful powerful.

[marvin]

This is not how a democratic nation is supposed to work. So please don't hold up this characterization of the police as something which is inevitable. The democratic ideal is that the police have a national monopoly on the legal use of violence, and the use of this violence is dictated by the laws and the courts. This is how well-working democratic nations work, and it is indeed how the police force in my home country works.

That anything else can be said about the USA today (maybe also the UK?), is just a testament to the scale of the democratic problems you guys have. You are really deep into it, and it doesn't seem like you realize the extent of the problem.

[csmuk]

It is inevitable. Every society has descended into this so far, until there is a revolution.

Us people in the UK realise what is happening. At some point, the moment will occur when the state oversteps the mark on something and the shit will get flipped country-wide.

[madaxe]

No, it isn't, but it appears to be the endgame of representative democracy. I'd suggest reading Hobbes' Leviathan, or perhaps Hayek's Road to Serfdom, if you haven't already, as both anticipated this exact malaise. The US and the UK are in the terminal stages of decline.

The representative democratic ideal is ultimately revealed to be a fiction, and the rule of law is a falsehood - for without a universally applied rule of law, there is no rule of law - just authoritarianism - and our rule of law is decidedly not universal, and never has been. One set of rules for us, one for them.

All representative democracy eventually declines under the same disease of creeping authoritarianism due to the inevitable desire of entrenched power structures and bureaucracies to self-sustain and expand. This should not be mistaken for malice, rather it's the inevitable output of a system optimised for self-preservation.

The only solution to my mind while maintaining a democratic ideal is either strict sortition, or direct democracy.

[mrow84]

Could you please add a bit of explanation as to why you are so confident that this interpretation of the role of the police should be regarded as categorical fact?

Particularly in the case of UK, if your knowledge allows, given that we operate, at least in principle, an explicitly Peelian system of policing, in contrast to, for example, our European neighbours.

[vidarh]

Consider the UK police treatment of demonstrators. It's one of the most brutal in Western Europe, and in many countries the very idea of a practice like kettling brings out images of fascist dictatorships.

I'm Norwegian. In Norway, government officials are often found participating in May day demonstrations, and it's a public holiday. Imagine my shock the first May day I experienced after moving to the UK, with police lining up units on horseback with shields all around and slowly forcing demonstrators into a smaller and smaller space and keeping them their for hours.

How does that fit with Peelian principles to you? It's the kind of method that is pretty much designed to provoke violence and distrust.

[csmuk]

Agree entirely. I've learned this over the last few years.