From the article:
“The police serve a very important role in society and I want them to be as effective as possible. They are there to uphold the law and protect the peace, which are extremely important functions. Unfortunately there are far too many cases where the police have acted as judge, jury and executioner to suggest that there are just a few bad apples.
Instead there’s a pervasive atmosphere of hostility and force escalation better suited to war zones than maintaining civilian order. The lines have been drawn in many police departments: it’s us vs. them.
Trust in many departments has been utterly shattered within some communities because the police hold themselves to a different standard than they do the populace. Police commit brazen acts of brutality and get away with it, largely because they self-investigate and/or because the local District Attorney office is unwilling to press charges.
But the recent cases of police brutality are simply a symptom of a much larger problem. Society in the US is breaking down, civility has been lost, and the country is rapidly becoming uncivilized.
This extends within and across all of the most important institutions.”
– Rising Police Aggression A Telling Indicator Of Our Societal Decline (Peak Prosperity, April 24, 2015):
A historially common marker of failing civilizations
My first Uber lift was in South Carolina. My driver was from Sudan originally, but had emigrated to the US 20 years ago. Being the curious sort, I asked him about his life in Sudan and why he moved. He said that he left when his country had crumbled too far, past the point where a reasonable person could have a reasonable expectation of personal safety, when all institutions had become corrupted making business increasingly difficult. So he left.
Detecting a hitch in his delivery when he spoke of coming to the US, I asked him how he felt about the US now, 20 years later. “To be honest,” he said, “the same things I saw in Sudan that led me to leave are happening here now. That saddens me greatly, because where else is there to go?”
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