They (the police union) backed the person that instigated an attack on police and the capital, and are surprised that said person (trump) pardoned the attackers, when he said he would pardon the attackers.
They thought they would always be on the "source" side of the batons and the big sprays of bear mace. There were a lot of weird little deflections and explanations what happened on January 6th and why for one reason or another it didn't count. There were some cops and ex-cops in the crowd. Just a few. Now that it's being made clear on a national level that any cops anywhere might find themselves on the "recipient" end, with full support all the way up the chain, it's a whole different story and a big problem all of a sudden, I guess.
I say great. Sounds awesome. It should be a perfectly natural alignment of the local cops against the lawless maniacs who Trump wants to turn loose on America. That's how it worked out four years ago. If Trump wants to make it loud and public that he'd like to firmly align the cops on our side of the coming divide, against his small handful of maniacs on his side, I say that sounds absolutely fantastic and I welcome the development.
to be the devils advocate. Most of them also stupidly expected them to honor his word that he would move through the list of pardons with a fine comb, and that people who participated peacefully were pardoned but the people who were violent during the protest were not.
Spoiler alert: He didn't. I personally think his descision to just blanket pardon was done last minute, I think it was decided the moment he was told about Bidens last second pardons. He's never had very good anger management, so I think he did it out of anger. Which also doesn't look good.
The pardons sent the message they were supposed to send - violence committed on Trump's behalf, even against police, will be pardoned. The police unions would still vote for Trump given another shot so their disapproval of this means less than nothing and all parties know it.
A big underappreciated part of fascism is that there's wiring in the human brain that is designed to delegate the thinking, planning, and reasoning to some other person. I think for a lot of these people, their instincts have specifically malfunctioned in a way that prevents them from really taking their own critical look at whether Trump has their best interests at heart.
If Trump says it, it's real. If you don't have that type of mentality, it's hard to wrap your head around how the person would even make such dumb decisions or trust placements, but if you're in it, it makes perfect sense and everything is ordered and comfortable. It may take something truly shocking to make you wake up and realize what was obvious to everyone else. And, once you reach the realization, it can be terribly destabilizing and upsetting. Now you're adrift, and you don't know what to do or what to think, and nothing makes sense.
They're obviously adults, I'm not trying to make it sound like they can't make any decisions for themselves, but it is important I think to realize how powerful the suppression of separate independent judgement in that kind of hierarchy can be. And that hierarchy can form itself into a terrifying powerful force, because everyone's acting in the same unified direction. No hesitation or loss of focus.
Well said. The satisfaction & reassurance of being in a "righteous" group is very powerful. No matter the reality, the group reinforces itself & calms dissent. Like a terrible & warm blanket.
Then it's very terrifying when you realize what you are & where you could be led.
Thank you for the lesson, religious youth groups.
It's never symmetric like that. When they did it, everything was confusing and they had to take 4 years to half-heartedly try to deal with it before giving up and saying it was okay because the system said so. If we did it, we'd be shot, and everything would move on, I think.
PLEASE go after the local police. Cops are a little community. PLEASE have Trump’s people start threatening a bunch of uniformed civilian police who didn’t do anything other than work to put some violent maniacs in prison, and make it clear to them what he stands for, and in particular that they are not safe from it. That development would be a rare ray of sunshine in a pretty awful stormy time that is coming.
Are we just going to remain in denial that he's a fascist until he wears a T-shirt that says it or something? His actions sent a calculated, premeditated message.
It's not like he's accidentally signalling that bad behavioir from white nationalists won't be punished....
It's like the Italian mafia waving their baseball bat around after freeing their friends who were jailed and telling you ..... "isn't that a shame, hate to see what those guys are going to do ... maybe they might do something to you ... don't know .... sure is a shame but what are you gonna do about it?"