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[Yoink]

I remember something about a couple of cops in my state raping a woman in their cruiser (whilst on duty) and getting off pretty much scot-free a while back. Things are getting ridiculous here lately.
Police are pretty much universally bad in any highly developed country, with all t the power at their disposal.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Tunisia had a police rape thing happen recently. It's not just developed countries that have occasional problems.

[Singularity125]

We want civil rights but we don't want to do any work to maintain them.
We want a government that isn't corrupt but aren't willing to hold politicians' toes in the fire on it.
We want laws that make sense but we don't want to do anything more than vote in a state senator every other year. Understanding the law is hard!
We want the lid blown off of news stories about corruption, waste, corporate misbehavior, pollution, etc. but we don't want to maintain a trained, accountable industry of journalists.
We want inexpensive health care but we aren't willing to destroy the useless health-insurance middlemen.
We want peace but war is easier and makes for better TV.
We want to be healthy but cooking delicious meals at home is hard and McDonald's is fast and cheap.
We want to be lean and strong but working out takes time and hardship, so we pop pills that we know won't work.
We want high-paying desk jobs but we don't want to have to go to college for math or a hard science to do it.
We want cheap foreign-made goods but we want other Americans to buy expensive domestic goods so Americans can have production jobs.
We want privacy but we want to know every other American's private business.
We want freedom to practice and acceptance of our religion but not all the other wacko cults out there.
We want to be the one with the fastest car on the road.
We want to live in a huge house on the cheap but let everyone else live in expensive shoebox apartments.
We want nearby natural spaces but we also don't want to have to drive more than 10 minutes to work.
We want eternal youth and beauty in a universe of entropy and inevitable death.

You speak truth... and it makes me sad

[SalmonGod]

Yeah... it just goes against our expectations for the developed world.

The big one here in Indianapolis is we had an officer run over four motorcycles who were stopped in a group at a stoplight.  He was driving drunk while on duty.  The first police to respond to the incident mishandled the evidence in such a way that it became inadmissible in court.  So they couldn't press suitable charges against the guy.  The officers who mishandled the evidence were at first demoted, but then about a year later (after the initial media attention had died out) were both promoted to higher positions than they held previously, one put in charge of his own precinct.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

[SalmonGod]

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Not the first time I've heard something like that.  I've long thought that one of the major disadvantages of political culture, especially in America, is that people don't operate on the assumption that authorities are doing things like that.  Disempowered by being too trusting, basically.  It was pretty well known to anyone who cared that there were mass-surveillance programs of that nature going on in the U.S. for years before the leaks, but anybody who talked about it was considered paranoid and crazy.

That attitude is definitely reversing quickly the last few years, though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Not the first time I've heard something like that.  I've long thought that one of the major disadvantages of political culture, especially in America, is that people don't operate on the assumption that authorities are doing things like that.  Disempowered by being too trusting, basically.  It was pretty well known to anyone who cared that there were mass-surveillance programs of that nature going on in the U.S. for years before the leaks, but anybody who talked about it was considered paranoid and crazy.

That attitude is definitely reversing quickly the last few years, though.

I disagree that this is a benefit. Read again:

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Didn't. Care. There's no good in having cultural cynicism. It just leads to apathy. People were outraged against the NSA leaks, and that is a good thing. There needs to be outrage, and there needs to be hope that it doesn't have to be this way, or people will just accept it.

[scriver]

Here in Sweden a policeman was recently caught actively dismissing a man who called for help when an aggressive man had forced himself into his house. The man had managed to flee up in the attic after a scuffle, hut his elderly mother was still downstairs. The policeman call-answering policeman were all arrogant and openly questioning the validity and truthfulness of the call while the man cried and begged for them to send help for I don't know how many minutes. Eventually the criminal set the house on fire and ram. The mother didn't survive.

[GiglameshDespair]

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Not the first time I've heard something like that.  I've long thought that one of the major disadvantages of political culture, especially in America, is that people don't operate on the assumption that authorities are doing things like that.  Disempowered by being too trusting, basically.  It was pretty well known to anyone who cared that there were mass-surveillance programs of that nature going on in the U.S. for years before the leaks, but anybody who talked about it was considered paranoid and crazy.

That attitude is definitely reversing quickly the last few years, though.

I disagree that this is a benefit. Read again:

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Didn't. Care. There's no good in having cultural cynicism. It just leads to apathy. People were outraged against the NSA leaks, and that is a good thing. There needs to be outrage, and there needs to be hope that it doesn't have to be this way, or people will just accept it.

Someone here has a really good quote in their sig on this sort of stuff - the cynic justs accepts it as the way the world works, but the optimist is horrified enough to try to push for change. And you can see it, too; shrugging your shoulders and just dismissing the police as all corrupt doesn't achieve anything.

[SalmonGod]

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Not the first time I've heard something like that.  I've long thought that one of the major disadvantages of political culture, especially in America, is that people don't operate on the assumption that authorities are doing things like that.  Disempowered by being too trusting, basically.  It was pretty well known to anyone who cared that there were mass-surveillance programs of that nature going on in the U.S. for years before the leaks, but anybody who talked about it was considered paranoid and crazy.

That attitude is definitely reversing quickly the last few years, though.

I disagree that this is a benefit. Read again:

I had a conversation with an acquaintance from Mexico, talking about the NSA leaks. She didn't care, because it's culturally assumed where she's from that the government does bad stuff and people don't really have protections against it. It was kind of surprising that she didn't care, though.

Didn't. Care. There's no good in having cultural cynicism. It just leads to apathy. People were outraged against the NSA leaks, and that is a good thing. There needs to be outrage, and there needs to be hope that it doesn't have to be this way, or people will just accept it.

I think there's pros and cons either way.  I do agree what you describe can be an unhealthy side-effect, but it isn't necessarily so.  A person can have a negative outlook on the existing state of the world, but believe enough in positive potential states to be motivated.  And a culture without some degree of cynicism is just easily manipulated, which I think is part of how we got to this point in the first place.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You think we don't have cynicism? After eight years of liberals circlejerking about how much their own nation sucks during the Bush years you really are going to say there's no cynicism?

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Cynicism is outrage leaving the body.

[SalmonGod]

In my experience, it was mainly liberal youth who were cynical about the Bush administration.  Liberal adults may have been disapproving, but didn't tend to hand-wring as much over stuff like the Patriot Act.  Plus, I'm not sure how much party rivalry really relates to the subject, and I was meaning to implicate pre-Bush culture more anyway.

[Pnx]

I'm supposed to write a response to someone on the psych discussion board but... I really don't want to write responses to these things.

It doesn't help that as per usual, half of these posts are near identical in content. I really suck at this whole bullshitting thing.

[Sirus]

I want to chime in on the cop conversation...but what's the goddamn point? No one here will listen.

On another topic entirely, thanks to shenanigans I only get an 8-hour break tonight instead of my typical 10 hours. Doesn't sound like much of a difference, but it is.