Our Boys In Blue

[KingRoyal]

We really will try anything else besides getting rid of guns, won't we? Like, we'd sooner try injecting kevlar into our children to make them bulletproof first?

These "solutions" to mass gun violence are preferred because somebody, somehow gets a fat contract for something that won't work. And that's the important part, that more money is spent creating the illusion of safety than on doing anything that would actually reduce gun violence

[Mongrel]

Another screenshot shows an officer diligently taking the time to sanitize his hands.

Wouldn't want anyone to get sick, someone could end up in the hospital.

[Friday]

The banality of evil.

[Mongrel]

The banality of evil.

Interestingly, this view, that groupthink and normalization can accustom otherwise people to committing evil acts - is increasingly being challenged as something which in fact absolves too many people who actively and creatively decide to be evil. The banality of evil is compelling in how chilling an idea it is, but the reality actually goes deeper such that presenting evil as banal ends up partially absolving people from responsibility for their actions. The chance of any of us falling to evil is real, as Hannah Arendt proposed, but we'll do it far more gladly than she understood.

It's certainly true that you can get a society at large to accept just about any circumstance given enough time, but Arendt's philosophy was actually based on a falsehood - she only saw the beginning of Adolf Eichmann's trial where he presented his being a "banal pencil-pusher" as a defence, but left before later examinations where he basically flipped over to revelling in being a megalomanial villain.

Stuff like the Milgram experiment (electric shocks) and the Stanford Prison experiment, actually went much too far in assuming Arendt's philosophy as scientifically proven - you may have read about how they're being retroactively discredited over time as well. Mostly in the fact that they tended to lump all the participants' actions together when in fact responses were quite varied and included dissenting individuals and those who simply "played fair". Also there's the classic "Everybody in the study was a collegiate male" problem, though there's no evidence that women would be any less (or more) tilted towards an embrace of evil. Different ages haven't been studied as much, but unsurprisingly personal background and circumstances do matter heavily.

That comes back to the classic "Superior Orders" defence so many Nazis used. The banality of evil ties into that, since we generally accept that people have a duty to disobey immoral orders, to be active rather than passive. But where the banality explanation falls even further is that historical research shows that most Nazi orders were vague, perhaps deliberately so, and that those "following" them actually did so with a great deal of creativity and zeal.

Sure, some foot soldiers may have followed orders because they knew they would be shot if not and were conditioned to discipline and army brotherhood, but that only applies to the lowest possible ranks and only in some situations - there's few if any accounts of ordinary soldiers being treated as traitors or deserters for not committing executions. Officers and functionaries of the Third Reich usually had a great deal of autonomy, which they exercised. To do great evil. Often quite enthusiastically.

tl;dr, This is a mong-winded way of saying, no, evil isn't banal, at least not very often, and is in fact usually eager. Yes, dehumanization is still an important part of the picture - if anything tribalism and dehumanization is even more important in fostering evil than we think (and it's not like we don't know that's a problem!). But making something routine does not typically blind people to what they're doing, rather they do great evil because they very much think it is the right thing to do. Many become eager to show how "good" they can be, whether to impress others or simply out of sheer zeal.

There was a very good recent monograph by a pair of British social scientists that covers the same ground in more detail here.

Personally I always find myself coming back to "To test a man's character, give him power." an axiom I've found to be far more disturbingly accurate.

[Upthorn]

Stuff like the Milgram experiment (electric shocks) and the Stanford Prison experiment, actually went much too far in assuming Arendt's philosophy as scientifically proven - you may have read about how they're being retroactively discredited over time as well.

You know, I was taught that the Stanford Prison Experiment was widely discredited at the time of its occurrence, as the experimental setup was such that there was no actual control group vs trial group going on, and no coherent method for gathering consistent data to begin with?

But it made big waves in the layman's understanding of psychology anyway, due to the general poor quality of science journalism...

[Mongrel]

Yeah, there's a whole chain of 20th century social experiments we all know about because they became pop-culture hits, and it's increasingly the case that not only are they all wrong, but we often KNEW they were wrong at publication, or at least critics very rightly pointed out serious problems in methodology. Problem is how damaging their influence becomes - look at the "Alpha male" study.

This is actually why Carl Bergstrom (a theoretical and evolutionary biologist), is the main scientist I follow online, because he's been incredibly aggressive in pushing to reform journal submission and peer review to undermine the weaknesses of the scientific publishing system and make it more rigorous, so we waste less time on that sort of flashy "intuitively true", yet wrong, bullshit. Especially in the social sciences.

Also he's funny, posts a ton of useful public science (I first noticed him when he was shovelling out as much accurate Covid data as he could), and a gigantic corvid nerd.

[Grath]

We really will try anything else besides getting rid of guns, won't we? Like, we'd sooner try injecting kevlar into our children to make them bulletproof first?

These "solutions" to mass gun violence are preferred because somebody, somehow gets a fat contract for something that won't work. And that's the important part, that more money is spent creating the illusion of safety than on doing anything that would actually reduce gun violence

It turns out addressing the root causes of violence in our society is expensive, so instead we're gonna try solving the issue of white male right-wing terrorists committing gun violence by making it harder for minorities to be armed.

[Yoji]

Not to change the subject with old news, but I only just found out that Robb Elementary School itself is going to be torn down and replaced with a memorial.

Maybe that'll do the trick going forward. Replace every single school shooting site with a monument to the might and glory of the ever-thirsting gun, and keep going until every American town falls under its shadow. Then maybe we'll do something.

[KingRoyal]

We really will try anything else besides getting rid of guns, won't we? Like, we'd sooner try injecting kevlar into our children to make them bulletproof first?

These "solutions" to mass gun violence are preferred because somebody, somehow gets a fat contract for something that won't work. And that's the important part, that more money is spent creating the illusion of safety than on doing anything that would actually reduce gun violence

It turns out addressing the root causes of violence in our society is expensive, so instead we're gonna try solving the issue of white male right-wing terrorists committing gun violence by making it harder for minorities to be armed.

I mean, is there anyway I can convince you that the white, right-wing males are vastly outpacing minorities in being armed? But go on, I want to hear how the problem of too many guns is solved by more guns

[Mongrel]

We really will try anything else besides getting rid of guns, won't we? Like, we'd sooner try injecting kevlar into our children to make them bulletproof first?

These "solutions" to mass gun violence are preferred because somebody, somehow gets a fat contract for something that won't work. And that's the important part, that more money is spent creating the illusion of safety than on doing anything that would actually reduce gun violence

It turns out addressing the root causes of violence in our society is expensive, so instead we're gonna try solving the issue of white male right-wing terrorists committing gun violence by making it harder for minorities to be armed.

I mean, is there anyway I can convince you that the white, right-wing males are vastly outpacing minorities in being armed? Because I, for one, would like to make that a whole lot harder

I think that's exactly what Grath's saying.

[Grath]

I mean, is there anyway I can convince you that the white, right-wing males are vastly outpacing minorities in being armed? But go on, I want to hear how the problem of too many guns is solved by more guns

My point is that instead of wasting political capital (and money, and additional power disparity given to cops in the process) on racist ineffective gun control measures that don't actually address either the violence or the access to guns for the people committing the violence, we could instead work on improving society to have less right-wing terrorists.

[KingRoyal]

I agree, and improving society to have less right-wing terrorists means having less guns.

[Mongrel]

Texas State Rep Joe Moody (D-El Paso) is on the committee which is in the middle of reviewing evidence from Uvalde and made a statement specifically to address the image of the cop checking his phone, with news that is both better and worse:

He was a cop with the tiny School District PD, not the regular Uvalde PD. The still is him getting a text message from his wife, Eva Mirales, telling him she's been shot and is dying.

The other cops disarmed him, dragged him away and "restrained him", which is also why he is not present in footage after he checks his phone.

[Mongrel]

I'm seeing these stories about cops killing Jayland Walker in Ohio and every single time I end up reading the headlines as "Ohio cops shot jaywalker 46 times." and there's nothing in my brain that thinks that's the least bit absurd anymore; it's just straight. "Yeah. They do that."

I mean, it's not absurd... they do!

Which is in and of itself absurd argh my brain.

[Grath]

Cops turn into pedophiles when people are mean to them, apparently.

[Mongrel]

"So, if I get what you're arguing here, if we didn't subject people to a police career, we could avoid this problem?"

[Mongrel]

This is AMAZING



(the parking lot is municipal land)

EDIT: Full video instead of Tweet that cut off mid-yelling.

[hngkong]

My god, cops are so fucking stupid.

[Friday]

Yeah, that video (the full version) has been in my favorites folder for years. I watch it when I want to watch a fascist get scared and see it on their face.

[Büge]