How is it not surprising that the problem sees no problem?

You say : "I don't see people getting beat up, or shot, or assaulted, or arrested for no reason"
So, those that were "beat up, or shot, or assaulted, or arrested", were for a good reason, right?

Ever consider that those reasons are often made up?
Ever consider that the stories you heard around the water cooler were simply B.S., and it was in fact the police simply preying on innocent people?



Just what exactly does LE do for me, or anyone?

Do police have super powers and spidey senses?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting raped, and prevent it?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting run over, and prevent it?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting beaten, and prevent it?
Will they magically teleport to someone getting robbed, and prevent it?
The answer is : no.

Police can't actually /help/ anyone.
They can only show up after the fact, and ask you what happened, and if you know who did it.
If you don't know who it was, tough shit. Sucks to be you.
Unlike on TV, there is no in-depth investigation. The most they do is tell you to call them if you remember something else. (This is speaking from experience)

What if you're not around to even tell them anything? Almost every murder committed by an unrelated stranger without witnesses or video goes unsolved.
Why? Because all police know how to do is ask friends/family where they were, and if everyone has an excuse, police got nothing.

At least when a normal person [that you can identify] harms you, you /can/ call the police, and maybe, just maybe, if they feel like it, they will round them up after the fact.

(They often don't. We've had people dumping trash on our land : police didn't respond. We've had people hunting [strangers shooting guns] on our property : police didn't respond. Brought evidence of a fraud to the police station, with account numbers, names, addresses : we won't investigate. The only time they ever came was to talk with my mother after she reported her credit card number was being used by a stranger - LOL, of all the things, they bother coming for /that/?)

But if the police harm you, you've got nowhere to turn to - but them. And they care more about each other, than some stranger.

Heck, I've been tailgated by a cop, on a multi-lane road, so close his headlights weren't even visible over my trunk. He could have gone around me any time. After miles, when I finally sped up - BAM. Ticket.

I've pulled up to a roadblock by my house, and asked if I could go by. The guy was so incensed that he detained me for hours, and told me I was threatening his life, reckless driving, and not wearing a seatbelt.

I've been threatened by a cop - because I interrupted her chat with her girlfriend to ask for directions around a road they were closing off.

I've been pulled over with gun drawn, for trivial speeding (well below reckless).

Seriously people, every time you get pulled over, you are at risk of getting shot, because someone is trained to be suspicious and paranoid, and they saw something shiny.

Just look at how they behave. Cop shoots his daughter in his own garage, because he thought she was a burglar.
What, too much to ask just to look at the person to see if they're even a burglar? Shoot first ask questions later.

Every year there are multiple cases of police raiding a house and shooting people - only to find out it was the wrong house. What, too much trouble to be a decent human being and just knock first, and ask for whoever they need to come out?

Oh, but that might put them at a greater risk. And we all know that police take MINIMAL risks themselves, and instead risk the lives of the citizens. (Why not approach with gun drawn? At least you're ready to shoot the suspect. And if you accidentally shoot the suspect, oh well, just say they 'attacked'. No biggie. Why take the risk.)
The biggest risk they take, is the one they dream up for when they want to take credit for being the heroes they never were.

Look at the friggin VT shooting. Swarms of cops surrounding a building. Man inside, could be killing more people by the moment... and the cops just camp out and wait for him to kill himself.
Worst part, is if it were my family inside, and I tried to go in and stop the shooter, the police would just shoot me for trying to enter.

(And no, police don't deserve heroic praise. They deserve the _pay_check_ they signed up for. If that's not enough, they should take life more seriously and really think about what it is they're getting into, before they do it. Take responsibility, like an adult should.)

The police are a liability. They're armed. They're selfish. They're paranoid and suspicious. They're jumpy.
IMO, the best thing to do is keep away from them, don't look at them, don't talk to them. Stay away, and stay safe.

Oh yeah, and the police are also immune form the constitution's equal protection clause. "Because interpretation".

Look at the numbers. You are less likely to be arrested or go to jail in NORTH KOREA, than here in the U.S. of A. By a factor of 4 last I checked.
What the heck is going on here?

1 in 18 men is either in jail, on parole, or somewhere in the process of going to jail.
Most of the countries in Europe have smaller populations, than the people that we have 'in the system'. And most of the people we have 'in the system', never even harmed another person. They're just arrested for 'behavior crimes' - simply doing things that are not allowed. This is madness. The system is mad, the police are mad.

You don't end up with videos of a gang of police acting like gangsters, if it's a matter of 'a few bad apples'. They all have to be in the same frame of mind.
If they weren't all of the same frame of mind, one would do something bad, and the others would say "whoa there man, you're out of line".
But instead, they all do it. Because there are no 'bad apples'.
There is 'bad training', and 'bad culture', and it permeates the profession.

And when I say bad, I don't mean that "they are trained to be thugs".
I mean that the police don't see suspects as 'citizens (members of the state) that the police are on the side of'.
Whoever crosses their path is dehumanized. Some kind of "other", that the police need to protect society from. Not realizing that those people /are/ society, and /they/ need protection.
The kind of behavior that I see in these kinds of videos, it's simply treason. Betrayal of the state.

If the laws of this country were written to provide restitution to victims - and there were no laws to simply tell people how to live, and if the police spent their time providing restitution to victims, then I would have nothing but the greatest appreciation for the police.
As it stands, there's very little nobility around this profession. Majority of the job is simply picking on people - sometimes because they did harm, but usually because they mind their own business in an unapproved of way, or for kicks.

-scheherazade

Ya know what, @Trancecoach is right. I could rebut all your points, but you've taken an ideological position that is unsupported by evidence, so clearly this is a waste of my time.

You probably genuinely believe what you've written, despite it being obvious nonsense.

One thing I can't let slide is your last little fantasy about the lone scientist against the establishment. That hasn't been true for a long time, and even then, it was generally religion or business (cf. Edison and Tesla) and not scientific consensus that impeded progress. Most major advances in science have come about by people working together, sharing results and bouncing ideas off each other. In fact, most of the time, the people we credit with great ideas (Newton, Einstein, etc) were only a step ahead of other scientists working toward the same ideas.

Yes, evidence trumps consensus, but scientists are not idiots, and there isn't some lone genius who has understood climate change when everyone else hasn't. If there was, the scientific community would recognise it.

There simply isn't any evidence to support your position that isn't easily dismissed in a few paragraphs. Read http://skepticalscience.com

The whole climate change denial (and no, I won't dignify it by calling it scepticism, that's an insult to scepticism) is marketing.

So I'll leave you, trance and the republicans in your little fantasy world where scientists and environmental campaigners have engaged in a massively profitable (please explain how, still not clear on this one) scheme to fuck up the world economy (because??? reasons, I guess) and the heroic oil companies are going to rescue us from a fate worse than a clean planet.

Meanwhile, I, the scientific community and the other humans that don't believe the earth is flat will accept the reality of climate change and move on.

@Quboid

It doesn't take much variance in speed to cause annoyance in other drivers, if this device tells you to slow down even 5km/h (sorry I don't do miles), you're going to be breaking the flow of traffic and people *will* overtake you.

People drive up to and often slightly over the speed limit, you can say whatever you want about what people *should* be doing but it's not reality, so it's moot.

If this doesn't take other drivers in to consideration, the entire thing is pointless other than the light countdown timer, which is handy but could also cause irresponsible driving ("If I speed up now, I'm gonna make it, this thing is switching in 5 seconds!").

What else is it telling you? Start slowing down now but oh wait, 5 cars just took position in front of you...guess the distance I calculated to the traffic light just then is no longer useful, you better slow down another 10km/h, oh hell just look in front of you and slow down to meet traffic conditions.

Ok thanks computer!

There is also an expectation that technology works and it is entirely valid, yes people should use common sense but this doesn't excuse your product for not working, this is silly. The purpose of technology is to work so transparently, you are doing less thinking so you can focus on more important things, like sudden high impact situations that require heroic reaction times.

Anyway, I don't think this is bad tech, I think it is not particularly useful in today's environment and is just an odd stepping stone to proper smart cars. I think the gradual progression to smart cars is the fault of an uneducated public who have unfounded hate in the concept of letting go of driving to a computer.

I just want smart cars every where for everyone, so we can have safe and effective roads.

Is it just me, or do the heroic one liners about freedom ring more hollow every day as these buffed up brain-dead roid monkeys fight to maintain a government and status quo that shifts dramatically from generation to generation away from freedom and towards economic slavery and tyranny?

Sadly, these sorts of movies just serve to placate the masses while their freedoms are stripped away. But hey, who cares, awesome FX, right?

Heroic, but I don't follow the events... The problem with his RCS just went away?

Good work brother....now: Use the day's noteworthy and heroic exploits to secure that fireman-groupie, ACTION!

Ugh. He segues from the tired old friend-zone cliché to the friend-zone somehow being a part of the feminist idea of rape culture. He then goes on to assume de facto blame for a crime (i.e., he looks in the mirror and sees a monster) that neither happened nor would've had anything to do with him in the first place even if it had happened.

All because he was a guy who made the horrible mistake of wanting to have sex with girls.

I agree that sex shouldn't be "owed," but... having known plenty of guys like this, they're just looking for more ways to game the system. They snivel and they prostrate themselves and they only ever say the things they imagine women would like them to say and they never say anything that they imagine a woman wouldn't want them to say, and they do all this because they want women to throw them a bone. They imagine that if they do everything right, if they follow every rule in the book and never ask any questions and never take issue with anything the women around them say, they will finally become worthy of sex.

What inevitably happens is that only the most insecure (and usually crazy, too) of their female friends will bother with the guy while the rest of them find guys who don't spend their time crawling at their feet and calling themselves evil disgusting rape culture-supporting perverts just because they think it's what they're supposed to do.

There's nothing heroic about what this guy said. If anything, it's tragic that he should feel that he almost raped a girl when all he did was feel betrayed because she wouldn't sleep with him, but would sleep with her next boyfriend. As if he's somehow sick and evil just because he has emotions.

Heroic, and yet stupid. The guy bearhugs her, then his coworkers strap him to her.

If she had really wanted to leave and got enough leverage...

That man's patience is heroic.

If found Man of Steel to be a good action movie but a bad Superman movie. The Superman in it, just didn't present as heroic to me.

All the flashbacks and early years stuff was fantastic, though. I liked the Lois Lane character throughout, but her character really petered out at the end.

By 'scary bitch', do we mean 'heroic human rights activist'?

Clearly the reasoned debate plan failed to stop the patriot act so lets go with some flair this time and kick start a giant ass monument for this man's heroics.

HAHAHAHA omg, This was a promote, and all I saw was the title as I was messing with something. So the seconds I was doing that I imagined some heroic dog pulling a cat to safety or something. Then I scroll down, and see that picture, made me laugh and hurt my chest from coughing the smoke... I mean from laughter

Jesus H Christ man.

If you can imagine this. Maybe you cannot because you lack any psychedelic experience. You take twenty sugar cubes of LSD. It comes on quick because you are taking a heroic dose,so in maybe ten minutes you feel it. Say you did that? You would trip HARD for a couple days maybe. Maybe a week. You would never get anywhere close to where DMT takes a person on one toke, in ten minutes. LSD is also a tryptamine like DMT, in fact LSD is a much more complex tryptamine.

So, you tell me. Why is it that after that first toke it takes seconds to pass the blood/brain barrier like sugar? Seems to me, that there is a neurological function for this experience, which would also cater to the fact of why it is so heavy. Forget the fact that you are going to feel like you are dead, that you have literally been killed, maybe that is what makes it spiritual; we live in a reductionist society as you clearly believe. Forget all of that. Why is it that this molecule is so far and beyond the other tryptamines, that one instantly goes into a trance? That is first and foremost. After scientists figure out that one, then they might be intrigued by the fact that the imagery is otherwordly, the sound are otherwordly that the experience is otherworldly. Again, no one knows why or how. But, for you. YOU SHOULD JUST SHUT UP AND DO IT

I was trying to have a conversation with you Chogs, but you seem more interested in taunting gwiz and Lann. We haven't had a good debate in ages. Let's have a little back and forth if you feel up to it. I know you tend to get very emotional on this issue, so if you think you might have problems keeping your cool, we don't have to.

Here's a starting point if you like (to be read in a spirited but not hostile tone):

The government will never turn tyrannical and confiscate all guns. That is one of many right wing fantasies you have errantly bought into. If you and other right wing gun lovers tried to stage a coup against the strongest military in history of the world, you would lose, and lose badly. tl;dr Don't bring a gun to a tank fight. Another point of delusion seems to be that you think your country-fried junta would be viewed by Americans as heroic rather than just plain fascist.