I’m not saying nobody has thought through the ideas, I find the proposed alternatives to police fascinating, although I’m personally sceptical that they’d actually be better than the existing system—that’s an essay all on its own!
My point was just that many people repeat slogans to express feelings rather than to advocate for concrete policy proposals, because everyone has feelings but almost nobody has policy proposals. (Myself included—I have opinions about lots of policy issues, if I’m honest I don’t really understand most of them). I’m not saying we should dismiss ideas just because most people that advocate for them would struggle to defend them, I’m just recommending against getting into arguments over the minutia of how community based restorative justice will actually work in the real world with people that have no idea what you’re talking about! It’s often more tactful to take people seriously but not literally, especially since slogans remove all nuance from the conversation and make it hard to know what people actually believe—saying “defund the police” could signal anything from supporting modest budget reallocation to literal anarchy!
I agree that treating “the Left” or “Progressives” as a monolithic bloc reveals a lack of understanding, but since Stalin and Hitler are much easier to argue against than what people on the left or the right actually believe, I’m not seeing this cheap rhetorical trick going away any time soon. We definitely should refrain from it though!
I’m not saying nobody has thought through the ideas, I find the proposed alternatives to police fascinating, although I’m personally sceptical that they’d actually be better than the existing system—that’s an essay all on its own!
My point was just that many people repeat slogans to express feelings rather than to advocate for concrete policy proposals, because everyone has feelings but almost nobody has policy proposals. (Myself included—I have opinions about lots of policy issues, if I’m honest I don’t really understand most of them). I’m not saying we should dismiss ideas just because most people that advocate for them would struggle to defend them, I’m just recommending against getting into arguments over the minutia of how community based restorative justice will actually work in the real world with people that have no idea what you’re talking about! It’s often more tactful to take people seriously but not literally, especially since slogans remove all nuance from the conversation and make it hard to know what people actually believe—saying “defund the police” could signal anything from supporting modest budget reallocation to literal anarchy!
I agree that treating “the Left” or “Progressives” as a monolithic bloc reveals a lack of understanding, but since Stalin and Hitler are much easier to argue against than what people on the left or the right actually believe, I’m not seeing this cheap rhetorical trick going away any time soon. We definitely should refrain from it though!
Gotcha! Now I think I understand. This makes sense to me