With only that information available to you, what is your opinion of the following scenario? -
At 3 AM on a Sunday morning an entire neighborhood, totaling almost fifty homes, is raided by the local police department, with assistance from country sheriffs and the State Police. They are searching for the abusive husband, in an attempt to rescue his wife.
Four people are killed in their beds outright, after policemen are fired upon by the startled inhabitants of several houses, and one apartment. Another six die in the hospital from wounds received in the cross fire, including two children. Five homes are set on fire, perhaps owing to the confusion, the use of crowd control gasses, and other factors not yet clear on first reporting. Three more people die of smoke inhalation. Another fifteen are wounded by bullets, flame and collapsing structures.
The police do not apprehend the husband suspected of beating his wife. And in the days following the raid, her whereabouts remain undetermined.
Was it worth it? Is it right for you to advocate for the police response, especially knowing from prior experience the manner, impact and tendency towards overkill of their involvement?
*
My apologies in advance for not finding a way to link this all to something a cultural studies professor once wrote on the margins of a term paper, a film produced for a Swedish festival, two obscure books published by University Tenure Press, Lady Gaga's state of undress, and the social sexual habits of the inhabitants of Zeta Kleepak Four.
(originally a reply, here slightly modified, en chez IOZ)
12 comments:
You've been excellent on this subject. Thanks.
Yeah that's a great hypo. Nice work Jack.
Thank you.
??????
"The police do not apprehend the husband suspected of beating his wife. And in the days following the raid, her whereabouts remain undetermined."
And there are thirteen dead, fifteen wounded + five burned houses? Sounds like Libya but I oppose that war for different reasons, namely the repeatedly-proven incompetence of the US military although it's not the soldiers themselves that are the incompetents, it's their leaders. (longtime lurker)
darms,
Thanks for the reply. I'm sure there's plenty of room to agree, even if we have different reasons for coming to banquet.
Hey now, they were only doing their job.
You left out one crucial element - the racial. This doesn't often happen in white neighborhoods, but frequently in non-white. And that has application to Libya too.
Race is not essential to a generic example used to illustrate a failure of logic, Sen.
I understand your point, in almost any other context agree with it, but I elided it deliberately, because it adds an elements which burdens the whole and distracts from the point I was trying to make.
I wonder if righteous class war would result in no wrongful death, no misdirected fury, no failure to solve the problem...
...and there's probably a way to distinguish between the ill equipped, illegal violent struggle of the destitute and poor of the earth from the sanctioned, legal, well funded, industrially armed and supplied military violence of organized powers.
You're absolutely right. There are many differences, and they matter. But if you want to bash the violence based on who's doing it, then do that. Don't present the consequences of war as somehow the matter here when you seem to be no pacifist, and when you have yet to explain how any war would avoid the consequences of our current dirty, capitalists' war.
A tangent: You know what a state is, right? It's the force that wins. Whatever force that wins.
And just to show you I don't take myself too seriously: You know the worst part of Return of the Jedi? In real life, the Ewoks become the new Empire.
My argument has naught to do with the origin of violence, Cuneyt. Only that its magnitudes vary, and that means something.
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