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United States: How do the Chinese and Russians fall for such obvious government propaganda!?!
Also United States: OMG, my favorite show CSI: Miami Law Blue Bloods Unit is on! OMG, my favorite movie is on Cop Show, but With More CGI and Colorful Costumes!
I feel like you can both enjoy cop shows and know that ACAB IRL.
I personally tend to find it difficult tbh, unless the parts of the show that AREN’T the copaganda hero worship is exceptionally well-written and/or stupid in ways that delight me.
Examples of cop shows (including hybrids with aspects of other genres) I will watch and rewatch for all time:
Lucifer, Brooklyn 99, Paradise PD, Mindhunter, The Wire, Dexter
Examples of shows with so much or so awful copaganda that I believe they should not be allowed on TV without a disclaimer:
Every CSI show; NCIS; every Law & Order show, but especially the ones where they torture and otherwise abuse presumed innocent people the most; 24; Blue Bloods
Cop shows I go back and forth about:
True Detective, Castle, The Blacklist, White Collar, Bones
Bones is one of the most egregious shows for me. The enthusiasm the title character has whenever she gets to shoot someone or lie to someone “because it’s allowed” is super icky.
This is Reno 911 slander
It was supposed to be an off the cuff set of examples rather than an exhaustive list. That being said, you’re right that Reno 911 belongs in that category 😁
That didn’t count, it was a documentary.
The original CSI was great. The first few seasons are all about how the evidence is more important than whatever easy story the cops want to make up, and how society is more complicated than just good guys vs bad guys, and the system isn’t always just. It drew a hard distinction between the scientific investigators and the actual cops. Later they turned into just another stupid cop show.
The first few seasons are all about how the evidence is more important
You mean the TONS of debunked pseudoscience that has led to thousands of innocent people being convicted because juries believe what they see on TV and prosecutors know how to exploit that?
Is THAT the “important evidence” you’re referring to?
Just say no to unnecessarily censored posts
I wish I could find that Reddit post about the commenter who called the police every time her ex came by and they literally told her that their arms are tied and there’s nothing they can do. She asked them what will it take for them to act, and the cops said, “Maybe if he tried to kill you.”
And she even said the restraining order meant nothing to the cops.
The restraining order means nothing to the supreme court, also.
“Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, 7–2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for refusing to enforce a restraining order, even though the refusal led to the murders of a woman’s three children by her estranged husband.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales
I used to work for the Medical Examiner’s Office. I’ve picked up more than my share of rape/murder victims. You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve heard cops say about the victims. I’ve only ever met a few detectives who really cared and were decent human beings, and coincidentally, they all came from years (or decades) in some other industry before joining their departments as detectives because they had advanced degrees. Never met a single uniformed cop or “promoted from within” detective who was anything other than a soulless piece of power tripping shit at their core.
I was a medic back in the day in a large city. Cops are assholes. Big goofy dumb goons. I’ve seen them do the dumbest shit. Light a smoke for a dead man. Was just one example. I sat at trial two times just to fuck up a cops day cause they routinely fucked people up for no reason. Goons.
Nothing made me more ACAB than having to work alongside cops.
Then you watch “The First 48” and realize that unless someone actively snitches or the fool immediately goes to the cops “to give their side” and/or flat out confesses, cops would never “solve” crimes.
Moral of the story: Shut the fuck up
unless someone actively snitches
Then you go to The Innocence Project and find out how many jailhouse snitches are issuing false testimony to lighten their own convictions.
My town’s police department posts info on wanted criminals on FB and people comment on the posts basically doing the cops’ jobs for them. Every person who has been posted about has been caught. The cops here rely on the public to catch criminals and they’re shameless about it. Meanwhile they spend their time on duty harassing people who ride ebikes.
Sounds like how the East German Stasi did things.
If you tell me that 65% of your towns entire budget goes to “law enforcement”, I would not be surprised at all.
Hey, it’s not always like that. Now they can also report the victims to ICE, which makes the problem go away much faster.
I like “The Rookie”.
But all these cops obsessing over the letter of the law, keeping each other in line, caring about perp’s life choices and victim’s problems…
This is fantasy. Might as well be Lord of the Rings.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
-John Rogers
I used to like The Rookie, but honestly after George Floyd I just couldn’t stomach any propaganda cop shows anymore.
Those motherfucker CHOCKED the man to death while smiling.
The show tried to pay lip service to it but honestly nothing they could do could possibly be enough.
Might as well be Lord of the Rings.
The longer I live, the more real LOTR seems.
Pining for the well-defined good and evil; the inherent goodness even in some misguided heroes, the honor, bonding, and integrity of the protagonists, despite trial and tragedy. Our characters all striving for a better world despite any personal cost. Something missing these days.
It’s easy to wish for that. But also easy to forget that it was terrible war, both the fantasy one and the one Tolkien himself participated in, that brought about such a grand story. It is real, to an extent.
I posted this on FB today and my friend that works in the domestic violence shelter system told me she’ll tell me over coffee how many cops show up to harass women staying at the shelter.
One night I walked home from work, in my work uniform, and some old guy with a personalized license plate asked me if I wanted to get coffee, at 9 pm. I was like, um no, and you’re weird, and then I went home and thought about it and decided to report it, wasn’t that long after the Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo serial killings of young girls in my city. The cop who showed up to take my statement asked me what I had been wearing, and then called me back to tell me he was just a lonely old guy looking for someone to talk to. Like who on Betty White’s green earth pulls over to try and convince a stranger to get into their car at 9 pm, a young woman many decades your junior, and thinks that’s normal? Fucking cops.
Those cop shows also glorify cops who breaks rules and trample rights as good cops who do what they need to do to solve a crime. It leads to people excusing abuse by cops in the real world
They can even have gang tattoos and still don’t get sent to the work camps.
1312! Fuck the police
The thin blue line flag is a gang sign. Also, police are necessary and (a lot of the time) earn their pay. We could go a long way in training them better and holding them to higher standards though. Let’s start with not treating ID like crack, not escalating, using unnecessary violence, and actually respecting citizens’ constitutional rights etc. Let’s start with the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th but not forget all of the rest of them. Authoritarianism is cancer regardless of who is in power.
ACAB every day but don’t you dare come for Mariska Hargitay. 1) we all know SVU is fiction (that’s why they say it every episode), and most of us are aware it’s mostly fantasy and also 2) svu often points out the shortcomings of other non-them svu teams and the NYPD in general.
Mariska is a gem irl. Let me enjoy my fantasy cop show.
(It has to be said: this is a tongue-in-cheek comment and I understand the point that was being made in the meme, I just really love svu ok.)
Okay but, hear me out—are we not going to look back one day and feel that it was really fucking weird that we had a cop show dedicated entirely to rape? Maybe I’m thinking about it all wrong but that seems exploitative in a weirdly fetishistic way
Boo!
RAPE
So Scary!!!
No idea why people censor themselves like this.
Capitalism has neutered our ability to speak freely about the most important, most painful truths in our society.
The platforms that most people spend most of their conscious thought-power have told our children and adults alike that things like rape, suicide, murder and nazism are so distant from us, so “unreal” that we don’t even have words for them anymore.
This isn’t a small thing. Language has massive power in our minds to reshape our world. We use language to abstractify complicated ideas and learn how to examine them from different perspectives. Language is how we built a world a wonders and miracles, but we’re being conditioned every day to stop using language. Don’t read, scroll. Don’t debate, retreat to safe spaces. Don’t say bad words, someone might feel bad if you say “rape.” As if people aren’t currently being raped right now. I wonder how they feel about the word.
But did you knoooowwww, that nearly a quarter of US adults are functionally illiterate? Meaning, they can answer texts, they can read street signs and a grocery list, but are almost incapable of stringing together a whole paragraph? This isn’t a small problem, it’s why the west is falling, it’s why we have nazis marching again. I mean… why we have “armband baddies” marching, or whatever the sanitized term is.
How is that capitalism’s fault, and not the fault of the ridiculous puritans the censorship is trying to cater to?
Because platforms cater to advertisers who cater to the broadest possible audience. Meaning they don’t take stances on any issues, they just use the broadest, safest possible forms of language and principles.
If you take any kind of active stance about anything there are going to be “ridiculous puritans” somewhere, in some context who are going to be offended. And once you decide that you’re going to piss off some group of people, you have to then apply your principles consistently or you’re going to make even more public backlash and controversy.
Platforms that are courting advertisers are going to try to make their platform as universally uncontroversial as possible rather than invite brands in who have to either align with the existing values of the platform or invite brands in who will have to then take a stance in any capacity.
As a result, we have the largest gathering places for people’s minds, completely disconnected from reality by presenting people a neutered, safe version of the world without any possible way for people to see something that bothers them, because it’s far easier to sell products when people are thinking about the product, not your company’s stance on something. This is what’s turned our social media and the internet broadly into a marketing tool. This is why the internet is dead. This is why kids don’t even say the word “dead” anymore because they’re used to abiding by the brand’s safe version of reality.
I mean, is this really hard to understand?
Yeah, because you’re overcomplicating it.
This censorship in particular is coming from China’s overbearing government. Remove that element and capitalism is fine leaving things uncensored. Remove the religious right from America and there’d be less censorship elsewhere.
They don’t censor as much in the UK, for example. Would you say China is more capitalist than the UK?
Remove the religious right from America
Oh so it all hinges on ethnic cleansing then? I love rando internet takes. Fuck off, I don’t care about your points, you’re in some fantasy world.
That’s obviously not what I meant, but you just go ahead and keep being you.
Why is there self-censorship on the word “rape”?
Capital is taking away our ability to speak to power about societal problems.
It’s not a silly little thing, it’s a real problem that we need to address. Nearly a quarter of the US adult population is functionally illiterate. They are taking our power to communicate away slowly, little bits at a time. They start with the big, heavy topics that make people upset, the topics that might make people rally together and push back against the system. Rape? Murder? Nazis? Suicide? No no no, those aren’t acceptable so we don’t say that. Monkey see no evil, say no evil, hear no evil. Be quiet and buy your new phone and buy your celebrity energy drinks.
Tune in tomorrow to see what the next banned ideas are.
Grab your rake and shovel and work those fields, serf.
I really like how Brooklyn 99 addressed this at the end.
Addresses what? That entire series, especially the final season, is all copaganda about “Sure, there are corrupt cops out there, but there are also squads on your side that are breaking the law in order to enforce their own morals, so you shouldn’t hate cops”
Final Season:
“Our bad guys, we just realized we’re part of the copaganda machine so all the best characters are going to quit the force”
Some people: “Omg that makes it worse why didn’t you all kill yourselves instead?”
Okay tap the brakes there. It was one character who quit the force. They addressed it in one episode. Then they never bring it up again and she just hangs out for the rest of the season and nothing changes. I like the show but you know, they weren’t exactly breaking down barriers. It was a really rough Awkward episode it’s probably the worst one of the entire show.
