FLEA

I would just say pilots are well equipped for it (as are most vet officers from an ops career field) You have the right degree of charisma, government knowledge/expereince, intelligence, aggressiveness and patriotism. Being a veteran to some degree gives you an electorate advantage although it's hard to quantify. It certainly doesn't hurt though. And holding a TS means you likely lived a fairly clean lifestyle free of scandal.

I am talking specifically about the criminal background. You basically have to have never made a mistake in your life. Mental health background has to be squeaky clean as well. Bottom line is the city is going to give you a gun and they see it as a liability if youre ever involved in a shooting and someone can question your mental acumen.

Yes I acknowledge police officers by far don't have the MOST dangerous job in the United States but they do have a higher than normal rate of danger. There are some key differences in the instances of officer deaths. One important one is that when an officer is killed in the line of duty it is an assault on an institution (justice by law) that attacks the fabric of society. This makes it more reprehensible than others occupational deaths. There is also the caveat that police officers work largely an environment where people are attempting to undermine them, where as other occupations do not. Hence their danger is relative to their vigilance. We have to recognize that police officers do not take the same types of Hippocratic oaths, and therefore do not have the same moral obligations to accept increasingly higher amounts of risk like members of the military. Despite that, they already are accepting higher risk. People often say "officers need more training" to which I ask... ok? What kind of training? What are they not already getting that you think will solve this issue. Simply pointing to training is like say SAPR training is going to eliminate rapes in the military. Its more complex than that. When this thread opened I left a page on meaningful police reforms. That was the post I was alluding to and I was hoping people would find it. Regardless, I'll recap some of them. By and large the largest hurdle the criminal justice system faces in the country is lack of focus and lack of funding. They've suffered in much the same way the military has where they continually succumb to mission creep of increasingly greedy political officials who seek reelection, yet their budget is often the first to suffer spending cuts when room needs made for a high priority item that makes the city look good. Seattle is a great example of how toxic the relationship between political officials and the police department are. The Seattle mayor is literally denigrating police officers on live TV telling them they don't uphold the cities standards yet she appointed and empowered every single one of them to include the ones drawing departmental policies. When the military suffers failure it is embarrassing for the POTUS. Somehow police departments do not carry the same weight of blame. Regarding meaningful reforms: 1.) Officer manning needs increased exponentially. Most people are surprised to learn officers are no longer partnered. The buddy system is integral to literally every other job in the emergency response industry to include the military and fire departments. We bemoan our police officers for being in fear for their lives but we send them of into communities that are often very hostile to them, by themselves. When my wife worked her metropolitan district she patrolled an under privileged neighborhood on the outskirts of the city where her nearest response was 18 minutes away. 2.) To add to officer manning, it has long been known that community policing is more effective but far less efficient than patrol cars. Techniques like walking patrols and police kiosks are instrumental to creating communities ties. Think of your relationship with your postman. You probably don't know him by name or much about his family but I bet you know his face and trust him because he drops the mail off to you every day without fail. Because of that, you have developed trust with him, and you would think to tell him if something was wrong with your mail delivery service. When police officers patrol in vehicles, they become unapproachable. Walking patrols are extraordinarily effective but come with less safety for the officer and a much larger task to efficiency. Hence back to my prior point about manning. 3.) Standards for career field entry for police departments are extraordinarily high. Much higher than holding a TS/SCI. The background check is very rigorous. This is problematic though. It makes it hard to recruit people of adversity or difficult backgrounds. Some people screw up in life, but they turn out to be amazing people who would make amazing mentors and roll models. Policing is primarily a community focused roll and the people serving a community should come from within it. Yet in some of the worst neighborhoods we can't do this because the people that grow up in those climates are unlikely to make it to college with a completely clean record. A pathway needs to be created to get these people of excellent character into the field without expecting perfection in their background. 4.) End the war on drugs. I'm not sure this one is worth debating anymore. Very few people support the massive resource waste this is at the moment. I'm not saying crack parties for all, but lets be sensible and stop wasting massive resources on find people and arresting people who the only thing they've done was jay walked with heroine in their pocket. 5.) Traffic camera enforcement: This one is unpopular but I've come to realize it has some major advantages. The first one is, it removes cops from pulling traffic which has largely become an industry to prop city revenues and it against waste police officers time and resources. That industry has stained the community perception of police officers and tarnished the reputation of their office. It creates thousands of negative interactions with cops every year. If people have a bad story about a cop its usually about how they were an ass hole for giving them a speeding ticket. Its also a waste of the above mentioned limited resources and manning. I think any conversation on how to reform criminal justice in the United States needs to begin with how do we increase public trust in the police department and make the work environment safer for cops. If you can start there you can probably start to find solutions. But the problem is, all of them cost money, and no one wants to hold political officials accountable for doing a terrible job of appropriating departments.

I'll write a response in a few. Keep getting pulled away from my Zoom class. Lol.

You probably should go back to the first 5 pages of this thread or so and read some of my posts. I think you would be surprised.

It actually does. That is the total # of people over 8 something million deployments. Seems high but remember it's over nearly 20 years and the vast majority of forces have high attrition to 1st enlistment separation.

No man, I've had plenty of days partying extraordinarily hard. Even had altercations with cops after being drunk. But we don't excuse anything else based on consumption of alcohol (rape, assault, etc....) I'm certainly not going to excuse a person who goes beyond retarded when theyre drunk for escalating a situation. You are responsible for your actions. If you fuck up drunk, we expect said Colonel to discipline you for it. (Also definitely not a Colonel or even close haha)

Quick bar napkin math. 2.72M people have deployed to ME in GWOT and sustained 7053 deaths. 1/385 Since GWOT started, 664,000 peace officers in the United States have sustained 3323 deaths. 1/199. Respect to the difference of those who work outside the wire versus those who do not but realise police departments have plenty of admin types as well, including most park services, certain capital services, many federal investigative areas, etc...

If you think anything ground guys do in the military is comparable to policing you need to reevaluate how you estimate risk. The force ratio we have in theater is enormous and backed by a monstrous machine or ISR, air support and quick reaction forces. The ROEs are generally more permissive and over a 20 year career at even the worse deployment to dwell ratios your exposure is only 50-60% of your career vs. upwards of 100%. Better ballistics protection, better command and control, always attached to another person via buddy system, I could go on. I'm not saying what they don't do is dangerous, but seriously man, think about it for a minute. My wife was a cop for 3 years. I spent a lot of time doing ride a longs with her and her friends in some of the worst areas of a major city know for gang violence. Two friends in my squadron also had cop wives. In 3 years one had been stabbed twice and shot one. The other one had been shot. My wife was luckily never in that position. But you are comparing apples to oranges. Also, if you're so drunk you can't think rationally to the point you are threatening people, maybe check your life choices a bit. Your an officer, presumably, so I expect your capable of being responsible to an extent.

Most important piece of info!

Sure there is risk, and thats acknowledged. But when we practice ORM we never say "deliberately ignore risk because its part of the job." We mitigate using planning and TTP's. In general, police are exposed to far more risk than people in the military and have only a fraction of the social benefit should they entail injury. Its difficult for us as a society to ask them to accept more risk. Who is willing to front the lifetime disability and early pensions for all of these officers we are asking to accept injury? Or is it, "sorry, just part of the job dude, enjoy never having use of your left hand again. Good luck finding work outside of policing."

All really good points. I'd add that 80% of American society today lives in an urban environment. That number is expected to grow to 90% in the next few years. In general urban areas have higher economical impact and stability than rural areas. Its easy to say "just move to the country and live off the land" but we actually need people to live and work in cities and manufacture high end products to support our economy.

Uh..... first off.... a knife is probably going to kill you not hurt you. Knife wounds are generally more lethal than gun shot wounds. Second, no.... getting hurt is not part of the job. I cant understand how anyone with any sense of morality can believe its somebodies job to get hurt. That's like people saying if you in the military your job is to die for your country. Uh, no its not. Here is why cops shoot people with knives. This is based off actual research performed by the FBI. The TTPs are pretty advanced. (not all covered in this video) Usually one officer is paired with a lethal and another officer with a non-lethal. (taser, pepper ball, etc...) Edit: I'm just going to add too, I've been doing MMA for 15 years and if someone came at me with a knife, I'm sure as fuck running. Ive been stabbed once in high school, and it sucked balls.

I think we are talking different things. Society in general requires cooperation to exist. It's what allowed humans to cheat evolution and humans by nature are social creatures and require social contact. US culture though is generally rated as more individual than any other culture in the world on the Hofstede scale. But this is usually in context of views on human rights. https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/

In all seriousness what did you expect. You clearly live in a bubble. You can change tires and grow your own food, great. What about your interpersonal skills?

Not a liberal but literally NONE of that matters. Although I'm sure some grandpa's back during WW2 bemoaned that the worlds greatest generation didn't know how to change wagon wheels or work a plow. The world is changing. Self sufficiency is a nice ideal but you have to recognize civilization is held on the pillars of cooperation, not on the pillars of individualism.

What if we just did elections 1800's style and turned them into pistol duals. First blood draw, your electoral votes determine your pistol and vice president picks act as seconds. If you sweep the electoral map, Keanu Reaves comes in and takes your shots for you. Satire of course.

Can you summarise? I'm out of my 4 articles a month or whatever.

The Pentagon, Congress, and the White House, literally paid this guy to tell them to leave the ME, and we are still there. Really good discussion though on terrorism and occupation.

I used biological monogamy to mean sexual monogamy. Science recognizes three forms of monogamy. Social, sexual and genetic. What most people identify as human monogamy is sexual monogamy where it is actually social monogamy. Sexual monogamy is the pairing of mates for life and is found in nature but humans don't fit the bill. The biggest evidence of this is the preponderance of adultery in society. If we were sexually monogamous this wouldn't be a common behavior.

Socially yes, but biologically and psychologically no. Monogamy is VERY rare in Animals and even more rare in mammals. Among mammals its more common in social primates but only to the degree that it a social benefit and not an evolutionary benefit. The evolutionary benefits of monogamy are VERY low. The evolutionary benefits to polygamy are VERY high. There is a lot of academic literature about this. Its not really an argument of if anymore, its an argument of how. Not sure how you see a slow collapse of monogamy? Monogamy has become more widespread since the 18th century. Prior to that the concepts surrounding marriage and bondship were much looser in Judeo-Christian society and even more loose in eastern society.

So I think there is a lot of string to unfurl here and we need to recognize marriage as a concept is something thats evolved over 2-3 millenia and its role in society has been altered and evolved over time too. Marriage is rhymed in many different religions/regions but the word for that institution is usually unique. Marriage was probably adopted to describe similar institutions out of convenience and remained tolerable so much as it fell within a certain set of rules. Its complicated because this was a process that was slow and I think Christians thought, controlled, but the wake of secular marriage via gay marriage was widely a shock to them. Why I find this bizarre, is because if you are not particularly religious, you should recognize that monogamy is not natural to human sexuality. Studies on primate societies show different models of polygamy are far more common. However, monogamy has one EXTRAORDINARY important role among straight people which actually makes society possible. So we know, for instance, from studying China after the 2-child rule, that societies with a disproportionate number of single males tend to become more violent and impulsive. This framework makes society difficult and sets the foundations for collapse. Monogomy resolves that by ensuring the primal system of a single alpha male taking a harem of females doesn't allow a group of sexually frustrated despot males to wreak cultural havoc on the pillars of civilization. What's so strange when we have the discussion on homosexuality is this same context doesn't provide the same societal benefit and their may be a prehistoric origin to the taboo there. But weirdly then, why would you subscribe to it? The only reason people would be because they are romanticized with novelty of monogamy and this idea of "eternal love" and we can probably blame the multi-billion dollar wedding industry on that. This aside from the tax benefits and more utilitarian purposes anyway.

I think you mistake my position. I've never had a problem with gay marriage. I personally don't care. But I am giving you your answer to why this was a moral crises for some in America. The US adopted an institution that was uniquely religious. Even more so, they adopted the Judeo-Christian model of it. This was inherited from Europe. Marriage became important to society as a systematic process to distribute property. Remember Europe didn't begin to separate religion from governance until the discovery of people in the New World, and that transformation wasn't complete until the 20th century. Marriage became an important system for the transition and inheritance of property and culturally developed in most civilizations alongside agriculture when the concept of land and land ownership became extremely important. The Judeo-Christian vision of marriage likely evolved out of this as much of the old testament regards the importance of unadulterated blood lines (where the term adultery actually comes from) and monogamy. When advocacy for gay marriage became a thing, Christian's misread that as an assault on their religion. To a Christian, "marriage" means a very specific thing. Mainstream society tried to change that definition. That's a really big deal. Think about it for a minute, in Catholicism, marriage is a sacrament. Can you imagine the reactions if main stream society tried to alter the criteria behind baptism? What was actually happening though, is society was adopting a secular view of marriage, which in all honesty, is sort of strange. Basically, mainstream society culturally appropriated it because for some reason people are in love with the romance (as in the perceived feeling) associated with monogamy. People find it "noble" or "honorable" and they don't really have a good understanding why. Science tells us "love" is actually a euphoria generated by hormones. Take that for what its worth. Look at it from this perspective. Imagine if you will, the Arapaho Sun Dance, a distinctly native American religious practice. To what extent would we approve of main stream society suddenly adopting this practice, bastardizing it, and then changing specific rules, beliefs, and understandings about the ceremony. Then, to rub the salt in the wound, we tell native cultures not only is this still a valid form of Arapaho Sun Dance, you are required by law to recognize it as such. They are required to make Sun Dance cakes, and administer Sun Dance ceremonies for non-Native people all over who bastardize the tradition and the meaning. That was the conflict with gay marriage in a nut shell.

Marriage is a religious institution though. It should have never been recognized by the government to begin with. That's your real issue.