What anyone here thinks of the podcast is irrelevant -- I'm talking about what they did and didn't say, and about whether we should be charitable to fellow leftists or whether we should assume the worst when they offer up a hot take.
What they said:
If you look at polls of POC opinions on police, at least a significant amount want some sort of police in their communities
Maybe that's because real violence and real crimes do occur, and people closer to that are more hesitant to scrap the police entirely
Maybe that's because you don't need to be an expensive education to be a cop, so being a cop is a path to a decent life for some POC
It was "here's a poll that conflicts with police abolition, and here are some ideas to explain that contradiction." Reading that as "cop-sympathizing" is not how we should be treating people who are even kind of on our side, because that's how you start a bunch of leftist infighting that gets nothing done.
Is anyone suggesting they were literally saying "the police are actually rad if you think about it" or are we upset at bullshit concern trolling? Literally any major advocate for abolishing police could tear through these supposedly good faith concerns in a minute, but instead of inviting an advocate on to have a productive conversation they brought on a liberal writer to bitch about how online mobs are so sensitive that they can't do real journalism anymore.
lol nothing about that is concern trolling -- it's "here's a poll, here are plausible explanations for it"
any major advocate for abolishing police could tear through these supposedly good faith concerns in a minute
What are they going to say? "No, being a cop is not actually a job that pays well and that you can get without an expensive degree?" There are barely even takes here: it's observations about the situation that complicate it a bit beyond "well we should just have no cops," a position that most people don't support.
C'mon, not even the most die hard fans were excusing the shit they were saying.
What anyone here thinks of the podcast is irrelevant -- I'm talking about what they did and didn't say, and about whether we should be charitable to fellow leftists or whether we should assume the worst when they offer up a hot take.
What they said:
It was "here's a poll that conflicts with police abolition, and here are some ideas to explain that contradiction." Reading that as "cop-sympathizing" is not how we should be treating people who are even kind of on our side, because that's how you start a bunch of leftist infighting that gets nothing done.
Is anyone suggesting they were literally saying "the police are actually rad if you think about it" or are we upset at bullshit concern trolling? Literally any major advocate for abolishing police could tear through these supposedly good faith concerns in a minute, but instead of inviting an advocate on to have a productive conversation they brought on a liberal writer to bitch about how online mobs are so sensitive that they can't do real journalism anymore.
lol nothing about that is concern trolling -- it's "here's a poll, here are plausible explanations for it"
What are they going to say? "No, being a cop is not actually a job that pays well and that you can get without an expensive degree?" There are barely even takes here: it's observations about the situation that complicate it a bit beyond "well we should just have no cops," a position that most people don't support.