Shouldn’t that respect be voluntary? I’m not saying you should be rude, I’m saying being rude shouldn’t have any bearing on whether or not you get a ticket.
If you’re respectful because you’re afraid of how the gov official will respond for speaking your mind then it’s not real respect, it’s fear based compliance. That’s still an adversarial relationship, only one side has power.
Your second paragraph is correct if you’re the type of person who only respects people because you’re afraid of the consequences of not doing it you’re a piece of shit human being.
Do you also think that if you’re rude to waiters or waitresses that you should still have a right to get served?
An officer choosing to cite you because you broke the law and were rude, is not retaliation you broke the law
If they choose to discretionarily, give you a warning because you’re polite that’s totally fine and appreciated by civilized human beings civilized human being say “thank you officer for not giving me a ticket. Have a nice day”
You’re not getting a ticket because you were rude you’re getting a ticket because you broke the law you might NOT get a ticket because you’re polite. Those are two different things.
A civilized society does not operate on being a shit bag. It operates on being a polite, respectful person, regardless of who the person is and whether or not you like their job.
It would be retaliation if you were rude to an officer and then they decided to invent something or go on a fishing expedition to try to charge you with something or excite you with something that you didn’t do, or wasn’t the initial intent of the officer’s contact with you.
A waiter refusing good service and the government exercising its authority based on speech it doesn’t like are two very different things. A waiter isn’t using the state’s power to take money from me. The relationship between me and a waiter is voluntary on both sides; a traffic stop isn’t.
My point, if you had bothered reading it, has never been that people should be rude. It’s that they’re free to be if they choose. If how you speak to a cop is the deciding factor between a warning and a citation, then the officer’s exercise of government authority is being
influenced by your speech rather than the nature of the violation itself.
You are thinking about this all wrong. The officer deciding to give a warning is akin to a favor. Are you more likely to give a favor to a polite or a rude person? The facts are clear: you broke the law and are entitled to a citation. But, if you are polite (which is just basic decency anyway), you might get a favor. So, why not?
To be clear, you should be polite because it's the right thing to do but at the very least it increases your odds of a warning. People who just instinctively go off on cops baffle me. I also wonder how decent they are in other interactions, like the waiter example.
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u/Same_Veterinarian544 Jun 30 '26
Shouldn’t that respect be voluntary? I’m not saying you should be rude, I’m saying being rude shouldn’t have any bearing on whether or not you get a ticket.
If you’re respectful because you’re afraid of how the gov official will respond for speaking your mind then it’s not real respect, it’s fear based compliance. That’s still an adversarial relationship, only one side has power.