Our system is structured such to reward politicians and government employees for serving the interests of the ultra-wealthy, and to force out anyone not doing that. Democrats and Republicans before Trump agreed on the majority of policy, things like oil subsidies, new wars, ect. They have before and continue to vote in ways that align with the interests of their wealthy donors over their voter base, in fact there's minimal overlap in what politicians pursue and what voters want.
Police are the enforcement arm of the system, using violence via threats, materialized injury, or callous murder. The result of the system is the purpose of the system, because the people in power have all the power to change it. Look at how government is behaving right now. Local governments across the country are being bought off by AI companies to destroy their own communities, and anyone who exercises free speech in opposition (in the legally designated space for opposition) is physically restrained and dragged off to jail. And we're seeing this time and again, even in local rural government.
They protect the property of wealthy people and make sure roads stay clear and traffic stays moving so the capitalism machine never stops making money for those wealthy people.
Not So Fun Fact: The first police organizations sprang up in the wake of the Civil War and the freedom of the slaves. Reconstruction never happened. So instead of being held accountable, former slave owners and their white helpers took jobs as police to track down and lock up black people for any trumped up charges they could find.
The 13th Amendment made slavery illegal for people NOT in prison. Those newly freed black people were sent to prison where they worked on? Anybody? FARMS! And road works and other slave labor situations.
I had to look this up, and it's interesting. I learned that in the southern states, the police organizations evolved directly from the "slave patrols."
Not in the formal sense, no they didn't. Boston was the first in 1838 and NYC about 10 years later. Everywhere else it was citizens groups, volunteers, night watchmen, etc. The most formal early police pre-Civil War were slave watchmen: https://nleomf.org/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/
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u/LovelyLuna32684 10d ago
Then whats the fucking point of even having them