> carrol recently to consider that his question seemed to hold people
> personally accountable for taking on the jobs that they do. i asked him to
> consider how such proclamations as you have made about cops--and i
> personally hate cops more than you will ever know--fail to recognize the
> actual lives of people who become cops or prison guards or security guards
I'm having too much fun watching other people fight over my question to argue the main point myself, but let's have a little clarification here. I have
*never* spoken of "accountability" (or its more vicious twin, "responsibility"). The traditional view of the working class movement (and not just of marxists or anarchists in that movement) has been that cops, regardless of their personal proclivities, were by the nature of their position enemies of workers. Look at the huge supply of synonyms for "police," almost all of which are derogatory. It is part of the folklore of Detroit of how at the battle of Bull Run the bulls ran.
And as some other recent exchanges on lbo have revealed, a topic that on a maillist anyhow *always* results in confusion (and usually in unprincipled babbling) is that of "actual people." There really are "actual people" out there, and they have to be considered, but not in the context of maillist discussions.
>
> or go into the military.
Read my original post. It says nothing of "the military" and its reference to the National Guard was, specifically, to National Guard *comissioned officers*.
Pretty boy grabbed a log chain
And the deputy grabbed his gun.
And in the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.
Guthrie
Carrol