>this is clearly an academic viewpoint, and one not informed by the
>reality experienced by that overwhelming majority of citizens who are
>not academics...lighten up, good buddy, despite whatever bad personal
>experience you may have had with the police - and against which i'd
>match mine and easily top you, in spades! - and take a few deep
>breaths...
If I don't miss my guess, Carol wasn't describing his own personal experiences. He was talking structurally, about the whole raison d'etre of policing.
>when someone is attacked, robbed, burglarized or suffers any of the even
>more numerous and perhaps less dramatic tribulations of life, like
>arguments with neighbors that get close to violence, etc., they do not
>call 911 to get a teacher, or a professor, or even a social
>worker...although, at times, the police action involves all those
>qualities and more, at higher personal risk, and much lower salary...
Cops are there to enforce bourgeois order, pure and simple. If that order happens to include enforcing laws that I happen to agree with, that's just happy coincidence. But the one big part of bourgeois order is: the bourgeois make the orders (to suit themselves), the police enforce it.
Don't know about the salary part. But a teacher in a bad school might or might not make a cop's salary, have to deal with dangerous situations, and not have a piece to use.
>of course police perform for the state, the government, the authority,
>when push comes to shove
No, it's not when push comes to shove. That's what happens to scabbing teachers and firefighters. It's push comes to shove then.
With cops, that's called "business as usual".
>and that's exactly what those other
>professionals do, despite any more glamorous seeming radical actions
>they may take, once they are protected by tenure, unions, or whatever
>form of job security their professional field offers them...
As a teacher, I don't act to enforce society's laws as part of my job description. And, once that door closes, I'm pretty much free to teach what I like, within some bounds (I'm an ESL teacher, not a philosopher). And I'm not unionized, have no tenure, no job security, etc.
>get off this elitist nonsense about dumping on cops, who would gladly
>accept better pay, and better, less threatening work conditions if they
>had the opportunity...
Of course they'd accept, if not press for that. That's one thing unions are good for.
And it's hardly elitist to articulate exactly what cops are for.
>find out how many sons and daughters of the professional class turn up
>their noses at grad school and instead become cops ...yeah, right
So what's your point here?
Todd
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