For blacks, anti-police means anti-white, not anti-authoritarianism

Although we do have an overgrown police presence that would ideally look more like it did on the Andy Griffith Show, the necessary changes may have to wait for awhile because in the current climate, the main impetus behind "boo police" is anti-white sentiment among blacks.

In the minds of most blacks, the police are the foot soldiers and open-air prison guards who keep blacks submissive, at the behest of the institutional racist white system that feels threatened by blacks doin' they own thang.

Therefore, holding anti-police views -- or escalating to anti-police actions -- stems from resentment against white people as a group. To them, the police are white folks' hired goons, so neutering or taking out the cops is just the first step toward taking down the wealthy and powerful whitey himself, who will be left with no protective forces.

That is quite a different motivation from civil libertarian types who are skeptical of the police because they are their own interest group, who may or may not have the public's safety at the top of its priorities, depending on the circumstances. Harassing white teenagers who are loitering around a parking lot? Easy, but pointless. Throwing themselves into a violent conflict to break it up? Harder to get them to do, yet more important for public safety.

This wariness of a too-big-too-fail police force has nothing to do with favoring one faction within a bitter conflict between ethnic groups, economic classes, generations, or any other kind of demographic conflict. Rather, it has to do with relations between agents of the state and the citizens. It is the same kind of concern that we have over whether Senators are directly elected, whether the military can draft soldiers, and so on.

Normal white people won't support radically altering the police forces when that matter is a hot-button topic in a broader ethnic conflict between blacks and whites. So, unfortunately the project of restoring the police back to the Mayberry model will have to wait until we get a better handle on various civil conflicts where one faction views the police as a mercenary militia that protects the other faction in the conflict.

Certainly that will not be taking place when anti-white movements like Black Lives Matter have escalated their tactics to murdering cops in ambushes, and when a good chunk of the black population is unmoved by or even sympathetic to those tactics.

The last time we transitioned out of a heavy police presence to the friendly neighborhood cop was the Great Compression. Before then, during the Progressive Era, the stereotype of the cop was still a skull-knocker who was looking out first for himself and other cops, and secondarily for the citizens.

First the Progressive Era had to restore order to a society that had begun to spiral out of control during the laissez-faire Gilded Age, and imposing order on chaos is going to stoke the sense of grievance among those demographic groups that are more prone to crime and destabilization. It might have been Ellis Island immigrants in the Progressive Era, while today it's blacks. But order has to be restored, and that may require us to tolerate a heavy-handed police force until the chaos has been controlled.

In general, all of the social worker programs that liberals desire -- the New Deal, the Great Society, etc. -- can only begin once there is basic stability among demographic groups. It's like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, where you need to take care of the most basic pressing needs (food, shelter) before attending to higher ones (fulfilling work). We had to kick out a bunch of immigrants and shut off immigration during the Great Compression, in order to focus on taking care of a more cohesive and unchanging population.

If there is open civil conflict, we are drawn back into "basic needs" mode, and that includes tolerating a police force that is stronger than we'd like.

The upshot for people who see a de-militarized police as ideal, is that we need to shape the population so that open civil conflicts are minimal and shrinking over time. The most pressing task now is to send the illegals back and shut off immigration, to prevent the emergence of further factions in the ethnic conflict arena.

For those who will be staying here, like blacks, I'll cover in a follow-up post about generational cycles within groups who are here permanently.