While I don't disagree with the sentiment, since you have a friend who's a cop I'm compelled to ask the uncomfortable question, is an otherwise good cop who protects bad cops still a good cop?

That’s a good question.

You know how all the people taking part in a robbery get charged with murder if just one of them kills someone?

I’d view it like that. A cop that covers up corruption for a partner is guilty of corruption. A cop that covers up a DUI carries a similar amount of guilt.

A cop that exercises ‘professional courtesy’ to overlook a minor traffic violation? Same negligible amount of guilt.

I think it seems about right.

You aren't acknowledging an awareness of culture or systemic issues. Cops that remain on the force despite being aware of the excessive force, rampant theft, corruption, institutional racism and lack of accountability choose to accept and implicitly support that system for their own benefit. That's why people use the metaphor of "bad apples" to refer to police. You can't remain a good person in an evil system.

I'm sure Derek Chauvin was a real nice guy to his friends and neighbors, but he still murdered George Floyd in cold blood. Cops are great at compartmentalizing, it's part of the job.

That doesn't explain the first ~230 years of US history though, where police weren't this way and we had the same Constitution.

It’s possible it’s a bit of an “arms” race, the police are more aggro but so are the public. At least in public perception back before the 70s its was perceived that by and large there was “respect for authority” but that’s eroded over the decades for various reasons among them court cases asserting more rights for individuals where cops can’t just up and arrest willy nilly. But also movements like “sovereign citizen” leaks in places enough to affect behavior elsewhere.

Also weapons are relatively cheaper today than decades ago.

There's an insane number of police shootings where it turns out the person was looking at an insanely large sentence and they "weren't going back to jail." From that perspective it's not even clear they're acting irrationally -- if the penalty for third-striking for stealing a TV and murder is the same then some criminals are going to make it worth their while.

"suicide by cop" is a narrative also used to cover up a bad police shooting.

Jail is a medieval institution with state actor technology.

Assault rifles were banned for 10 years.

They were not legal to buy until the 1980s.

That's not true, on a federal level. Colt was selling a civilian model of the ar15 to the public in the 60s

Yep. These companies forget that we can use AI too, to unpack these ridiculous corporate statements in record time to get right down to the point: We're going to dump all our values, and not even going to pay lip service to things like integrity, transparency, or diversity anymore.

The American people knew who they were electing. They knew it, and they elected him anyway. Whatever damage results from that collective decision is our cross to bear.

Many of them will insist that they didn't know. Another group of "many" will insist that this is all somewhere between "not that bad" and "great".

The problem is that everyone else on earth has to suffer the consequences of those choices.

I get emotional whenever I see anyone with enough good sense to pass the baton at the proper time rather than die in office, letting it drop and clatter to the ground.

Now if only members of our representative government would follow his lead to voluntarily retire when it's time, hand off the baton to a new generation, we'd all be so much better off.

Even if they were to pass such a law which would be political suicide, it would still be up to the courts to say that it doesn't violate the Constitution. For example, a law that says anyone with a net worth of $1B can freely punch anyone in the face whenever they want and have immunity would be a clearly illegal law. That's basically what this bill is. The courts would then need to be made sufficiently corrupt to not strike down such a law as unconstitutional.

Unconstitutional doesn't mean much when it's being decided by a group of unaccountable people that weren't elected through democratic means. If SCOTUS says something is legal, it's legal. That's how the system is setup, nothing else really matters. They'll justify their decisions however they want but the material ends are the only things that matter.

SCOTUS has ruled many terrible things over the course of our nation's history (upheld slavery, said slaves weren't people, equated money with speech, decided a presidential election while denying a recount, etc). Expecting them to somehow be better is a foolish task.

It's an institution that needs to be dismantled and rebuilt, where at minimum SCOTUS appointments should be elected by a national vote rather than letting an extreme minority decide (100 senators versus ~340,000,000 people).

People on both sides seem to give capitalism a lot of credit for human traits that existed long before capitalism.

Well the point of capitalism (going back to Adam Smith) is that the invisible hand converts locally selfish behavior to globally good outcomes. The argument is whether or not that emerges. So if your implication was that human trait was selfishness, yes, that is quite the point of capitalism.

It's okay to have two conflicting thoughts about something and both be true at the same time. AI is awesome but at the same time is promising to do evil in the future. Why? Facebook has done a lot of good for the world, like React for instance, but also done a lot of evil as well. Billionaires have initiated the development of some amazing products and services, but at the same time they're spending their money building bunkers so they can survive an end of the world scenario that they're largely responsible for, rather than using it to mitigate some of the evil that they unleashed. Why are they doing that? I don't know. It doesn't seem necessary to me.

Yeah. A think there are a lot of tech enthusiasts like myself that find it amazing from a tinkering and curiosity standpoint, but terrifying from a power and those-who-wield-it standpoint.

The entire tech industry is rooted in the study of subjects which were extemporaneously considered unnecessary by the average person.