undefined | Better HN

0 pointsfalcolas12y ago0 comments

> how would some police and a single APC pacify even a couple of blocks of citizens without the cooperation of those citizens?

Assuming that the police have no restriction in the use of force, it would be very simple for them to pacify a rather large area with an APC and Police. All they have to do is kill a few people who are out of line, and the rest will cower.

No single or small group of citizens in the US really has the ability to stand up to even a single measly APC. The firepower required to stop one is beyond what anybody outside the US enforcement structure can realistically obtain. You may be able to limit its movement with well constructed roadblocks, but harming the vehicle or its passengers with an assortment of shotguns, handguns and IEDs is not reasonable to expect (given they were explicitly designed to withstand these threats).

0 comments

6 comments · 3 top-level

eseehausen12y ago· 3 in thread

>"the rest will cower"

This is one aspect of sort of complicity with power that's being discussed. Sometimes, people decide en masse that a certain way of life is worth dying for, so we know there are other responses to armed pacification.

Not that this is always a bad thing. It's pretty great that most of us obey the state's injunction to not wantonly kill each other.

ryanpardieck12y ago

I find it extremely distasteful to describe backing down in the face of slaughter as "complicity." If that's the sort of thinking that follows naturally from the model of power dynamics being discussed here, then I think the model is likely intensely flawed.

scarecrowbob12y ago

On one hand, you are correct that it's an ethical problem.

But on the other hand I think it's more salient to understand that, say, the students shot down at Kent State were murdered and the general population of the country was on the side of the National Guard.... that's the kind of complicity that most people live under, the same complicity that believes people executed by police for non-compliance deserve their fates.

On one hand, it probably really is a good thing that we are generally aligned toward lawfulness, but at the same time it does make us complicit when the people charged with upholding that law use it towards criminal ends-- which is quite common in the US.

1 more reply

eseehausen12y ago

Complicity is a loaded term, so I can see why you'd feel that way. Perhaps it'd be better to say that such behavior enables the slaughterers to do what they do. As for the ethical question of whether a particular instance of backing down was right or wrong, hopefully our analysis of power dynamics avoids answering such questions and focuses on, well, the dynamics of power. That's not to say that such questions are irrelevant, they're just a different field, like the quantitative differences between the light emitted by configurations of dyes and the feeling evoked by a certain painting.

qq6612y ago

The recent regime changes termed "Arab Spring" provide some evidence that killing some of the population can sometimes further inflame the populate rather than intimidating them.

XorNot12y ago

...and this is where you lose everyone. There's a gulf of difference between technical capability and legal right.

Campus police don't "just kill a few people".

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse