[ SECRET POST #3928 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3928 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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03.
[The Shape of Water]


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05. https://i.imgur.com/FFikkoI.jpg
[linked at OP's request for graphic image, worm in eyeball)


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07. https://media.giphy.com/media/3ohhwgHt2QqljARnlm/giphy.gif
[linked for moving gif]












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #562.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What really scares me is the likelihood that the shows where cops do illegal shit are also reflecting the kinds of law enforcement officials that many Americans want to see.

[philstar22]

This. The popularity of shows like 24 where what characters are doing is is both illegal and immoral and yet we are supposed to root for them worries me because I think it might bleed over into real life. People already justify when cops murder. And media is just going to make it worse.

[rosehiptea]

Back when I was watching Cagney and Lacey (and it wasn't even the worst of the cop shows of the era) I felt like they were portraying the Constitution as some kind of pain-in-the-ass problem that kept cops from doing their jobs. I hated that.

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is an outgrowth of the gunslinger trope, and people don't think through the implications when it's pasted onto modern police. There's a lot of Western romanticism in the trope.

[(Anonymous)]

I think that's probably true for some people.

But I also think that those modes of thinking are not just limited to fictional police and aren't just the result of a failure to consider implications. What I'm talking about here is the possibility that those views - wherever they come from, whether it be Western gunslingers or whatever else - are a reflection of a segment of the American populations' views of how the criminal justice system should actually work.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, and I'm saying that this is as old as people getting together in the old west to mete out their own justice. There's always been that segment of people who think violence will solve the problem. I'm not disagreeing with you. I just don't think the thing is a new thing.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not saying whether or not it's new. Just that it's deeply wrong and deeply harmful.

[(Anonymous)]

Okay. You said you were scared that the shows were reflecting what people really wanted, and I'm saying that it's definitely a thing some people do want and have been conditioned to want for a hundred years. That's all.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, but even more so in spy/intelligence work dramas. Sure, torture the bad guy, it definitely gets the info you need!

[(Anonymous)]

Just remembering that time Antonin Scalia mentioned Jack Bauer in a discussion of torture at a legal conference

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, that reminds me how casually they talk about torture in Avengers. As if it's no big deal, just a means to an end.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not even a useful means to an end!

[(Anonymous)]

But the ~*safest hands are still our own*~!

[sabotabby]

Oh man, I am the worst for that. I love spy dramas.

I have a list of Highly Problematic Fictional Cops That I Love, too. It bears no resemblance to my feelings towards cops in reality.

[soldatsasha]

I don't think that's really the case that Americans want to see law enforcement do illegal shit. I think it's just that people want to see the good guys WIN and the bad guys put away, and irl all too often the good guys don't win because of the law.

Just think of Zimmerman. He got off because of a law that's in place to protect people, a law that says "if someone attacks you, you are allowed to defend yourself by whatever means available". On it's surface most people would say that's great. But that same legal protection means that without enough evidence to the contrary some shitfuck like Zimmerman gets to claim he was defending himself.

So of course, people fantasize about some renegade cop taking justice into their own hands, and protecting the good people.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, that is part of it but I think it is also more complicated than just that. It is not just a reaction to people being seen to get away with things. It goes deeper than that. It's not just a reaction to the complexity of the legal system, I think it is a baseline view that some people have. It is an idea that there are Good People and Bad People, and that it is both necessary and proper that we use force to keep the Bad People in line and also to punish them. It is an idea that violence and illegal conduct are not wrong when they are used by police against criminals, and it's the idea that there is a simple group of people who are criminals who the police are against. I think there are many Americans who do actually factually want to see law enforcement doing illegal shit.

I mean, shit. “And when you see these towns, and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon—you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’ Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head—the way you put the hand over, like don’t hit their head, and they’ve just killed somebody. Don’t hit their head. I said, ‘You can take the hand away, okay?'”

Don't fucking tell me that the President is referring to people getting away things because of legal technicalities. What he is signalling to his base is a belief that it is right and proper to rough up criminals, and I think his base largely would sign on to that, and I think a lot of police would sign on to that, even if there's also a necessity to walk it back and pretend like it was a joke. That is part of our society and it's the part of our society that's in the White House.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but the problem with Zimmerman wasn't really the law, it was Florida being full of racist fuckstains (including him). If that law had been applied in an unbiased manner, there's no way that a man who stalked and then attacked a teenage boy would have been able to use it as a defense. Zimmerman *is* the person who thinks he can take his version of justice into his own hands and win, and he was right (and not just him - it was a more successful defense strategy in many cases if you shot a black person, see the Wiki article for links to the studies).

You're defending Zimmerman's worldview here.

[(Anonymous)]

Aside: Since then, Zimmerman's been embroiled in a few domestic violence incidents. All of which he's conveniently managed to dodge as well.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but the problem with Zimmerman wasn't really the law, it was Florida being full of racist fuckstains (including him). If that law had been applied in an unbiased manner, there's no way that a man who stalked and then attacked a teenage boy would have been able to use it as a defense.

This.