More Public Calls for Free Housing
Police brutality is something that objectively exists in America. Many will chalk this up to systemic racism. Others, who have seen the data of how it breaks down per racial category, will claim it's just a problem with the police and isn't affecting any one group more than another. Though no matter where anyone stands on who has it worse, that the police need to be held in check is something on which most Americans can agree. Though some people have taken to calling for entire police departments to be defunded, including some prominent politicians in states like Minnesota and Washington. They want the police abolished, and they want the money used to fund the police to go offering people free housing.
This is far from the first time activists have used a tragedy to shoehorn in their calls for free things. Just two months ago, 12,000 people gathered in New York City in order to demand free housing amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Dozens upon dozens of times in the past few years, the Democratic Socialists of America have gathered together during times of tragedy and civil unrest to plea for free housing, as well as student loan forgiveness, a living wage, and free food and healthcare as a human right. The reason this is news in America isn't that they ask for these things. Rather, it's how they ask for them.
While there have been a few riots and a lot of property damage, and over a dozen people murdered during the mayhem, the overwhelming bulk of the people in the streets are just peaceful protesters who want change. They want systemic change, from the top down, because they care about people's lives and safety. Unfortunately, because they are peaceful people, they're very easy to co-opt. They have been co-opted by violent sects of looters, who are responsible for the assaults and murders. They have been co-opted by socialist organizations. They have been co-opted by Antifa, a militant communist group. And all of these other groups want disorder. They smash and burn and steal and cry out for free things given to them.
The tough obstacle to mentally tackle in one's mind when calling for an abolishment of the police inside of cities is that cities, generally speaking, are where police are needed the most. So while one can easily identify and agree that abuses of power need to be checked and reined in, even insofar as that means fixing entire systems, it's another thing entirely to do away completely with a police force in areas already experiencing higher levels of crime.
The kicker here really isn't that so many people are calling for the police to be abolished through losing every penny of their funding; the kicker is for what these activists want the money. They want money to be given out to people for free housing. The irony is that the people to whom activists want this money to go already live on Section 8 for the most part, which means they're already receiving free housing from the government. And the activists themselves, mostly middle-class white millennials from well-to-do suburbs, certainly do not need free housing. So, it leaves a burning question: Why?
Many political experts have speculated that a "Marxist revolution" cannot be waged on the grounds of class. It has been tried in America for a century now, to turn classes against each other. This leaves some to speculate that perhaps these Democratic Socialists, Antifa, and other Marxists groups are purposefully using racial discourse in order for "race" to act as a stand-in for class, to get the revolution they so desperately seek. At this juncture, no one really knows the motivations entirely. We can only speculate. Though one thing is clear: The calls for police defunding and free housing are ramping up.
Reality Stands Against Hope
Unfortunately for the people calling for the police to be abolished, reality doesn't really side with their ideology. The truth of the matter is that we see what happens when police are even a little lax. Flash mobs and roving gangs of criminals looted and robbed thousands of stores across America. Over a dozen people were violently killed, most of whom were people of color, ironically enough.
We can also view every nation on the planet that doesn't have a police force, and how brutally violent they exist. Exceptions are primitive tribes, but a look at crime rates in Haiti and Somalia, where police are either absent or corrupt, paints a picture that Americans don't really want to view. They just want free stuff, it seems.