When they labeled themselves “The party of Law and Order,” it’s quite funny.

As with a lot of things, once it becomes about prejudice instead of "postjudice" as Carl Sagan said, and the tribal cart starts to come before the common sense horse, is when people go off the rails.

• Cop beat the fuck out of some person -> bad
• Steve Bannon going to prison -> good
• NYPD running protection rackets on such a scale that the commissioner himself couldn't manage to stop it -> bad
• Someone is driving drunk and the police made them stop -> good
• Chokeholds against black people selling cigarettes and then blaming "excited delerium" when they die -> bad

And so on. It all makes sense. Let's attack the problem of bad policing in the same way we would any other societal problem; look for root causes and failure modes, and work aggressively for good solutions to make things better.

On the other hand

• Cop beat the fuck out of some person -> fuck the cops
• Steve Bannon going to prison -> fuck the cops
• NYPD running protection rackets on such a scale that the commissioner himself couldn't manage to stop it -> fuck the cops
• Someone is driving drunk and the police made them stop -> fuck the cops
• Chokeholds against black people selling cigarettes and then blaming "excited delerium" when they die -> fuck the cops

See how much better that feels? That actually feels better than the first list. I get it. It's exciting, it feels dynamic and emotional and gives you something to sink your teeth into, so to speak. It's just not going to do anything good for anybody to actually do it. It's actually very similar to how a lot of fascism's "solutions" operate -- it's dangerously appealing specifically because it's so emotional and feels right. It's a simple answer to a complex problem that you can scream in the face of anyone who's actually trying to understand and solve the problem in a more complete fashion, from more than one selected perspective.