…but also explicitly punishes people who do try to defend themselves from abusers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/oklahoma-survivors-act-domestic-violence

Many people recognize that there is an unacceptable amount of interpersonal harm in society, and conclude that the state is all that stands between them and an overwhelming amount of harm, a war of all against all.

But this misses the role of the state in creating, fostering, or facilitating those harms.

@HeavenlyPossum And that’s *before* we consider states becoming/acting rogue, see Minnesota; and I don’t mean *just* the feds, State government didn’t do much to protect citizens of Minnesota from harm either.

Attempts to make policing more just? equitable? (see Peel’s 9 principles) aren’t exactly a success either, UK police’s been plagued by racism and sexism and attempts to reform it weren’t successful. Don’t get me started about the whole “thin blue line” mindset common with police everywhere.

Our safety should be in our hands, organized around our needs, and with our oversight. Government role could be in coordination of community orgs and possibly in establishing a common infrastructure.

@wbftw @HeavenlyPossum A perfect state could defend the large number of people with a little power from the small number of people with vastly more power (e.g, the EPA getting corporations to slow down on the polluting). Without anybody to stop them, sociopaths inevitably accumulate power, which they use to accumulate even more regardless of the consequences for others. They’re hard to stop once they get going.

Unfortunately, we’ve never seen an example of such a state lasting more than maybe 50 years without being captured by the more powerful and used to launder their actions (or worse).