#someone who would look at that and think 'landlords are evil i won't work with them' would have seen a migrant kid in jail for trespassing

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"i support abolishing the legal edifice of The Family because it demonstrably does massive amounts of harm and it seems like we could probably do something else instead of that, but i haven't figured out all the specifics" is not significantly different from saying "i support abolishing the legal edifice of For-Profit Health Care because it does massive amounts of harm and it seems like we could probably do something else instead of that, but i haven't figured out all the specifics" except that the former is more viscerally disconcerting to the average left-leaning voter.

most Americans who support progressive policies do not know the material logistics of any of the policies they support. most Americans who support the abolition of for-profit health care do not know anything specific about how money is allocated to acquire medical supplies or skilled medical labor in a zero-profit model. and yet it doesn't scare lefties and liberals to voice that sort of ignorant "at best i know a few talking points"/"at best i've looked up some basic refutations of conservative talking points" type support because we're already vaguely familiar with things like non-profit religious hospitals and foreign countries with socialized medicine. there are stepping stones that seem to give us some sense that a zero-profit health care system could, perhaps, exist somehow, instead of just endless attempts to put reins and regulations on the for-profit health care system we already have.

but you know who absolutely treats people like idiots because they don't have the details of their better "free healthcare" world totally worked out? conservatives! fox news! they take the scariest possible consequence of the hypothetical alternative to the status quo and say "what's your answer for THAT, huh?" and when the interviewee doesn't know exactly how spending limits would be determined for end-of-life care or how exactly medicine would be distributed in a situation that requires rationing, or whatever, then suddenly we've got headlines about "death panels", and they're moving the conversation away from the real people really dying under the current real system and towards the hypothetical people who MIGHT die under the nonexistent alternative system.

questions like "well what about luring children out of parks" and "what's going to happen to the Known Murderers" and so on aren't inherently bad questions any more than "will there be spending limits on end-of-life care" and "how will we distribute rationed medicine" are inherently bad questions, but the thing with questions like this is it's fairly obvious when they're not being asked in the spirit of hashing out the practicalities of a better world and are instead being asked because the asker already thinks abolition is unworkable and is trying to enlighten (or, more often, humiliate) the person they're arguing with.

most left-leaning people aren't policy wonks. most people generally in favor of more egalitarian, less car-focused city planning do not actually know anything about city planning and could not answer specific questions about it if asked. most people who are pro open borders don't know what that would actually look like in practice. most people who support tighter regulations on food safety have no idea what those regulations would be. and when you do ask the people who ostensibly might know the answers to those questions, they often disagree with each other over specifics, because that is a pretty normal thing that happens when you get down to the nitty-gritty details!

perhaps my point here is that when i say i'm a prison abolitionist, a police abolitionist, a family abolitionist, etc, i'm saying i think we should figure out how to abolish those things, the same way i think we should figure out how to get rid of fossil fuels. you can't shake my opposition to fossil fuels by pointing out i don't know how to accomplish the transition or by pointing out i also support using less fossil fuels (reform!) or by pointing out that a flat ban on fossil fuels would fuck over poor people in the global south or by pointing out i don't know what will happen to people who rely on life-saving single-use medical plastics if we can't pump oil anymore. because none of that shit is relevant whatsoever. why would 'getting rid of this harmful system will be difficult' or 'getting rid of this harmful system will have consequences we'll need to address' dissuade me from believing we still need to figure out how to get rid of the harmful system?

sure i don't know how exactly we're going to get rid of it or what will happen afterward. but i think it's important to figure out how to get rid of it. thinking it's inherently bad and wanting to get rid of it makes me an abolitionist. either help me figure out how, or convince me the thing i think is bad is actually good, but those are your only two options, because "the bad thing is inevitable and can only ever be mitigated" is not an answer i am prepared to accept if we are talking about an artificial system constructed by and maintained by human society.

if you're annoyed at abolitionists because you think their political strategy is inconvenient to your own political goals, that's one thing, and it's sometimes true, but i'm an abolitionist, and in practice the stuff i agitate for and vote for is reform, because that's what's on the table—and that's what gets me closer to the possibility of abolition. if you're having trouble getting through to a specific abolitionist about lending their political support to a reform initiative, the trouble is not because they're an abolitionist, it's because they're a political idealist or political purist, which is a different problem and will certainly not be solved by trying to make them cough up nonexistent details on hypothetical abolitionist policy.

The other reason I'm generally annoyed with the "Abolish X" crowd who actually DO mean "abolish X" and not a watered-down version is that ime they very rarely have fully thought out the implications of what they're demanding and then get angry when other people ask about it.

"Family abolition means completely removing legal ties for family units and allowing all children the choice of where they live" okay. So if I see a three-year-old throwing a fit because she doesn't want to leave the park, and I go over and tell her if she comes home with me she can stay as long as she likes and then we'll get McDonald's on the way home, that three-year-old should have the ability to make that decision? The parent or guardian has no legal recourse to stop me from taking her? Cause if the answer's no, that's not abolition, that's reform baby!

"I'm done talking about what we'll do with rapists and murderers after we abolish prisons, it's all anybody ever wants to talk about!" Well yeah man! 98% of people just interpreted your words as "we're going to let murderers roam around killing people at will"! You need to explain very clearly what plans you have that will stop them that aren't incarceration or you're not going to make any headway! And if your answer involves any form of "well of course SOME people can't be allowed total freedom" - that's not abolition, that's reform baby!

I'm not even gonna touch the number of people who think we should abolish the police and replace them with what are essentially roaming squads of vigilantes dispensing "community justice", whatever the fuck that means.

Like these aren't "gotcha" questions, they're legitimate problems you're going to have to contend with. And if you wave away all these questions with "you're just making up ridiculous scenarios" and "we'll think of something to fix that once we destroy the current system", then yeah actually, I DO think you care more about sounding radical than about making any kind of change.