#the morality chain that would work on this asshole doesn't exist

[gravitasmalfunction]

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

You are not ACAB. You're an asshole

SO this post has been a long time coming and I have sent a rant to several people to look over it for me just so I could get opinions. And most agreed with what I had to say. However it was mean, callous, and too "I'm ok being an shithead" for my taste.

If I am being 100% honest, people hate cops just to hate cops. It's not because there are cops that do wrong. It's just because they are told to/programmed to hate cops. Ok, so why do I say that?

Well a few reasons.

For the past 40 years *minimum* it has been a point of the media to showcase any time a cop does anything bad. Because what better way to "Reach the people" than to assuage them with a "Hello fellow Americans. Doesn't it suck with cops get on our ass about stuff".

Social media has been using bait for years in order to get more traffic to more links and articles. This alone has made rage baiting as an entirety more of an issue.

Because of both of the above, there was a time when alt media *at the time* and social media worked in tandem to constantly show off instances of cops being assholes or outright doing things that were illegal.

So what does this mean. Well it means that you are under a notion that is already provided to you. "Cops are ruthless bad guys that don't do anything for anyone at all".

Except that's not even remotely true. What is true is that often, any positive stories involving cops is buried or glossed over and only ever talked about in very local reports. What's more a cops job is to do the right thing. So when a cop does do the right thing, the understanding is that they are not meant to receive praise. However, that is lopsided in how it works. It more or less means that you are under the LARGEST of microscopes, and if you fuck up at ALL, then you end up as a youtube video that reinforces that "Cops are bad guys" or "Cops are stupid and annoying". Rather than the truth which is that cops themselves are human beings.

Now. I can already see the comment from the shitheads. "ACAB EXISTS BECAUSE-" Shut it. I don't care. Unlike most of you I understand nuance. And more than that, I've had poor run-in's with cops. I have also had to work along side them as private security as well. And my mother, who's not shy about telling people they fucked up, worked as Dispatch and as a Secretary for the PD in the small city we lived in. "Oh well then your brainwashed", you can say that but it does not make you right.

Unlike you, clearly I'm able to think critically about subjects where as you are not. Am I a "Back the Blue" cultist? Absolutely not. I'm solely in the camp of Abolish Unions and hold officers to account for what they do wrong.

However, having said that, Cops duty to uphold the law sometimes manifests in ways that we don't like. Like Uvalde. The cops were in their rights to stop the shooter, but the top brass would have decimated any officer that decided to not follow his order of standing down. I don't think that's ok. Hell that entire chain of command should have faced a lawsuit. But where they DID properly enforce the law, is stopping parents from going in. Because had a parent gone by cops in order to stop the shooter, at that point, it legally could have been considered vigilantism.

Regardless of the moral implications of that, fact is, that's the truth.

So why am I making this post? Mostly because ignorant people exist in this world and their only reason for living at all is just to hate. "All cops are bastards"? Are you so sure? I wonder how many people in the US over the past 100+ years have been saved by cops. I wonder how many kids have been rescued from abuse. I wonder how many women have been saved from rape. I wonder how many kids have been save from gang violence or drug dealing.

Saying, "All cops are bastards" is no different than saying, "Yes all men". Functionally you are saying the same thing. And while you may say, "Hey that's not the same one is an immutable trait and the other is a job", to which I'll say, sure. Except you are making a gross generalization. Which IS the same. And ignores every single decent, good, great cop that exists out there. And every single good cop that has ever existed.

In my last post talking about this, I stated that people that are ACAB don't really hate cops. They just hate that they can't break the law without consequences. And I still believe that, but let me add a bit of nuance to that.

Most of the people that hate cops are programmed to hate cops. Because, like the media does, it picks something that will engage you, and will put it in front of you any way it knows how to. There are also a lot of people out there that hate cops because they can't break the law. That's also very true.

However there is another group that exists and it's Anarchists. Now, I have followers and people that I follow that are Anarchists. And while I view them as different from Tankies, Fundamentally they share the same, "Ideal Utopia" idea. Which is that, "Under my ideals, the world would be better". Except it won't be. It will be warlords and dictators forming groups. Assuming that we don't get taken over by Islamic Extremists, China, or the UN. Their ideals aside, they hate "The State" in all it's forms. And if you are fine with any form of "State" they will quite literally go off on a tirade of why you are a bootlicker. *Sigh*

Now, the last of these groups is just people that either 1) Do not understand what goes into being a cop and just hates them based on baseless notions, or 2) People that have had bad run-in's with cops and take that notion out on ALL cops.

So for these last two sets, things are difficult to deal with. Because they will go out of their way often to not care about how hard it is to be a cop. What do I mean?

Well for starters, cops are expected to be perfect at all times.

Perfect Aim

Perfect knowledge of all laws both federal and local

Perfect judgement at all times

Perfect execution of force at all times

Perfect response at all times

Perfect awareness of surroundings at all times

Perfect ability to listen to the law but also not piss off people breaking the law

And I could go on. Humans are fundamentally imperfect. They always will be. So expecting a cop to be perfect is like asking your SO where they want to eat every day for a month and them knowing right away. Unless you're a LIAR it's not going to happen. Same such, cops can't be perfect. Combine that with having to both uphold the law AND be sure to follow the law at the same time, then combine that with the dangers of the job, the fact that human beings are ANIMALS that are violent by nature, and unpredictable on top of which, with use of force laws. And yeah. You don't have a good time. It becomes a huge issue of people that are like, "Why didn't just just tase him?" or "Why didn't you just shot the gun out of his hand" or better yet, "He only had a knife and was threatening to kill someone. Why'd did you have to shoot him, you are not judge jury and executioner."

And that's where you are both right and wrong.

Right in the fact that they are not a Jury. Wrong about the fact that they are not acting in their capacity to judge a situation, and execute those that are too great a risk to subdue. And if you ever talk to a person that does MMA, subduing a person is not as easy as you think. More over, Tasers are not considered, "non-lethal". In a lot of cases they are considered lethal because you are delivering a shock, meant to incapacitate someone. Meaning that you have the risk of permanently injuring them, OR killing them if their heart stops. Hell you could also in theory turn them into a vegetable.

But sadly no one considers all of these things. And only people familiar with cops and how their jobs work, know any of this.

Am I justifying bad, or even evil cops with this post? No. I think cops fundamentally need more training. I also think that they need frequent psychological evaluations to see the effect of the work on them. Because some of the things you see in your capacity as an officer can be gruesome. Dead bodies. People that have been mutilated. Dead kids from drugs or gang shootings. And the list goes on and on and on.

Recently I made a post talking about how since the summer of 2020, there have been less good cops. And fact is, because of the 2020 riots, a lot of good cops did quit their jobs. That's a fact. Many actually put in for early retirement. And not because "They were being held to account". No. It was because they were told, "If you do your job, we will riot outside your station. Firebomb your cars and homes, and we will find a way to railroad you into prison".

So what do we see in NY and LA? Car break ins. Looting. Beatings in the streets. Cops that will literally stand down while people are being hurt. Why? Because why the hell would anyone be a cop when you are under a microscope SO LARGE, that even the SMALLEST twitch in the wrong direction could end your career and possibly your life.

It's easy to say, "Yeah I'd stop those looters and assaulters". Sure. Right up until the are a protected class. Then enjoy your media crucifixion, loss of work and likely stint in jail. As well as your family getting death threats for years to come. So given all this, I made a point that a lot of hires over the last 3 years have probably been scraping the bottom of the barrel. Because in truth, knowing all the above, why WOULD anyone be a cop? Certainly there are still good cops. But a lot of the good ones quit.

What's more, Now a days it's better as a cop to just NOT enforce the law. Because why risk everything I mentioned. You protect the law and you make the conservatives happy but piss off the woke. And the woke currently more or less control law and media. Good luck getting shanked in jail. If you don't uphold the law, you piss off people who want you to enforce it but you probably get to live another day.

At that point you may say, "OK so why be a cop at all then", and the answer is easy. It's a job. And it pays. Why excel at all when you are expected to be a bastion of perfection? What's that? Didn't use the PERFECT amount of force? Death Penalty. Oh? You shot a guy that pulled a gun on you and you didn't just take the shots to the chest? Well clearly you deserve to be put in jail for the rest of your life.

Cops are treated like they are supposed to be absolutely perfect at all times and it's stupid. I HATE police unions mind you. But you know what I hate more. People that have no idea the risk to their lives that cops are put through day to day just for putting on the badge. The fact that cops NEED wiggle room within the law in order to enforce it.

Remember "Hands up don't shoot"? Yeah. So do I. I also remember that it was a fucking lie, and that there are people to this day that still believe that lie. And if not for Police Unions, he might have rotted in jail for the rest of his life. There is no PEFECT in this life. Not for cops, not for anyone. Cops are not superheroes. They don't swing in on a web shooter and punch the bad guy JUST hard enough to knock him out without killing him. And with morality as fucked up as it is in the west, even just in the US, Law enforcement is in a no win situation. At all times.

But I want to find every person that has ever been saved by cops, and force you to tell those people that all cops are bad. And tell them about how whatever they were saved from doesn't matter because "ALL cops are bad". Tell the women that were possibly saved from rape, "You should have just been raped. Cops are all evil." Or tell the kid that was saved from the person that kidnapped them, "Yeah no, you should have just been a sex slave. Cops are bastards and clearly they didn't WANT to help you". Stop making assessments about ALL of any group of people. Because the likelihood that you'll be right is near zero.

There are good cops. And there are bad cops. Police Unions need heavy reformation. Accountability needs to actually be able to happen. And people need to understand how hard cops actually have it. All of these things can be true at the same time. And none of it is justifying evil or bad cops or even ones that don't enforce the law. It's a nuanced topic. And as such, it should be treated so.

[aotopmha]

Attack on Titan Chapter 122 Thoughts

This chapter is pretty straight-forward in comparison to the previous ones, but in a deceptive way, where a lot of moments have a bunch of nuance, when they at first glance don't seem to.

Most of the chapter is very thoroughly "show, don't tell", which I can see getting people confused and leave them asking questions, but the key to this is context.

When taking this chapter as more stand-alonish, I feel like it would 100% feel much more obtuse and confusing, but almost every panel calls back to something and the story simply asks you to put the story together based on this. I feel it still definitely leaves some stuff up for potentially varying interpretation, but much less so.

Here's my take on it.

Firstly, the only voice in the whole Ymir flashback is that of King Fritz. Everyone else is silent.

There is much talk about how AoT is this morally gray series and there are certainly many morally gray elements here, but in truth, I'd phrase this idea more in the sense of the story having really well fleshed out antagonists.

It emphasizes humanizing every character, including all those that are presented as shitty people, in a specific way of giving them at least one quality that's if not sympathetic, then at least understandable from the characters' perspectives (this is something Isayama has actually straight-up mentioned to aim to do in interview material).  

Karina is a horrible mother to Reiner, but she is a product of her environment and has never gotten to see outside of the world she lives in.

Alma treats Historia horribly, but her life is in danger because of a powerful man and the society she lives in.

Floch started out as a tactless asshole and has only grown worse, but there are understandable points in what he is saying during various moments in the story.

Gross is straight-up a candidate for the most hateable character in the series, but there is a spelled out, concrete perspective to his evil you kind of understand in a twisted way that also stems from the system he's living under, which often makes for my favorite type of antagonist.

I point this out because I think the first King Fritz is the most straight-forwardly villainous character in the series so far and I think that's fine.

The truth is, sometimes there isn't a "both sides". Sometimes there is a good and evil and in this case, Isayama opted for a powerful man that exploits the weak to further gain power for the evil, which is still a very real evil, but, as said, also pretty straight-forward.

He doesn't develop in any way - he's an abuser to begin with and in a position of power to begin with.

The only sliver of nuance to him is that he's a smart opportunist: he's a powerful man who knows to take advantage of the position he's in to gain even more power.  

You could argue this also comments on power abuse and how a priviledged position and availability of the means to take advantage of others encourages to do so and gain even more power. People are more likely to use a gun when they are given access to it than when not.

But even then, as he says to keep passing down the spines of the Titans, due it being at the cost of the daughters he had with Ymir, whom he already saw as a tool to be used, he most likely doesn't even do it for the good of his people, but his own self-serving desire to preserve his position of power and influence and that way remain important and influental even after his death.

He's more interesting as a vehicle for exploring the social situation he creates than as a individual character.

Him being the only one to talk is thus another neat example of the story making a narrative point through meta elements. Abusers silence and take away people's voices through fear and conditioning and this is exactly what he does and therefore is the only one talking.

In this case, it's even literal, as we see a slave having their tongue cut out. We don't ever see this happen to Ymir, but it's an easy assumption to make that she might've had her tongue cut out, as well, based on what we see done with the other slave.

Regardless of any physical element, though, Ymir simply doesn't go against King Fritz because she doesn't understand she can do so. Her chains are entirely emotional. She seems to have been a slave for most of her life, never getting to see any other perspective regarding herself, so because of the conditioning and indoctrination stemmed from her position as a slave, she believes serving him is her purpose in life:

It's how she is lead to percieve herself that keeps her a slave.

This is interesting to me because this seems to reflect Armin's initial character resolve. The only reason he didn't believe in himself was because of his own, negative, perception of himself. It's through an alternative perspective given through Eren and Mikasa he grew to see himself in a different light. His arc is one of the first arcs in the story that involves a character gaining nuance in their perspective (technically Mikasa has a moment like this before him, but I think Armin's arc fits the comparison better because it very specifically relates to his self-image):

(Chapter 11)

This later also evolves into the Marleyan Eldians' single-mindedness and unawareness of playing into a corrupt system. Neither Ymir nor them simply never get an opportunity to see the world differently/in a more complex light.

In the case of a more typical damsel, the rescue would have had a much more straight-forward and simplistic explanation and through that in my eyes would have been much less interesting and I really appreciate whenever a story understands abuse like this.

Related to this, Eren's speech in this chapter probably makes it one of my favorites.

There are some uncertain connotations to it, as Ymir truly probably is in no good emotional position to make her own decision and Eren ultimately gives her two very specific options to choose from, but I think his words are genuine and the point of the speech still stands.

It's a powerful speech that says everyone is an autonomous person and is not obligated to be bound to anyone:

As said, the elements of a typical damsel in distress story are here, but I think it's more human than just a standard crying girl asking for help situation and on a meta level, the story says that whoever is in a similar situation also has a choice.

As also said, you could tear this into pieces when you focus on a bunch of the technicalities surrounding it, but I think as a general sentiment I really do think it’s incredibly powerful.

I mentioned how this chapter commented on how powerful men exploit women, but I think it's more gender neutral than it might initially seem. I think the general feelings here would work just as well if were Ymir a boy, with the only difference probably being another woman being involved to force him to have children. The story has gendered aspects, but it handles them with not only taste, but also in a way where the general point isn’t gendered, similarly to Mikasa's backstory.

Related to this, I think the final element to look at in relation to Ymir's story specifically is Historia’s pregnancy. I think it made it directly much more harder to make natural.

It felt artificial to begin with, but before this, I was much more open-minded about it.

Okay, since Historia genuinely seems to care for everyone, maybe this could've been somehow spun around her sacrifice being genuine and of her own choosing, but now it's as literal of a representation of history repeating itself as it possiblt could get and whether Historia chose the pregnancy or not, subtextually it will always represent history repeating itself.

The pregnancy has a bunch of potential problems: erasing the gay part of a character (since Historia is the most overtly gay character in the series and this happens after her love interest is killed, it will come across this way even if it's not the intention), contradicting a character's arc, but more than that, at this point, I just don't see anything interesting and unique said through it specifically. All other options where the pregnancy is fake sound much more interesting to me.

If the story finds a way to somehow make the pregnancy work in a interesting way, I'll applaud it, but right now I don't see all that many possibilities in terms of how it could.

This chapter literally calls back to the image of the kind girl Historia saw in the book Frieda showed her that she went against and while this contradiction in her arc already existed just with the reveal of the apparent pregnancy, this now puts a big red exclamation mark on it:

It's so obvious that the story missing this contradiction and not even addressing it would be extremely puzzling (which I do think it will).

More than anything, as if it hadn’t done this as strongly as possible already, this also even further (as it possibly could at this point), fortified the idea that something definitely, most certainly, without a doubt, is up. 

Moving on, though, in the same vein as I said there are points in the real world where good and evil exists, there is actually a truth in history. History is a series of facts interpreted by people and with showing the "real truth" here I think the story dodged a dangerous potential implication about history not being factual.

I think it also fixed some of the potential implications with the historical imagery the story has been using.

Firstly, the Eldian empire was born through the exploitation of the weak. We don't even know if Ymir and all the other slaves were all actually Eldians, so depending how you interpret this, it takes away the potentially historically revisionist perspective of the Jewish analogue race ever being the oppressor. There is no place for "both sides" when it comes to the Jewish parallels because it's one of the most black and white situations in all of history. If nothing else, this element at least makes it clear that the story simply wishes to explore the thematic element of the dynamics between the oppressor and the oppressed the idea of power abuse.

Then, through making the encounter with the parasite creature happenstance and the Titan power not biologically inherent to Eldians, it removes the potential implication of the Jewish analogue being biologically different, therefore being "special" compared to other races, which is not the case with any race.

The element that has been there for the longest in my eyes and I think didn’t even need to be elaborated on because it’s been there and explored so much already and that always removed the possibility of the story (at the very least intentionally) being racist to me, though, is that the story treats all characters from all races the same without ever resorting to using caricatures or excessive stereotyping. The Eldians specifically are the main characters of the story, with there being equally good and evil characters among them.

The key element to racism has always been othering and dehumanization and the story for the most part makes sure that even the characters that are awful people have fleshed out perspectives.

I think what also helps in this chapter specifically is having more of a history-inspired than strictly historical situation, showing it all through a fantasy veil compared to the more direct usage of imagery with Marley and the Marleyan Eldians.

Finally, I really liked the potential Titan lore this chapter presented us.

I think it's really neat how it might potentially connect mythology and biology with the possible inspiration being, both, the prehistoric creature Hallucigenia and the mythological dragon under the roots of the world tree Ygdrassil, Nidhoggr, more than that, though, I really like the potential "nature you scary" element of the Titan origins.

The creature driving a horror story usually either isn't explained or is explained through something like aliens, lovecraftian horror, a human-made catastrophe or an experminent.

In this case there are elements of all of these in here and I think any of these could still be revealed to be the direct origin of the Titan parasite, but I really like the potential "nature you scary" element here because we usually always look outside of our world to find horror because we fear what we don't know, but Earth's own nature has plenty of that, too.

Nature can be really unsettling and horrifying at points and I’d like to see that being taken advantage of more.

Overall, though, I really liked this chapter. I think it might be one of my favorites because of Eren's speech, but I also really enjoyed it for it's "show, don't tell" aspect. Sometimes one image can say much more than a thousand words and I think this chapter did a really solid job with that.