zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
I read through the whole complaint and it's a pretty shocking catalog of abuse of power, discretion, and force. And it only covers actions against journalists, and only in the city of Minneapolis.

>>zucker+Kb
It shouldn't be shocking for anyone who was paying attention. There is a good book about related issues by Radley Balco called Rise of the Warrior Cop. Published in 2013. Unlike many comments here and on other websites it's not hysterical, or hyperbolic or contaminated with self-referential post-modernist bullshit. It is a sober and factual analysis of how American police became what it is right now. It's not an easy read, but it's a must-read for anyone who wants to have a reasonable picture of the problem.

The public notion of good policing and the actual practices police departments follow have been diverging for several decades (if they ever converged). What we're seeing right now is not some inexplicable increase in bad behavior or cops deliberately targeting journalists. For modern American police this is just business as usual, except the volume of deployment is significantly higher than in the past few decades and the visibility is much higher as well.

Edit:

There is a flip side to this coin. When you have a systemic problem of this scale, you should be cautious about making simplistic (especially moral) judgements about individuals in the system. When someone's training, incentives, position in the community and even equipment nudge them towards bad actions, even decent people will routinely do bad things.

>>collle+Hr
> Unlike many comments here and on other websites it's not hysterical, or hyperbolic or contaminated with self-referential post-modernist bullshit.

Lobster brain claims another. I have to say that one of the most overlooked forms of anti-intellectualism in modern life is the immediate discount of anything that uses even remotely complex terminology or looks in the general direction of critical theory.

>>ianlee+6w
It's not anti-intellectual to reject a philosophy that is based in the rejection of the very concept of truth and reality. Post-modernism itself is anti-intellectual, as it's a philosophy that individualizes experience while dis-individualizing responsibility. It rejects both empiricism and rationalism to choose the unhappy middle between the both, elevating anecdote above experiment, emotions above rationality.

"Critical theory" isn't even a thing and barely even intersects with post-modernism, although I suppose it shares some philosophical leanings. It's just a repackaging of Marxist ideals applied to other demographic groupings besides class, and it's just as easily disproven.

Edit: Thanks to whoever downvoted me, because they had nothing worthwhile to say in response. Rejection of objective truth is a core principle of post-modernism, you can ask the post-modernists yourself if you like, they'll agree. Meanwhile speaking the truth earns you hate since the rise of post-modernism.

>>tristo+eF
Post-modernism is not related marxist economic theory it is an art movement that rejects the possibilty of a unified narratve, rather than the concept of "objective truth". Embracing absurdity is not anti-intellectual per se.

>>thatca+mZ
From memory, it's absurdism that embraces absurdity, referring to the conflict between the human tendency for meaning attribution and the inherent lack of universal meaning. Absurdism is more comparable to existentialism and nihilism. Postmodernism has infinite truths; it values subjectivity and relativism. Truth or knowledge are whatever is pragmatic to the beholder. It can be opposed to the more traditional positivist perspective, that upholds objective truth. Something objectively true can be true or false for the postmodernist. Fields like medicine or engineering seem to stick to a neo/positivist philosophy, thankfully. Imagine building a bridge when opinions can be worth more than objective laws. Adhering to postmodernism has been convenient for politicians, e.g. to spin issues in one's favor or to adopt policy founded on "science" for hidden reasons.

>>dmerks+Wb1
Postmodernism is a stage of development after modernism not a definable philosophy of life. I would argue that strategies for dealing with uncertainty using statistics would be post modern era science and that sort of analysis is often required to comply with "objective law" which is typically defined subjectively using community standards and judgement. It sounds like what you're refering to is moral relativism.

Modernism used paradox as a concept, ie. one meaning or the other is true but both cannot be, post modern reacts against that allowing for multiple similtaneous meanings. These paradigms are are discovered in different fields at different times.