@wdlindsy If there's one thing the GOP response to January 6 has taught me, it's that they can do damage control for anything, no matter how vile, given enough time and repetition.

But that doesn't help them this close to the election. I'm sure they'll have their talking points straight in the next couple days, but there's no time for their noise to bury the signal between now and Tuesday.

@wdlindsy Perhaps. I would argue that what we like to tell each other the purpose of the police is, and what their purpose actually is, are very different things, that making a portion of the populace feel unsafe is and always has been their purpose and this isn't a change in purpose, just a removal of a fig leaf.

But maybe the distinction doesn't really matter for purposes of this discussion. The end result is the same. Overt white supremacist law enforcement.

@wdlindsy The part where it says "Such a huge mission will effectively redefine the purpose of law enforcement: the principle is no longer to make all people feel safe, but to make some people feel unsafe" would seem to imply that the purpose of law enforcement is to make all people feel safe, and if its purpose were to make some people unsafe, that would be a change.

If that's not what he meant, then fair enough.

@wdlindsy I appreciate the analysis but I think it's remarkably naive to suggest the purpose of law enforcement was ever to make all people feel safe.

I live in a county that elected Joe Arpaio six times. The notion that law enforcement's primary purpose would be to terrorize brown people, with the enthusiastic support of a decisive portion of the electorate, isn't new to me. But seeing it on a national scale is.