Jason Whitlock, as usual, is one of the few sports reporters willing to tell the truth:
Vegas police were simply overwhelmed along The Strip. They were there solely for decoration and to discourage major crimes. Beyond that, they minded their own business.
I was there. Walking The Strip this weekend must be what it feels like to walk the yard at a maximum security prison. You couldn’t relax. You avoided eye contact. The heavy police presence only reminded you of the danger.
The idea that the police provide the basis for civilization has it exactly backwards. The police are brushed aside and revealed for the frauds that they are any time and anywhere that enough people – far fewer than you’d imagine – decide to ignore them. Just ignore them, it’s not even necessary to oppose them much less seek to destroy them.
This is why police are always on edge and why so many more of them succumb to the pressure, because they are perfectly aware that they can be overwhelmed at any time despite all of their many dictated advantages over any single non-police individual.
Think about it. If civilization was a byproduct of effective policing, then installing it in Iraq or New Orleans would merely be a matter of providing the right number of properly trained police. As it stands, not even one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers suffice for the former, and as we know from New Orleans, the police are at least as likely to be a part of the problem as part of the solution.
I would very much like to see a modern urban community try an experiment with banning its police force and encouraging its citizens to take responsibility for policing themselves. I suspect that the results would be rather better than the total chaos that most people, indoctrinated by decades worth of televised pro-police propaganda, would imagine.
On a tangential note, isn’t it interesting that nearly every television drama lionizes the police, lawyers, doctors and government workers? At this rate, in ten years they’ll have to create new government agencies just so television producers will have something to create a show around.
“Don’t miss THE MEAT, Fox’s stunning new show about the hackers of Homeland Security’s elite Internet corps and their fight to stop denial of service attacks and BSD* assaults by domestic Christian terrorists and a shadowy network of international neo-Nazis. Starring Michael Mustafa as Hassan ibn al-Talib, an agent torn between his desire to peacefully destroy Israel and his anger at the religious prejudice he nobly endures at the hands of the very Americans whose freedom he is defending.
*Blue Screen of Death. In the shocking season finale, Agent al-Talib discovers that Windows system crashes are caused by an evil Christian plot designed to cause people to involuntarily invoke the name of their Lord and Savior.