The Thinking ‘Kat: The Police State
Recall my recent posts on guns and gun control? If not, it might be worth having a look here and here, though it may be more relevant to have a look at the associated Tumblr responses from one benjaminfranklincat. Benjamin has already provided some interesting material to dissect, though perhaps not in the way he wanted (see the second part of my gun control post for a clearer picture of his ‘arguments’), and he did it again, providing, quite inadvertently, more material to pull apart.
How is that police state you traded your guns for working out?😂
@darthtimon Riiiight… That’s why your police force went from 125,000 to 145,000 a few years after getting rid of guns and y’all are arrested for expressing the wrong opinion.
If the sheer number of police officers denotes what is and is not a police state, then I would suggest to Benjamin that he needs to look how many police officers per 100,000 people there are in the USA, especially when compared to elsewhere.
In the UK, there are approximately 227 police officers for every 100,000 people. There are approximately 428 police officers per every 100,000 people in the USA. In other words, there are more cops per person in the USA than there are in Britain. By following Benjamin’s ‘logic’, the USA would be more of a police state than the UK, if we accept his incredibly simplistic ‘reasoning’.
Could it be argued that more police means a draconian police state is more likely? Well, it’s certainly true that countries with dubious records on human rights and freedoms have a lot of police. Russia has a ratio of roughly 681 police officers per 100,000 people, and we know that Putin keeps a tight lid on the freedom of the average Russian. However, South Korea has 580 officers per 100,000 people, Spain has 534 per 100,000 people, and and Germany has 349 per 100,000 people. I am not aware of anyone suggesting these countries – with more police officers than the USA or UK – are totalitarian regimes.
As with Benjamin’ previous attempt to imply a causal link between guns and prosperity/stability, it seems his arguments rely too much on some incredibly tenuous threads.
As for people being arrested for sharing opinions, I await Benjamin showing something tangible in that regard. I suspect I will be waiting for a while.