Ok. I can accept that. But to take the analogy even further then to me it’s like if she is complaining about two boxes in the garage when you can’t walk through the kitchen because of the clutter.
Are we focusing on the biggest clutter problem we have?
Maybe we're not. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't focus on it. Again, that's a "whataboutism" diversionary tactic.
As FF brought up in the coronavirus thread, 25M people a year worldwide die from contaminated water. does that mean we shouldn't take coronavirus seriously in the US?
I don't know that we every 100 percent will. But we're focusing on one that can in theory be changed by a level of collective action. The police should be answerable to their people.
Trying to solve the violence that comes with poverty, it's simply a worlds more complex problem, and that's saying something because some of the issues with police violence are plenty complex. That doesn't mean people haven't tried to solve it (not super effectively), or won't keep trying to solve it (though there is admittedly not much agreed upon path forward).
Exactly. The solution for the problem of inner-city gang violence is incredibly complex. And people ARE trying [ineffectively] to solve it. But it's hard, because part of it is entirely wrapped up in the problems of drug prohibition [and the black markets / turf wars inherent therein]. It's hard because it's decentralized. It's hard because it's wrapped up in cycles of poverty and poor community support that go back generations, in communities that are consistently subject to adversarial policing and don't trust that the police will help them if needed.
The problem of police brutality
SHOULD be much easier to solve. For one, it appears to be a very American phenomenon, so there are lots of counterexamples from other nations that we could learn from--but we don't. Second, it's centralized; you know who the police are, and they all report up through a chain of command to decision-makers with power that could push accountability down from the top--but the political forces stop us from doing it. Third, police are hired professionals and we should have the resources to adequately train bad behavior out of them--when instead the system reinforces it.
To draw it back to the analogy, if I have a systemic problem in the kitchen where it's too cluttered not because of laziness, but because I have too many cooking utensils and not enough room, but my problem in the garage is that I've got a couple boxes of clutter that I'm just being lazy about donating to Goodwill or pitching in the trash, it would be fully normal to focus on taking care of the low-hanging fruit and fixing the garage. Because the bigger problem, the cluttered kitchen, is going to be exceedingly hard to solve without getting rid of things I feel I need, or moving to a bigger house we can't afford.
