People have wondered why I have spent 3 days mostly pushing back on this idea that "defund the police" is bad marketing.
The reason is, it's an example of this magic trick, the oldest trick in the book.
It's a competition between what I call compass statements. And it matters.
There are a lot of people who think "defund the police" is a bad slogan.
But it's a directional intention. A compass statement.
The real effect of calling it a bad slogan, whether or not intentional (but usually intentional), is to reduce a compass statement down to a slogan.
Whenever there is a real problem and a clear solution, there will be people who benefit from the problem and therefore oppose the solution in a variety of ways.
And this is true of any real problem, not just the problem of lawless militarized white supremacist police.
There are people who oppose it directly using a wide variety of tactics, one of which is misconstruing anything—quite literally anything—said by those who propose solutions—any solutions.
They'd appreciate it if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion.
The reason they'd appreciate if if you mistake their deliberate misrepresentation for confusion is, it wastes time that could have been spend on the solution trying to persuade them, with different arguments and metaphors or solutions.
Which they intend to misconstrue.
