A quote I heard from a Greek minister (from memory). “If Germany had a choice between doing the right thing and hurting France, they will hurt France.”
Are you forgetting how often European nations fell apart and had many civil wars and change of government forms? Don't you remember the Yugoslav Wars? Even the Kingdom of the Netherlands is younger than the United States. The USA has a continuous democracy since 1789
Usually a coup is counted as a success if the person executing it takes it remains in power.
Trump did not remain in power, and the attempt is counted as a failure.
It’s a clear sign that there’s danger to the democracy, but that doesn’t mean the coup didn’t fail or that the democracy has.
Hitler took power after a failed coup, but that doesn’t mean that the coup wasn’t a failure, since he didn’t take power as a result of the coup.
Give credit where credit is due: US managed to create extremely stable system. So stable it took a bloody war to alter it the only time it was done. So stable it’s now dysfunctional and impossible to fix. So stable it will still be there even after the country dissolves into a dictatorship.
In most European countries you need a 4 year university degree in criminology to become a cop. They have the same standards for average police officers as we in North America have for Federal law enforcement. So while it's certainly true that some European countries have shitty cops, the ones with stricter barriers to entry have slightly less shitty cops.
Here's an interactive map although it does seem to be missing a fair bit of data for Europe. The USA has the most abysmal Police training time at just 500 hours of training between being a civilian and being a Police officer.
between being a civilian and being a Police officer
Also, in Europe, police are considered to be a part of civilian society. Here, “civilian” means “not part of the military”. Police officers are civilians.
That could be a part of the problem. I consider police to be a respected and trusted role that comes with certain privilegies, like carring an overwhellingly powerful weapon (a hand gun).
The point is that they are not a thing unto themselves, they are people hired by the commons to do a job. They have the same rights and responsibilities, they go in front of a civilian judge if they fuck up. Also, as a rule, non-civilians are not permitted to police civilians, at least here. Being a civilian BTW is, and should be, a higher status than not being one, not a way to say “not part of the cool in-group”.
Airline crews are also in a respected and trusted role and operate machinery that can cause the deaths of hundreds to thousands of people. They even have ranks and stuff. I’ve never heard anyone say airline crews are not civilians.
I hate to assume, but you must be a white man, and if you're not you're really fucking lucky and should read up a little more about how the police actually conduct themselves and what obligation they have to you (hint: none).
That depends, the gendarmerie in France is part of the military, but there is also regular police which isn’t. European cops aren’t perfect, but it varies a lot by division and country and overall I’d say that your typical every day police you encounter as a normal citizen is fine, they’re usually at least somewhat polite and won’t shoot you or your dog for no reason. Some of them might go on ego trips now and then with some youth or something.
Where you see more issues is with riot police which is starting to look like a RoboCop army in some countries just smashing into protesters, or some other anti-crime divisions where they act like cowboys and leads to some events where some kids get killed or something like that, but it’s much more rare than in the US.
In some countries like in the Netherlands they are next level and you basically don’t see them or when you do they’re always super nice and polite, using positive tactics and just generally doing public service work which is what all police should be.
Civilian means varied things in the US.
The police are civilians, but they’re also not, because they’re law enforcement.
Legally they’re civilians, but colloquially they’re not, because there’s a vague separation of public service workers from the public.
Firefighters are the same, because they can also legally order you to do something. You just don’t think about it as much because the fire department isn’t intrinsically fucked up.
They find mentally unstable people and use undercover agents to convince these people to commit acts of terror, often even giving them the tools to succeed… And then they swoop in to stop the attack and yell to the media “SEE WE SAVED THE DAY AND STOPPED TERRORISM!!” Nevermind that this person would have never been in this position without the FBI’s backing. It’s a lot easier than stopping real terrorism and gets them the budgets they want.
In Quebec it’s three years in college and another half year in police school. Pretty sure that’s the highest standard in North America and it seem we have much less trouble here too…
The quality of the cop is irrelevant when their entire purpose in existing is to serve the rich owning class by oppressing everyone who gets in their way.
Either way, you're the one who needs to expand their narrow view, not me.. Here are some links I happen to have to hand, feel free to look things up for yourself in your own time (lol, as if..)
Let’s not throw stones at each other yeah? Wouldn’t that be the proper way to conduct yourself? Or are you no better than Americans in thinking haha my group is the best fuck you…
The way things look around USA, I wouldn’t be hugely surprised if some state tried to secede in the next 10 years. Then again, it wouldn’t be like brexit, because only the poor states in USA are looking to secede… and UK was certainly not a poor state in EU. That’s perhaps why they only shout about it and not do it: they look at the numbers and realize they’d be fucked without the rich states, which are almost entirely blue states.
Even UK, the richest country in EU, didn’t do brilliantly due to brexit. So in their funny way, they made it quite a lot less likely that any EU country actually wants to leave.
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