Ah okay. Barely related but I read recently that Vietnam is one of the countries that thinks highest about the US. Super strange, considering.

I don’t know what that is, but it looks like Vietnamese script so I’m inclined to agree that’s probably relevant.

But then VC started throwing money at it

I had no idea the Viet Cong was still active in 2026.

No worries. Where I posted it on Reddit, I had it where the more granular detailed sections were blacked out spoiler-style so people could read less of it if they wanted to, but I don’t think Lemmy supports that function (yet).

One of the biggest deflating sentiments that ruins the ACAB meme is the one-two question:

“Do you think you are a good person?”+“Do you want to be a cop?”

If they’re answering truthfully, most ACABers would answer: “Yes.”+“Of course I don’t.”

The reasoning behind the latter varies, in my experience with them, from “Because there are too many bad cops (therefore I am afraid for my personal safety).” to “Because I qualify for better jobs.”

The former is, frankly, an argument from a place of cowardice. Imagine a world where nobody put out fires because fires are dangerous. Sure, it’s totally rational for one person to avoid danger, but if everyone avoids danger we are all screwed. Further, though no group is a monolith, you also see “Cops always protect their own no matter what,” come from ACABers, at which point wouldn’t that person trying to be good be one of those cops that is above any adverse action?

The latter is an argument for incentivizing good people to join law enforcement, most directly with better pay, and indirectly with not shitting on every cop just because one/some/most/etc. of them are shit.

I don’t strongly disagree with that notion, but I strongly believe that spreading the idea leads to making cops worse as a whole.

Say your message reached the eyes/ears of every single (prospective) cop, whether they (think they) (will) contribute to that problem or not.

The ones that want to contribute to that don’t care what you have to say about it; they might even get a kick out of it.

The ones that don’t want to will either be motivated towards mental gymnastics into ignoring criticism of law enforcement (“they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about” and other similar cop-outs) or look for a way out of that line of work. In other words, making people think “it doesn’t matter what I do, I will still be considered evil,” will push a lot of otherwise good people to either ignore criticism, deviate to the worse, or get out entirely. The former two are basically the logic behind Labeling Theory. Do you know who invites them with open arms? Bad Cops.

So by subtracting (potential) Good Cops and not affecting (or bolstering) Bad Cops, you make the ratio worse.

Statistically speaking it’s likely that I was somewhere close to a 5/10. If you consider that “good” so be it, but I reject the notion that just because a(n ex-)cop goes on Lemmy they must be or have been good.

I’ve tried to address the issue across many spaces, but there’s never anywhere near a consensus on what makes a cop a Good Cop, so I don’t think I or anyone else will be able to truthfully answer that question about me (or any other cop) in a way that suits most/all people.

Used to be cop.

Went into a completely unrelated line of work purely because it was remote, promoted from there.

Edit for the curious who want to know why I’m not a cop any more: https://lemmy.world/post/43267939

No, but they do use it to target all sorts of other things via Parallel Construction.

Now that Trump has defined anyone against fascism as being a terrorist, the path ahead is clear.

Until now I honestly thought I’d have to host an Instance to create a Community, for some reason. Now I’m a bit embarrassed.

Thank you.

Edit for visibility:

This answer is the direction I chose to go in, mainly for simplicity’s sake.

If the fediverse gods are watching, it might be worth considering automatically making communities associated with people’s usernames. Maybe reserved automatically, but invisible unless you opt-in? That way nobody can create harassment communities targeting your username on your home instance. Just a thought.