The Left is only interested in "democracy" when it gets what it wants. Otherwise, it will do everything it can to subvert the democratic process, forcibly re-engineer the electorate until it votes how the Left wants, or use non-government power to achieve its objectives.
If the Left can't win a vote to make something it hates illegal, or the Constitution stands firmly in its way, then it will go around the law to make it impossible to exercise a right you still technically possess, while mocking you for worrying about losing what it's taking.
The inexorable destruction of America's free speech rights is the paramount example. Sure, you're technically "free" to speak - but you'll be banned, blacklisted, hounded, threatened, and possibly fired from your job if you break the Left's ever-changing speech codes.
20 or 30 years ago, left-wingers were actually mocking the idea of political correctness as though it didn't exist, as though it were a paranoid fantasy invented by right-wingers, a phrase that demanded scare quotes. Now it's everywhere, enforced by mobs and mega-corporations.
But your precious little First Amendment was never touched, was it? It's a dead letter, but it's still there. It was completely and totally nullified without the American people having any chance to vote against the imposition of strict speech codes or invoke the 1A in court.
They tried the same thing with gun control. When they couldn't get past the 2nd Amendment and gun control proved to be political poison, the Left started pressuring manufacturers and retailers, doing everything it could to make gun ownership more difficult and expensive.
It hasn't worked as well as the assault on free speech, but the Left will never stop trying to do the same thing to guns. And I'm warning you right now, they will do the same thing to COPS. They're going to abolish the police, one way or the other. It's a left-wing jihad now.
This is the big difference between Democrats and Republicans. When the GOP is convinced an idea is unpopular - or really, if it has anything less than enthusiastic majority support from every demographic - it drops the idea and abandons "obsessive" GOP politicians who don't.
But when Dems see one of the Left's big agenda items is unpopular, they start laying plans to subdue or subvert the electorate, beating voters into shape until they can squeeze a little bit of whatever they want into either written law or enforced social custom.
If the "will of the people" doesn't agree with what the Left wants, then the people's will must be changed BY FORCE until resistance has been eroded, or a means of going around the people to impose left-wing ideas against their will must be devised.
That's where we are with "Abolish the Police." It's left-wing canon now, an objective they very much intend to achieve by force, and they could not give less of a damn that YOU don't want it. They have concluded, as they often do, that the majority is wrong and must be subdued.
So if they can't win enough elections in 2020 to formally eliminate police departments or shift a huge amount of their funding to Democrat slush funds disguised as "social justice programs," they'll do everything they can to make it so no sane person would want to be a cop.
For all its blathering about the evils of capitalism and money, the Left is keenly aware that the best way to get less of something is to make it more expensive. That's what all of these totalitarian strategies have in common: they raise the cost of doing whatever the Left hates.
Sure, you can still speak - but if you're not "woke," your speech is WAY more expensive. It might cost you your job, your peace of mind, your ability to use the Internet as freely as committed lefties do. Now, are you absolutely certain you want to speak up and pay that price?
That's what they'll do to the police. They'll raise the cost of police work until no one wants to do it. Look at the crusade against qualified immunity. How many arrests do you think cops will make when every bust could cost them every penny their families have in the bank?
Too many of us looked at the "Ferguson effect" - reduced policing in crime-riddled minority communities after the riots - and thought it was an unexpected consequence that would teach the Left a lesson. No, it was a SUCCESS for them. It showed them how to abolish the police.
They looked at those turbulent final Obama years and saw a brilliant strategy to get what they really want: the elimination of police protection for the middle class. This is ALL about class warfare, and the Left wants to eliminate middle-class prosperity and security.
The Ferguson Effect showed them how to get where they want to go. They can make police work so expensive, so difficult, that cops will stay away from trouble spots - and then the Left will blame THE REST OF US for the soaring crime and violence in Democrat-controlled cities.
And then they'll sneer: "See, it's like we always said - the police are just bodyguards for privileged white people." They'll drive the police out urban war zones, blame the resulting bloodbath on everyone but themselves, and get busy defunding those white-privilege cops.
The hard Left is very, very serious about abolishing the police as we know them today. They can't persuade the public, so the public will be coerced. You'll never be given a chance to vote against what's coming, and you'll be denounced as paranoid for warning against it. /end
Addendum: And just as I typed that last Tweet, I saw this from @MrAndyNgo.
"The stated goal [of Antifa rioters] is to depelete the city of resources so the police are defunded."
The strategy I described is well under way.
"The stated goal [of Antifa rioters] is to depelete the city of resources so the police are defunded."
The strategy I described is well under way.
