According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.
Archived at https://archive.is/He9O6
“There’s a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state. The other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
-Commander Adama
Trump literally calls anyone who disagrees with him an “enemy of the state”, so yeah, we’re way past that.
The reason is that one is trained to (supposedly) keep the peace and prevent and investigate crimes. The other is trained to kill people. Military methods are incompatible with effective police work.
Ironically the American military is better at it than the police are. They usually only kill someone if they were being fired at first. It’s called rules of engagement. American police have zero concept of it.
Largely because they’ve spent two decades trying to police Afghanistan.
Wait…which is which?
If that guy truly believes cops “serves and protects the people”…
Then we shouldn’t be listening to anything they have to say.
The guy is a fictional character in a TV show, and he is arguing that his military troops should not be used for police work.
Ah, so it’s not relevant at all because it’s literally not even based on our own universe…
Thanks!
It’s a hypothetical scenario on a military warship in space with refugees in tow.
Also, it’s not even praising the police, just stating its purpose.
Maybe in that universe…
In ours “serve and protect” was never what the police were for, it was just a PR slogan they put in cruisers
That’s what I’m talking about, our universe is not the same, although you seem to not be sure about how our universe works…
If not youd see why the quote isn’t applicable.
You’re so dark and edgy. Do you also use phrases like “the owning class” after reading that summary of Karl Marx that one time?
You people are insufferable.
What do you mean “you people”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5ZfDg3zdo&t=22s
Oh shut up dude. We see what you are doing. You are literally being DISINGENUOUS.
I’m familiar with the scene and stand by my statement.
Are you claiming you’re a black guy now? That’s pretty much what I’d expect from you (people).
The US isn’t the entire universe.
It’s not even half of North America.
Okay.
Science Fiction is largely used as an allegory to explore the real human condition in a way that is parallel to political and cultural topics of the day without the inherent baggage that people would bring to exploring the real topic.
While the original quote and topic is about deploying a military as a policing force, it actually also holds true in the reverse as well, as policing forces shift towards an adversarial militarization against their community, leading directly to the issues you raised in the first comment about the failure of them to live up to the “protect and serve” motto.
While fictional events aren’t real, they are written by real people with views, desires and goals. Good writers will have internal consistency for their characters and try to ensure their external interactions have the authenticity of the ring of truth, because that’s how people will relate to the characters and story.
Good fiction is just a random meaningless story, it’s a platform for education and safe exploration of the real human condition.
Also, just to add some context for the specific example of Battlestar Galactica: the show premiered in 2004. The 9/11 attacks were still fresh in peoples’ minds. Congress had passed the Patriot Act giving law enforcement and intelligence services new directives to surveil and police US citizens and look for signs of future terrorist plots. We were entrenched in two new wars, and there were lots of protests. There were scandals involving the president and his advisors misleading the public about the nature and quality of intelligence they had.
The plot and themes of B:G were a direct response to all of this. The idea of martial law being declared and rights being suspended was not some far-fetched idea the show writers were playing with. People were really concerned that it might happen to squash public unrest.
Yeah, but in the real America police have literally never had “serve and protect” as part of their duties…
It was just a PR slogan.
Invalidating the whole analogy.
It’s just not relevant, and I’m sorry I can’t communicate that in a way you can grok
Good thing you’ll never read 1984, or animal farm, or brave new world, or anything by P.K. Dick, because, yep, completely irrelevant.
No idea why you would make that assumption…
Or why you think that would be meaningful to the discussion…
Just sounds like a bad attempt at an insult which resulted in demonstrating ignorance. If that was your goal, then well done.
Your comment is not relevant because words.
You don’t argue from a place of good faith in the first place. No one is going to take you seriously.
It’s a fictional character from Battlestar Galactica.