lrt: yeah im autistic and often hyper-literal when im tired

there's nothing confusing about "abolish the police" as a rallying cry outside of emotional whiplash if you're still invested in the police as a protective force

i was still pretty recently like "maybe not all-" but then i questioned that and researched and it turns out "yes all, or else they get treated like shit by other cops and either leave and face harassment or die"

i've noticed a lot of the vocal voices raised in saying "abolish the police" is confusing coming from cis other white autistic people, most often cis men, and like

it's not confusing at all, unless you've bought into the ableist myth that we're Always Super Logical Creatures

bc then "this makes me feel bad" gets interpreted as "this must be illogical and incorrect, because i'm upset about it, and i only get upset about illogical things" for way too many and it's painful to watch happening bc i see the root of it and it's a trap so many fall into :(

this is also i think the root of why so many white autistic people, particularly cis men who struggle with social conventions are vulnerable to recruitment into white supremacist groups, bc of weaponization of the myth. it just hurts everyone.

so it plays out that "abolish the police" must be an ineffective rallying cry bc of the emotional reaction it provokes on hearing it, and that emotional reaction must be based on objective reality bc i don't get emotional unless something is Wrong and Incorrect

the problem is that the source of the distress is misidentified. it's not that abolishing the police is a bad idea. it's that recognizing that abolishing the police is what is needed throws literally everything else into question and that's a Lot To Process and is upsetting.

social rules say that police are Good and Protect People and this is like one of the fundamental rules to memorize for how the world works in multiple places unless you get exposed to reasons to not trust the cops, but they're there for Terrible Reasons

if that is incorrect, everything is incorrect, all those rules we had to learn and suffered if we got them wrong were...bad, and bad on purpose.

which is the case!

that's traumatizing as HELL to realize while autistic, i'm still dealing with it

social rules taught me that if you're in trouble you should tell your parents or an authority figure

i did that but then those became the people causing the problems

this doesn't make sense by those rules and still upsets me and it's that same upset i reckon folks are feeling

if you believe that there is Right and Wrong and you are firm on Right and Wrong things and that if you're having an emotional reaction something Must Be Wrong that's an incredibly vulnerable place to be in, if you aren't examining why you think some things are right and wrong

for example: a lot of other white autistic people get really upset about property damage in protests, like, super focused on it even while agreeing protests are needed. Property damage is taught to be a Bad Thing that Bad People Do, That's How The World Works.

Finding out the root origin points of social rules is really, really important, and a lot of us get punished for asking questions about it, it's a trauma point and I understand, but we can research this stuff ourselves.
It's not "sabotaging the message" to do property damage.

Property damage is often the only way to make people in power pay attention too and rectify a problem, not because it's cruel to break things that belong to other people, it's because the property is valued more than the lives of the people who have tried asking for help first.

When people on the right use property damage in their actions, they are also using it to send this same message in reverse to their targets: Look, this is more valuable than you are as a human being. If I break this, I can ruin your life.

There's also often a clash occurring in background emotional processing to try and reconcile the incredibly traumatic circumstances of navigating society set up wrong that gets presented as good and ideal and deviation from is punished.

Which is one element, I think, that leads to victim blaming statements coming out of the mouths of people who would otherwise know better in different circumstances. Bc a lot of us are told that when we are being harmed by authority figures, it is for our own good/to help people.

So there's often unaddressed trauma from *that* which then slams up against "the cops are the Good Guys, that's the Rules" which then slams up against "if the cops are doing something cruel, there must be some reason for it even if I don't understand" like it's a hell trap.

that all gets blended up and comes out as the - entirely nonsensical - argument that "abolish the police" is confusing thing to ask for. It's not. It's very straightforward. The confusing thing is why white supremacy is being treated as good and cool and normal and taught to us.

and i get it, i've been working through my emotional processing for like 2+ years at this point on "oh no everything is this bad on purpose??? there's no reason for this except cruelty????" and its really rough and i do a lot of personal offline private thinking to deal

if any other white autistic folks following me vibe with this: https://upstanderproject.org/firstlight/doctrine this is one reason why it makes sense to abolish the police, and it doesn't make sense according to the rules we get taught on how people should behave that they exist in the first place.

i relentlessly examine emotional reactions i have to anything to do with politics to find out what the root origin point of that reaction is - whether it's stemming from my *personal principals* or from *things i got told are the rules* and that's an important distinction.

as a kid i got told all crime is bad and that you're bad if you do crime and you should go to prison
this was inherently in conflict with the existence of my grandmother, who broke laws all the time and who i love very much
i reconciled this by giving her a special Nan Permit

if nan is breaking a law, it must be a silly law, left over from different times
this is correct but not in the way that i thought about it as a tiny child who insisted on paying for a single grape that i ate on impulse in the shopping center because CRIME IS BAD ALWAYS

i was very lucky to be exposed to a living example of the conflicts between the social rules i was being taught and the lived reality of human existence: i eventually realized that some laws are put in place just to control and hurt people who are different than people in charge

It took me a long time to realize that the reason I was having so much trouble accepting that as the case was because my *principals, and the social rules i'd been taught* were in stark opposition to *how they are enforced* by power.

I got taught that hurting people is always wrong, but my bullies hurt me all the time, but my teachers by and large didn't help me.
Ableism and white supremacy leads to internalizing victim blaming. I must have deserved it by breaking another rule I didn't know.

I internalized that since hurting people is always wrong, except when it's me or people like me, fighting back against being hurt is also wrong. This conclusion was a lot harder to unlearn, bc the people in my life who tended to push back on harm also freely dealt it out.

So they got assigned the Police Exemption in my head: it's not wrong for these people to hurt me or to fight back against being hurt themselves, because there must be some other rule I don't know yet that makes this make sense and allows breaking the one I know.

There's not.
It's just fucked up and built wrong to enable success of the few at the expense of everyone else. It all is. I didn't deserve to be hurt, it wouldn't have been wrong to fight back, and authority figures aren't always right, protectors, or justified in harm.

When all is said and done and evaluated: a lot of the rules we get taught are bad, and hurt people. I have subsequently thrown out most of the rulebook as a bad lot, and focused on identifying if something aligns with my principals.

Hurting people for personal gain, is bad.

Hurting people to perpetuate systems that are designed to hurt people for personal gain, is bad.

Therefore: the police need to be abolished. There is no other logical conclusion. It is an institution that exists to perpetuate pain. They protect property, not people.

They grew out of treating people like property. People are not property. Most objects can be replaced. Unique people cannot be.

All of my research and all of my learning in conjunction with my principals leads to abolishing the police.

As a consequence of this, if the police need to be abolished, then that means the institutions that created them and push for their funding at the expense of people who are hurting also need to be abolished.

The negative emotional reaction to the idea of abolishing the police is driven mainly by fear of what that represents in terms of scope and implication. But I have excellent news! Everything gets like 100% simpler once you've finished processing all of it.

Police need to be abolished. The legal system is broken. Academia is broken. Medicine is broken. Schooling is broken. Welfare nets are broken. Housing is broken. Food systems are broken.

Why are all of these broken?

Gestures back at the link from earlier as one aspect of it.

Therefore the only actual logical conclusion I can draw based on my principals and all of the information of the history of the harmful institutions and why they exist, is that none of them as I know them should in the first place and that they are illegitimate

They are illegitimate because they were founded from harm done in the pursuit of personal enrichment and self interest. This is wrong. When harm is done, it should be examined. If someone has been the aggressor for self interest, they need to commit to making amends.

In conclusion, colonial states are illegitimate and we aren't just abolishing the police, we're giving the land back, and this is the only right thing to do in the face of the irreconcilable contradictions between the stated rules and principals and their enforcement.

This is a scary thing to think about initially because there's a lot of things that will change, but if you're involved in the change it's a lot less scary than when it Just Happens. There's a lot being done to genuinely help people and build something better. That's exciting.