For the Record: Punk Abolitionism

Archival image from AnOther magazine, with an article claiming the safety pin was coming back (in 2017—I don't remember noticing at all, but that doesn't mean much).

The zombie argument over the slogan "Defund the Police" continues, for reasons I can't comprehend; to me this kind of "leftism" is like Punk politics. I saw the point of Punk music back in the day, though not to the extent of wanting to follow it intensely, but I thought the early fashion was just silly and self-defeating. Shouting "defund the police" to me is the equivalent of putting a safety pin in your nose—if you insist it's attractive you might be making some valid aesthetic point, but it's not the thing that's going to sell a lot of records.

Some bright spark who identifies as a "foxy leftist" and advocates "Abolish the Police" thought he'd come up with an unanswerable analogy out of history and I wanted to lay down the answer here for posterity:

Is that why 1860 Republicans denied vociferously that they would abolish slavery? Or was it just because the abolitionists WANTED TO WIN THE ELECTION and figured the non-abolitionists would come along afterwards (as they in fact did)? https://t.co/c4AkVDOTzm

— Yas Just a Lightweight (@Yastreblyansky) December 4, 2020

The "conservative rightwingers" didn't give a fuck about the slogan--they weren't going to vote for that Republican party no matter what. And the states they ran seceded, launching the Civil War, when the Republicans won.

— Yas Just a Lightweight (@Yastreblyansky) December 4, 2020

But the cautious liberals like Abraham Lincoln said "take it easy on that abolition." And that's how they won the election. Then three years later Lincoln signed the Emancipation Prolamation. No records say if he called it a "big fucking deal," but it's not impossible.

— Yas Just a Lightweight (@Yastreblyansky) December 4, 2020

(I see I misspelled "proclamation". Damn Twitter and its refusal to let you edit anything.)

God love the radicals, including the more or less elderly ones anxious to look woke like Seward, who was certainly no fool and would end up as one of our best secretaries of state, but they needed a crafty politician like Lincoln to get them hired for the job. 

Also I offered some slogans I thought would be satisfyingly radical without putting voters off so much. Nobody's objected to any of them so far.

SOCIALIZE THE POLICE

NO RACIST POLICE

POLICE FOR THE PEOPLE

WHOSE COPS? OUR COPS!

MAKE US SAFE DON'T MAKE US DEAD

— Yas Just a Lightweight (@Yastreblyansky) December 3, 2020