“When elites run the show, the interests of the group get whittled down to what they have in common with those they have at the top, at best. At worst, elites fight for their own narrow interets using the banner of group solidarity.”

This puts into words exactly what I’ve been thinking: the ruling class ruin everything. And that includes entire political movements, especially those that might harm their status or financial interests.

They are very effective at co-opting movements to fit their own agendas and rendering any kind of resistance ineffective, watered down so that the original goal is lost entirely.

You learn so much even just from the first few pages. I will note that it's depressing to see just how much influence what Karakatsanis calls the "punishment bureaucracy" has, not only regarding safety, violence, and crime, but also in what is possible for us collectively as a society. But I feel more equipped to recognize the propaganda that we're all exposed to on a daily basis, and that's the first step to resisting that propaganda.

“This is a symbiotic relationship between authoritarian politicians and the media: they collude in convincing the public to accept repression instead of improvements in material conditions. Time and again, the same policies of control, violence, and profit are implemented to ‘solve’ a problem like homelessness, and time and again the news portrays the problem as impervious to the best efforts of the greatest minds among us.” pp. 316

One of the most fascinating parts of the book covers the way police and journalists collude to make progressive activists and movements appear ineffective, irrational, and naïve—hopeless idealists who don't have any actionable plans or ideas for reducing crime through anything other than punishment, and whose pursuit of a more equitable society comes at the cost of safety.

They have successfully implanted in us this idea that equality is somehow diametrically opposed to safety. In reality, investing more in social programs, housing, healthcare, and education instead of the police has proven to reduce crime far more than policing ever could.

Violent crime seems inevitable, unsolvable. But that's only because, despite the ineffectiveness and outright harm of policing, they are very effective at spreading the narrative that we are not safe, never safe, and they are the only way to make us safe.

I have a lot more thoughts about this book, but I've already made this long. I highly recommend it.