Yep. When there's a New York Times OpEd titled "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police"[1] it seems inaccurate to tell people that this is simply a poorly worded slogan that really just means "reallocate funding."

I get the impression that the minority of protesters who started using the slogan "Defund the Police" meant "Defund the police." But then there were a number of people who were sympathetic to these protesters but also realized that getting rid of the police is a very extreme position, and they started rationalizing things by saying that the protesters _really_ meant something else ("When people say "Defund the Police" what they actually man is..."). Even when the people themselves keep saying, "No, we really mean get rid of the police."

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

I don't see it as a lot different than "Starve the beast"[1]. "Starve" means kill by removing nutrition or sustenance. But do we literally take it to mean "cancel the government by removing funding"?

There's a difference between a slogan and a program. Somehow accuracy and correctness in slogans are only demanded when someone doesn't agree with the basic premise of the program.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Starve:

  ... transitive verb
  a: to kill with hunger
  b: to deprive of nourishment
  c: to cause to capitulate by or as if by depriving of nourishment

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/starve

Is that significantly different from what I said?

But you can't make a sign that says "We want to radically change the duties of law enforcement but we aren't exactly sure what that should look like and need to start a national discussion so that we can move forward and fix what is clearly a problem."

At least not a very good sign.

You could have a sign that said “fix the police”, “reform the police”, etc and it would more accurately describe your views than “abolish the police” (assuming you are indeed not a person who wants to abolish the police). And I’m sure you could come up with a lot of creative and compelling ways to say it. It’s not possible to fully describe the subtlety of your views in a protest sign, but at least you can make a sign that‘a compatible with your views.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I think "fix the police" is a more accurate slogan. But slogans are intended to prime someone about an idea (not to convey!) and generate emotion. But trying to read any slogan as a literal meaning is simply naive. Slogans have to be smaller than a tweet and look at what a clusterfuck conversations on twitter are. Hell, even here where we can type hundreds of words it is difficult to accurately convey complex ideas.

I said in another comment, communication has 3 components: what is said, what was meant, and what was heard. We have to recognize that these are 3 different things and frequently all 3 are different. Communication is extremely difficult. So try to say what you mean and try to hear what was meant. (obviously this is a saying and in of itself is limited and should be taken more as a baseline idea rather than a literal and absolute point to stand on)

"Defund police" isn't the same string value as "Abolish police". In your haste to demand correctness from others, you seem to be twisting words yourself.

The phrase “abolish the police” is used in the grandparent, great-grandparent, 4-parent, 5-parent, and 6-parent of my post.

You're right, fair enough.