[timun]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I read this and decided to look at Google Search trends to see spikes in search interest for "thin blue line" and what was going on roughly around the same time.

<links clipped for brevity>

So it actually seems that the earliest spikes of public interest regarding "thin blue line" align more with instances of police officers being killed in the line of duty or similar (US: NYC, Los Angeles, Dallas, Baton Rouge; Canada: Nova Scotia) before turning into a symbol of supporting police in the face of accusations of brutality and so on.

In a post a couple weeks back I already said that the original meaning of "the thin blue line" was "what stands between good and evil", between criminals and the rest of law-abiding society. I'm not arguing that's not what it originally meant; I don't see anybody else arguing that it wasn't the original meaning. Wearing the flag emblem didn't become a thing until relatively recently.

Originally Posted by 81MC

Tom Nolan, associate professor of sociology at Emmanuel College who previously worked with the Boston Police Department, said the "Thin Blue Line" fosters an "us against them" mentality, in which "the police firmly believed that they are, in fact, the metaphorical and literal 'Thin Blue Line' between order and anarchy, between the good guys and the bad guys."
or
Above the blue line represents the "good" spoken in Reagan's quote, while below the line represents the "evil." The law enforcement brothers and sisters in the United States make Ronald Reagan's quote a reality, and the Thin Blue Line represents their constant bravery. They risk their lives daily upon the streets of America. The Thin Blue Line is a small token to remind us that the presence of law enforcement is to bring forth peace and diminish hostility and violence.
or
The most reliable account of the origin of the thin blue line is the story of the thin red line. A red-coated Scottish regiment of the British Army during the Crimean War heroically stood, outnumbered, against repeated Russian attacks. This effort of the 1854 battle, most notably associated with Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” was described by the British press as the thin red line. The idea of a line of brave defenders standing between peace and chaos was borrowed by law enforcement whose typically blue uniforms were testimony to true blue loyalty and steadfastness.

Again: no one is arguing the origin of "thin blue line". But what you and Captain Otto are repeatedly, utterly refusing to believe or acknowledge is that it has other more recent meanings, and those meanings are not good. You're walking around with proverbial blinders on pretending that it isn't used for nefarious means by reprehensible people, and badgering the rest of us for "proof" of the "fact" that they're doing so. The rest of us are dumbstruck by your recalcitrance. Open your eyes; do you not see the right-wing turds out there who wrap themselves up in the "thin blue line" flag to deflect criticism of their bigotry? Do you really not see the way some crooked cops have protected other crooked cops because they're "part of the family" of LEOs, and those crooked cops are proud to fly that "thin blue line" flag under the guise it's a show of support and camaraderie?

If you actually read the rest of the article you grabbed that first quote from Tom Nolan from, you'd maybe have a clue as to what the hell the rest of us are talking about:

https://www.insider.com/how-thin-blu...-police-2021-2

"I think when I was on the job, I might've actually espoused this belief myself because when you're immersed deeply in the subculture of policing, which most police officers are, this is how you see the world," Nolan told Insider.

Nolan, who has nearly 30 years of experience in law enforcement, said the controversy that follows the flag is rooted in the "construct" built by police officers "that there is this kind of schism between the good guys and the bad guys."

"The police feel threatened because their role as being the good guys and their supporters of being the good guys is being questioned," he said.

[...]

In 1988, film director Errol Morris released a scathing documentary about an innocent man who was arrested and convicted of murdering a police officer. The man was executed by electric chair "with the help of suppressed evidence, perjured testimony, and an emotional closing argument for the prosecution," according to "Lawtalk."

Ironically, Morris titled the film, "The Thin Blue Line."

"[The] final argument was one I had never heard before the thin blue line of police that separated the public from anarchy," the trial judge said in the film, according to the book. "And I have to concede that there my eyes kind of welled up when I heard that."

[...]

The flag, however, has been adopted by the conservative activists to show solidarity with the police, and it has also been picked up by far-right extremist groups as well. The flag made an appearance at the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which gathered white supremacist groups, including the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan.

[...]

Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter, told The Marshall Project last June that the flag "feels akin to a Confederate flag."


Standing up for the use of the "thin blue line" flag really does feel very much the same as the hillbilly racists who proudly fly the Confederate battle flag prattling on about "heritage, not hate!"