The problem with slogans

Defund: Prevent from continuing to receive funds; withdraw funding from; deplete the financial resources of.

Protesters are chanting “defund the police” or painting those words on pavement. It’s not intended as a political mantra, but a movement’s mantra. Yet it carries political consequences that aren’t good for the movement, or for the rest of us.

The goals of Black Lives Matter would seem to benefit from a return to decent behavior and a more understanding and compassionate tone in the White House. But spattering the left with “defund the police” could enhance Donald Trump’s currently outside chances of getting re-elected.

He thrives on something to run against. Saying liberals would do away with police protection will do nicely, even if it’s a gross oversimplification.

This president’s stock-in-trade is gross oversimplification.

“Defund” is a word with elasticity. It mainly means to leave without any money at all. But it apparently can mean reducing funds, as in this newspaper sentence: “The California Legislature has been steadily defunding higher education for years.”

In politics, and in life, precise words serve purposes better than elastic ones, especially around presidents who like to stretch words anyway.

Many street protesters probably disdain all of politics and see not much difference for peace and justice between Trump and Joe Biden. After all, things didn’t get better under a black president. The Democratic nomineeto-be is, after all, a wobbly career politician who has gone through the obligatory tough-on-crime and lawand-order phase.

But human decency and civility of tone still matter, or ought to matter, as a national foundation for a better day — and those are qualities Trump possesses less than just about anyone.

Presidential races tend to turn on which candidate can most effectively scare people about the other. “Defund the police” is a political yoke for Biden and Democrats no matter how many times they say they don’t want to do it.

And it’s a political yoke no matter how many times some protesters take pains to explain they don’t mean abolishing police protection but tearing down current police departments and building them back differently.

Biden said Monday that he opposes defunding the police. That came after Trump tweeted that Democrats had gone crazy by wanting to abolish police forces and a Trump campaign spokesman said Biden’s silence on “defund the police” spoke volumes in revealing his support for it.

That’s how it’s going to go, I suspect.

Politics is largely about casting aspersions on associations, and Republicans cast them well. “Defund the police” is riper for Republican exploitation than Willie Horton, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

I’m not saying Americans are generally pliable. I’m saying Trump is at 42% and Biden 49%. I’m saying that leaves a decisively undecided 9%, and that some of Biden’s 49 are iffy, based entirely on his not being Trump, thus susceptible to a little scaring. Anybody undecided or iffy at this point is sure-enough pliable, probably by emotion.

And it’s just too bad — those three words, I mean.

Recent protests have been generally effective and justifiably compelling. As a result, mainstream voters are coming around to the folly of heavy public spending on ever-more-militarized police departments while our national crime rate remains one of the highest in the world.

People tend to sour on things that don’t work, and what we’re doing in policing doesn’t. People want it done differently and smarter.

So reform seems to have a rare chance.

But “defund the police” is a phrase too far. “Make America great again” will poll much better.

People still want the police to be traditional police as necessary and come when called and exert authority over criminal situations.

We need to redefine the police, de-escalate the police, demilitarize the police, heighten the community engagement and sensitivity of the police, and rearrange the priorities of the police. We need to reduce the funding of the police — yes, we can and should do that — to direct resources from war gear to community-based engagement and prevention.

But it’s infinitely easier for Trump to say Sleepy Joe wants to do away with the police than for Joe to explain that “defund the police” doesn’t mean do away with any police, at least universally among protesters.

As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it Monday, “defund the police” means schools prioritized over police in black neighborhoods just as in white ones.

So why not say that? Because it’s their movement, not mine, most likely.

Fix the police. Humanity over brutality. What’s wrong with those as slogans?

I should acknowledge that young people tell me on social media these days that I’m a washed-up dinosaur, worried about presidential politics and other antique concepts like policing as we’ve known it.