Seattle-based brewer, Michael Dempster owns Mirage Brewery. In June, Mirage launched a brew called “Choosey Lover.” Dempster directed that every can include a stamp that reads “ACAB means all cops.”
ACAB is a very old anti-police acronym meaning “all cops are bastards.”
Dempster told KIRO 7 TV,
I used the markings because I stand against institutional racism, of which modern policing is a militarized arm…It’s not about individual police officers, it’s about a system. But I think to the casual observer, it seems like an attack on individual police officers, all cops.
Ah! So you’re a bigoted idiot, then! Thanks for the clarification! You say “all cops,” but you don’t mean all cops, though you acknowledge that the “casual observer,” meaning someone who can read and understand English, might think that by “all cops” you mean “all cops,” when you really just mean “the system.”
In short, you’re an idiot. Good to know.
I remember back in the days of Strawberry Alarm Clock, aspiring revolutionaries called the police “pigs” when they weren’t so stoned they couldn’t talk without giggling. Then those children grew up and went to work for investment firms. At the time, I thought such fad cretinism had gone out with tie-dyed shirts and love beads.
Then, in 2020, came The Great Stupid, when the accidental death of a black man in Minneapolis as a result of brutality by a cop who was an equal opportunity thug without any background of racism, was cynically exploited by anarchists, anti-white racists, Black Lives Matter, the antifa, and Democrats—nice crowd you guys hang out with!—to spread hate, racial distrust and division across the nation as a power grab. Now anti-police bigotry is making a big comeback, though, as before, there is no justification for it, and the idea that civilization can exist without diligent enforcement of the rule of law is signature significance for ignorance of so, so much: history, human nature, logic.
Business owners have the right to politicize their products and services, of course, but it’s un-Amercan, divisive, and wrong. Here Kantian ethics rules: Imagine a nation where every product and service publicized who was and was not welcome as a customer. People like Michael Dempster are a poison in society and a virus in a democracy. They serve to polarize and spread hate, just like my neighbors who put Black Lives Matter signs on their lawns .
I admit to being a near absolutist on deliberately divisive messaging: I even object to campaign bumper stickers. “Hurray for our side,” as Buffalo Springfield sang in 1967, is an ominous sentiment. It is fineat a sporting event; it’s destructive anywhere else. I really like Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, but once they named a flavor after Stephen Colbert’s show, I was out. The current owners of this creation of two superannuated hippies can advocate anything they want as individuals; politicizing ice cream is despicable.
So is politicizing beer.
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t drink beer, but if I did, I wouldn’t drink anything from Mirage Brewery.
Dempster’s freedom to be a complete prick (can I type that?!?) comes courtesy of a system of government that people like Dempster are determined to destroy and replace with a system that denies him those freedoms.
AMBOAB means all Mirage Brewery Owners.
Speaking of cultural awareness, the two “superannuated hippies” (I assume you mean Ben and Jerry) sold the brand in 2000. They have no board position, no management position, no place in day to day operations. Unliver has owned Ben and Jerry’s for 20 years.
I should have said, “this creation of two superannuated hippies.” I believe I will!
But Michael, those two superannuated hippies set the tone, even if it was well over twenty years ago. I can never think of them without Bernie Sanders being their third.
“I used the markings because I stand against institutional alcoholism, of which modern microbrewing is an elitist arm…It’s not about individual brewers, it’s about a system. ”
Seriously, how does a brewer come to a conclusion that other occupations create unacceptable levels of social damage?
Actually, “For What It’s Worth” was recorded and released in 1966. This, coupled with the understandable but mistaken attribution earlier today of “A Horse With No Name” to Neil Young suggests to me that you really need to bone up on your Buffalo Springfield (a band with an existence far smaller than its footprint) history.
Single released in January 1967, Arthur. Song was not on original pressing of their eponymous first album which was released in December of 1966. It was added to the second pressing of that album in March of 1967.
Released a week before the end of 1966, but a hit in 1967. YouTube has the video listed as 1967; I associate the song with 1967, as apparently do many. For what it’s worth. In the last week of December, especially back then, it’s all Christmas, man. That’s why,in Wikipedia’s one-hit wonder list, the song is listed this way: Buffalo Springfield – “For What It’s Worth” (1967)
^^Yes, this. Released in ’66.
And if it’s any consolation, when I first heard “A Horse with No Name” I thought it was Neil Young, too.
Didn’t everybody?
“Then those children grew up and went to work for investment firms.”
Donald Trump’s election and everything since has brought the “grew up” part of this sentence seriously into question. I used to think guys I grew up with or went to college with had turned into reasonable adults. Surprisingly, it turns out they aren’t. They’re still “Fuck the pig!” “Stick it to the man!” idiots. And some of them ARE the man. One is a retired physician, a rheumatologist. One is a retired large firm environmental lawyer. One is a former Navy fighter jock, former airline pilot (L-1011s) and long time corporate headhunter and sometime entrepreneur. Another is a corporate lawyer who started out working in house for GE Credit Corp. I thought they’d grown up, but I guess their juvenile rebelliousness was just weirdly in remission. (And, by the way, I also thought our forty-something children who are each married and have children of their own and mortgages would have grown up at least by now. Boy, was I wrong.)
It’s just the most shocking, disheartening thing. What the heck happened?
They won’t admit that they’re the man?
That’s such a great commercial. Thanks for looking it up, Joe. I was too lazy. It captures such a weird, weird psychological quirk that seems to be running rampant in my generation. Take it away, early The Who;
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=talking+bout+my+generation+youtube&qpvt=talking+bout+my+generation+youtube&view=detail&mid=FF32F4D14898343604F2FF32F4D14898343604F2&&FORM=VRDGAR
Whatever happened to “hope I die before I get old.”
Disgraceful. I don’t understand this. Some might call me privileged, but I prefer to think of myself instead as the beneficiary of wise family members’ wise actions. I grew up in the suburbs, where, although the kids acted stupid toward each other, serious street crime was almost unheard of. This wasn’t a place where there were shootings every weekend, drug-addled homeless shooting up in full view, and anyone who ventured out at night was viewed as not using common sense. The police mostly patrolled the streets, ticketed and arranged for the towing of illegally parked cars, arrested the occasional shoplifter, took reports of auto accidents, made sure nonsense from events in the Meadowlands didn’t spill over into this town, put a quick stop to any kids who tried drugs (in a small town the police knew your parents), kept an eye on street festivals and other events, and occasionally worked with the county auto task force to help close down “chop shops” that sprang up occasionally in the back rooms of the auto places by Route 17.
They also had one other important duty, and that’s that of being the FIRST first responders. Whenever there was a call for the EMS or the fire department, the police were always there first, and whenever there was any kind of unknown emergency, they were always there first. In the 46 years I have spent in this area (I went to college in MA, but that’s about it), I can think of only a few major incidents involving the police. One was an auto accident at the bottom of my street (which is kind of a weird setup because trolley cars used to run that way) that resulted in a fatality. Another was in 1999 when an officer approached someone throwing garbage bags into the river and thought he was going to write an illegal dumping ticket…only to find the bags were full of the dismembered body parts of this guy’s ex and her lover. A third was a pretty sad incident about four years ago when an acquaintance of mine who had been battling mental illness for some time snapped, killed his wife, and then killed himself. However, in that time I’ve had to call the police, or my family has had to call the police in their role as first first responders probably more than a dozen times.
We’ll put aside an early incident in which my dad called the police because he thought there was a home invasion (there wasn’t) and another where there was a neighborhood dispute which I’m not too clear on, but even doing that, we’ve called them probably nine times for family members who were having medical issues, at least once, a few times for neighbors who had medical issues, and one incident where my mom, may she rest in peace, locked her keys in the car, stranding her and also me and my brother. A few of those times the quick application of oxygen or other first aid probably made a significant difference in stopping things from turning really bad before the ambulance and/or paramedics could get there and administer more serious aid. Probably another few times that early intervention saved the necessity of summoning those additional resources where they were not needed, keeping them available for other incidents where they might be. I’ve also seen my local police break up a domestic dispute next door before it could get really out of control and stop a shouting match a few doors down from turning into a fistfight. There’s also one incident which I don’t include because it wasn’t in my hometown in which a member of the chorus I belong to who had some mental health challenges neglected to take his medication, lost it, attacked another chorister, and fled down the street. I called the police and they grabbed him up before he hurt himself or anyone else. A lot of these incidents are very mundane, but the presence of the police was very necessary to maintain everyone’s safety.
This is just my personal experience. I also spent four years disciplining the police as part of my job. During that time I saw the same names keep popping up, ten percent of the officers, ninety percent of the problems. The administrative courts usually saw through b.s. and didn’t put up with attempts to defend the indefensible. Out of probably twenty firings I oversaw, only that case and two others involved anything really bad (one guy wrote fraudulent tickets to screw his neighbor, another exposed himself to a four year old), the rest were officers testing positive for stuff you’re not allowed to test positive for, officers breaking mentally and being declared unfit, officers who lied on their initial application and got found out, and women officers who got involved with the criminal element. I didn’t see constant issues of officers getting heavy-handed with ordinary folks, let alone open racism. I have defended a few officers too, and I’ll never forget just how ridiculous one case was, in which the plaintiff, who was thirty, had never held a legitimate job, and had done nothing but commit crimes his sorry life, fled from one of my officers, threw a gun away because he was already on probation, then claimed he threw away a phone instead (which he wanted to get rid of because there were images on it of him and his gf having sex) and claimed the officers must have planted the gun they later recovered. He lost the case, but didn’t live to see it lost. He was shot dead in the parking lot of a closed down Auto Zone, having either not paid someone or not paid him quickly enough. With this kind of nonsense going on, who can blame officers for getting a little cynical?
This is before we even talk about the officers who perished in the doomed World Trade Center, or who kept some kind of order in a city gone made the day of the FIRST World trade Center bombing back in 1993 (remember?). This is before we even talk about the men in the yellow vests who ran toward the explosion at the Boston bombing instead of away from it. For almost twenty years the police officers in this country have been thought of and represented in the media as heroes, or at least as able professionals doing their jobs. Yes, there were more incidents of police work gone wrong than there should have been. However, in four months, because of one incident in which racism was not involved, and the victim was really not such a great guy, the police in this nation have gone from heroes to villains. Suddenly the majority are buying into the idea that police officers are just hateful racists with badges, killing anyone darker than Liv Tyler at the drop of a hat, because to them, anyone who isn’t one of the blue brotherhood is a suspect, and anyone darker than Ms. Tyler is a bug, to be squashed at will.
Here’s the thing, though. In this country there’s a burglary every 11 seconds, a violent crime every 25 seconds, an armed robbery every 65 seconds, a murder every 25 minutes, and over 200 rapes a day, many ending in murder. In almost all these categories, the victims are overwhelmingly black, and in the cases where the perpetrators are black, 80%+ of the time, the VICTIMS are black too. There were also 89 LEOs killed in the line of duty in 2019, 144 in 2018, 102 in 2013, and 126 in 2014, including five in one incident in Dallas. None of them fell any color but blue, and none of them fell doing anything other than keeping their fellow Americans safe. Everyone siding with Black Lives Matter can tell you the names of all these folks who they say to say the names of, from George Floyd on back, but if you asked them to name the last five homicide victims, or rape victims, or non-police shooting victims, or assault victims in their cities, they would be absolutely MIA. They’d be stuck doing their Ralph Kramden impression. I can’t read minds, but I submit to you that these supporters don’t give a damn about ordinary crime victims, except as far as they can use them as props in their cause. I also submit that they don’t give a damn about ordinary people, except so far as they can bully, shame, blame, and intimidate them. It’s a lot easier to bully, shame, blame, and intimidate if there are fewer or no police officers around. It’s a lot easier to block the street if the police can’t muster enough people to break up your mob and send them on their way. It’s a lot easier to smash a store window and loot whatever’s inside if the police can’t interpose enough men to convince you otherwise. It’s a lot easier to harass some white guy and his gf having their dessert and coffee if the police can’t spare anyone to tell you to move on and leave these people you don’t even know alone.
The fewer there are to keep order, the greater the chaos, and it seems that chaos is what these people want. It also seems that chaos is what some of the authorities want. When the police in Bend, Oregon will protect protesters who are interfering with ICE, but not aid ICE in any way, and the DA is saying he’s never been prouder of his community or angrier at his government, the authorities are looking for chaos. When the district attorney in Portland is publicly announcing that he will not prosecute the vast majority of crimes involving rioting and destruction of property, to the point where the Oregon State Police, who came in so the Feds would withdraw, withdraw themselves, the authorities WANT chaos. When a mayor lets armed thugs take over a police station and several city blocks, where robbery, rape, and assault run rampant, and then tells the president not to be afraid of democracy, the authorities want chaos. When a mayor doesn’t lift a finger to shore up collapsing law and order, but makes a VERY big deal out of painting Black Lives Matter on the street, the authorities want chaos. Why do they want chaos? Beats me, but I wonder if part of it is to cow ordinary citizens into doing whatever they want as long as the chaos stops. Policing is the antidote to chaos, and that’s why they hate it.
People like this idiot brewer are just jumping on the bandwagon, hoping the newly woke will flock to their product. Maybe they’ll even continue to drink it even though it tastes like monkey piss, same as the East Germans ate Spreewald pickles, which tasted like crap, but were the party brand. Maybe he’s also hoping the mobs will leave his brewery alone. The thing is, when you have to turn on the guardians of society to hopefully keep away those the guardians are supposed to protect you against in the first place, but can’t, because the authorities won’t let them do their job, something has gone very wrong. Fearing the police won’t show up, or will side with the bad guys, is something you usually worry about in unstable third world countries. It’s not supposed to be what we worry about here.
Bringing this back to the beginning, let me ask you this: if the police are defunded, disabled, or hobbled from doing major tasks or their main task of keeping order and protecting ordinary people, how long do you think they will be able to keep being the “first first responders” and problem solvers? How many heart attack victims are you willing to sacrifice because the police couldn’t hold them with the oxygen until the paramedics could arrive? How many head injury or fall victims are you willing to have die or suffer life-altering injuries because the police weren’t there to screen the EMS away from an earlier incident that turned out to be a false alarm or non-consequential? How many neighborhood arguments are you willing to let turn into street fights because the police don’t have enough officers to spare one to tamp an argument down before it gets out of hand? Are you willing to let the bookies keep taking honest people’s hard-earned money and just let the chop shops keep moving stolen auto parts because there are simply no detectives to stop them?
I wonder if some of this is due to the Marxist philosophy of some of these activists. Marx, a ne’er-do-well writer who was only able to avoid bankruptcy because his friend Engels, who came from money bailed him out repeatedly, had a gift for rhetoric that sounded good, but never really had to think about how it would work in reality. It’s not like there aren’t examples of what’s happened when his ideas have been tried. The USSR is gone 29 years, its satellite states all gone democratic and a lot of them now NATO members, Venezuela almost a failed state, Cuba an isolated nothing. But they think because their ideas sound good they’d work in reality. Where the police pull back, the neighborhoods don’t turn into neo-socialist “communities” run by do-gooders with well-stocked food pantries and cultural centers with classes in everything from English as a second language to African-American culture to knowing your rights as a tenant. They fall to crap. Ordinary people just don’t go for the crunch of broken glass every morning, the sight of emaciated, dirty addicts shooting up with heroin, or the experience of being mugged for their cell phones and wallets. Those who can, leave, and the place slides further into the crapper. But, by all means, keep those dreams alive, they’ll become reality someday… maybe we’ll just have to break a few more eggs to make that omelette, and then a few more…
BTW, this is what you vote for if you cast your vote for Biden/Harris, or is it Harris/Biden?
It is ironic the amount of hate thrown at Michael for this stance. Trump supporters from all over the country tried to flood review sites that sold his beer with one star reviews. They tried calling from far away places to tell our local businesses to stop selling his stuff. Yea…..that definitely backfired. Our entire community went around and bought every last bit of his beer available. And when the beer was gone, we started donating the money to police reform groups and charities in the area. Now that he has been put on the national stage, its tough to find his products because they are sold out all the time. Whoops, guess the people have spoken…..