But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.

To me, this was one of the really confusing things about the Kaepernick affair. He found a really effective way to get people to notice him, but then he flatly refused to say anything about it once he had people's attention. It was like, "Well what the hell are you trying to raise awareness of?" For that reason it all seemed so pointless to me.

Police brutality is probably one of the toughest nuts to crack from a public policy point of view, because in the end it's law enforcement who, well, enforce the law. There's a low probability that they're going to enforce the law on themselves and their comrades. This may be a counter-intuitive thought, but maybe they need to be paid more, like a lot more. I feel the same about teachers, which is that they sign up for a hard job for shitty pay, and then they get frustrated when everyone shits on them (I know many teachers and every single one is an idealist and a great person at heart, but also very frustrated about the way they are treated by everyone from parents to politicians to society writ large). If in both cases the pay were higher (say, double), you'd probably attract a different crowd for different reasons and your accountability structure would change commensurately. Where cops diverge from teachers in that the weapons and authority probably attract sadists at a higher than baseline rate (full disclosure the only cop I ever knew very well personally, who is dead now, was a gigantic piece of shit racist and also not very smart).

Right now the barrier to entry is just far too low to be a police officer, but upping the bar would make it so basically no one would ever become a cop. The only way to solve that problem is to pay them more, and then to make accountability really, really high.