Cherry-picked from the Something Awful forums…
“The most amazing thing for me, the first time I visited the US, was the deference (bordering on fear) that citizens used when dealing with the Police. I lost count of the times I was told ‘don’t answer back to a cop’, ‘best just to shut up and do as he tells you’, ‘the cops can do whatever the hell they want’. Since I’d assumed that the US had more protection of freedoms, and more solidly entrenched personal rights than my home nation (the socialist island hellhole north of France), this came as a huge shock, since we don’t generally apply the same ‘cowed reverence’ to law enforcement here.”
I wasn’t afraid of cops until I got arrested by some. They hate their jobs, they hate you, and they treat you like shit. I don’t fully blame them, but this is a sucky aspect of American society that I’d never heard described with such alarm before.