since I left the collective farm and moved to the industrial heartland.

in several texts - both are OK

Not where I live.

I suppose that's okay, but it's probably not going to remain healthy for us for much longer to continue believing that particular illusion.

Query: If the Supreme Court has ruled that the police have no duty to defend (and it has, with a very very fine caveat), who do the police 'protect and serve'? If your answer is 'the people', then why are they being shot? Why are so many marching in the streets over them?

The neo-liberals (and yes, I too have seen it spelled out both ways, malaise, although I do visit a huge number of sites most here wouldn't, so it's possible that it's something picked up from them. I hope not.) already have their private armies. One standing and occupying every single city, and the other on the periphery expanding the reach of Imperium. Also, as a side note the schools aren't failing at all. In fact, they're succeeding beyond their WILDEST expectations.

It's just that most of the people still think they're playing a game where the goal is to improve the lot of their lives by electing people who care and by following 'the rules' and still refuse to face the reality of the actual game being played around them. It's like watching a group of people playing a classic game of Go with Monopoly tokens and money, wondering why they keep getting clobbered even though they have stacks of $500 bills.

Look the state has four parts - governmental, administrative, coercive and ideological. The police are very much part of the coercive part.

You are correct re the tension between the people and the police who have been instructed to plunder the poor for the financial shortfall that not taxing the rich has created - all textbook neo-liberal policies.
And schools are failing in poor communities although that is nothing new - it has to be deliberate.

We the people are suckers.