EIGHT freaking responses...?! There should be 200, by now.
This was a brilliant essay.
Like you, I suspect, I was once very much a law-and-order kind of guy, and in certain narrow respects I still am. But after all the kooky ninjya wrong-address raids, dog shootings and vet slammings, nope, somehow I just can’t feel the same about cops.
A garrison-state mentality has taken over among Our Finest, and with it a tidal wave of tacticool, hi-speed nomex kook gear. Like an actor donning a costume, their thinking changes at a visceral level as they go through the ritual of putting on all this make-up and finery. Drop thigh holster, tac-vest, knuckled gloves, layer by layer they are more and more actively LOOKING for a fight.
Even or especially where there is NONE.
And, I mean, keep in mind, this is coming from an NRA guy who gets choked up at the sound of the national anthem, etc. I have zero tattoos, have never smoked pot or dyed my hair, always linger to keep the door open for the next stranger, avoid bars and keep regular, civilized hours.
I hated Ice-Tea and when Charlton Heston bravely denounced him, I was delighted. Yet years later I heard and felt an eery familiarity with the lyrics, “Remember when the cops came and got your cat down from a tree..? Well in South Central SH*T AIN’T LIKE THAT..!”
Yes indeed, even out in the sticks, where people still go to church regularly and kids call people sir, increasingly shit ain’t like that there, either.
Cops see two types of “civilians” (to violate a major part of your essay): those whom they’ve arrested and those they have yet to arrest.
And FINALLY in turn in spite of myself I have come to see them that way, too —there are those cops on the one hand who are brutal and have been corrupted and then there are those on the other having just begun to go down that sordid path.
In extremis, multiculturalism (especially as bolstered by the patient forces of collectivism) has atomized people, eroding their senses of being somehow bound together. And with the ever-expanding forces of The State cops manners have eroded. They see the citizenry as an amorphous, unknown “THEY”, to be handled as little as possible, and then only gruffly and often in the form of legal robbery.
What this means is even though I despise the highly-orchestrated forces that conspire against the Baltimore PD, now I simply roll my eyes and fold my arms when I hear cop jobs there are becoming difficult.
“The cops are US..!” Meh, I can’t get there.
It’s very hard for me to feel for Revenue Officers in the same way I once felt for real patrol officers.
For me I see a tide of credulous, violent suckers actually BELIEVING the rot of hip-hop music, and then another, shorter-haired group of miscreants, inking themselves similarly and listening to the same violent bilge, but wearing badges.
You never can tell with FR. I posted it in Chat because it really is a vanity more than anything else, Probably would get more if I'd put it in News.
What this means is even though I despise the highly-orchestrated forces that conspire against the Baltimore PD, now I simply roll my eyes and fold my arms when I hear cop jobs there are becoming difficult.
Absolutely. I don't think the agents of the state (that would include everything from police, to FBI, to the faggots at BATF). really understand how much goodwill they've already lost. When the folks at FR can't and won't trust them, they lose a lot more than they think, because we, the responsible God fearing folks of this country are a real force-multiplier for them. We are eyes and ears for them, and are helpful when they ask for assistance or information. What happens as more and more people come to the conclusion that the only thing it is safe to talk to any representative of the state about is football?
Officer: Did you see what happened here?
Citizen: How 'bout them Cowboys?
They depend upon our willing cooperation in ways that they don't even think about.
This is something they really need to start thinking about.