[Carl from Marietta]

I don’t much disagree with you, I’m just damned disgusted with things generally.

I’m retired now and have a lot of time to watch the “wildest police video” genre shows and they almost always identify each officer as a former so and so military person.

You can’t go a day without some headline about someone’s dog being shot or someone’s grandma being tasered. We equip these whelps with the most expensive offensive weapons available and train them to a razors edge and wonder why they go off like grenades.

[familyop]

"I don’t much disagree with you, I’m just damned disgusted with things generally."

I know, and agreed on disgust.

"I’m retired now and have a lot of time to watch the 'wildest police video' genre shows and they almost always identify each officer as a former so and so military person."

Oh. I don't watch TV at all any more except for a video of a news item from the Net once in a while. Most time using the Net here is spent on reading technical information (mostly low-tech. stuff) or watching an occasional free, old movie (archive.org , "feature films"). We live in the middle of nowhere on the Rockies (no nearby neighbors, cities far away) and have plenty to do outdoors.

"You can’t go a day without some headline about someone’s dog being shot or someone’s grandma being tasered. We equip these whelps with the most expensive offensive weapons available and train them to a razors edge and wonder why they go off like grenades."

Back in the '70s, police told me that they preferred hiring men trained for infantry combat, because they were less excitable and less likely to get into that kind of trouble (looking for work then, decided on different kinds of training to do private security part time and other work full time).

During the '60s and '70s, there were hiring preferences for soldiers, Marines and the like (around Texas and parts of the Midwest, at least). It seems to me that more police were more levelheaded during those years. I went through initial training (Army, 13 weeks straight) at the age of 31 (Baby Boomer guilt).