Things have been pretty dire of late, and my hope has been at a low ebb. I can’t pretend to said hope doing much waxing, but I have come across something that has put me in at least a space to wonder.
Previous readers and friends know of my love of the Boing Boing website, both for its commitment to digital rights and its unique collection of contributors and editors. You never know what you’re going to find and I regularly see things there I have not come across anywhere else. This is a prime example of that. If you click on the link, don’t be alarmed at the title! Yes, the video it shows and the content of the post is horrific but hear me out.
There has been much discussion surrounding how divided we are as a nation, and I heartily agree. I think, however, that there is something deeper than division taking place. The division has moved beyond difference of opinion or ideology into a separation of basic beliefs, even human nature. We are not just divided, but rather two distinct peoples, and as people reveal which type of person they are we move ever closer to an irrevocable breach.
Let’s look at the second video in the post first. I have often tried to maintain the position that members of law enforcement are not inherently evil. That has admittedly become harder and harder as their egregious tactics and methods proliferate, but I still feel it paints with too broad a brush to characterize all LEOs as terrible people. I have in my past spent not insignificant time around some of these folk, and found many of them not only reasonable and sane, but the type of people I would actively want in the job. It seems a reasonable assertion, despite no hard evidence, that perhaps fewer of those type of people are joining law enforcement and that in turn is contributing to the enshittification of the police. And I think that is true because a huge part of the problem is not the individuals themselves but the system in which they must operate. The blue wall, or the brotherhood of police (shockingly sexist) or whatever you want to call it, is well documented and undeniable. Here is how it plays out. Bad cop does something terrible, everyone knows it is terrible, but good cop doesn’t stop it from happening. If good cop intervenes they are betraying their colleague and are now vilified for being disloyal. Even worse, if good cop speaks up after the fact they are not only disloyal but a rat. Somehow, and law enforcement is by no means the only place this phenomenon exists, the person doing the right thing becomes the villain and the terrible deeds go unchecked and unpunished. This is obviously a blatant oversimplification, but no less true for being so. The question then becomes why this good cop stays in the job, and how they can live with themselves. For evil men to prevail only requires that good men do nothing and all that. I can only speculate as to how they think, but perhaps it is as simple as idealism or the view that staying and trying to be one of the good guys is the only hope. I don’t know. I bring all this up because I think we can see that play out in the video.
Cop A – we’ll call him Dickhead – is clearly a dangerous goon that should be nowhere near law enforcement. His intentionally desecrating a memorial (undoubtedly in part to antagonize our bearded protagonist – we’ll call him Beard) is all we need to know he is broken and twisted and that someone saw fit to give him a badge and a gun defies understanding. He wants Beard to fight back, doing all he can to provoke him so that he will then have the excuse to do violence. Second cop, the DHS clown we will call Chickenshit, is a study. He clearly knows that Dickhead is out of line – watch him look askance and turn away – and while his doubts are obvious on his face, there is no way he is going to step in. We must be thankful and proud that Beard, while justifiably outraged and angry, does not rise to the bait. Enter LEO #3 – the third different agency represented! – as the adult in our little drama, now named Reason. He is calm and quiet and quite good at his job. Placing himself between Dickhead and Beard, gently creating space, shifting Beard’s focus away from Dickhead and preventing what could have been another news story. Do I wish Reason would have confronted Dickhead, called him out and shut him down? Maybe. But that too could go south in a hurry, especially when dealing with a Dickhead from another agency. In my wishful musing I like to think Reason became Righteous after the fact and made it clear to Dickhead where his name came from, but that seems unlikely. So we have not only an amazing example of why maybe there is hope for law enforcement. This will be made more difficult by the ongoing installment of more unqualified people into their ranks in the name of having enough Brownshirts to meet their absurd quotas, but that is another problem. Maybe, just maybe, with time and energy and some even minutely sensible leadership, Reason will win out and he will find himself with more like-minded colleagues. Big maybe.
I see this small incident as a microcosm of the larger picture that plays out in the first video. Megaphone guy, I dub thee Zealot, is probably disturbed, and I mean in the clinical sense. But he is also a product of the context in which he exists and the people he idolizes. He parrots a half dozen talking points. Many of which are unsurprisingly nonsensical – what does communism have to do with it? – but all standard fare for trolls and agitators. You know, like Trump and Noem and Vance and Leavitt. But then there are the other elements, where he morphs into that other type of person I alluded to above. He threatens and encourages violence, he promises retribution, and he glorifies the death of an American citizen, even taking ownership of it: “WE executed one of you”. Enter Sanity. Random woman, Jane Doe, unassuming and totally on point. She doesn’t even acknowledge Zealot, not even looking at him, and isn’t trying to diffuse anything or calling for calm. She implores everyone to ignore him, giving him no oxygen, no coverage, no fuel. Not only does that show wisdom of the opposition, but stands as a stark contrast to the madness and aggression of Zealot. I love this woman. We have one more cast member, though, and while he plays a bit part he cannot be ignored – Kangol hat guy. (By the way, there should be a nationwide moratorium on anyone but Samuel L. Jackson wearing a Kangol hat. Not only is he the only person in America who can pull it off, he does it so well it just makes anyone else who tries look like an idiot.) If we assume he is a protestor and thereby ostensibly one of the good guys, we have to acknowledge that he is more closely related to Dickhead than Sanity. The aggressive posture, getting all the way into Zealot’s space, he is spoiling for a fight, just like Dickhead. A wise friend of mine once pointed out that even if the other side is clearly wrong it does not make us above reproach. We would do well to remember that and make sure that Sanity far outnumbers the Kangols.
As the cop video is a microcosm, the Zealot video is the macro. Just as Dickhead and Reason are the two faces of law enforcement, Zealot and Sanity are the two faces of America. One consistent tactic of the right is to draw spurious parallels between the activism of the Left with their own agitating. Yes, yes, one man’s warlord is another’s freedom fighter and as a member of the Left I can only see one side, but I call bullshit. It has been proven time and time again that the Right is far more likely, by orders of magnitude, to react with aggression and violence. Judges and congress critters on the right aren’t getting death threats, but they are growing exponentially towards the left. One of my favorite examples is the stark difference between post election social media. When Biden won he was shown being hung in effigy, blown up, decapitated, etc. We were just as pissed and dismayed when Trump won, but what came from us? Trump in a diaper, with clown face or a dunce cap. Hopefully you can see the difference, because there is a difference. Are there calls for doxxing of the agent that killed Renee Good? Yes. But consider this. We want that fucker held accountable and prosecuted, and if that entails his life being ruined that seems a not unreasonable price to pay for murder. He not only ruined lives, he ended one. (And pressing to identify him and bringing pressure to bear seems doubly appropriate since it appears that he will face no other punishment since the powers-that-be have already decided he is innocent.) What I am not seeing is calls for his execution. That is their answer, and dark proof of the difference between the two groups.
The two faces – Dickhead and Zealot on one side and Reason and Sanity on the other – are becoming more starkly different with every passing day. But I said earlier that hope might be glimmering in the dark recess of my depression and fears over what is happening. It is the second face that is the source of that light. As long as that face continues to appear, that we can continue to turn our heads in the right direction, to show the right face to ourselves and the world, then perhaps we are not lost. Thanks for reading.