Let’s think things through re: cops

A year ago now re: George Floyd.

A tendency toward generalized vilification.

Let’s step back.

Young men often have one of two things (or both) in mind when they seek to become a cop: (a) they’ll be loved and admired for helping people; and/or (b) they’ll be an adjunct of the power structure with privileges and prestige wearing the Uniform, the Badge, the Gun. Donuts and deference.

In sleepy towns their experience might be mostly helping people. Keeping the peace.

But in most of our mostly-urban, impersonal mass society what happens is this:

Our sick society generates an all-intents-and-purposes-infinite amount of psycho- and socio-pathology.

Cops are thrown into the morass. After some time they become jaded and cynical. The peace is constantly disturbed with no end in sight. Day after day they have to try to deal with the miserable underbelly of a miserable society that they really are not equipped to understand or to deal with.

They get frustrated and sometimes a little sadistic. They get prone toward taking advantage of their authority.

You really wouldn’t want your kid to have the illusions that lead to entry into copworld. I feel badly for everyone relegated to that world. It’s a huge morass, gray, gruesome, infinite, sorry.

I feel badly for everyone relegated to the misery of our gross sociopathology. Cops and robbers.