Who’s building the straw man?

I actually couldn’t wait to finish this video about the capitol riots last year before I started writing this. The video is still playing on YouTube in the background while I type. The footage is really hard to watch. I get physically ill watching the police battle the rioters. In Daniel Hodges’s testimony he refers to the rioters as terrorists. Hodges was the capitol officer who was caught in the doors and held his ground while being beaten and crushed as the rioters tried to breach entry where Daniel was posted.

I get physically ill for a few reasons. One, I don’t like violence. I can’t stand to watch violence of any kind. Two, it’s sad to watch a helpless person be beaten, and three, it was also a police officer being beaten by a citizen. The twisted irony of the third reason sends a shiver of satori up my spine. The cops fight the left and then the right fights the cops. Crazy.

Since I was 18, I stopped watching “action” movies, quit playing “first person shooter” games, and gave up watching TV all together (it was still a thing back then). MMA fights are some of the worst viewings for me. To watch those bodies mangle each other before one pops the other with a blow dropping them. The sudden lifelessness of the free-falling body makes me cringe. Must be my mirror neurons

We must remember all this happening on Jan. 6 was right in the midst of this “defund police” movement. If you’ve watched any news in the last few years, you can easily see that this “defund” has been turned into abolish. The ideas of defunding the police are sound, in my opinion. Police are over worked and under paid. They are required to respond to situations in which they are not needed and while they are tending to these situations, they could be of better service somewhere else. This is what defund the police means. It means more money for those officers who are actually qualified with more specified work. It means going back to the time when being a police officer was a career you could be proud of which gave dignity to those who held its posts.

Abolishing the police would be insane. Disallowing under-qualified individuals, who can’t pass a psyche exam, to enter the force is commendable but should be mandatory. If we are going to hire officers and then put them on the traffic beat, then we need to defund that position and regulate the issuing of a weapon to those more qualified to handle situations warranting the use of deadly force. I’d go a step further and say that instead of defunding the police at all, new laws are made to regulate the spending of each department. The funds that are no longer used to buy military grade weaponry, (manufactured for a profit and at a surplus by the military industrial complex) can be used to send future officers to four-year colleges. That money could be used to pay a base starting salary of 65K-100K per officer, even at the lower levels. Even for the traffic cops. I’ve long said, the citizens who make our democracy function should be paid equal to those in congress. The dignity that comes along with a higher salary and better quality of life re-enforces the ethics, principals and ideals of a free society. I for one want officers who believe in the American way, not cronies with guns out to write tickets to meet some corporate-style bottom line.

My father is an officer. He went to a four-year college and got a degree in Criminal Justice. Afterward, he served as a Military Police in the Army for four more years. Then, after failing to secure work as a city cop during his first few interviews, he landed a job in Azle, TX. The rigor he had to go through to obtain the trust and responsibility of being a police office is, today, non-existent. Today, one can go to TCC for 6-8 weeks and become a rookie cop almost anywhere. Cities are hiring more officers every year to help meet ticket quotas and since they are inexperienced and underqualified, they are paid as such. Some cops start today at less than 40K a year. I don’t know about you, but I would not take my job seriously if it barely let me survive.

Defund the police also means to stop buying military grade equipment with city budgets. If we need that kind of force, we can always call in the National Guard or our U.S. military with bases in every major city across the country. If the collective ‘we’ needs a tank, we shouldn’t be letting the chief of police deploy it, much less own it, buy it and stock up on it. If we stop buying tactical gear and military grade weaponry at the local level, that money can be used to hire more qualified officers and to pay existing officers a livable wage.

Why I immediately brought this up in response to the video linked above is that I find it so tragically ironic the people who are so against any changes to our police force are the ones beating police officers without abandon during the Jan. 6th riot on the capitol. The word play, cognitive dissonance and Orwellian double-speak is astounding, and it hurts my soul. With one side of the GOP's mouth, they tell the media it’s Antifa, BLM, communists, democrats and lib-tards who are ruining our democracy and threatening the livelihood of our police force. At the same time, out the other side of their mouth, they incite anger and extremism in their base of followers, telling them to arm themselves and storm the capitol. The amount of vitriol pouring from the mouths of the rioters against the police is shameful. Do they kiss their mothers with those mouths?

Yea, I’ve not enjoyed most of my interactions with police, however they mostly have taken place over traffic stops. I’ve never done much wrong, but when I stole, I was caught and punished. I felt remorse and the presence of the police and interaction with them changed me for the better. They were not malevolent. I was caught red-handed and all they wanted to do was make sure I didn’t do it again. What made me not like the police was as I became an adult, I realized how much power they had and how pettily they used it. How a single ticket could set me back ages, could make me lose my job, apartment and everything I was barely hanging on to.

During my first traffic stops like this, I remember pleading with the officers and telling them, there’s no money to pay that ticket. With infractions like running stop signs with no one around, speeding on empty roads and doing 12% over the speed limit on a long hwy drive seem like things we could overlook. Despite a nightly news show with 30 straight minutes of gore, gloom and doom, murder, theft, embezzlement, corruption, molestation, financial crisis and governmental failure and incompetence, police are still posted up under over passes with their radar guns. They hide in the complete blackness of night with their vehicle completely shut down before they light you up like an escaped prisoner scaling the final wall to freedom. The incessant strobing of the red and blues with the 5 million-lumen-spotlight aimed directly at you, combined with the overall heightened sense to a simple traffic stop for speeding nearly gives me a heart attack. There’s no way to be calm in a situation like this. My body literally shakes with adrenaline as I make ready for the officer to approach my window.

Luckily for me, I make enough money these days playing music that I can maintain insurance, inspections and registrations. Those three things served for the majority of my tickets growing up. I’d be leaving my neighborhood on the way to work with an inspections sticker out and get pulled over. That would lead to another several tickets for no-seat belt, failure to use turn signal, taillight out, expired D.L., and any number of things the officer could site me for. I’d leave a traffic stop with 5 to 6 tickets. Ther was no way I was ever going to pay that. None of these interactions, even though at times they cost me every cent I had, ever made me want to hurt a police officer.

When those tickets mounted up, that meant warrants, which gave the officer the right to have me out of the car immediately and then to search it. I’d go to jail and sit out my warrants. Departments don’t really let you do that anymore though. They want the cash and is the reason the officers are out there anyway. Making quota. It’s no wonder they choose who to fuck over and who to let go. They have morals. If you’re a fuck up already, then who cares if they load you down with a few extra tickets? You’re going nowhere anyway. They are just doing their job. But this is why systemic problems are so detrimental to society.

Could you imagine if Albert Einstein, arguably a person our modern world could not live without, happening to grow up in our society today? It’s well known he was no good in grade school and so would have likely been a ‘bad kid’. It’s also well-known he was inquisitive and a rebel. I’d imagine him being stopped and fined and jailed for failure to have his vehicle inspected. That would piss anyone off. “Look officer, I’m trying to come up with E=Mc squared. I can’t afford to be arrested today.” “Well, Mr. Einstein, you should have thought of that before you bought this vehicle you can’t afford to drive you to a job you don’t enjoy. Watch you head Albert.”

Every time he’d get close to coming up with something, there they would be, the police. “Mr. Einstein, I see you have failed to fix that taillight of yours, and even though it may have just happened and even though you are completely unaware of it, I’ll need you to step out of the vehicle.”

Or if he were to celebrate some success with a beer or joint in the garden to the university, he’d undoubtably hear, “Sir, we can smell the beer on your breath. Why don’t you step out of the car. We’re going to have to do a sobriety test on you.”

In my case, is it because of the fines and the punishments that I am now reformed? I obey. I take pride and even livid joy in knowing that my D.L. and the place I live have the same address. I’m elated to know I have no tickets that will impede the easy renewal of my vehicle’s registration. I’d say, it worked. I’m at a point where I can no longer risk my entire life over a simple $75/year registration fee. Stopping at each stop sign with recognizable deceleration, setting cruise control 5 miles below the speed limit and immediately latching my seatbelt are second nature to me now. I’ve complied. It took no force. I’m not angry at my government for it and I think it’s kind of silly I ever went against it in the first place.

I love you Mr. Stockholm.