Megan Mulls It Over

+JMJ

“Guns don’t kill people. The government does.” – Dale Gribble

My views on law enforcement are less defined than my views on other topics. On one hand, I believe that a lot of the resentment that we see aimed at law enforcement in this country is misplaced. If Black Lives Matter wants to blame a dead white guy for all of inner-city black America’s troubles, they should consider giving Robert E. Lee a break and former President Lyndon B. Johnson a second look. Because making people choose between a welfare check and marriage has given us a generation of directionless young men who end up turning to neighborhood gangs for structure and security.

But even though I believe that the welfare state, the sexual revolution, and feminism have largely been given passes when it comes to their roles in destroying communities, I also have a higher level of distrust toward law enforcement than many others who share my views on social issues. “But Megan, you’re white!” True. But I am also the daughter of a truck driver. And most of the truck drivers you encounter will have some shade to throw on police.

And the rest are lying.

In addition to being the daughter of a truck driver, I also have libertarian leanings on a lot of issues, particularly the military and foreign policy. So if I’m going to regard the military as an armed arm of the government, it’s only fair that I at least try to do the same for law enforcement.

A recent news item that reminded me of the importance of such vigilance was an active-shooter training in Indiana that got out of hand. According to this IndyStar article, police who were conducting the training at a school shot plastic pellets at some of the teacher participants with no prior warning. One of the teachers who was shot with the pellets reported having “welts and one spot where the pellet broke her skin.”

“Megan, your white privilege is showing. You are more stirred up over this than you are over most famous officer-involved shootings.” Actually, this incident has made me want to be better about not jumping to conclusions every time an officer-involved shooting makes the news. Because these teachers weren’t doing anything other than trying to learn how to protect themselves and their students in an emergency. When the cops kill someone who’s in the process of committing a crime, usually my first instinct is to think of how the victim could have prevented his death by making better choices. But when someone who is being a model citizen is injured by the police, I think you kinda have to consider that maybe there are some systemic problems with American law enforcement. So I’m not dropping the banner of personal morality and responsibility, but I’m going to try to be better about remembering that Black Lives Matter shouldn’t have a monopoly on vigilance regarding police use of force.

Translation: The leadership of Black Lives Matter are Soros-funded sheep who are more dedicated to the feminist and LGBT agendas than they are to anything that will improve underprivileged minority communities. But that doesn’t mean the police are off the hook.

One of the most maddening things about the subject story is that, based on what the article says and doesn’t say, it doesn’t seem like the police department thinks it did anything wrong. (Big surprise there, right?) Sheriff Bill Brooks is quoted as saying, “They all knew they could be. It’s a shooting exercise.” This contradicts the story of the teachers, who say that although “they were given paintball masks, which law enforcement said were a precaution for different scenarios throughout the training,” they were not told that being shot with the pellets would be part of the training. And the teachers who were interviewed for the article were shot in the back, not in a body part that was covered by the masks.

And not only does Brooks think that the teachers should have been aware that they were going to be shot with pellets during the exercise, he also thinks that his saying that the department has removed the shooting from the training should be enough to reassure everybody that something like this won’t happen again. The affected teachers have suggested that state legislation mandating active-shooter drills in schools should be amended to prohibit shooting projectiles at trainees. But Brooks is quoted as saying, “We don’t need legislation in White County. We’re just not going to do it.”

Translation: “We shot you with some pellets, but we promised not to do it again. So that should be enough for you. Unless you’re a bunch of commie traitors.”

(Side note: I admit that I chuckled when I saw that this was happening in a county with the name “White.” Although to be fair, I am not sure what the races of the teachers involved are. Brooks appears to be white.)

It also sounds like Brooks thinks that the teachers are a bunch of whiny wimps. When describing the pellets he said, “It’s a soft, round projectile. The key here is ‘soft.’” Ok. But I’m guessing that “soft” in this context means “softer than a bullet” rather than “soft as a marshmallow.” Also, when a soft object is shot out of something at a high speed, I’m guessing it doesn’t feel so soft upon impact.

Brooks’ feelings about the teachers are also shown when he says, “We were made aware that one teacher was upset. And we ended it.” Does he really think there was only one? And I am gritting my teeth as I say this next thing because I know it’s gonna sound kinda feminist: the very word “upset” is kinda irritating. This is a catch-all word that men use to describe women’s emotions. And in using the same word for something burgers and nothing burgers, something burgers can be made to sound like nothing burgers.

The article also states that one of the teachers said that the training officers told them “that police had to go through the same training.” This sounds like it could have been intended as a brush-off of the concerns of the ungrateful civilians who didn’t like getting sprayed with pellets without warning.

It could have also been intended as a testament to the quality of the program. Fair enough, but that doesn’t mean that the teachers are going to have the same odds of success as police if they ever have to use this training. Because whatever they do will be done without firearms or protective gear.

But this didn’t stop the police department from attempting to convince the teachers that office supplies can be as effective as guns if you’re in a bind. The article says that before the teachers were shot with the pellets, the training officers said, “This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing.” And the article leaves us hanging as to what the officers said right after that. Was it, “Now if you had thrown a stapler at the shooter, things would have gone much better for you”?

Actually, tennis balls might be better than a stapler. Because, no joke, towards the end of the article, one of the teachers “said the other training exercises were useful, including one in which an officer pretending to be an active shooter shot the airsoft gun while teachers hid under desks and were given tennis balls to throw at him until he stopped shooting.” So I can kinda see how it might feel empowering to throw tennis balls at an active shooter, because it’s better than doing nothing. And there’s not a 100% chance of failure. But let’s be realistic – the average shooter is not going to stop shooting unless he runs out of ammo or gets hit by a bullet from a civilian, a cop, or himself.

And the tennis ball thing really made me think that one objective of these active-shooter trainings must be convincing people that guns are unnecessary for personal safety. This does not surprise me because a well-armed populace is one that is not completely dependent on law enforcement. And law enforcement relies on such dependency for longevity and expansion.

Those tennis balls also show that we are being asked to accept a double whammy. Not only do we need to be ok with total dependency on law enforcement, we also need to be ok with the fact that they aren’t always going to be able to respond as quickly as we would like them to. So it’s sort of a “You need us, but until we can get there, use these tennis balls to tide you over.”

Alternatively, you could try the classic “Put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye.”

At the end of the day, I recognize the necessity of law enforcement. And there have been lots of times that I have been grateful for police presence. I also believe that most people who enter law enforcement do so because they want to serve the public.

And I have to admit that it is easier for me to make this assumption about police than soldiers.

I don’t think that most soldiers enlist because they want to kill people, but I do think that for many of them, all the perks and free stuff the military promises play a bigger role than anything else. “Megan, that’s crazy! Why would people be willing to risk their lives if they weren’t motivated by some type of selflessness?!” When you factor in recruiting and advertising tactics, I think it’s reasonable to assume that you’ve got some in the mix who think they’ll never have to risk their lives. (I talk about this in greater detail in my October 16 post entitled “I Don’t Like Your Tone, Generals.”)

I am aware that law enforcement does advertising and recruiting as well. But from what I have seen, it is not yet as prevalent and heavy-handed as that done by the military. Notwithstanding the huge “Click It or Ticket” poster on Austin police headquarters (which can be seen in the photo accompanying this article about the suspension of the department’s Citizen Review Panel). And that poster gets woke Orwellian points for showing a female officer.

And the fact that the poster can probably be seen from space shows that the department is also open to hiring literal aliens.

(Btw, I did not come up with “woke Orwellian” on my own. It is a derivative of “woke imperialism” and its twin “intersectional imperialism,” which are two terms that I am so grateful to have discovered. Because I have been peeved by those things for a long time, but until recently I did not have names for them. Woke or intersectional imperialism is when a liberal views an increase of women, minorities, or LGBT people serving in the military as a victory for those communities. And sometimes these liberals are the old-fashioned kind who claim to hate endless wars. These are the ones who will say things like, “We shouldn’t have invaded Iraq, but I am really glad that so many women took part in the invasion.”)

Another reason for the difference between my views of law enforcement and the military is that at this point, there is much greater accountability for police behaving badly than soldiers behaving badly. When’s the last time you’ve seen a military commander on TV giving an explanation about why his men killed a foreign civilian? How many Americans protest in the streets when a foreign civilian is killed? Typically zero because we will usually hear about such deaths only in passing, if at all.

And when we do hear about them, we tend to have a pathologically high outrage threshold.

So if you’re a shady and underprivileged American, don’t lose heart. You still have better odds than an innocent foreign civilian when it comes to mobilizing people on your behalf.

We already have plenty of SJW watchdogs making sure that white privilege and male privilege are being kept in check.

So now I think it’s time to take a look at “American privilege.”

Verso l’alto,
Megan