Part One of this series (https://steemit.com/anarchy/@larkenrose/fake-experience-fake-reality-part-one) explained how, when it comes to “foreign policy,” Americans’ perceptions of what is going on in the rest of the world comes from drastically limited, biased and controlled reports, which they nonetheless perceive as “experiences,” whether they come in the form of “entertainment” (such as movies), or “news” (state-approved propaganda pieces). This, however, shouldn’t be too surprising, and is even somewhat understandable, given the fact that very few Americans have any direct way to know what is happening around the world, or what the U.S. military is actually doing. They just don’t know any better, and don’t usually have an easy way to know any better, without going to the other side of the world themselves.
However, even when they should know better—even when they do have direct, personal evidence of the real world—most Americans still believe fake “experiences” more often than they believe their own eyes. As one glaring example, there are still many millions of Americans who think and say things like this:
“The police are brave protectors who constantly put themselves in harm’s way to keep us safe! If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear from them, and if they are arresting you, you must have done something bad!”
How often do Americans personally witness anything in real life that supports such a viewpoint? Damn near never. So why do they see the world that way? Because they are constantly barraged and bombarded with the “brave protector cop” stereotype in movies and television shows, and because watching those things registers in their brains as if they were actual experiences, instead of registering as what they actually are: fabrications and falsehoods.
So many people have positive opinions of “law enforcement” that are based entirely on how they see pretend cops behaving in fictional scenarios.
In the real world, however, what most people actually see the police doing is systematically robbing lots and lots of people for stupid, technical, victimless “crimes,” like not having the right sticker on their car. They see that all-too-familiar sight along the highway of the doughnut-eater casually swaggering up to the window of his latest extortion victim, to condescendingly ask, “Do you know why I stopped you?” And yes, most of us do know why he stopped the person: because the cop gets paid to look for any excuse to steal money from productive people (via issuing “tickets”) in order to give it to politicians. That is what the majority of cops actually do, day in and day out, in the real world. There is nothing brave, heroic or righteous about it. They are nothing more than professional road pirates.
On a video I made quite a while ago (titled “Cops are Cowards”), I asked how many viewers had ever actually seen anyone in “law enforcement” do anything genuinely brave. There were two or three half-hearted attempts at examples—which were just examples of good things (helping someone with something), but not at all brave things. At the same time, dozens of people piled on with stories from their own lives where they witnessed “law enforcers” being power-happy, abusive cowards and assholes.
Even among those who proudly declare how much they support those “brave men and women in blue,” few can actually point to any real-world examples of the badge-wearers behaving like brave protectors. And yet many millions still believe that stereotype, and still spread it. Why? Because they really and truly think they have experienced that reality, even though that “experience” consisted entirely of watching make-believe stories on television.
Of course, in this day and age, someone doesn’t need to rely solely on his own personal experience while trying to figure out what the real world is like. Thanks to cameras everywhere, there is no shortage of second-hand but genuine evidence to be found to show what “law enforcers” are actually like in real life. In fact, feel free to do a little experiment of your own: go to YouTube and try whatever word searches you can think of to try to find videos of cops doing brave, “righteous protector” type things. Then do a search for “police abuse,” and watch a few of those—or a few dozen—or as many as you can stomach before becoming enraged or depressed.
Then, of course, there is the line about “a few bad apples,” and how most cops are really fine, upstanding and valiant public servants. Funny how cameras only ever seem to be present when the “bad apples” are around. And what a coincidence that when the supposed “bad apples” are violently abusing or murdering people, none of the “good apples” looking on ever seem surprised or shocked by it. (It’s worth noting that the original saying about “bad apples” was that “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.”) Of course, in real life, as experienced by real people, the true rarity is the decent human being who wears a badge and is not perpetually on a power trip, fishing for reasons to fine, harass or kidnap non-violent people.
Oddly, some will even cite their own lack of experience as proof of something, by saying things like, “Well, I’ve never had a bad experience with the police!” To reach some general conclusion from that makes about as much sense as arguing, “Well I’ve never been bitten by a rattlesnake, and therefore rattlesnakes are perfectly harmless!”
I can only imagine what it must sound like to some young black kid in some poor inner city neighborhood, where it’s pretty damn obvious what the “thin blue line” really is (the most obnoxious, sadistic, violent street gang around) to hear some middle class white woman out in the suburbs talking about how she never has problems with the cops, and how they’re always very polite to her. No shit, lady. Because if the thugs in blue get all sadistic and abusive at you, they at least might actually get in trouble for it.
Notwithstanding Godwin’s Law, it’s also worth mentioning that even in Nazi Germany, most upstanding law-abiding citizens never had a problem with the SS. If you’re an obedient, meek subject under any regime, however tyrannical it may be, there’s statistically a fairly good chance that the goons of state won’t get around to beating you to death in your own home. That does not mean that they are noble protectors who only hurt despicable villains.
A lot of the time, the people who wear badges are mentally imbalanced, sadistic, insecure, malicious power-happy assholes, who routinely lie, commit theft and assault, and occasionally commit murder. A lot of real people, in real life, have learned that the hard way, through real experiences. And no amount of television fairy tales can erase the real pain and real suffering that thugs of the state have inflicted upon them.
On television, wild animals are nice (and can sometimes talk), good guys are inexplicably bullet-proof, no matter how scary things are everything will turn out fine in the end, and law enforcers are brilliant and brave heroes who always save the day. But those aren’t real experiences. Those aren’t real life. And it’s high time that at least most grown-ups came to understand that.
Coming up in Part Three we will consider a few more ways in which people believe statist mythology and related fake “experiences” more than they believe their own eyes.
PART THREE: https://steemit.com/anarchy/@larkenrose/fake-experience-fake-reality-part-three
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(Larken Rose is a speaker, author and activist, having advocated the principles of non-aggression, self-ownership and a stateless, voluntary society for over twenty years. Donations to help support his articles, videos and other projects can be made by PayPal to "[email protected]" or by Bitcoin to 13xVLRidonzTHeJCUPZDaFH6dar3UTx5js.)
