War Of The Apples

War is a peculiar thing. On one hand it truly is one of the most destructive and immoral activities ever to have been invented by the human race, but on the other hand the experience of war has a strangely compelling effect on those who fight. These warriors kill and terrify, but they also develop among each other the strongest sense of brotherhood and love, to the extent that they even make the ultimate sacrifice, not for their country, but for each other.

In popular media it is of course the side of brotherhood, selfless sacrifice and the resulting appearance of heroism that's emphasized, much less the ugly side. This propaganda has been extended to the mainstream news media; Vietnam was the last war where the many atrocities were freely broadcast to the general public; nowadays we only get a highly sanitized version of America's many foreign wars, complete with scripted tours for so called "embedded journalists", with even a moratorium on showing too many coffins of dead soldiers being loaded off planes. But that's actually besides the point of this post; it's about the brothers in arms we find in war as well as in the increasingly militarized police.

Yes, the brotherhood we traditionally know about from "our" armed forces abroad is also apparent among the armed forces at home. They'll protect each other no matter what atrocities they're collectively involved in. Mind you, this is not an outright condemnation of these men and women as both organizations, the military and the police, thrust them into environments that allow for the psychological conditions necessary for this particular kind of brotherhood to develop; it's systemic and not about blaming individuals per se. The self sacrifice between brothers within the police force usually doesn't lead to sacrificing one's life, but we saw it happen when 57 members of the Buffalo police riot response team resigned in solidarity with the officers who were fired after they assaulted a 75 year old man who posed no threat to them. Honestly, when I heard that 57 police officers resigned, I thought it was in solidarity with that innocent old man, or with the peaceful protesters; that was naive on my part.

Please watch the above linked video to see to what extremes the brotherhood of the police will go to protect their colleagues and justify their criminal behavior. I like the term "Good Apples" used in the title, because whenever an officer of the law commits an atrocity that is televised or otherwise made public, the usual line of defense is that most policemen are good people, and that it's just a "few bad apples" who step over the line. I believe that we've seen with our own eyes, again, that this is simply not true, and that the police operate very much like a gang, or indeed like brotherly combatants in a war. You see, another psychological effect in war is the dehumanization of the enemy; killing another human being is actually a hard thing to do, so subconsciously "the enemy" becomes less than human.

And we all know who "the enemy" is for our brothers and sisters in law enforcement; in this moment in time it's the protesters, peaceful and violent alike, and in general it's the inhabitants of poor and forgotten neighborhoods disproportionately populated by our dark skinned brothers and sisters; they become less than human in the police force's collective psyche, and we witness that on TV every day now. But even if the "few bad apples" excuse was true (which it is not), that's not a repudiation of the systemic nature of the problem I've just described. Like Chris Rock says in the below linked video: in some professions ALL apples must be good, some professions simply can not allow for the presence of a few bad apples...

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