police brutality

It all lines up under Trump

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

It’s interesting what happens when you go “behind the scenes” and actually visit the page of a Trump Troll busy trying to defend the indefensible actions of a President compromised by his multiple breaches of constitutional law.

These include violations regarding emoluments, newly revealed evidence of tax evasion, genuine fraud convictions on both Trump University and the Trump Foundation, campaign finance regulations, impeached attempts at coercing foreign governments to aid in his re-election, secret payments to porn stars, serial refusals to pay for contracted work or compensate cities for law enforcement costs during his campaign rallies, and patently racist attempts to encourage police brutality and enact fascist tactics against American citizens across a number of fronts.

All while holding a Bible in a supposed demonstration of his pure conscience.

The fact that Trump Trolls support all this corruption because the President excels at political theater is quite an indictment of the overall greed for power. Those that support Trump refuse to confess that these confused ethics and the moral hypocrisy that drives them are a danger to the nation. Instead they spout platitudes such as Make America Great Again as if those four words have any meaning at all.

The fact of the matter is that Trump knows better than anyone that slogans sell even worthless products. HIs “You’re Fired” statement fueled a reality TV show that covered up his bankruptcies and bankrolled his brand despite its many failings. Without that $200M or so that he gained from playing a a business mogul on TV, he might have been exposed and deposed for financial fraud a long time ago. How ironic it is that his fake world saved his real ass.

Do like the Russians do

So we should not be surprised that the content posted on their the Facebook pages of Trump supporters is often comprised of fake attempts to justify the Trumpian appetite for power over purpose. The typical tactic of Trumpian memes is to purposely present a falsely black-and-white contrast on social conscience and civil rights. This happens to be exactly how Russian interference in the election proved most effective. It is no surprise that this type of disinformation was eagerly shared by Trump supporters to make the case that their preferred candidate holds the key to American prowess and success.

In fact, what Trump holds most dear to his heart is the authority to undercut the rule of law and democracy. This is exactly how Vladimir Putin conducts business. Trump supporters and to a large degree, the entire Republican Party is complicit in this behavior. The Party of Lincoln has become the party of Do Like The Russians Do.

Divide and Conquer

By way of exploration on this tactic, I explored the wall of a Trump support who was busy chirping at a friend of mine that about a post concerning the debt owed by Trump and how it might lead to a conflict of interest if foreign interests controlled loans to Trump totaling nearly half a million dollars. The Trump woman insisted instead that the “facts” were not in on Trump’s taxes and that no one should be allowed to pass judgment on the man until Trump himself released his tax records.

It’s pretty clear why Trump is not eager to let that happen. He’s spent five years avoiding the issue and doing everything he can to keep his tax records secret. To distract attention from this and other issues that indict his behaviors, he spends most of his time stoking up social and civic fears among his base, a sector of society that seems to prefer distraction over the substance of reality.

Here’s one of the memes that the Trump Troll woman posted on her page.

The group that claims to be the creator of this meme is called Keep America American, an apparel company whose About Us page states, “Our main goal at American Nation is to promote patriotism and love for our homeland no matter the occasion. It’s okay to be a NATIONALIST. It’s okay to be AMERICAN. ” The. slogan that adorns its logo is “Peace through superior firepower.”

Those statements are rife with the barely concealed racism of words such as “homeland” and the tradition that says America is originally and foremost a white nation. Thus it also supports the “whatever it takes” mentality of KKK tactics that define and defend that homeland. The apologetic headline “If the KKK is a hate group” pretends to admit that fact, but only as a precursor to claim that Black Lives Matter is a far greater threat to public safety.

Dismissing the fact that the KKK tortured, raped, persecuted, lynched or murdered thousands of Black Americans in order to claim that Black Lives Matter is its counterpart is a sick attempt at moral equivalency. The KKK emerged in direct response to the abolition of slavery. For 100 years until the Civil Rights Act was passed in the mid-1960s, Black Lives were subject to Jim Crow laws and harsh discrimination all across America. That institutionalized racism bled into law enforcement, filled American prisons with a disproportionate number of Black American citizens, and led to the serial murder of dozens of Black citizens at the hands of police across the nation.

That trifecta of corrupt outcomes is why Black LIves Matter was conceived and introduced as a protest against the American system as a whole. Its original premise is that respect for life was not being shown to Black members of society.

Trumpism is destructive

Into this conflicted scene marches the Racist In Chief, President Donald Trump. His own history of racist statements are not confined to Black Americans. His appetite for racial taunts and discrimination emboldens Trump supporters to espouse racism as a normal and legitimate state of mind in America. Trump has leveraged that approval as a tool for political power. Though this blog posted prior to the Presidential debate on September 29, 2020, it is worth this revision on September 30 to note that Trump refused to disavow white supremacist groups such as the Proud Boys. Instead he instructed them to Stand Down and Stand By. By any normal measure of law and order, those words constitute a threat and an act sedition against the United States of America. So much for the Second Amendment, which begins, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state.” Trump prefers vigilante fear and injustice instead.

The Trump administration builds its rhetoric from the foundations of racist advisor Stephen Miller. Trump and his followers seek to turn back the clock on social progress to a period when intimidation based on race was an acceptable tool of social dominance. While many Trump supporters adamantly insist they are not racist, and Black conservatives claim to love the politics and policies of Donald Trump on matters of economics, trade, housing and healthcare, the inescapable burden of such support is that racism is strapped to the backs of all those who carry water for Trump.

Confusing racism with patriotism

The sickest thing about in all this social conflict is that these brands of closeted racism are now considered a brand of patriotism. Racism and a cultlike brand of nationalism is what Trumpism promises to carry out through its slogan Make America Great Again. What else could it mean? Trump loyalists eager to dismantle American institutions such as the Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency have worked to dismantle the purposes for which those governmental bodies were established.

Their efforts are succeeding, especially with Covid-19 gutting even normal educational processes thanks to Trump’s disaffecting response to the pandemic and wildfires burning away millions of acres of land in California even while Trump disavows any possible effects of climate change on dramatic environmental disasters. Trumpism is destructive of every type of public trust and responsibility. All of this destruction is backed by religious ideology that claims white people are the Chosen People of God and that the earth is doomed by Original Sin, and isn’t worth saving even if we wanted to try.

Nothing really changes

This is the America in which we now live. It is probably the America in which we have always lived. Civility and justice owned the stage for a while, but the reign of the Great Entertainer Donald Trump is indeed a fulfillment of the self-indulgent wishes of the Great Communicator and Original Dog-Whistle President Ronald Reagan, who started the destruction of America rolling in the early 1980s.

Now Trump has turned the fight for the survival of the American ideal into a real-life nightmare. The only real concern of the Reality Show President is saving face and saving his own skin from indictment and conviction. He knows from his TV experience that pitting Americans against each other in a war of survival is an ideal distraction while he sucks money from the nation through his ill-earned position as President of the United States.

That’s why Trump loves the racist memes and hate spouted by his supporters. It is his only hope for some kind of redemption against the fraud and corruption he’s already committed and plans to expand upon with a second term. Trump knows that gaining fascist control of the nation is worth the kind of money that even money can’t buy. It all lines up under Donald J. Trump.

Is it time to ditch the paramilitary structure of the police?

/ Christopher Cudworth / 2 Comments

A few years back while riding my bike in the country, I saw a green vehicle parked by the side of the road. The writing on the side said, “CONSERVATION POLICE.”

With an interest in the environment and especially our parks and natural areas, I stopped to talk with the officer at his vehicle. That probably doesn’t happen all that often. I noticed that he was a bit guarded in his demeanor. So I opened with a question, “Do people know what you do?”

He seemed to realize that I was either curious or genuinely knew the answer to that question. He smiled and said, “Between you and me, about seven out of ten people want to know what the Conversation Police do.”

Training and commissions

That speaks to a lack of knowledge and a level of paranoia that exists in society toward the police. As a writer I followed up on our talk by contacting the regional office for the State Conservation Police and wound up interviewing two officers, one a woman and the other a man, about the distinctive nature of their jobs.

What I learned is that State Conservation Police go through training to become fully commissioned state police officers. They also go through additional training for the specifics of their job in policing natural areas, parks and other situations in urban, suburban and country settings.

I learned that it’s not an easy job. I also learned that the police with whom I talked at the managerial level were open to the idea of communicating the breadth of the job handled by state conservation police officers. It’s true that many people do not understand the roles and challenges of police officers at the local, regional and state level.

Urban and exurban realities

After learning more about policing the wilder areas of our state and writing an article about it for a suburban lifestyle publication, I met a man that served as a police chief in a highly urban area west of Chicago. It was a tough town according to reputation. He’d spent many years rising through the ranks to become the Chief of Police. In classic police fashion, he was not overly communicative about the nature of his job. But after talking for an hour, I dared ask him a question that I’d long wanted to pose to a police officer in his position.

“What do police actually think about the problems of gun control?”

It was admittedly a question phrased in a liberal context. Yet he answered with sincerity. “We think it’s a mess,” he confided. “There are too many guns out there.”

One could immediately jump to a number of conclusions from that statement. Gun proponents might state that there are too many illegal guns in the urban environment where the officer was stationed. It is easy to ascribe patent gun violence to gang-bangers and such. That carries with it the implications of race. Yet the police officer with whom I spoke was himself African-American. He’d probably seen plenty of violence and law-breaking from people of all races and backgrounds.

Self-protection

But the culture of policing in America depends on guns as safety and protection for the officers. The result has been that as America’s volume and capacity of the weapons on the street has escalated, so has the need for police to arm up and defend themselves. When placed in circumstances where guns may be present or called into action, police are at risk in every situation from a traffic stop to breaking up a block party to watching prisoners in hospital settings.

So it’s really no surprise that people are being gunned down by the police. The sad, sick part of the equation is that the paramilitary structure of the police force with its hierarchy of command places police in a position of protecting their own as would any other form of unit committed to a battlefront. That’s what the United States of America has become. A nation at war with itself, and the police are supposed to act like the United Nations forces in blue helmets trying to keep the peace.

And frankly, it is too much to ask

Conflicting purposes

The police are clearly being asked to do too many types of things. From traffic control to domestic violence, handling mental illness in the public space to tracking down crime and violence, the police are expected to multitask like no one’s business. And frankly, no organization can handle that many options and be efficient and effective.

That’s especially true when the paramilitary structure demands loyalty, rigidity and compliance on the front end. Surely discipline is important to public and private policing. But discipline alone is too easily compromised when social or work pressures enter the picture. That’s when people become more concerned with covering their ass and keeping things quiet if things go wrong, rather than opening the subject to inquiry and consideration.

When political or racial bias further enters the picture, a paramilitary organization too easily becomes a tool of power and manipulation. When the culture of an organization adopts a prejudice of any kind, it conflicts with the assigned purposes of a police organization to serve and protect.

Tribalism and paramilitary mentality

That is how an officer decides to kneel on the neck of another human being long enough to kill them. And why fellow officers stand aside or even support that effort. There is too much tribalism built into the paramilitary model of the police forces of this country. That is not to say that the police are necessarily to blame. Who wants to risk their lives in a country where there are more guns than people? The perversion of the Second Amendment into a free-for-all of gun rights and vigilantism has turned policing into a losing proposition from the start.

The opening phrase of the Second Amendment holds the solution, too long ignored and debased by the likes of the NRA and its patsy politicians, that reminds us that, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state…” should not be dismissed as an unnecessary burden on the nation. More people have died from gun violence in the United States than all the soldiers killed in American wars on foreign soil. The nation is in the long grip of a gun violence pandemic and mass shootings that only abated for a bit once a disease pandemic came along to force people off the streets and out of the cycle of blasting each other to bits.

The POTUS and domination

The worst part of all this vigilante addiction to guns and force, and the paramilitary approach to society, is that the President of the United States even views our nation’s military as his personal police force. In a fascist response to public protests over the killing of multiple black victims by police, Trump proposed sending tanks into Washington, DC and other cities to “dominate” those he considers out of order. It is no surprise where Trump likely got the idea, as he put in a call to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin before launching the idea of this proposed assault on American society to protect his own racist agenda. Trump’s murderous instincts have included instructing police not to be too soft and to knock heads when doing their jobs. This is not the message America needs to hear.

Cities across America are now considering “defunding the police” which is an unfortunate term at best. The real goal is to restructure the approach and obligations of America’s police forces. The best place to start is changing the system from a hierarchy of paramilitary command to a more collaborative model similar to organizations where decision-making is more effectively crowd-sourced and includes contributions from all levels of an organization to hold everyone accountable and provide support where needed from top to bottom for police everywhere. Of course, the “tough guys” mentality of police work would resist this model as impractical and too soft. But what’s the better alternative? Remaining at war with the public in fear for the lives of the officers on the front lines, or acting with conscience and proving the Blue Lives really do matter?

Source: https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/perspective/perspective-evaluating-the-paramilitary-structure-and-morale

Why armed militias walk freely and peaceful protesters get mowed down

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

See those guys in the photo? They’re part of the Boogaloo movement planning to bring about a new Civil War. They’re a far-right, libertarian-style faction that hates government and loves American gun laws that allow them to carry weapons around with impunity.

See the people in this photo? They’re part of peaceful protests taking place all around America and the world. Their main objection is that police keep slaughtering black people in this country, and the death of George Floyd under the pressure-packed knee of a Minneapolis policemen generated legitimate public protests.

To review, the armed militias have had quite a bit to say lately, and plenty of latitude to say it. A group of them descended on the Michigan State Capitol, stormed the legislature and started making demands that restrictions on public access related to the Coronavirus pandemic be removed. One of them placed an effigy of the female governor as if she’d been hanged. Meanwhile, Kentucky Libertarian Rand Paul is blocking an anti-lynching bill even in the wake of the documented asphyxiation––a lynching in public––of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Some of this stuff you just can’t make up.

Trump excuses and welcomes brutality

The President of the United States of America excuses all these affronts to true justice because, he maintains, “People are angry.” That was also his excuse for the “good people” who assaulted activists during the removal of a Confederate statue somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line.

During his manic attempt to restore order in the face of recent protests, the President met with leaders of the American military to request that 10,000 active troops be deployed as a “domination” force against peaceful protestors. That request was made shortly after a personal call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, also known as a strongman with a vicious bent for punishing his own citizens.

Conflation patrols

Trump’s defenders claim he was only trying to stop people taking advantage of civil unrest to loot storefronts. The two groups had entirely different motives, but Trump refuses to make that distinction. He conflated them as one, and then grandly proved that point by shoving aside peaceful demonstrators to descend on a Washington church where he stood with a Bible in his hand as if he owned the place.

Trump clearly thinks he owns everything, but especially the military. Everything the man has done, and all his claims to executive authority, are earnest expressions that he believes he owns the entire nation. His demeanor is one of a slavedriver demand response to whatever he chooses to impose. The nation is his plantation, you see. That is why he steals funds from the military to build his border wall. It is also why he sought to force Ukraine’s President to make up lies about Vice President Joe Biden. Trump’s version of political negotiation is to cheat or coerce the system until it does his will.

The gesture out front of the church with the Bible in his hand was particularly disturbing because it interpolated Christianity with the brand of fascism it took to place himself in that position. But perhaps that’s not such a big stretch. It was Adolf Hitler that once stated, “We are not doing anything to the Jews that Christians have not been doing for 1500 years.” Some traditions stick around. Others just come back in other forms.

Fortunately the nation’s generals did prevent Trump from sending tanks into the fray in Washington. Yet frustrated by the lack of force he could employ, he instead commissioned Attorney General William Barr to rally a group of mercenary prison guards to station themselves around the Lincoln Memorial.

Displays of fascist “domination” such as these align directly with the overwrought militia types that took over the Michigan state capitol. Their end goal, it seems, is to start a Civil War under the term Boogaloo to get what they want. That is a world free from restrictions on their racial prejudice and aggressive victimhood. They also want their firearm toys. It’s a compensatory thing.

That’s no different than the priorities of Donald Trump. Together these politicized nasties represent a Neo-Confederacy threatening the existence of the Union as we have long known it. That explains why armed militias of many types are being seen more frequently across America. Trump has no intention of giving up control of this nation’s armed forces or its resources, which he loves to dole out to his fawning loyalists. To accomplish this mission he welcomes even mercenary support as long as they share his goal of not letting anyone challenge him. Both the thugs in Boogaloo outfits and the Evangelicals cozying up to Trump share that in common: a opportunity to align themselves with such power. Fuck Jesus, and let’s go play with guns.

There is a third quasi-military faction involved in this mess. We’re already seeing the results of the vigilante confederate mindset, with dispassionately misguided police forces knocking a 75-year-old men to the ground because they can. If that’s how they treat the elderly, think of the brain-crushing they’ve got planned for youthful protestors full with energy and purpose. The bloodshed could be awful to behold.

Fascism rules

Trump’s supporters are keen to defend him. “This is not Nazi Germany,” they say. “He’s only trying to protect the nation from Antifa and looters.” Yet we’ll repeat: that claim aggressively ignores the fact that armed militias are being casually permitted to run wild and privately commissioned prison guards are hired to impose martial law in the nation’s capitol. And the police keep killing people.

This may not be Nazi Germany, but neither is it the United States of America. But perhaps this is what Trump meant all along by his slogan Make America Great Again. After all, Germany enjoyed a few great years before the world sent Hitler into his private bunker with a pistol and a getaway plan of taking his own life rather than having to face a tribunal for the deaths of millions of people. Trump’s Coronavirus body count is only up to 113,000 at this moment, but if he’d been allowed to carry on with his selfish plan of ignoring the threat, it is estimated that 2,000,000 may have died.

The scary truth of that last statement is that Trump’s flaxenly selfish response to the Covid-19 epidemic was only changed because he realized that people dying in droves might hurt his chances for re-election. Once again, he did not act out of conscience, but for selfish political reasons.

Hideouts

Illustration by Christopher Cudworth

In something of a symbolic coup, Trump is now hiding behind 13-foot-tall fences installed around the White House. For a while at least, he was even hunkered down in a bunker out of fear that his life was at risk.

Yet he’s refused to wear a mask in public because he thinks it would make him look ridiculous. That’s a bit like that evil clown John Wayne Gacy complaining that his lipstick is smeared. And speaking of clowns, Trump shrieks like a carnival barker behind the podium of Twitter. He raves about how the game isn’t fair and that he’s a victim of all sorts of conspiracies against him, especially by Democrats, but some Republicans too.

Yet somehow white evangelicals line up and clamor for his words. There are women who worship and fawn and faint over Trump and his manhood. His business buddies just want to grab what they can before the economic collapse comes along. And “First Lady” Melania Trump keeps a purse and small suitcase packed and ready in case the whole carnival needs to take off for Argentina.

A firsthand look at the twisted world of police prejudice

/ Christopher Cudworth / Leave a comment

As manager of a sports complex in the town where I lived, my duties were to open up every night at 6:00 pm to allow the public to use the indoor track, basketball, and volleyball courts in a facility attached to the high school. It wasn’t strictly a membership club or anything like that, but there were discount passes available. The entire purpose was to return some value to the community for the tax dollars used to create that building for the school district.

So it was a popular facility for many reasons. On weekends, there were indoor soccer games from 9 am to 5 pm. That was the real moneymaker for the building.

But on weekdays, there were between 100-150 runners and walkers coming through the doors at night. I learned most of their names and still see some of them out in the community decades later. Along with serious runners counting laps, and logging miles on cold winter nights, heart patients were recuperating from surgeries, mothers losing weight after babies and people talking through life’s problems as they circled the oval for 30-60 minutes.

Then there were the basketball players. As a longtime hoopster, I occasionally joined the games on nights when my staff had things in order. It was an excellent way to get to know the players and frankly, earn a bit of credibility among them. We had ballplayers from all over the Fox Valley show up for competitive basketball games. There were politics involved with who wound up on what team. My floor supervisor had a system of first-come, first-serve, but the guys had all figured out how to scam that and wind up on powerful teams that dominated the floor. So instead of winner-take-all every night, we instituted a two-game winner, then you sit system so that more players could see action.

It was a diverse population. We had guys from either end of the Fox Valley, cities such as Elgin and Aurora, two of the larger urban centers in northern Illinois. One night I joined a game that involved nine black players and me. I wound up guarding a small guy named Doc. On the first time down the floor Doc faked right to take me to the baseline and then literally jumped over my shoulder to dunk the ball. The entire place erupted in laughter. I’d been had. Doc didn’t look like much with his wire-rimmed glasses and closely shaved head. But the guy could sky.

From then on, I played him far more closely, and we had a good game all around. Our team lost, however, and I was walking back to the office after shaking hands when my assistant game to meet me at the door and said, “We have a problem. We got robbed.”

I looked at the office, but that wasn’t where the robbery occurred. Instead, there was a team of guys who scouted out the locker room and posted a guard at the door while one of them went locker-to-locker snapping locks with a bolt cutter. They cleaned out wallets and valuables that they could find and were out of there in five minutes.

Of course, we immediately called the police. The officer who showed up was a couple of years ahead of me in high school. His younger brother was a high jumper on the track team with me. The officer was strong and tall, about 6’3″ and probably 190 at least.

The thing that struck me on his arrival was the nightstick he carried in his right hand. He’d already unleashed it from his belt. Recognizing me instantly, he came straight over and made it clear that he was ready to bust heads if necessary. Then he looked around, and I was instantly nervous about his intentions. He muttered something that could only be construed as a racist comment about the robbers, mentioning as well that he thought the “black” problem at the facility was what caused it all to happen.

The guys playing basketball clearly were not involved directly in the robbery. I told him so. “I know these guys,” I told him, using his name for emphasis. “This was someone else entirely. We don’t even know for sure what race they were.”

Our employees had seen people coming in well after the usual rush to sign up for games. They had paid for admission, which was $5.00 per night without a pass. So there was an inferred possibility that the guys who showed up later were involved in the robbery.

That did not satisfy my policeman friend. He took some notes after putting his nightstick back on his person and then left.

A week or so later, I received a note from the athletic director that policies might be changing for the facility. “It may be restricted to residents only,” I was told. Immediately I protested. “This was an isolated incident,” I insisted. “We can keep a better eye on the locker rooms and won’t have a problem.”

My staff and I were concerned about the people who used that facility, and appreciated it. I had even worked out a deal for a father with an energetic batch of children that he brought to the facility each week to let them run on the track. I’d charge him two admissions, and six of his family members would come in. Several years later, those children grew into young adults and won many state championships in track and field. In my estimation, the facility did not lose money on that proposition. It gained value for society, and for that family.

Was it special treatment? That father and his children were black. Would I have done something similar for a white father and his children? I’m not sure. We all have to make judgment calls on those decisions in life. Just like the father I helped out, it would take a little conversation to figure out the right and wrong of the situation. Some of these calls we make are not black and white.

There’s a whole lotta world out there trying to make the right call on issues like these, and more. We have to call on our conscience to make the best decisions in the moment. I suppose I erred on the liberal side of the equation in granting a favor to that black father and his children. But what made the decision easy in my mind was the many other discussions and experiences I’d had over the years with black teammates and work associates. It didn’t take a genius to see the effects of prejudice on their lives. So I tried to compensate a little.

Perhaps a diehard conservative would decry such civil reparations as examples of liberal and unnecessary favoritism. But compared to a cop wielding a nightstick on a winter evening looking to bust heads, and that firsthand look at potential police prejudice and violence, or a policeman kneeling on the neck of a possibly innocent black man until he died, I’ll take the liberal recourse any day. And every day.

Because that’s the least we can all do.

The patent neurosis of Concealed Carry

/ Christopher Cudworth / 1 Comment

Neurosis: a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease, involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a radical loss of touch with reality.

Guns_1000Last night while listening to the Sam Roberts show on Sirius radio, the discussion centered around the latest killing of a black man by a cop in Minnesota. Roberts struggled to show respect to the nation’s police whose culture centers on protecting their own whenever a difficult choice or a public relations crisis hits an officer that has used excessive force. While discussing the issue with a New York state trooper who called into the show, Roberts stated, and I paraphrase: “You need to get the good cops to start saying they do not support this kind of behavior.”

To which the cop replied, “There were 50,000 black people stopped today, and this was the only incident of its type. The rest were all handled well and people went home.”

It should not be too difficult to see the imbalance in that arithmetic. Why are 50,000 black people per day being stopped by police? What type of profiling is going on that leads to that kind of suspicion? Doesn’t that level of interaction generate reasonable suspicion about the motivation of police, even resentment? And aren’t the odds actually in favor of the fact that something bad is eventually going to happen when that many people are essentially being haggled every day?

Acceleration

From a broken tail light to a murder. That’s how one of these police interventions just turned out. And the reason? That’s simple too. Cops are afraid for their lives. The New York state trooper admitted as much. “We don’t know what’s going to happen on any traffic stop,” he intoned.

The discussion then turned to the fact that when a driver has a gun in their vehicle, it is their responsibility to inform the office right away. “At that point,” the trooper explained (again in paraphrase)  “it is the responsibility of the Concealed Carry citizen to inform the officer and turn over their weapon to the police.”

Now we can actually see how dangerous the world has become because of laws like Concealed Carry. Combined with weapons carried illegally, Concealed Carry laws have upped the ante on the presence of guns all across America.

Self defense?

Concealed Carry advocates love to cite the right to carry weapons in case of the need for self-defense. But what about our police? To those chartered with enforcing the law, Concealed Carry adds an entirely new level to the fear of being gun-whipped at a normal traffic stop. So let’s stop for a moment and think about the term Concealed Carry. That literally means you can legally hide a weapon on your person. How are police supposed to know if a gun is legally or illegally carried? If everyone has the right to hide a weapon on their person, there is no safe place in America.

Concealed Carry has created an additional layer of legal burden and a threat to civil order on all of society. Which makes it quite ironic the law is so favored by conservatives, who purportedly hate regulations of any kind. Yet the unintended consequence of Concealed Carry is that law enforcement is now trapped in a situation where the power balance is exceedingly in the public’s favor. Concealed Carry has forced an entirely new layer of inquiry to every police stop in the country. But the real fact is even more disturbing: The police are literally outgunned, outmanned and out of control all across the nation.

Militarization

In response, the police have had to militarize to counteract the number of weapons now owned by Americans legally and illegally. They have also been forced to change their culture to one of patent aggression. That’s just to save their own lives. That’s why cops throw people to the ground, cuff them automatically or use tasers to subdue those who question their arrest. If you stood at risk of being shot by any citizen that you stop, wouldn’t you do the same thing?

The reason why Concealed Carry was passed, and why there are now more guns than citizens in the United States, is that the patent neurosis of gun ownership has been promoted in America by a selfish and well-funded minority that purposely confuses fear with freedom. The reason for that approach is that fostering fear is a highly profitable venture for gun manufacturers and politicians who get elected by backing the self-interest of those who chose to live in fear. The net result is that attitude has been forced on American society, which has succumbed to the collective neurosis with Concealed Carry laws. Just like slavery which was once a legal and supported aspect of American society, Concealed Carry is sold as beneficial to society and something the nation cannot do without. As a result, we are all slaves to the gun industry and its henchman.

But let’s step back and take a rational look at this dynamic that the idea that people have to carry weapons in order to enjoy the basic rights of American citizenship. That is plainly neurotic, and possibly manic. We thus live in a bipolar society created by those who are depressed by the idea of not having enough weapons. Yet there are more guns than people in the United States. Neurotic.

Mental illness

One of the excuses given for mass shootings by gun lobbyists is that most are committed by people that are mentally ill. Yet mental illness can be manifested in many ways. The structure of a fear-based society dependent on guns is a reflection of a collective neurosis. We know this because other societies in the world are able to function without such proliferation of guns. And in societies such as Australia where weapons such as assault rifles have been banned, the number of mass shootings has been greatly reduced. That leaves America standing alone in a global society, violent as a crazed and jealous cousin at a family reunion.

We also know there is mental illness afoot when gun advocates refuse any responsibility for the crimes perpetrated by other gun owners. Where is the remorse for those gunned down by police when those attacked are clearly innocent? Instead, gun proponents hide behind the shock of the event and say, “It’s too soon to talk about gun control in the wake of this tragedy. We need time to process and let cooler heads prevail.”

But now the shootings simply overlap from week to week and even day to day. Last night in Dallas, Texas, snipers opened fire on Dallas police and killed five officers in cold blood. And guns are not the problem?

Neurosis as a way of life

Organizations such as the NRA have shown no sincere commitment to this problem. Instead, they advocate even more guns as the solution to the problem.  NRA supporters speak in terms of fear to defend their position that Concealed Carry is a necessary layer of protection in America. And hidden behind those fears, but not very well, is the patent racism shown by both the police in their arrest methods and by society in blaming blacks for the majority of crime.

Yet the predominant number of mass shootings in America have been committed by neurotic and perhaps psychotic white males. The gun lobby absolutely refuses to connect its collective neurosis with the pattern of psychosis driving shooters to act on their imagined power by using weapons in the streets, at shopping malls, even public schools and theaters. But we’ll say it here: the collective neurosis of rife gun ownership simply becomes too powerful for some people to resist. They can kill easily using guns, and guns are easy to obtain, so they go do it. There’s nothing magical about that. The neurosis of our gun mentality creates a straight line equation.

Invented for killing

Guns were invented for killing. There is no getting around that fact. They would never have been invented had it not been the need to kill more efficiently in war. That history, and the collective neurosis that leads to all violent wars, is the reason why America is at war with itself.

“But I’m not neurotic!” you can hear the panicked voices of so-called law-abiding gun owners complain. And that may be true, to an extent. Yet the collective neurosis that led to Concealed Carry laws across the nation affects us all. It is plainly paranoid to need to carry a weapon around with you. It’s a sign of social stress when a person cannot deal with society on anything but defensively violent terms.

Fear rules

Mix that with racist fears, or fear of “the other” of any kind, and it is clear that America’s phobia about being gunless is a mental disorder of a national kind. The patent neurosis of Concealed Carry is an admission that fear rules. It is a symptom of an addiction to the idea that vigilante justice is heroic, and that the national character of America is formed through violence, and that shooting another person is a solution to a problem.

It is not. Instead, the neurosis of Concealed Carry reveals the fact that gun owners are, without exception, responsible for 1) the fear of cops both within the force and 2) fear of the cops from the citizenry at large. It’s a repeating cycle of a fearfully militarized society. In other words, a patent neurosis.

Fear creates war, which is why more Americans have died from gun violence (both by force and self-inflicted) than all the American soldiers ever killed in foreign wars. That, we must admit, is a sign of a neurosis that must be cured. Because too many of us are dying while trying to figure it all out.

Perhaps if we treat the nation’s gun obsession as a collective mental illness, we’ll be better able to assess its impact on society. That way we can get to the reasons why so many people feel so afraid in a nation that is supposed to stand for freedom, but instead has created a prison of its own paranoia.