126) All Cops Are Not (Necessarily) Bastards: The Inescapability of Hypocrisy for Inherently Flawed and Limited Humans
To be honest, I don’t know quite what to do with this whole thing. I still judge the police, mostly, for their aggressiveness, too-frequent callousness and lack of empathy, and for the oh-so-painfully-slow pace of the institution evolving in a progressive direction. I still judge the many, many officers I have witnessed engage in unnecessary violence at peaceful protests. I still will raise my children to avoid calling the cops for most situations involving vulnerable people, based on my conviction that the police will likely make the situation worse. I still will advocate for and attend protests and sign petitions calling for police reform and demilitarizing them and holding public inquiries for police violence and redistributing a big chunk of their budgets to community-level organizations, mental health workers, and the like. But….
16) Murdering terrorism
The “terrorism” language, which is directly traceable in its modern incarnation to George Dubya Bush after 9/11, reinforces a particular way of thinking. Geoff Lakoff calls it “Strong Daddy”, referring to a centralist, patriarchal, hierarchical way of organizing power in families, traditionally speaking. The entire rhetorical structure that comes from Strong Daddy ways of thinking, makes it easier to contemplate certain courses of action (e.g., war) rather than other courses of action (e.g., community empowerment, basic income and housing plans, ecological restoration, permaculture and local-scale farming projects). Basically, “terrorism” leads to “war” in people’s minds.