The Violence Isn't Complicated: Our Culture Embraces It
The Whole Damn Culture Needs To Shift - Not Just Law Enforcement
Since Donald Trump officially escalator-ed onto the political scene in 2015, toxic masculinity, racial bias, and threats of violence have all shot up up in this country — but the violence isn’t new.
The truth is that we’re living in a country and a culture that embrace violence; especially against certain groups. The recently refurbished, re-embraced toxic masculinity, activated racial bias, bigotry, misogyny, and general embrace of violence by Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd isn’t the reason the five cops beat the life out of Tyre Nichols in Memphis in January, though.
Why they did is likely plain old old-school old-as-humanity men-are-dangerous stuff… mixed in with white supremacy, colonialism, racial bias, and the outdated yet still intact US police state parts that were engineered in colonial days to keep slaves in line and to hunt them down if they got away. US police state parts that were engineered to support companies but not workers in company towns; back in the era of the robber barons in the late 1800s. And so on.
I don’t bring up the idea of a “US police state” very often, because I think it’s outdated and not how we should be running law enforcement these days. But just because I — and millions of others — think it’s outdated doesn’t mean that some law enforcement doesn’t still run that way these days.
It’s pretty pitiful. Nature red in tooth and claw, and all that. Violence for the sake of violence… and for fear. To terrorize certain segments of the populace for some theoretical ends — but certainly not in service of overall public safety. It’s power and control held by those with the physical power, state-sanctioned guns, and the other tools of the state.
We’re supposed to have evolved beyond that, as a democracy. A democracy is supposed to distribute power; to enable the masses to share more of it. The government of a democracy is supposed to protect all of its citizens — not just those with privilege.
This outdated-yet-thriving police state BS is like something from the 19th century… or up to the middle of the 20th.
Only it never went away. We know that because the news stories and data showing black Americans getting disproportionately pulled over, targeted, shot, beat up, and killed by law enforcement is persistent. It’s always there. It’s a fact of life in the US.
I’m not saying anything a hundred thousand others haven’t said… yet here we are. It persists.
In the especially horrendous, dehumanizing recent story out of Memphis… people are looking for some explanation other than the obvious: these men were trained to be violent, and to take their anger out on certain types of citizens they were actually supposed to be protecting.
It’s too horrendous to believe that our systems create and encourage this kind of policing, yet they did.
Looking for other excuses for why this happened in Memphis keeps us from seeing the hard truth.
It keeps us from seeing the worst parts of our humanity, too: brutality, indifference, cruelty, irrationality, gaslighting, manufactured excuses for violence, a total lack of empathy, sadism, racism, classism, and the list goes on.
People can be really, really, really horrible. They can be cruel and dangerous. Men especially so. No, #NotAllMen, but we need to be honest about how dangerous men can be as the generally larger and stronger of the genders. It’s a silent truth up in this country and on this planet. Women everywhere have stories of horrors done by men. Oppressed people everywhere do, too.
We shouldn’t foster systems, training, rules, and units that bring out the worst in men; the worst in humans.
We could be creating systems, training, rules, and units that bring out the best in everyone — even while protecting public safety. That’s not what we’re doing in so many places. Why isn’t that the goal?
Why is it that law enforcement training and culture so often “other” the people the cops are going after? Why is it that law enforcement training and culture uses insults based in misogyny, bigotry, and racism?
Why is it that anger, ego, and rage are leveraged as law enforcement tools rather than mitigated, and de-escalated from?
I would argue that we’re not going to get there in law enforcement nationwide until we un-muck the toxic masculinity, hate, bigotry, racism, misogyny, and all the other bias BS from the overall culture.
When will that happen? Maybe never.
Could it get way better though? Hell yes.
Are we seriously trying very hard to do it? No.
We’re not trying to un-muck law enforcement at scale and nationwide any more than we’re trying to un-muck any other big, wicked problem up in this country.
We’re not trying to un-muck our overall culture, either. It’s actually going the other way right now… continuing to escalate and radicalize. There is no disarming, diffusing, de-fusing force just yet. There could be, but it’s not here yet.
We’ve not been solving big problems together collectively for a long time now — arguably since the post-9/11 years. We’ve gotten into a deadlock that’s held since the Tea Party came onto the scene… and now that same political party is heavily anchored in and happily embracing toxic masculinity, bigotry, misogyny, and racial bias.
How do we evolve law enforcement or our culture when this is the situation?
Republicans are certainly not well-positioned to evolve law enforcement; since they describe an insurrection and coup attempt as a nice day of tourism; and since their own adherents beat police officers on the scene there with thin-blue-line pro-police flags and flagpoles. Republicans have voted against investigations into January 6th, lied about it, and obfuscated. They’ve refused commendations for officers involved in defending the US Capitol. They’ve refused additional funding for more capacity and more officers for capitol building security.
And that’s all just for the facility they work in — why on earth would we think they’d support evolving law enforcement?
Former Congresswoman, US Senate Candidate, and police chief Val Demings has said since the video from Memphis PD was released Friday that law enforcement around the country will likely need to evolve itself, as the likelihood of a national overhaul is unlikely anytime soon.
I think she’s right… and I know that’s a lot of how law enforcement has evolved up until now. There are good agencies, good police chiefs, good training programs, and good cops out there. I know this from years of post-9/11 work with first responders; especially with police and fire people. There are some excellent leaders and officers out there… but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some really bad cops too.
Does it matter if there are “good cops” if the toxic law enforcement culture persists? If ego and a need to fit in with cop culture overrides speaking up for citizens when other cops are in the process of killing or endangering those citizens right in front of the “good cops?”
How do we make taking care of humans the dominant thing in our culture? How does that become the thing that overrides the other things?
It could. Lots of us think that it already does, or should — but there is so much evidence to the contrary. Just look at the pushback on mitigating covid spread to see how much people aren’t willing to sacrifice for the greater good to keep other vulnerable humans safe.
We have to shift the culture.
We can shift the culture.
We can make taking care of humans the cool thing.
It would help if we tried. If we started.
We could go after evolving our culture. I think we need to do more with vision, values, and moral courage. I think we need to shift those values and morals as part of evolving our culture. I think we need to advocate more fiercelly for all that for it — in all kinds of ways.
We can push our local law enforcement to evolve, too. We can do more with that. We can speak with and pressure the elected officials that oversee local law enforcement — or law enforcement themselves when they run for office. We can get up to speed on what’s going on, we can find other groups that are already working in these areas, we can create alliances for pressure, and we can work with agencies and departments to help reimagine law enforcement where we live. And then we can help make sure it actually changes, evolves, and transforms.
We have options for pressure and change… even with the deadlock, paralysis, and extremism present at the national level.
Will we use them?
Join us in this work here at Shift the Country. We’re set up to get into exactly this kind of stuff. Lots of other groups are working on different yet related pieces. How do we find those and weave all of this stuff together for more coherent and transformative change? That’s what we plan to figure out — together, with our volunteers, with the alliances we build, and with the ruckus we raise.
Let’s go big. We can. Spread the word.
All that you write about the whole damn culture needing to shift is absolutely spot on. And...there is a huge imperative for law enforcement to lead the way. I'll share a relatively minor anecdote--from the early 1970s. One of my first jobs as a very young woman was working as a clerk in the police department. The economy was in recession. I needed a job. The federal government sponsored an employment program--The Comprehensive Education and Training Act (CETA) program; among the program's placements were jobs in the public sector. I took a test, passed it, qualified--and the first opening that came up was in the police department. I accepted it with a bit of trepidation...especially when I found I would be working in the Vice and Narcotics Division! There were two squads of detectives, and I and another clerk handled their clerical functions--typing arrest reports, filing (paper!) documents, handling written correspondence, etc. These guys--and they were all guys except for one female in the Vice Section--couldn't have been nicer or more deferential to me and the other clerk. Many of them were old enough to be my father, and they included a Black sergeant. All treated me respectfully, and I would have described them as "nice men," until one day...they had arrested and were interrogating an older Black man on a drug possession charge; it was unusual for me to be there --the only time I can remember being present--while they had someone in custody. And I observed their interrogation. They humiliated the person they arrested. They made him take his false teeth out of his mouth and set them on the desk. They made him remove his shoes. They badgered him. They didn't hit him or rough him up, but they intimidated him psychologically. This wasn't a dealer; in the parlance, he was a "junkie." I didn't understand whatever it was they were trying to accomplish, other than to humiliate the man. Remember, these were the "nice guys." I know this is a single example, but it changed my attitude about cops. There is something about cop culture. When they are in a group, even the "nice guys" can change, turn into not nice guys. My perception of them changed, soured--I figured out a way to get a transfer out of the police department. And the ugly taste of this experience has remained in my mouth. In the few encounters I have had with police officers over the years since then, I have always reflected on this encounter. Although all the officers have treated me respectfully, I know that, just under the surface, there could be a very different individual who under different circumstances could abuse me or anyone else because.they.can.and.usually.get.away.with.it.