The Police and Military Represent a Failure of Civilization

If you’ve been thinking of sponsoring me, why not do so today :) Upgrade at 30% offYesterday, every other post was a message to veterans thanking them for their service. I have nothing against veterans. My heart goes out to the underpaid men and women in our society who are put in harm’s way by our irresponsible politicians. The military budget is the largest in the world, but little of that money goes to the individuals who are asked to make the ultimate sacrifice to maintain the mechanism of war.“Thank you for your service,” always stops short of proposing a tax code that would ensure soldiers actually got the pay and care they deserve. The truth is, our insincere reverence for the military is deployed to protect the grift of the military-industrial complex. They’ve got a blank check, and there are fat cats throughout the country who see the service of others as just another means to gather up riches for themselves.But then I got digging into the numbers a little more and I discovered something strange. We revere the police and the military because it’s a high-risk occupation. People love to lecture us to thank these groups because they die to, “protect the rights we all enjoy.”According to this source, around 100 police officers die in the line of duty every year.According to this source, around 1,000 active duty members of the military die each year.In 2021, over 2,500 children died due to firearm-related deaths. These deaths represent the sacrifice of human life our society is happy to endure because it refuses to “infringe” on gun rights. More than twice as many children die every year “in service to our rights” than members of the military and the police combined.Think about that the next time you kiss your child on the forehead and send her off to school. Think about it every time you see a child. Maybe, instead of going up to a police officer or a soldier, you should thank American children “for their service.” Our innocent children are forced to bleed more than anyone to “protect our rights.” They receive no recognition, and they’re denied any choice in whether they should face the danger our society imposes upon them.“We need protection because human beings are inherently evil!”I remember sitting with my uncle years ago and watching his face contort into a smirk as he muttered that human beings have abused each other throughout history and that they’re never going to stop. My uncle is a moderately wealthy man, and I think he likes to believe that human beings are “bad” to justify the things he did to accrue a fortune.In response to my writing, I often encounter the assumption that human beings are inclined to lie, cheat, and steal. I’m called “foolish” and “naive” for seeing the best in people.Well, maybe I am.But isn’t there also a cost in assuming that everyone is awful? More importantly, do you really have the proof that this is true? Has there been a study? Perhaps you’re placing an obstinate faith in a baseless narrative that’s designed to justify and perpetuate the abuses of evil people.People do bad things, sure. We should be asking ourselves why they do bad things. We shouldn’t assume the answer is obvious or easy.My hypothesis is that all wealthy and powerful people are bad, and then they project their evil onto the people they exploit in order to justify themselves. In that scenario, evil people are the minority, but they have a disproportionate amount of power.“If I don’t do it, somebody else will…”If you walk around with uncharitable beliefs informing your decisions, you can talk yourself into behavior that goes against your better nature.Consider finding a wallet in the street. Your initial response might be, “I’ll leave it, perhaps the owner might come back.”After a moment, you discard that idea because, “Well, the next person who comes along is likely to just take it… so I might as well take it now.”In this example, you end up talking yourself into doing something uncharitable because of your baseless assumptions about all of humanity.We too often push the message that “human beings are awful” but we fail to recognize the cost associated with believing that. What if you’d been walking around thinking “All human beings are good.” In that case, you wouldn’t have an argument to justify your own poor behavior.On two different occasions, I’ve picked up wallets because I was worried about what the next person would do. In both of those cases, I returned the wallets to their owners. The simple truth that needs greater emphasis in our society is that it doesn’t matter what other people might or might not do. You’re responsible for your own actions, and you have a responsibility to treat your fellow human beings with appropriate grace, care, and dignity.“We need the police and the military for protection!”Do we?The United States justifies its obscene military budget because of fears over international terrorism. However, how many Americans do you think are killed in terrorist attacks every year? You might be surprised to discover that from 2004 to 2013, it was 80. That’s not 80 per year, that’s 80 total throughout that time frame.People will make the argument, “Well, the number is low because our military is doing such a great job.” Yes, that is a hypothesis, but it’s just as wrong to assume that’s true as it is to assume human beings are “inherently evil.”You could just as easily assume that the number of deaths would drop to zero if we spent no money on the military. You have no more information to believe that than you do to think the number will increase. You don’t have real evidence to support your thinking either way, so you shouldn’t jump to conclusions.Making malicious and unsubstantiated general assumptions about human beings is a mechanism that serves no purpose other than to justify oppression and abuse. We have no ability to look into souls and determine whether or not a person is “good” or “evil.”We have to stop maintaining the cruel social assumptions that are based on the lie that we understand basic human nature.Crime is a consequence of an unjust societyCrime rates are always used as a political tool in the United States. Politicians get elected based on the promise that they will be “hard on crime.”What we never discuss is how we might better alleviate the suffering of marginalized people within our community. Politicians say that “all lives matter,” but then they refuse to stand by policies that might actually help anyone.They insist that people struggle because they’re “lazy” and not because the system is rigged in such a way that it makes suffering inevitable and success impossible.It’s not fair to say that “human beings are evil” but it’s accurate to say that “human beings are animals.” Animals don’t lie down and die when faced with an immoral social code. If a society decides that one group of people has to endure restricted access to food or potable water, a rational society should be able to predict the outcome.People are going to do whatever it takes to survive. Survival isn’t a crime. True crime is committed by those who maintain an unjust system that imposes pain and death upon the innocent.If a person gets hungry enough, she will steal food to survive. The crime isn’t the theft of food, the crime is that the society became so corrupt that the theft was necessary. The crime is denying food to those who need it.The United States of America looks at crime rates, but we can’t always default to further funding authoritarianism as a solution. That doesn’t work. No matter how many times you hit somebody, they’ll still do whatever they can to survive. Instead of paying for the police and paying for the military, let’s invest in greater social equality.In a fair and just society that values human life, crime isn’t an issue.Let‘s save our reverence for human lifeIntellectually, we know that war represents a complete failure of civilization. We glorify war far too often. Part of the process of glorifying war is our insistence that we must regard the military-industrial complex with absolute reverence.Because we’re constantly saying, “Thank you for your service,” we never pause to think that there might be a more humanitarian way to spend those funds.If your school district employs a school resources officer, it means there are fewer teachers. That means your child is in a classroom with more students. As you increase the number of students in a classroom, you decrease the educational experience. It creates more behavioral issues. More behavioral issues lead to the school hiring more officers.More funding for the police and the military is the opposite of a solution. The inclination to embrace authoritarianism makes things worse. In the end, the innocent are always forced to bear the burden of an unjust society.We see it now. Firearms are the leading cause of death for our children. They’re dying because we’re irresponsible about our laws. Think about that the next time somebody thanks a soldier or police officer for protecting our rights. They aren’t protecting your rights, your children are.The shame of America is that we force our children to bear that burden, and we don’t even have the decency to recognize the truth.We should tolerate the need for the police and the military, but the only thing that deserves reverence is human life.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! 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