THE POWER OF MISINFORMATION TO HARM

by Ruth A. Sheets

NPR’s Morning Edition again presented a report about the “urban-rural divide.”  The implication is that everyone except Donald Trump has forgotten the rural people.  Only Republicans have done anything for those folks.  Even Democrats are now ruminating over this supposed fact. 

Where does this set of beliefs come from?  Well, first of all, it does not come from reality.  Donald Trump has expressed distaste for his supporters.  He installed tariffs against China claiming China would pay, but it was the rural farmers who mostly paid, then he used taxpayer money, mostly contributed by those urban people he hates, to pay off those farmers so they would vote for him, a bribe, but the message he presented to rural America in their distress was that he is the only one who cares about them and they believed. 

Rural people, over time have been forced to embrace coal mining and oil and gas extraction.  These are not healthy, even deadly occupations, but they paid well over the past 50 years or so.  Due to global warming, those occupations are going away.  Hilary Clinton proposed that those losing their jobs due to the move to renewables would receive government assistance to develop new jobs and skills.  She in no way spoke disparagingly about those workers, but the Republican message, Clinton will take away your jobs and leave you with nothing, resonated.  That message got out, and I heard it over and over on mainstream media as well as in political ads.  Why?  It wasn’t true but it was a powerful message of supposed discrimination and fed their feeling of being abused by the city folk.

How is it Democrats can’t get out the message that most of the progress made in and for rural communities has come from programs proposed and passed by Democrats?  Electrification, farm subsidies, SNAP, health care, and so much more were Democratic programs, and, the Democrats have proposals out there to get good internet service to every American.   That is among the programs Mitch McConnell, the man who would be president has blocked without a hearing or vote in the Senate.  How is it Republicans like McConnell, from rural areas are not held responsible for that? 

The rural interviewees keep claiming Donald Trump is their hope.  On what do they base that?  None of the interviewers ever ask.  Perhaps if they do, the response is left on the “cutting-room floor.” Then the interviewees chosen are from the “white states.”  These are the states Sarah Palin claimed were the “real Americans.”  Well, perhaps so.  They are white.  They are rural or small town.  They are uninformed.  They are easily misled.  They can’t even name one thing Trump did for them besides the bail-out welfare check Trump gave them to win their votes.  They can’t even acknowledge that it was Trump who caused the hardship that brought down their businesses in the first place.

How is it that NPR, the most balanced of the news media is OK with pumping out this nonsense with no follow-up.  It is the thing, to interview Trump supporters as though there is something more we can learn from them.  I think we have learned all we can.  They aren’t interested in truth.  They seem to care only for the information that tells them over and over they have been mistreated, ignored, while those awful city people (code for Black people) are getting everything. 

They choose to “stand up for their rights” by not wearing masks or social distancing while their hospitals (the few that there are) are filling up and having to pass their sick neighbors on to cities for care.  The lack of hospitals is not a Democratic thing either.  These rural citizens are also not eager to consider getting a vaccine for COVID-19 because it comes from cities or some other such nonsense. 

Factory owners in rural and small town areas care little for the health of their workers because that is forcing regulations on them that they should not have to follow; it gets in the way of their profit or whatever.  Where is the outrage among rural communities related to this abuse of their people?  The Democrats did not do this.  It is the Trump administration that has been working very hard to ditch regulations employers don’t like no matter the impact on people’s health and lives.

I used to be one of those liberals who believe truth could persuade anyone to do the right thing.  I no longer believe that.   What I do believe is that we need to put the truth out there, stand for the right, and keep trying, but when I hear those rural white people whining that they have it worse than anyone else and that Democrats are the cause, I shrug and acknowledge I can persuade them of nothing.  I don’t have the bluster and ability to lie and misinform as Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Laura Ingram, Donald Trump, and the rest of Republicandom do, and I don’t want to.  If the rural people continue in their foolish cleaving to lies, disinformation (deliberately put out there to generate chaos and distrust), and conspiracy theories, I can’t stop them, but I don’t have to listen.  For my own mental health, I will turn off the radio every time one of those ridiculous interviews comes along, and they happen several times a week, and have for nearly five years. 

The racism and misogyny that  put people into a place where they would choose misinformation over thinking can only be cured by the misinformed denying THEMSELVES of the poison that is crippling their communities, their families, their lives.  I am OK with providing aid when it’s needed, but I just don’t need to be caught up in hearing about their chosen lack of vision. 

I used to want to blame teachers for the stifled condition of deliberately misinformed people, but I suspect their history and science books were similar enough to mine, that is if they attended public schools.  They learned about the scientific method.  They read some of the good and bad parts of U.S. history.  They learned to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  They mostly know how to read (unless perhaps they have a disability).  There is no excuse.  If they wanted the truth, they could find it, but the misinformers have found entry points and keep plugging in, feeding dissatisfaction and hatred like electric current.  The negative emotions produced seem real and righteous but are manufactured by those who manipulate folks for their own often nefarious purposes.

I don’t want to imply that urban and suburban people have a lock on truth.  We don’t, but we, at least some of the time, try to look for it, by choice. 

So, all of us need to stand against the deliberate misinformation (disinformation) and promote what is true as much as we can and try to avoid the poison of misinformation either giving or receiving it.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND

by Ruth A. Sheets

There are a lot of things I don’t understand:  how most things work, how the universe is organized, why I like certain books and don’t like others, etc.  These days, however,  most of my non-understanding involves politics.  Politics has come to consume our nation and nearly everything has become politicized.  OK, everything might always have been political, but lately, we have it smeared in our faces so we can’t miss it. 

We are reminded every day there are two sides to each story and they must be of equal value because the two sides are covered with near equal intensity, or were until Donald Trump was defeated in the November 3^rd election.  While Trump is president, the media have felt obligated to report on nearly everything Trump tweets or yells at his constant rallies even if they didn’t reproduce those tirades word for word.  Those word for word accounts were always available somewhere that people could check out in case there was doubt the media had adequately covered Trump for his supporters and enablers.  How is it people don’t get it that there is such a thing as false equivalency?

- I don’t understand why it took so long to call a lie a lie.  From the golden escalator onward, Trump’s words were permitted to stand unchallenged until some newspapers said it might be OK to say something Trump said was false or unproven, or unsupported. Those are the words now used.  I am sorry, but falsehood does not have the same punch as “lie,” and much of what Trump tweets or yells are LIES, not “falsehoods, unproven, unsupported, etc.  Not stating the lies as lies (except occasionally on MSNBC), keeps people from seeing Trump’s claims as the lies they are.  And, according to our major newspapers, Trump has lied in public more than 22,000 times and his followers lie as much as they can get away with, for example, Lindsay Graham.

- I don’t understand how people can sacrifice their integrity and personal values to support someone who has neither.  Trump has appointed people whose task was to do their best to bring down our government so Trump and friends could pick up the pieces.  They did a pretty good job and are still diligently at it.  It is clear that during the Trump transition, folks were out there hunting down the least caring, the most racist and misogynistic, the least qualified people that could be found who would blindly support Trump and his destructive actions.  Even then, bunches of them were fired for lack of loyalty or not destroying enough.

- I don’t understand how elected officials in Congress could approve of a president who, with lots of help, committed atrocities that at any other time would demand removal from office.  In case memory is not strong after all the stuff that has been going on with the election: 

- They imposed a Muslim ban of people coming from many countries that have in the past been our allies claiming they were all terrorists.

- They separated children from their parents at the US southern border, deporting children alone or parents without their children, or just simply lost the parents or the children.

- They permitted ICE, a racist fascist organization to invade people’s homes hunting “illegals” at will, even demanding that local governments assist them, deporting people who have lived and worked here for decades, serving our economic machine with little reward.

  - They permitted foreign entities to interfere in our election to elect Donald Trump, then refused to let the American people know just how extensive the interference was.

  - They worked exceedingly hard to override or negate any achievement of the Obama administration, then claimed they had done more for Blacks and “Latinos” than any other administration, and a bunch of people believed it.

  - They disbanded the pandemic task force that could have helped protect us from the COVID- invasion, then ignored scientific input related to how to stop the pandemic, and nearly a quarter million Americans have died, yet  10 million more people voted for Trump this year than four years ago.

  - They have worked to reduce environmental regulations, I suppose, thinking it won’t impact them because they aren’t Black or Hispanic living in the at-risk pollution areas.

  - They have lied about global warming, blaming the forestry service for the California fires and Nature for the intense storms.

- I don’t understand how anyone accepts the extreme incompetence of this administration.  They know how to destroy and cause harm, but have no clue how to fix anything

- I don’t understand how the Senate of the United States, an august body, we are told, could allow a man like Mitch McConnell from a small racist state to act as president and Congress all wrapped up together.  He is a partisan, racist white guy who cares only for power and money (despite being the husband of a woman of Chinese background).  It proves racism can be pretty complex.  And, voters have decided he should stay in power just doing his obstruction thing while blaming Democrats for something (not stopping him, perhaps).

- I don’t understand how so many people can go about not wearing masks.  I get it that Donald Trump doesn’t wear one.  It might smudge his make-up, but the rest of us don’t have to worry too much about that.  This virus is deadly even though a lot of white people don’t think so.

- I don’t understand how Republicans or anyone else can stand by when police brutalize peaceful protesters, when a governor is threatened with kidnapping and death, when a gun toting out-of-town teen kills 2  protesters and wounds a third, when poll workers and vote counters’ lives are threatened, when right-wingers threaten civil war, when to many, Black Lives do not Matter, when our Supreme Court, supposedly fair and impartial, allows votes to be suppressed and others to be discarded at the will of Republican officials – I DON’T UNDERSTAND!  

- I don’t understand how white America keeps falling for the racist “Willie Horton” style political ads that tell white women they have to be scared of Black home invaders.  Those ads in the Philadelphia area got some Republicans elected, not because those Republicans were competent, honest, or anything else positive, but because white people, men in particular, were scared the Democrats would defund the police, implying no more police, so who would keep their women safe from Black predators.  More than  30 years later and those ads still work.  That is racism, just in case scared white men want to claim something else.

- I’ve read a lot about the way our brains work and how easily certain emotions can be played upon.  However, I don’t understand why we can’t stand up to our emotions, at least some of the time and know that some things are just wrong and those who perpetrate them don’t deserve to hold any kind of public office.  I want to be hopeful about the coming Biden-Harris administration, but McConnell is still in power and so, nothing will get done until our nation falls even further behind.  Then Republicans will be voted into all the highest positions again, maybe, even Trump, and we will continue our decline until global warming takes us all out.  Democrats get about  2 weeks to fix the mess Republicans took more than  4 years to make.  It was like that in 2009 when Obama took office.  He didn’t even get the 2 weeks to try to fix the worst recession since the Great Depression and end 2 wars George W. Bush had started.  It is amazing he got anything done with all the obstruction by Republicans even though Democrats had the majority in both houses of Congress at first. 

- I don’t understand why we Americans don’t stop the insanity and demand more of our elected personnel.  Maybe we will this time because we are facing 3 massive problems:  global warming, COVID-19, and whether truth will survive in a land where Lying And cheating have reigned in one of the political parties for nearly 50 years.  We’ll see.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “WE THE PEOPLE” AS TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION ENDS?

by Ruth A. Sheets

Nearly a week ago, it was clear Donald Trump had been defeated for a second term as president.  Six days later, he has not been able to bring himself to acknowledge this defeat nor to stop his bullying of the Republican Party and the American people in general.  Claiming all kinds of unsubstantiated voter fraud, he has stirred his base into believing Trump must be right, must know something they don’t know but have suspected, must really have won the election.

The hardest part of this lying is that it clearly does not match with what actually happened in this election.  Despite the Biden victory, Republicans made large gains in many state and local races.  So, Trump actually won?  Does that mean that those other races were losses for Republicans because those same people who voted for Biden also voted for Republicans down-ballot?  It seems logic counts for little.  It’s about what feels right, and what feels right is that Donald Trump, their beloved leader won. 

I noticed during the final month of the election season that Republican TV ads became more and more vicious.  Lies tripped out of the mouths of mostly woman narrators with their “skeptical” voices proclaiming that Democratic candidates would in various ways bring down our nation:  get rid of police so rich white women would be unprotected in their homes; would destroy the local economies in various ways; would release all criminals from prisons, and so much more.  These were all lies, but so what!  Freedom of speech allows candidates and their PACs to say on air whatever comes to their heads that can instill fear and distrust in a significant portion of the population, the base we have heard so much about.

I can’t help but wonder about this base.  Who are they and what do they stand for?  Why are they so scared of everyone and everything?  Why are they so easily triggered into decisions that are so bad for them, then defend that bad decision indefinitely?

According to Tim Lott of “the Guardian,” “Fury has become our lingua franca: because we are afraid and we are becoming more afraid, and we do not wish to admit that we are afraid. For to do so is to acknowledge that our beliefs are not as cast iron as we wish they were.”  He was referring to the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris in 2015, but I suspect this fury and fear maintain Mr. Trump’s base today too.  Trump’s enablers know this and use this knowledge to keep the anger and fear fires burning to cause as much destruction as possible while they bide their time, hoping to hijack democracy in the wake of the chaos.  

Where does this intense fear, almost terror come from?  I think it has many origins.  When all your life you are compared economically with previous generations it sets up a kind of hysteria to achieve.  We are regularly rated, as a society,  on whether our children are doing better than their parents.  Unfortunately, we have tied that almost entirely to economics.  If we are not earning more than our parents, living in houses that are bigger and better, don’t have more things than our parents, our society is failing.  Because we allow economics to be the determiner of social success, we are unable to safely weather emotionally or physically, the down times that are inevitable. 

Children living in their parents’ basements is the indicator that millennials are somehow inferior, unable to succeed.  Then, we follow with the question, whose fault is it?  Our beliefs often provide the answer.  If we are white, have a high school education, are male, and live outside cities, we say it’s the liberals’ fault.  They are “tax and spenders” who can’t balance a budget like “we the real Americans” do in our personal lives, an inaccurate comparison, but truth is not part of this, just feeling. 

 If we are people of color, live in or near cities, have a college education, we are likely to blame Republicans and conservatives who claim to value frugality while spending more even than liberals but on different priorities:  the military, corporate welfare, and drug wars and incarceration. 

These are not equivalent despite what political ads, tweets, and posts might proclaim.  The fear and fury of Mr. Trump’s base spring from a mythic past of pastures of plenty in which their forebears had enough and more because of their own hard work and frugality.  They believe their diminishing wealth and standards and having their offspring living in their basement are due to government regulations restricting what they and businesses can do.  They have ignored (or been helped to ignore) the diminishment of workers and unions, the increase of outsourcing, the absorption of small entities into huge conglomerates, the decrease of taxes paid by the wealthy and corporations. 

Why does Trump’s base do this?  It is not entirely their fault.  The Trump base is very male dominated, feeling that if a man is loud and bullying, he must be strong.  They do let a few women have some power in their circles (31 Republican women will be in Congress this coming term and a misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic woman has joined the Supreme Court), but those women must toe the line or be put back in their place.  Those women know exactly what is required, keep the fear and fury burning high and it is working.

Men like Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones pump out the testosterone along with the fear and fury and the base clings to these as their salvation from the encroachment of a world they don’t understand and are terrified of.  Mitch McConnell and his Senate obstructers get re-elected so they can continue to obstruct while blaming Democrats for nothing getting done.  These men know just how to manipulate their unnecessarily scared followers into supporting just about anything if “socialism” and Democrats” can be somehow tied to their unamerican opponents, no matter how harmful those politicians are to our nation.

It seems all of us would benefit from checking out the Preamble of our Constitution to understand the purpose of our government, perhaps to dispel some of the anger and fear.  It starts with “We the People of the United States,” not just we the Republicans/conservatives or we the Democrats and liberals.  We need to pay special attention to the following lines.

- “in order to form a more perfect union” means we are not there yet. 

- “to establish justice” not just for the ones who believe the way we do, but for everyone (are you listening Supreme and all other courts, police departments, ICE?). 

- “to insure domestic tranquility” does not mean quell protests, particularly if it means people are speaking truths we don’t like.  Trump’s base does not have to fear “Black Lives Matter,” but they do.  They don’t have to fear “defunding the police” but they do.  They don’t have to fear immigrants, but they do.  They are sure all of these groups will mar their domestic tranquility, but they won’t, most of the time.

- “to provide for the common defense” does not mean defend ourselves from people we don’t like, often our neighbors and political adversaries.  It means to defend our democracy from those who would threaten or bring it down from without and within.

- “to promote the general welfare” is not just welfare to the poor and folks among us with various disadvantages, although it is that to a great extent.  It includes improving the well-being of all Americans and trying to lessen the impacts of the fearmongering and excessive anger that keep We the People from thriving.  It is not OK for just some, with the right thoughts, beliefs, and amount of money,  to thrive.  It means we must actively promote the well-being of all.

- The last piece of the Preamble is “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”  This is probably the hardest one of all to work with because it means we can’t focus just on ourselves and what we need and want.  We need to work to insure that the opportunities we now have are expanded and will include those who come after.  Claiming climate change (global warming), is a hoax, for example, is a betrayal of our posterity and probably should be framed that way by politicians, candidates, the media, and all Americans. 

We the People are all the people.  Allowing ourselves to believe WE are the only people who really care about this nation, are the only “true” Americans is a betrayal of the ideals the founders espoused even if they could not manage to live up to them themselves. 

Right now, the many sides of our nation’s people may not yet be able to talk together but that should be our goal.  Freedom of speech is essential to our democracy, but screaming lies over the airwaves and social media is like wrongly yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre.  People are getting hurt and disenfranchised by such fire-lying and perhaps, for a time it needs to be curbed somewhat to allow our fellow citizens to recover from the fury and fear that is smothering them.  Let’s push the incoming administration under Biden and Harris, the Congress, and the Courts to honestly do their best to lead us into a new time of inclusion, caring, appreciation, and true cooperation that will let We the People survive and thrive without fury and fear.

ABORTION, THE PSEUDO-ISSUE

by Ruth Sheets

Election Day is past and many people are pleased while others are angry, ranting that Donald Trump really won except for voter fraud (which of course is not happening). It was Biden vs. Trump, the unifier vs. the misogynist, white supremacist in the words of my bias.

When I hear Donald Trump ranting against nearly everyone, I wonder how anyone supports him. But, 70 million did, just as he said 5 years ago, “I could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and I wouldn’t lose a supporter.” Unfortunately, I know he’s right. I suspect there are issues those supporters care about. It seems though, anything can be forgiven if the candidate claims to hold a particular position on an issue. The issue most prominent for moderates and liberals is human rights. The conservative issue, abortion. Nearly a quarter of a billion people have died of COVID-19 under Donald Trump’s watch, yet his supporters are not only staunchly with him, but kept many of his Congressional enablers in office. When interviewed, several Trump supporters said that Trump was against abortion. That was the issue? Really?

I understand moving toward insuring human rights for all people, but Why should something as minor as abortion be the issue? It seems to me that if women were being recognized as adults who have the capacity to make important decisions for their own lives, abortion would just be one more medical procedure to improve human life, safe, legal, and available when needed.

That is why I see abortion as a pseudo issue. It is the surface thing that can be pointed at to demonstrate one’s credentials as a good conservative, probably conservative Christian. The real issue is that women are seen by men in general as subordinates who should have only a minor place outside the home, in the "public sphere." Many men in power are scared of women because most women can do an amazing job in the work world and still raise kids and run a household, often without men. I suspect most men would be hard-pressed to do that. Now, when they attempt it, they are seen as superheroes. Men have been sure about their role and how important they are to everyone, assuming superiority to women, people of color, children, disabled persons, non-Christians. That leaves a very small "elite" group of white men who think they deserve to rule, make all decisions for the world, and be the moral police, except for themselves, of course. They can lie, cheat, do violence, plan wars and force others to fight them, and more and they want no opposition.

Women, people of color, and children often do stand up to men with varying degrees of success. A few are allowed in their circle, but only those who espouse the male majority viewpoint (Phyllis Schlafly, Kelly Ann Conway, Martha McSally, and Amy Coney Barrett, for example), the devoted surrogates.

Abortion is just one tool wielded by scared white men (and their surrogates) to keep women out of the way, too poor or wrapped up with kids they are no threat.

So, abortion is the conservative pseudo-issue. It is not enough to try to ban abortion because most women don’t have one, many conservatives oppose birth control too, and many women depend on that. That means women have no control over their reproduction. Men get their pleasure while women bear the burden and responsibility for whatever happens. It’s a weapon men have come to embrace and to force, shame, or coax many women into using against women too.

Since most religions are patriarchal, it is easy to slip anti-abortion and anti-birth control into the doctrine even if the sacred books do not mention it or give it short shrift among many dos and don’ts that today’s people mostly ignore.

Another proof of this pseudo issue status of abortion is the way pregnant women are often treated in the workplace and society in general. In many workplaces, few if any accommodations are made. Often there is no maternity leave, paid or unpaid. We push paternity leave before all women who have borne the struggle for 9 months get paid maternity leave. Then, of course, there’s the loss of wages, expensive day care, and shortened careers for women who take time to “raise” their kids at home.

The thing that amazes me most is how many women support this insanity. Misogyny is alive and well among men, but also among women. Why women are willing to accept their second-class status is unclear to me no matter how many times women have tried to explain it. The fallback for so many, “It’s God’s will.” When I point out that any mention of birth control in “scripture” is cursory, they ignore that and say “it’s what the Church teaches.” The media are on board too, constantly finding women willing to speak out against other women, making claims that are irrelevant to the discussion, but harmful to women in general. Their cry of “Right to Life” is merely a demand of forced birth. Not sure? Where are the conservative proponents of significant financial help for families after the child is born through age 18?

I find this abuse of women and our autonomy disgraceful, but until women who are more than half the population take our place in the circles of power, pseudo issues like abortion will hover over us and keep us from moving on to the important issues of saving our planet, providing food, shelter, and a decent living for everyone including children, and correcting the wrongs of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, agism, ableism, and more. There will be 31 Republican women in the House of Representatives starting in January. It will be interesting to see how they respond to the needs of women.

So, sisters and brothers of all political leanings, in the future, vote for people who do value women for more than the children they bear. See women as partners, as people who can make their own decisions about their own bodies and reproduction. Stop hiding behind abortion and birth control. We need to move on to put our focus on the real issues.

POLICE, COMMUNITY SERVANTS?

by Ruth A. Sheets

I just read a piece from the organization “Win Without War” that claims the police of the District of Columbia and other police departments are stockpiling weapons of war, probably for use against the citizens of the United States.  I don’t know personally if this stockpiling of more advanced weapons is real, but I do know they already have an armory of various types of tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, pepper sprays, and all kinds of “riot gear.”  We saw it in use back in June when Donald Trump needed a photo op at a church across from the white house.  Trump ordered the protesters driven away and the police obliged with tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray (used up close and personal) against the peaceful protesters.  Mr. Trump crossed the street and held up a Bible and smiled for the cameras, then walked back across the street. 

I wonder if Mr. Trump even noticed the smell of the tear gas and pepper spray lingering in the air.  Or, did he revel in it’s scent, believing it was righteously used against folks who don’t like him very much, and thus were worthy of whatever was used to get them out of the way?

We have come to the place where police departments can stockpile and use weapons of war, weapons that are supposedly not permitted on battlefields,  against American citizens.  It is outrageous.  I suspect this weaponization is the product of the “wars” on crime, drugs, and immigrants that politicians of the '80s and ''90s were fooled into believing were necessary and so made real.  Sadly, the victims of these “wars” were predominantly people of color,  and our democracy. 

Over the years, police departments became ever more powerful, usurping people’s rights for supposed safety.  Who were the police making more safe?  Predominantly white middle and upper class people.  Due to a range of factors, often set up by governmental and financial actions, communities of color became more segregated and poorer in relation to white communities.  Throw in drugs and lack of economic opportunity, and a disaster was created.  It wasn’t that those disadvantaged communities were using drugs more but that they were perceived to be using them more and more violence was arising from such use.  The job of the police, stop the drug use and violence and arrest as many as possible and “put them away.”  Three strikes and you’re out!   

 Even caring people and politicians were convinced that the crime rate was beyond impossible and something drastic had to be done.  I find it fascinating that correcting the wrongs of segregation, lack of resources, poorly resourced schools, and many other induced factors were rarely taken into account.  The myth of laziness and criminality grew in popularity.  Police were given all kinds of permission to step on people’s rights, mostly people of color, of course.  Police powers grew and police officers and many conservative  officials convinced themselves that this police intrusion into people’s rights caused the massive drop in crime of the 1990s.  They had no evidence for this, but it sounded good.  It fit with their political message that poor mostly people of color deserved their poverty because they had no ambition and didn’t take advantage of opportunities offered to them.  They were just takers and the white people in charge were the givers, constantly sacrificing for the takers.  (Remember Mitt Romney’s comments in 2012?) 

 This was, of course, a lie, but when many in the media bought into it, it became difficult to oppose.  From fear and frustration, people in the poor communities reluctantly agreed too, sealing the fate of millions of Americans who could easily be blamed for their circumstances AND INCARCERATED.  And, police just kept increasing their power and presence, not as community workers hired to protect and serve, but as  enforcers on behalf of the white and more wealthy members of society. 

 It was determined that if police were “scared for their lives” they could kill someone with impunity (qualified immunity).  The police got away with this for a long time because it was their word against the dead victim or “unreliable” witnesses.  Cell phones and police cams changed the playing field and police were being caught killing, beating, harassing, and otherwise intimidating citizens, but still not held accountable. 

 Calls for reform have brought about little positive change in many communities because police still believe and claim they are the righteous preservers of the American way, at least for the “givers.” (Who cares about the “takers?”)

 We saw this in relation to the protesters of police violence this past spring and summer.  People stand against the police killing of Black people.  The police respond in riot gear firing off rubber bullets at close range, releasing tear gas (in a pandemic with a disease that primarily attacks the lungs), clubbing people to the ground, arresting peaceful protesters while ignoring the white instigators of violence, and more.  That is police out of control. 

 Without major intervention, I do not see that any positive changes will happen.  Police programs everywhere in this nation need to be reworked from the bottom up and the top down, from the uniforms they wear or don't wear to the training, to the weapons they are permitted to use, to the actions they are allowed to take, to the ways they can patrol and whom they can stop, and on and on.  What we call them needs to change too.  The word “police” has such negative feelings correctly attached to it. Republicans are posting scare ads in this election season that white women won’t have police protection if Black people get their way and defund police.  That’s utter nonsense, but those who have never been the victim of police targeting can’t imagine why anyone would have problems with what the police  are doing.   

 Fraternal Order of Police “unions” make demands for more power and money and communities feel unable to resist.  Police "unions" need to decide whether they are unions or fraternal organizations.  They can't be both and should never have been allowed to be both.  If they are unions, they can negotiate with communities in good faith.  As fraternal organizations they can't negotiate anything beyond where they will have their fraternity house. 

 New Community service organizations must have a range of talented, skilled, caring people to respond to the variety of emergencies occurring on a daily basis. Each city, town, and other entity will have to investigate to understand what is needed, then design its program to address those needs.  Community members must have a say in what the program will look like at all levels of planning and implementation.  Training will also be more extensive and fully financed for those accepted into the service program.  Perhaps, most important of all, community servants will be held accountable for their actions and will be supported in their interactions with the community.      

 OK, I know it’s currently a fantasy, but it is doable if we have the will.  It's time.  We deserve better than what we have been dealt.  If we all stand together, we can get better so we can do better.