Better

I am at loose ends this morning, melancholy and thinking about things.

One of my friends left two comments on my entry about COVID-19 and politics, on the more rational reasons why some people voted for Trump. The one that struck me in particular is that ‘treating immigrants badly’ has always had bipartisan support in the US. Trump shifted the tone from “callous, bureaucratic indifference to suffering” to “gleeful malicious delight in suffering.” And abuse of immigrants has gotten much more media attention in the last four years as a result. But the policy was bad before, too. I don’t know if my perception of it being far worse under Trump is correct, or if it’s closer to “somewhat worse and much better covered.”

It is not a great comfort to think that many Trump voters might just be cynical -- “all politicians are terrible and at least this one will appoint conservative judges” -- but it’s better than picturing them as ignorant/stupid/evil.

It’s easy to be cynical.

The worst part of stereotypes like “all cops are bastards” and “all politicians are corrupt” is not that they are false, but that they are self-fulfilling. If society believes only terrible people would pursue a given career -- well, that’s pretty much motivation not to do it if you don’t want to be terrible, right?

How do you get better when you start from there?

But media generally lionizes the police, and that rosy view of them has not made them any less violent or corrupt in practice. On the other hand, media also lionizes police violence: in TV shows and films, the cops are always “breaking the rules” in order to “stop the bad guys”, usually with violence, often with lethal force. It always works out for the best in entertainment. Maybe they’re just doing the job the way they were programmed to think it would work out. I don’t think we did a very good job of this.