I spent my morning productively: arguing on the internet with people who are defending the pig who drew the gun on Bushnell and ordered him (the downed man who was on fire) to the ground.
Whenever you argue long enough with people who defend the state backed death squads, they always come back to the same thing: “you don’t know what it’s like out there, you think you wouldn’t make the same mistake?”
They always say that shit like noooooo one else has ever experienced emergencies and violence. A ton of people are in jobs where wild stuff happens regularly, and we don’t start blastin: EMTs, social workers, anything to do with directly caring for folks in bad situations.
Besides which, there were other people there who DID act normally, and called out the guys drawing guns. It makes me sick that people can shut off any perception or judgement when looking at this stuff.
I don’t want to go into detail, but one of the proudest moments of my career is saving a guy on fire. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t pull out a gun like a coward. A lot of people will freeze, and that’s normal, but pulling a gun is psychotic. But people will act like any other reaction is impossible.
Of course, I don’t whip out my history in that context because it wouldn’t make a difference and no one would believe it. But like, I guess I’m just venting here because I’m working through my own stuff.
They just always talk like cops are the only people who deal with crises, and that the cop-science answer of “shoot at everything that twitches” is the best answer because they’re the only ones with that experience.
In my opinion bootlickers lick that boot not because they truly love authority, but as a kind of psychic self-defense. Similar to victim-blaming, both arise as a common side-effect of people attempting empathy. Subconsciously, our brains are thinking about keeping ourselves alive right? And there is no evolutionary purpose in imagining something where one has no agency. The brain revolts! People instead place themselves in some imagined position of power somehow, be it second-guessing the actions of a victim of violence, fantasizing of the infallibility of authority, or even empathizing with authority instead. Anything is less painful, less difficult, less evolutionarily useless, than contemplating helplessness.
In this particular case I think these bootlickers are doing something similar, even though the situation couldn’t be more different. In this case, the ‘shooter’ didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but I think these guys are considering the motives of the would-be shooter because they cannot bring themselves to try and process what Aaron Bushnell was thinking. Honestly, I can’t either. The brain revolts! Here I am, putting myelf in they shoes of bootlickers rather than contemplating the… conviction, the bravery of Aaron Bushnell. (Sorry I’m just gonna repeat his name until I don’t forget it)
You have a different perspective. You don’t have to empathize, you actually have put an immolated person out before. (i’d be interested in this story btw if you wanted to share). Your brain doesn’t need to imagine an escape scenario and so you waste no energy with it. It is not an abstract idea. In the words of a friend of mine, “You have a mechanic’s mindset” here.
Anyway, this has already gotten too long-winded. Thanks for listening
That makes a lot of sense actually.
Sort of like developing a superstition, rather than accepting the chaos. Except instead of having to knock on wood, you have to do the hokey-pokey for a cop shouting orders. That way you feel less vulnerable, even if you aren’t.
Thanks for taking the time to write that. It’s genuinely not a way I’ve ever thought about it, and it helps a bit.