Editor’s Note: Police1 recently launched a new series, “First Person,” where members candidly share their own unique cop’s-eye view of the world, from insights into issues confronting cops today to observations and advice on living life behind the thin blue line. This week’s feature, written by Street Survival Seminar Lead Instructor Jim Glennon, is a no-holds-barred commentary on the two things that he says are “slowly making us our own enemies.” Do you want to share your own “First Person” perspective with other P1 Members? Email us.
Since September 11, 2001 this country has been involved in a senseless and unnecessary war. And it is one of which we should all be collectively ashamed. For this war is of our own doing. It was caused by us—no one else is responsible. Our national habits and lifestyles are what lead us into it. It wasn’t a sneak attack. The signs had been there for years. We didn’t need an expert to warn us. We should have seen it coming.
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By Lt. Jim Glennon
Lombard (Ill.) Police Department
I’m not talking about the War on Terror. I’m not talking about Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or any of the other Radical Islamists morons who want us to disappear from the planet. No, I’m talking about the war within our own culture: the one that is creating a national impotence to the point that we find ourselves on the precipice of losing our way of life. The one that has changed the media from being an unbiased protector and watchdog from government excesses to cheerleaders for their personal causes. The one that uses labels such as: traitor, racist, misogynist, liberal, or conservative that only serves to stop real debate and thwart workable solutions. The one where we find ourselves so apathetic about our history and culture that we don’t even recognize that it is slipping away.
This war is the product of two things: individual ignorance and cultural arrogance. Each of us has contributed to this self-destructive internal crisis allowing it to flourish through our collective indifference to reality. We conceitedly hold on to the belief that the United States and our democratic capitalistic existence are immune from annihilation. “We are the ‘Biggest Baddest-Assed Dog’ on this planet; who the hell is gonna come over here and wipe us out?” No one of course! Oh, we may get our nose bloodied on occasion, but no invasion force is going to defeat the good old U.S. of A. on our own soil. The trouble with that attitude is that we are blind to the fact that they don’t have to; as we are well on our way to doing it ourselves.
Let’s address the ignorance phenomenon first. When it comes to understanding history – both our own as well as that of the rest of the world – we citizens demonstrate an incredibly high level of ignorance compared to most people in other developed countries. We Americans take our freedoms, security, and right to speak freely as an absolute staple of life. But, how many of us really know how we obtained these freedoms and privileges. Who paid the price? How many of our countrymen had to die when they revolted against tyranny? Hell, how many U.S. citizens even know how or why the American Revolution began? Who were the participants? What ended the conflict? A survey conducted a couple of years ago revealed that an alarming number of college students don’t even know what century the Revolution occurred in let alone the exact dates. Many believed the Civil War and the Revolutionary War were one in the same.
Then we have cultural arrogance. At some point over the past couple of decades an alarming number of people have apparently come to believe that one of the Bill of Rights guarantees that no one at anytime should ever feel pain, discomfort, a sense of failure, or be subjected to work at a job that isn’t emotionally fulfilling. There should be no harsh words ever used, no opinions ever expressed, or actions ever taken if there is even the remotest of chances that someone at sometime will be offended. In addition, no matter what lifestyle someone wishes to partake in it is the government’s responsibility to see that it happens for anyone who; is a citizen, is standing on U.S. soil, is related to a citizen, or has ever heard of America. In turn however, nothing has to be given back and no individual responsibility has to be taken for being a part of the society that we take for granted.
Case in point: the woman who gave birth to octuplets last week in California. According to her mother all 14 of this woman’s children were conceived through in-vitro fertilization, she is not married, no father is in the picture, and she has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager. Six embryos were implanted against all common sense and reproductive ethics, she has no job, and lives in a three bedroom house with her parents who filed for some level of bankruptcy protection. The medical bills will likely reach into the hundreds of thousands and raising these children will cost millions. Even in the face of this reality many individual rights activists are not only defending her right to live this lifestyle but believe that the State has some moral duty to pick up the tab as though she is a random victim of a dire circumstance. This is the same state by the way that just announced they can not pay $2 billion in tax refunds to citizens who pay taxes.
The problem with this way of thinking is that it warps reality to the point of being a serious danger for society as a whole. How is this relevant to our continued existence?
Well let’s examine the perspective of some our fellow citizens about the War on Terror. According to at least one national poll, the War on Terror wasn’t one of the top seven concerns for people during the November, 2008 election. What?
As of this writing half of this country believes that the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba should be closed. However, follow-up questions to those polls reveal that almost no one has an idea about what really is going on inside the prison, exactly why they want it closed or what to do with the prisoners once the facility no longer exists! The point is that while opinions run rampant in both our society and in the media, educated viewpoints are extremely scarce. It is easier to sign on to an ideology and then tow the ‘party line’ than to engage in critical thinking and deal with reality and facts.
Blaming individual ills on society as a whole has evolved into blaming the United States and our system for all of the ills in the world. That’s really not much of an exaggeration. We get attacked by terrorists and many insist that we provoked it. A national discussion begins about how we are viewed throughout the world. We second guess our morals and ethics as a society. If we kill a terrorist in battle many ask if it was necessary and if all the rules were followed. If we capture one then there is a debate about; our capture techniques, our interrogation practices, and our system of justice for war criminals and genocidal murderers.
Our media may be the biggest contributors to this skewed way of looking at this still great nation. There is an alarming lack of subjectivity, overwhelming biases, and anger towards anyone with whom they disagree. We have gotten to the point where supposed intelligent media types believe terrorists over our soldiers, trust terrorist tyrants more than our own leaders, and focus on how terrorist prisoners are being treated while ignoring the fact that many of the countries these terrorists come from disregard even the most basic of human rights, treat women as chattel, criminalize free speech, and decapitate Westerners.
I was working out next to some guy last week; I recognized him but didn’t know his name. He knew I was a cop somehow so he started offering me his unsolicited observations on law enforcement in general and the “supposed war on terror.” I quickly realized that he was an idiot; a nice guy, but an idiot. His comments about the criminal justice system were standard ramblings of people who watch too much CSI and Law and Order shows. But his view on terrorism terrorized me!
He said to me as I avoided making eye contact; “The evidence is clear that the Untied States took those buildings down. There were no terrorists involved. George Bush needed an excuse to invade Iraq in order to avenge his father and grab the oil.”
Huh?
Now I’m not defending the former President but rather pointing out an example of mind-boggling ignorance. He went on to say that fire can’t degrade steel (which should be quite a shock to all those people who work in steel mills), bin Laden is on the CIA payroll, and the Patriot Act is designed to listen in on “everyone’s phone calls.”
Fringe idiot? Nope. According to Time magazine, a Scripps-Howard poll in 2006 revealed that 36% of Americans consider it “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that our own government officials either allowed the 9/11 attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. How can 36% of this country have slipped so far from reality that they believe we somehow orchestrated 9/11?
This is just my opinion here, but let’s clarify:
We are fighting a war on terror and it is one that was brought to our shores by psychotic criminals that are only mad at us because we exist! These people brutally murdered thousands of our citizens and want to kill MILLIONS MORE! Quite frankly I don’t care if when caught they feel as though they aren’t treated with the proper amount of respect. According to U.S. Army policy, the standard operating procedure at Gitmo is: “Handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art.” Did we forget that at least for these particular people the Koran is what contains their marching orders for killing us?
These are the same people that sawed a 26 year old American’s head off for simply being; an American! And the murderers filmed it! I and many hundreds of thousands have seen it. We discuss it during the Street Survival Seminars. But where was the national outrage? How did this heinous despicable act perpetrated against one of our countryman slip from our national consciousness so quickly. I challenge you to compare how many times that incident was discussed on American television to how many times our media lamented about captured terrorists being frightened by snarling dogs. I’ll bet if an American soldier decapitated an enemy combatant and it was videotaped that video would be played almost nonstop on our own television stations 24/7 for months. Many of our own media would vilify the entire military as ‘out of control’ war criminals because of the act of one deranged soldier. Our politicians would fall all over themselves apologizing to the rest of the world. And the anti-military types would use this one example to paint a negative picture of all our military personnel and their honorable service and mission.
The point of this article is not to preach a conservative platform, I actually believe in individual rights and freedoms. I don’t think the 1966 Miranda v. AZ decision should be overturned. I’m not a real advocate of the death penalty. I agree that the exclusionary rule is necessary to limit police excesses. And I think we as a nation need to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world. But, we also need to embrace reality and understand that the people who want to obliterate us actually have a plan to use our own media, our own politicians, and our own sense of decency to erode morale and make us continually second guess our determination to win this very real War on Terror. Our soldiers have gone above and beyond the call of duty while too many of us sit in coffee shops, listen to our iPods, and whine about slow Internet connections.
It is time for us to educate ourselves about the reality of what freedom truly is and what it will take to preserve it. We need to accept that in order to win we have to recognize that our own ignorance and failure to take responsibility is slowly making us our own worst enemies. If we ignore these realities we are doomed.
