Wingnut Zombie Police Augur A Frightening Future

I have a friend, whose husband is a retired Marine special forces guy. He spent better part of a year at the siege of Khe Sanh. After he retired, he was a police officer (SWAT) and medical first responder. He's vaguely conservative on some things, but not nuts. In his retirement, he still teaches police, SWAT teams, and first responders about dealing with ugly mass casualty events, including Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High Yield Explosives. He's still part of the state volunteer emergency services. 

This past week, he got asked to do a day of training for emergency medical services providers in a different county. Think even redder and more Trumpy than his already fairly conservative home town in a red state. Part of his training (the briefing with PowerPoint) was discussing where mass casualty attacks come from, who does them, their tactics technics and procedures, and what sorts of injuries their mass casualty events produce. Basically, here's what to expect. For anyone who's military, this should sound pretty boring and normal: it's the intel briefing that everyone gets when discussing CONOPS. 

Except, this crowd of "students" was having none of it. Why? Because this decorated combat vet who's pro-police in in most cases had the temerity to show them the FBI statistics on the sources of domestic terrorism and mass casualty events: which is roughly 75% right wing, 18% religious, 4% left wing, and the rest other or N/A. Under right wing he included things like neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the like. 

The audience refused to believe. "No! It's Antifa!" He pulled up the spreadsheets and stats on the FBI website. They still wouldn't believe him, even with FBI data collected un Trump. The audience seemed disinclined to believe anything he told them after that, despite being by far the most experienced person they're ever going to meet. 

He's vowed to never go back: they're unteachable. But it says something about the future of law enforcement. 

When future administrations and Fox News decide to blame someone for anything, law enforcement is going to be even worse than they are now. Remember the special treatment RIttenhouse got? I'm even more firm in my assessment that these militias are the next Sturmabteilung. Trans people are responsible for mass killings? Sure! They'll all believe it. 

All the problems we see with police today are only going to get worse as the few remaining (remotely) sane officers retire or are forced out because they refuse to believe things that are patently false. 

Follow up. Spoke with his wife last night. The first responders also didn't believe that police were attacked on January 6th. Or if they were, it was Antifa. These are the people that will be propping up our post-democracy government. They're true believers. We're f****d.

-- Brynn Tannehill @BrynnTannehill (Senior defense analyst at a think-tank. Author of two books (American Fascism most recent). Former naval aviator. Spouse. Parent. Harbinger of doom.)