Illustration by, Levi Hastings
Well, we can count the folks at Jewish in Seattle Magazine (JISM) among those who not only hold negative stereotypes of police officers, in this case, Seattle police officers, but also commit those stereotypes to print and illustration. It would have been bad enough if the repugnant image they used portrayed generic cops, but the officers’ uniforms have SPD patches. Doing so, they declare their ignorance of and contempt for Seattle’s police officers to the world.
Now, before some leftie includes anti-Semite on the list of invectives we on the right endure whenever we attempt to express our opposing views, my recent Ancestry.com DNA results showed a smidgeon of “Eastern European Jew.” I had no idea. How did I receive this news? I embraced it with the same pride that I embraced my previously unknown “drop” of “African” blood, my unexpected modicum of Scandinavian and Irish extraction, as well as the other 90% of my white privileged, “European” heritage. Why should any portion of my racial and ethnic heritage offend me? It doesn’t change that I am 100% American!
Please, join me in related digression. Bono, of U2 fame, said something sublime and perfectly applicable in a speech at Georgetown University, I’ll share it with you:
“America is an idea. The idea that you and me are created equal. This country was the first to claw its way out of darkness and put it on paper, and God love you for it. Americans say they have a bit of the world in them… The family tree has lots of branches. The thing is, the world has a bit of America in it, too.”
This is how I see the world and why I find the JISM article so deplorable (can I use that term with the left?). The article, Can Holocaust Education Help the Seattle Police Department?, and the accompanying illustration exceed insulting or offensive and venture into the absurd and defamatory. While Emily K. Alhadeff, the author of the article, doesn’t state outright she believes Seattle police officers might become a Nazi Gestapo, but she certainly alludes to it by advocating for such “training.”
What sort of leftist bubble must she live in to believe Seattle cops would commit mass murder? Oh, right. Seattle. Does she really believe that American police officers of 2017 equate to German police officers of Nazi Germany? Does she truly believe Seattle’s men and women, sworn to protect their communities and uphold the U.S. Constitution, would obey an order to take the healthy men as slaves and then murder the rest along with their wives and children? Really? This is an example of academic, theoretical, historical (or hysterical) quackery.
And what is she implying about who exactly might give such an order? Is there anything even remotely on the political horizon about the new Republican administration that would give, lucid, rational, and critical-thinking human beings the notion that such an order is conceivable?
And speaking of critical thinking, I served Seattle as a cop for about 22 years, most of it on Capitol Hill, probably the most diverse neighborhood in the city. Of course officers use critical thinking on the job. A cop can’t operate properly without it. However, leftists characteristically reject critical thinking. That’s why some of them (see below) find it so hard to see it in others—especially cops. Their bigotry toward law enforcement won’t let them.
Alhadeff’s quotes an SPD lieutenant:
“When you’re a police officer, there are written rules for everything you do. If you think about that, over the years it causes the critical thinking to go away. Now we’re looking at individual biases, individual decision making. We’re not giving them [SPD officers] the exact takeaway. We want them to come away with the takeaway themselves.”
Think about how elitist this sounds. It’s as if the lieutenant is talking about teaching kindergarteners, not professional, sworn police officers, making them feel accomplished because they managed to find the “correct” (according to the indoctrinators) answers all by themselves. The audacity is stunning.
I remember this teaching philosophy was in effect when I was forced to participate in leftist political indoctrination. It was based on the PBS program, Race and the Power of Illusion.” While there was some valid information and factual history, the “training” conflates institutional racism of the past with today’s America, which they skew to fit their narrative of a currently uber-racist society.
Regarding, “We want them to come away with the takeaway themselves,” I remember noticing the same thing while attending my political indoctrination day camp. In fact, soon after the training, I wrote about my experience. I phrased it something like this: I felt like we were cattle being herded toward predetermined conclusions (I’m speaking literally: They asked questions and then had us get up and gather into groups according to our answers). Whenever officers offered opinions that didn’t fit the narrative, our instructors would stop or deflect the discussion in another direction. So much for critical thinking.
Jewish in Seattle Magazine should be ashamed of marginalizing the memory of the holocaust by attempting to make such a bizarre comparison as Nazis in pre-war Germany to Seattle police officers in modern America. Is it just me, or does anyone else believe JISM owes the good men and women of the Seattle Police Department an apology for insinuating they could become Nazi storm troopers?
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