Captain PMS, Althusser

Captain’s Blog Stardate 10/30

“The (Repressive) State Apparatus functions massively and predominantly by repression (including physical repression), while functioning secondarily by idealogy…the Army and the Police also function by idealogy both to ensure their own cohesion and reproduction, and in the ‘values’ they propound externally.”

When I was growing up one of the things that I was certain of was that I could trust the police. Cops were safe. I loved The Andy Griffith Show. Later, when I began driving, I was told that if you were pulled over by a police officer to make sure you asked to see his badge before rolling down the window, in case he was actually someone dressed as a cop. Still, cops were safe, it was the imposters that were dangerous. Then came the Rodney King video and all the movies where a cop was dirty (especially, it seems, if they were from L.A.) and violent. Suddenly, cops seemed a little less safe. Then I went to college where we learned about the Vietnam War, when students gunned down by cops for protesting were all over the newspapers, and police officers dressed in their KKK hoods harassed African Americans for being, well, African American. Cops could be the enemy. I got my first speeding ticket a couple of years into college. I began to hate cops.

The same evolution happened through the years with my feelings about the military. Let’s face it, no one was coming home from Korea in M.A.S.H. and killing their wives and children, as was the case a few years ago with the fighter pilot officers who returned after a tour in Iraq. Still, in my heart of hearts, I believe that most cops and military personnel are honorable and true to their purpose. Above all, I believe that they are noble in their cause. They believe different things than I do, but like me, their hearts are in the right place. So it makes me wonder why, as a culture, we love stories of bad cops and military personnel gone crazy. Is it because we love to tear our idols down, to see them fall before us for trying to be something we know we ourselves are not? Or do some of us just enjoy seeing the dissolution of an ideal we are asked to uphold as Americans. It has become a trend of politicians lately, to imply that questioning these fundamental ideals is un-American, yet our whole country developed because a small group of people did not wish to be told what their ideals should be. It is not binary. Cops are safe and unsafe, but above all they are just people.