I don’t like political posts, but this question has really been bugging me:
Why do we have unqualified respect for members of the military, but not for police officers? Aren’t they similarly dedicated to protecting our rights and freedoms? Why do cops get such a bad rap, while service members get a national holiday, priority airline boarding, and a 10% discount on Apple products?

Easy. Our troops only fight Bad Guys: Terrorists, who hate us for our Freedom. Commies, who hate us for our Values. Fascists, who hate us for our Diversity. There’s no reasoning with these savages, so of course they should be bombed back into the Stone Age.

Police officers, on the other hand, beat up on Good Guys. Especially helpless minorities. Maybe those minorities were caught doing not-so-legal things, but that’s a natural response to systemic oppression. An armed robbery should make you stop and think about why the robber felt that was their only choice, and how the system failed them.

Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified. https://t.co/fUZTABUM21

— ABC News (@ABC) July 26, 2020

Maybe the media has something to do with prevailing attitudes. Here in the US, an arsonist who throws explosives at a police station is a “mostly peaceful protester.” In Iraq, a civilian who opposes foreign occupation is a dangerous extremist. One nation’s political dissident is another country’s terrorist, the only difference is marketing.

Foreign aggressions benefit a coterie of special interest groups: Defense contractors, Bankers who finance defense contracts, corporations ready to exploit the resources of an overthrown regime.

Sane people don’t risk their lives to line the pockets of oligarchs, so we have to manufacture a mortal enemy. In the leadup to World War I, newspapers ran stories of German soldiers cutting the hands off of children and skewering babies on bayonets. Then there were North Korean soldiers feeding babies to dogs, Iraqi soldiers pulling newborns out of incubators, Saddam Hussein stuffing babies into wood chippers, Libyans taking Viagra to rape children en masse, and other unverifiable tales. No matter how ridiculous, if the media repeats it often enough it becomes Fact, and anyone who questions the propaganda is a traitor. You’re not a genocide denier, are you?

A free and independent press might challenge state propaganda, but no one would ever mistake ours for one.

Embedded journalists accompany military units and filter appropriate information to the public. Release of unauthorized content is a violation of the Espionage Act, which prohibits the communication of classified information for reasons of “national security”. Hence the persecution of Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange. Pretty much anything can be classified for reasons of “national security”, especially information that might shift public opinion about our troops.

Police officers mostly do protect and serve their communities, but oligarchs gain nothing from that, so there’s no need to promote respect for local law enforcement. In fact, let’s encourage infighting amongst the locals so no one notices all the stuff happening abroad.

The Soviet Union collapsed after decades of expensive proxy wars drained their resources and demoralized the population. Is that where we are now?

See Also:
Death of the Unfettered Press
War is a Racket by Smedley Butler

Here’s a video clip of a North Korean citizen discussing Human Rights issues in the US:

American citizens are afraid of their own police, because American cops look like they’re going to pull a gun out any second. American cops shoot their own people when they look suspicious. Whenever someone goes near their pockets, they get shot and killed. Little children are arrested if they don’t obey the police, even little girls. Huge cops who look like pigs beat people to a pulp and handcuff them.

Is that human rights?

I think we sent them the wrong propaganda.