Officer Alex explains the role of cops at political rallies
There is an unspoken phenomenon in police work that is only know to cops, and even then they don’t often realize it themselves. It’s the dynamic of working security at a rally.
A “rally” by nature requires a group of people who are passionate as hell about something to come together and hold signs, make noise, and bathe in groupthink in general. Like minds just liking the hell out of each other in the absence of dissenting views.
The topic doesn’t even matter; it could be about a cause, a group, or an individual—so long as you’re in lockstep agreement about it, you’re in the club. And where you have a passionate advocacy of a thing? You invariably have a group who feels the polar opposite.
If you disagree with people who love something you hate, you have to do something about that, lest you risk being “wrong.” And if the people that are wrong about this thing are in control, then you risk having to deal with it, and what kind of world would that be?
And so, you have to physically go out and oppose the people who are physically supporting a thing, and that is how a rally is formed.
Some people in support of a thing get a permit to gather from local officials, and even rent space to house this lovefest. This often forces the people not in support of the thing to have to stand outside which makes them even more irritated than they were in the first place, which therefore further underscores their need to be there and in the process making them even more correct about the thing than they were in the first place.
And if it’s raining, too hot, or too cold? Then they are victims in addition to being right about the thing they’re opposing—and it’s not their fault.
So on one side of a street you have the people that love the thing, and on the other you have the people that hate the thing (including the people the people they can now see in plain sight who have the audacity to love something they hate), and in the middle? You have the cops who are ironically the ones they both hate when there’s nothing else to hate at the moment.
We now call this “America.”
The cops of course have the advantage of always being hated because the people on either side of the street invariably won’t like it if the cops don’t persecute the partiers or the party crashers (depending on your allegiance at the moment) so they’re perpetually prepared to be hated by any number of people or groups at any given time, which is an extremely useful skillset when being literally surrounded by haters.
But at a rally, the cops can at least take a few sips of water and socialize with one another since for once they’re not the target at the moment.
White Nationalists vs. Liberals (and three to four Conservatives statistically), Occupiers vs. …I’m actually not sure, Tea Partiers vs. Socialists, Antifa vs. Conservatives (and the other Antifa members they accidentally bludgeon from time to time during their ironically fascist frenzies), Gay Rights vs. Homophobes…I’ve stood between them all at one time or another, and it’s always a relief.
My advice? Bring sunscreen, water, and make a mental note of where the closest restrooms are. Oh, and don’t throw things at the people you hate at the moment. You’re perfectly justified in doing so if they’ve made you unhappy of course (because “feelings”), but you run the risk of accidentally hitting one of the cops with your crumpled up job application, rock, or jug of piss, and then all manner of hell will be caused and nobody wants that.
We’re Americans. We define ourselves by what we hate, and associate only inside like-minded intellectual echo chambers. Embrace this—but trust me on the sunscreen (with a hefty emphasis on the pee-jug advice). Rally on, folks.(Unless you disagree, of course.)
When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.