[This is a guest post by the webmaster. This column is from the Loyal Opposition, a fellow Catholic and a conservative. Please answer with more courtesy and forbearance than social media usually provokes.]
I’ve been thinking about the “Thin Blue Line” for a month now, even before all this. For any who have seen the flags but never heard the meaning defined beyond “showing support for the police”, it is the assertion that police are “the thin blue line” between society and violent chaos. It is the mindset that police are a noble minority (a *thin* line of blue) confronting hostile savages and keeping them at bay.
There is nothing noble about viewing the community which you are supposed to protect and serve as savages. That mindset is an anathema to good policing. How do you assist and de-escalate when you view the people you are policing as sub-human? It doesn’t work, and we see that in a myriad of ways (such as the number of POC that, taking the police at their word that they’re there for their protection, call them for help only to have the police show up and arrest — or, worse yet, shoot — them).
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