Taking It Out OnThe Cop

AMID ALL THE MASS MURDERS and sundry, uniquely American forms of violence, there is the oft repeated scenario wherein a law enforcement officer knocks on a door to serve an arrest warrant, the inhabitant answers the door, gets into an argument with police officer, and kills the officer, usually with a handgun. You'd be surprised. Often, usually, there are other common denominators in such scenarios. Often the inhabitant answering the door is a divorced father, and the arrest warrant alleges deliquent child support payments, in arrears. With equal frequency, which is always, the warrant is served without any prior due process, without the divorced father having an opportunity to appear in court beforehand, and explain to a judge the reason for being behind in child support payments. These reasons usually include low wages,living expenses, poverty, etc, and are often quite understandable. Then too, the situation many times involves the fact that there has been a recent verbal agreement between the father and the ex wife, in which the father has contacted the ex wife, explained to her why he is late with payments, and offering to catch up, on a mutually acceptable basis, taking into consideration the realities of the father's financial situation. The wife will often, after having made such a verbal agreement, discover that she can, in any event, legally have an arrest warrant served against her ex, and will go ahead and have it done, in spite of the fact that she and her ex husband ostensibly worked things out, verbally. The officer serving the warrant is unaware of all this, and all he wants to do s serve the damned warrant and go on about his business, without any crap from anybody. He thinks he deserves this much, and indeed he does. But meanwhile, the father, standing on his porch in his underwear with the warrant in his hand, thinks about the situation. First, he thinks his ex has stabbed him in the back, double crossed him, again. He thinks about the divorce settlement which bankrupted him. He thinks about the child support requirements which leave him perpetually in poverty, and he thinks about the severely limited rights he has with his own kids, in terms of visitation rights and such, and he may even think about the fact that, every time he sees his kds, they seem to be a bit more poisoned against him in their attitude, which leads him to suspect maternal brain washing propaganda. And the cop is standing there, acting like a cop, all attitude, no empathy, and, well...behind every murder is a complex set of facts, of personal interactions. The new science of sociology helps us understand the importance of this. This includes mass murders, of which we Americans have a great abundance. In every ,not most cases, but every case, the mass murderer is someone who has been ostricized, marginalized, rejected, and most usually bullied. Most of the time, mental illness, separate from these specific facts, is not a factor,other than loneliness and rejection driving someone to be uncontrollably angry. No matter how badly we all want to believe that these murderers are nothing more than "bad" people, rotten apples with mental problems, the facts just won't support this stupid and naive notion. Man is a social animal, said Aristotle, but America is not a social culture, but it is a throw away culture, and we throw away everything we have, sooner or later, including people. Always creating new enemies, the long list includes blacks, gays, moslems, divorced fathers, you name it. Its dog eat dog in America; and the most vicious dog usually wins, or dies trying.