What About Their Good Qualities?

For those of you in the know, the world is a pretty scary place right now. It's been a rough few months, and every time things start to look like they're getting better, something else happens. It's like a never-ending cycle of crap, and it's getting really, really hard to drag myself out of bed to go to my office every morning. I can't not go, so I manage. I've spent a lot of time alone...too much time alone. In that time, I've been drowning in thoughts I can't quite figure out how to share. This will be my attempt to tell you those thoughts, as disorganized as they are. I don't require agreement or discussion, but feel free. I'm doing this for me, to clear my head of clutter. You do what you gotta do.

One of my favorite movies ever is this dense thriller, "Mojave." It stars Garrett Hedlund as some sort of director/creator of films, and Oscar Isaac as a desert drifter and serial killer. The movie makes a point of telling the viewer that the life of Hedlund's character is falling apart. His marriage is coming to an end, things aren't working out quite right with his movies, and he's unsatisfied with his reality. In order to gain some much-needed clarity, he stocks up on water and drives out into the desert. He rolls his car and decides to continue his retreat on foot. One night, while he's sitting by his fire, this drifter shows up. Hedlund and Isaac have a brief exchange where they threaten one another and size each other up, both determining the other one to be a danger. They come to an agreement to both set down their weapons and Isaac's character sits down to have a discussion with Hedlund's.

Over the course of this discussion, Isaac sets himself up as The Devil, and Hedlund gets likened to Christ wandering through the desert having an existential conversation with the devil (Isaac refers to The Devil as another aspect of Christ's persona). This sets the two characters up as two sides of the same coin, "Just two dudes going mental in the desert." Following this rather sinister encounter, both men decide it's time for Isaac's character to leave, Hedlund's sends him off without the riffle he came with, then spends a restless night in the desert hoping the drifter doesn't come back to kill him in his sleep. What comes after is a twisted version of cat and mouse.

The drifter kills a handful of other people as he follows Hedlund back to his home in LA where Isaac eventually tells him the whole thing will end where it began. He gives Hedlund coordinates to a camper parked in the desert. Hedlund shows up where he knows it will either be him or Isaac. They sit down and have a conversation where Isaac lays out that they're not so different. Isaac reveals he was a poet and a songwriter whos career failed before it began. Like Hedlund, he's an artist. Hedlund kills him, burns down his camper, and returns home. Upon his return, he finds his wife and daughter at his house. He ends up reading a bedtime story to his daughter about a monster hated and feared by the townspeople. The people throw this monster off a cliff, and as he goes down he shouts, "But what about my good qualities?"

That line has stuck with me. I've spent years of my life analyzing and contemplating the implications of that line. What about my good qualities?

Over the course of the past week or so, we've witnessed how the actions of four police officers have ripped the country to pieces. The unjust and brutal death of George Floyd has become the straw that broke the camel's back. We've gone through days of rioting, protesting, violence, and shouts both for and against racism. It's been one ugly thing after another.

"Hillary," you ask, "what does that movie have to do with any of these other things?" Here's one conclusion I've come to, police forces are a lot like Hedlund and Isaac's characters and the human dichotomy they represent. The police were organized to serve and protect the people. However, there are rogue elements that tend to go off the rails and do exactly what the forces were organized to prevent. Something happens, like the death of George Floyd, and people rise up in angry protest because "black lives matter." It amazes me that the anger is always simmering under the surface, but it waits until something ugly happens before it all comes to the surface in more ugliness. It eventually dies down again until another ugly thing happens then the protesting gets louder and more aggressive and it dies down again. Now it's back, uglier, louder, and angrier than it has been in a very long time.

I understand the anger. of course black lives matter, and it is LONG past time we, as a society, completely acknowledge the value of lives (especially colored lives). This lack of appreciation isn't specific to police officers, but they get singled out because they hold positions of power in our communities. The thought I keep coming back to is this, what about their good qualities?

We get so caught up in the terrible actions of a few officers that we start demonizing all of them. There is absolutely no defense for cruelty and racism. However, I don't believe the good qualities should be overlooked. I firmly believe much of the rioting really is being done by people tired of being oppressed by society. However, not all of it is. The rioting in Salt Lake, for example, was perpetrated by people who really just felt like throwing things at cops because "fuck the police!". That's completely unacceptable. Black lives matter, so do cop lives, so do the lives of all the other people caught in the crosshairs of the violence. If we want all lives to be acknowledged as equally important, why are there groups placing one set of lives over another (I'm not referring to BLM)? Rebelling against the police isn't going to fix anything. Hating them because they're law enforcement isn't going to fix anything. Throwing things and shouting "fuck the police!" isn't going to fix anything. Throwing blame around isn't going to fix anything.

The collective organizations of police are not without their flaws. They're comprised of individuals bearing their own prejudices. Those prejudices should not be overlooked, and everyone should be held responsible for their own actions, but those flaws should not condemn the entirety of police. They have good qualities. They do great things to benefit our society, and it's unacceptable to ignore those things to focus solely on the negative. 

The negative should prompt change. I sincerely hope this all serves as a wakeup call to our government officials and city police departments to improve officer training and more carefully hold people accountable for prior actions. The death of George Floyd was preventable. It's absolutely beyond time to stop ignoring the needs and tears of the people. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." It's time for a change for the better. A change in policy, and change of heart, and change of mind, a change of scenery. In the midst of all the ugliness, don't forget the good qualities.  

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world." Max Ehrmann