"Cold and Tense": 10 Americans on How Politics Changes Relationships
Audrey Vera, 33, Oakland, Calif.
"I finally told them my girlfriend was a cop."
"I played bass in a death-rock band for almost five years. We would say that we were like family. I could go to a show and either know someone playing or know people there and feel welcomed. I am a nonbinary lesbian, and my band mates are also queer and trans, so having chosen family is huge.
"I started dating my partner in June 2020, around the time of the George Floyd murder. She works as a cop. I knew that was going to be contentious, so I kept her profession a secret. Throughout that year, they met my girlfriend and never had an issue with her. Around the time the Floyd cop had his trial, my band decided they wanted to write an 'ACAB' ['All Cops Are Bastards'] song, and I finally told them my girlfriend was a cop. They didn't talk to me for a week and then called to say I wasn't 'a fit' for the band.
"I find it all very disheartening, but mostly so because she became a cop to have an influence on changing the police work force culture and create a safer environment for women, queer and trans people. Before I met her, I never would have thought I would be romantically involved with a cop. But if I hadn't been open to unpacking my own snap judgments about people who become cops, then I wouldn't have won the lesbian lottery. It really just speaks to how much your life can get unlocked when your gut goes by what you experience of a person instead of social narratives you've been told."
I kept her profession a secret.
Bad form. When you introduce someone to your bandmates, and that person is a cop, they have the right to know.
I remember when a roommate was dating a cop she would just bring him round with no notice. Not cool
at one point she tried to frame me for her drugs to him but fortunately he didn't give enough of a shit to do anything
My mom used to live with a retired prison guard who found her weed stash, she told him she'd confiscated it from me and didn't know how to properly dispose of it.
"I told a lie of omission for two years and was ousted from my hobby group because the nature of that lie was anathema to their values, feel bad for me"
also it's not like it was a small lie who does and doesn't have the power to arrest you and who should you trust with certain things is really important information
yeah I would immediately assume that person was a narc because, well, that’s narc shit
Saying you want to become a cop to try and fix the police system from the inside is like saying you hate cancer so want to become a cancer cell to stop it from the inside.
K, but they’re looking for a bassist right? I can play any style and can accommodate
I'm addition to everything else... what's up with that cop? Like, imagine being queer and "punk" or whatever and not finding a different job.
A fair amount of people think they can do better from the inside of the machine. Almost all fail in this, at least outside of small, individual interactions. They then either:
- Quit,
- Fail to advance to a position where they could theoretically enact broader change because their values clash with the organization as a whole, or
- Sacrifice their values to advance their career.
Among the last group, maybe a tiny percentage somehow win a decades-long 4D chess game and get to a position of real power while secretly retaining their initial values. But they've almost certainly compromised their values more than they think, they lack credibility with the people they say they want to help because of their entire career up to that point, they now have a bunch of long-term friends with the shit values of their organization, and they likely underestimate what bullshit will be pulled to remove them if they try to rock the boat.
All this is to say that I can understand why this type of person would want to become a cop (especially given the lack of "legitimate" options for major political change), but folks like this either wash out or give up why they took the job in the first place.
They have the arrogance to believe they can change the org when it's the org that'll change them.
Some arrogance, some optimism, some naivete, some lack of obvious better options.
Good list but you forgot option 4, get shot in the back by one of the other cops for being even a little less evil than they are
It's like hazing. To advance in the police force, you'll necessarily have committed enough wrongdoings to become a senior that you'll effectively incriminate yourself if you then effect any change.
Queer cops after stonewall, black cops after George Floyd or Rodney King (nevermind the rest of that history), it's hard to say what exactly goes through the mind of these people.
Franz Fanon wrote a bit about the psychology of colonized people working and collaborating with the colonizers. I dunno, some people get so desperate they figure they should try their chances with the people that'll kill them - but it takes a really fucked up person to not just serve the regime of oppression but be the gun wielders and boot stompers on the pointy end of the stick of imperialism.
I think the answer is simple. They're reformist minded. They think that by infiltrating oppressive institutions in significant numbers, they can change the character of those institutions more than those institutions will change their character. That revolution can be avoided and that everything can be fixed by oppressed groups individually scrapping for "representation" among inherently oppressive institutions. But the institutions always chew them up and spit them out, turning them into the modern equivalent of a Funktionshäftling. The best thing they can do at that point is :dorner:
Yeah its a very lib brained thing to see yourself as an unchanging monad whose psyche cannot be acted upon by materialist forces (because for libs it is ideals that act upon the world).
It's also born on a misunderstanding. The idea that police force should be a force for good, but there are a few bad apples. Not that the police force have always been evil forces of legitimation because that is their singular most important purpose.
lmao I'm reading the article and besides this one it's 1 anti-choice asshole who's like "yeah my cousins disagree but we got over it" and one redditor who's like "yea i just don't talk about politics because they wouldn't approve of my beliefs (don't ask which beliefs)" and then 6 libs who are like "yea i try to listen to my coworkers' and family members' point of view because i know deep down they're really nice people but somehow they just won't abandon christofascism" and then one at the end just reciting some kind of Litany of Centrism.
had someone get very upset I cut my dad out of my life for being a pathetic alcoholic bigot.
turns out they only felt strongly about that because one of their own kids had done that to them too lmao
one at the end just reciting some kind of Litany of Centrism.
That's my favorite. I wanted to make a joke about it but I wasn't inspired. I'm happy I didn't post anything. Your joke is pretty hard to beat.
Blessed is the mind too small to imagine an alternative to capitalism
the strength of martyrs fills those too afraid of conflict to have an opinion
Wow that's crazy how much great stuff can happen in your life when you completely ditch your values!
It seems to me she must be very self-righteous to tell a major newspaper about this. I don't think she's going to get the response she feels she deserves. Many people will say to her "I agree with them in kicking you out of the band."
It's just so fuckin dense, lmao
Such a dense thing to do, like, for crying out loud you're in a death metal band in Oakland, things are going well for you just keep your damn mouth shut about the polussy, lol
My wild guess is that she either got engaged to the cop or married her. And she wants validation.
This is just copaganda, right? Like it probably didn't even happen. It's just their to provide a source of empathy for cops (being persecuted) and making LGBTQ and punks and the left seem cold hearted
The NTY certainly goes out of its frame the narratives.
What I always note about interviewees is they often have usually have no social media accounts and they have a super-low prescience on the net. It makes me skeptical about what's going on about the super-low profile. It can't be a coincidence that I google them and I usually find next to nothing. That's very true in this case.
I have to assume that the NYT loses interest in a prospective interviewee if they do have social media accounts and they can be googled easily. The narrative can slip - and can slip very badly - if you can google people. For example - a "reasonable" republican can be shown to be an insane right-wing lunatic asshole.
I've often found social media accounts (twitter) of reporters eliciting specific points of views or experiences to create their stories. :parenti-hands:
But the NYT is a newspaper so that makes it extra fucking sneaky. The average reader there isn't a nerd like me so they'll never google the name of an interviewee. Also they'll never go ahead and assume that any right-winger who says he has "issues" with his family is actually an insane right-wing lunatic asshole.
she became a cop to have an influence on changing the police work force culture and create a safer environment for women, queer and trans people
The thing is though, the recruitment process is pretty good at weeding those type of recruits out. If the girlfriend successfully became a cop, it was because those values were expendable for her, if they ever existed in the first place.
If they can pressure you once to hide those values, they can sure as hell keep pressuring you.
Or just beat you to death in a simulated training exercise "on accident".
I knew someone in the military who bragged that he not only did nothing and would hide when work was being doled out (to the point they stopped asking him to help) he was also actively causing problems in his unit and even completed his full contract despite having two insubordinations on his record. I think thats the only way to be a good person and in the military.
I feel like dating someone who has the power and motive to completely ruin my life in a million ways or possibly murder me and get away with it when things go bad
