It’s a cliché, usually used to describe investigations or interrogations. One cop is hard and tough, the other softer—more understanding. They work over the witness or the alleged perpetrator of a crime, and in the back and forth between good and bad cop a truth—or a conviction—emerges.

Who, I want to know, were the face-masked ICE people in dark cars who kidnapped the Turkish student at Tufts University? Who were the ICE officers in Hawaii who arrested two young German tourists and held them overnight in prison garb in a cold cell? The masked ICEers who paraded the handcuffed, bent-over Venezuelan deportees onto the airplane on their way to the El Salvadorian prison? Who drives tanks over homes and people in the West Bank? Who was at Mai Lai? Who manned the Gatling guns that mowed down women and children at Wounded Knee, slaughtered the innocent Indians at Sand Creek  a hundred and fifty years ago?

Bad cops?

It occurs to me, in light of recent events, and rethinking historical events, that there are in fact good and bad cops—and good and bad soldiers—in this world. Maybe there have always been good and bad cops and soldiers, and cops, soldiers, and the rest of us, who pay little attention to their work until there is a crisis. Then we too make choices/

So here is a theory about good and bad cops and soldiers that helps me understand what is happening today with ICE, with deportations, with Israeli killings of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, with events in Sudan and Ukraine. The theory is that we all—especially males and especially young men—have some interest and tolerance for violence. Most of us—I speak for young men as I once was one—use athletics to exercise our penchant for violence. We hit and tackle, bang into other bodies under the basket, drill a hard kick by a goalie, hit the hell out of a baseball and scream down the baseline, box, wrestle, even ski or surf, conquer physical challenges and maybe win a battle with another human as well.

We—most of us—graduate and watch games from the stands or on screens, and/or we continue to challenge ourselves physically on ski hills or in the water, allowing for the gradual erosion of the quest for violence and domination in our brains. I think most cops and soldiers are that way. They get turned on by a good cop when young and join the force to honor that cop. Join to emulate the cop who helped deal with an adversity, coached football, took kids fishing when they were out of sorts at home. Some join the military to see the world or for education, join the police force for the uniform and community respect, even for county. I hope—and think—that most of the cops and soldiers in the world are good folks, there to do right for their communities and countries.

Some, though, have greater needs for continuing violence, and seek careers that allow them to continue to exercise it in lawful ways. They become cops and soldiers, border guards and ICE agents with different needs.

What happens when leadership moves towards social or physical violence? When leadership gradually or suddenly removes the good cops and soldiers? When critics in the press, universities, churches, and judges are dismissed or ignored? And when good cops, soldiers, lawyers in the justice department, opinion writers in newspapers, academics in research, leave of their own accord, unable to function as violence increases.

It can become a spiraling increase of violence, becoming easier for those on the edge to fall in line, for others to follow along out of fear of superiors—as it must be for some ICE officers to mask and kidnap, for Israelis to bulldoze and bomb schools and hospitals, as it must have for the millions in Nazi Germany to operate or ignore the concentration camps, for the Indian fighters to take up Gatling guns.

In my humble mind, I see bad cops on the rise across the world, bombing Gaza and its people to smithereens, aiming drones and missiles at Ukrainian apartments and schools, jailing political enemies in Turkey, taking away Indigenous Peoples Day at home, incarcerating Indians more frequently, abducting students from their homes, immigrants as they attempt to make scheduled appointments with officials.

But I see good cops too, and people in that broad middle who are rising up. I applaud the large Turkish crowds backing the imprisoned mayor of Istanbul, the reserve service members in Israel vowing not to rejoin the assaults on Gaza, Tribal leaders and Black and indigenous historians reminding us of the true history of Columbus’s misdeeds, of slavery’s reign, of centuries of bad cops—and teachers and politicians—oppressing Indians and African-Americans into poverty and powerlessness.

We must make sure those voices are not stilled, lessons not forgotten.

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Photo from NBC News