Guest post: The Bad Guy Mentality and Social statification Issues

This is a guest post by Gene Burmington. (Obligatory disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in below are the writer’s and do not necessarily reflect my own.)

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“Bad guy” [source: Peter Roskam]

I say statification instead of stratification as other renowned sociologists are known to do, because stratified hierarchy implies many layers or levels.

This is the opposite, as stratification implies possible advancement and advancement is impossible for "the bad guys". Throughout life, certain elements become the enemies of society through unlawful or unpopular means and are thus cast as the evildoers.

This status doesn't cease when penance is completed, either. Once you go to prison or you're declared an enemy to America's "moral fiber", you are always detested and are never truly part of society. Your life is miserable and pointless, and everyone makes sure to continue to punish you for something you already went to prison for.

You are a bad guy if you use drugs, were an enemy of the United States in a current conflict, or are generally disliked by the majority for who you are.

Basically, you are "bad", and it never stops at rehabilitation or punishment; you are always a bad person no matter how you think you've changed on the inside.

People say different and they think they know different. After all, everyone is a liar, and no one trusts anyone else for what they say about themselves. It's a reprehensible mess and it starts with the demonization of human beings.

As I said before, judgment taken out of context along with assumptions upon wisdom or facts is a perversion of truth and should not be indulged in by people who consider themselves intelligent.

Making assumptions is a symptom of ignorance. Making assumptions is the same thing as the tunnel vision of investigators in a murder case. Just because nine out of ten other cases seem to confirm an assumption, that isn't a guarantee. A guarantee is out of the grasp of human beings until true infallibility can be found.

True judgment must examine all the facts and elements with an emphasis on equality for all evidence. If we begin to weigh evidence on scales, we disregard other proofs which are actually quite significant.

This is true of such famous cases as the JonBenet Ramsey case and the Bakersfield child molester witch hunt. It seems especially true that when a child is involved, everyone loses their shit and has to find someone to blame.

In this point, we find the status has been reversed. The good guys that we have revered for all of our lives are shams and sick fucks who hide behind their popular reputations.

Take the example of cowboys. Many people have this mystique that the cowboy is a rough unabashed stereotype of what it means to struggle against all odds to make a new life.

What people don't know is that cowboys are basically famous for fighting and imprisoning them pesky Injuns while doing their best to wipe out a species.

Are Native Americans truly bad guys or evildoers? No, because many were peaceful and have been attacked under the umbrella assumption of settlers that all Indians were evil and needed to be wiped out or captured.

Cowboys aside, who else has a gung-ho attitude?

That's right – police.

As proven by everything from the mishandling of murder cases to the recent killing of peoples pets by SWAT teams, we have enabled a governing law authority with too much power, for now there is no accountability for when they break the law.

There is no justice when officers band together to cover for one of their own. There is no justice when they get trigger-happy and kill dogs or people for nearly idiotic reasons. There is no justice when innocent people are wrongly convicted on charges just because a scant amount of evidence points to someone.

The evildoers and bad guys are our own police when they get too rowdy and bull-headed to analyze all the facts and behave like human beings.

When a SWAT officer kills a dog in a cage, that is not humane, that is a narcissistic attitude of omnipotence and god-like confidence. If police can kill people's helpless pets for no reason and not be held accountable, we truly have a system that does not function.

Tags: bad guys • cops • police brutality