And furthermore…

As the heroes and villains algorithmic bullshit of comic book based movies have replaced nearly everything else in the culture of popular entertainment, cosplay, one of the oddest, and to my eyes creepiest, of that previously concealed from masscult world in which I've spent the last half century has become a pervasive aspect of group identity, separate and distinct from those people wandering around comic book conventions in sad and needy search for attention.

All these Nativist Christer men and women playing soldier of the soon to be upon us apocalypse, in camouflage and body armor, waving around weapons ownership of which they regard as their divine right, ultimately showing up for the attempted overthrow of the United States government with the same sort of passionate and incoherent enthusiasm they'd bring to Walmart on Black Friday, have mainstreamed that creepiness.

That's sad and terrifying enough, in and of itself.

But I’ve been hipped to a number of newspaper puff pieces from 2018 about the Uvalde police department equipping itself in all this paramilitariphernalia with pride and glory, all butch posing, oozing smug self confidence.

So now, as their true selves have been revealed, we have police officers cosplaying as police officers, too.