Let Me Escape From Reality

he could not admit to himself that leland knowingly raped and murdered not only teresa banks but his own daughter, that she lived in fear of him since she turned 12. his sin was cowardice and naivety not in the sense that he saw the good of the world but in the sense that he refused to see the worst of it, even when it was right in front of him.

its a very black and white way of thinking: evil men do evil things in the dark of night and good men fight against them. you can see this in the way he upholds the law as a standard equal to morality, that criminals are bad people and cops are good people, something that he internalized at a very young age.

leland was a pillar of the community, a loving father, a kind hearted man. therefore, the things he did were surely not in his control. that refusal to believe was what laura feared the most when she spoke to him in her dream, and its the reason leland got away with what he did to her.

(i believe coopers mindset also comes from a denial of his own experience with sexual trauma, as implied in mlmt and the return, though that is less explicitly stated in the text)

cooper is always so fundementally misunderstood as either a perfect caricature of chivalry or a self-congratulating narcissist, but both of those interpretations fall into the same trap cooper fell into himself-the ability to understand nuance, the ability for any person to become either the worst or best version of themself at any time. that is why he was split into mr. c and dougie, it was a literal physical representation of his compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance