I was initially excited at repercussions meeting Seattle for some of their reckless behavior, but left with a sigh at the reminders of the legal and procedural hurdles to holding the government accountable.
Noriega was a Panamanian dictator. Or at least he was when I was stationed there and I ended up walking through a pro-Noriega rally to get to my girlfriend's house. :)
I remember listening to a Radiolab story (https://radiolab.org/episodes/no-special-duty) on Castle Rock vs Gonzales (they also talk to Joe Lozito) and being shocked and horrified. As I recall, the legal consensus, at least from the people they talked to, was that once you legally bind the police to protect people you automatically slide quickly into a police state because you remove their "discretion" and therefore they're required to enforce every law all the time without exception. I've never been sure how good that argument is (it sounds a little bonkers, but not totally unfamiliar given what little I know), so I'd be very interested to hear more discussion about it. Is there truly no middle ground, and this is just one of those instances when you have to come to some kind of terms with the safety vs freedom conflict? Or is there some kind of careful reform that could maybe make a difference here?
I listened to that Radiolab episode a long time ago. I personally flat out do not believe the excuses the state makes on this topic. But you shouldn't take my word for it, and I think the best test would be to consider corollary professions and see how they deal with legal liability. If you hire a security guard, and he just runs away as he sees you getting stabbed, you would ABSOLUTELY be able to sue the pants off of him and there might even be criminal charges depending on the circumstances. I can't think of a similar situation where the stated concerns actually seem valid.
Officials in the US and elsewhere are soft fools, and in current and coming circumstances those who know no history (and nothing about human nature) are in for rude shocks as we shift into the hard times, hard men phase of reality. Where institutions fail, people get creative. It sounds like a joke or metaphor to say these crooks should be tarred and feathered (and run out of town on a rail), but that's a real thing people did in America not that long ago. It's a brutal public torture to punish officious fools hellbent on destroying the lives and livelihoods of normal folks who just want to be left alone to run their own lives. Not only effigies have been hung from lampposts. We are a hairsbreadth away from something that will not be pretty. Watch France.
We might not have boiling pitch lying around on an everyday basis in 2023, but that is where the indomitable spirit and creativity of our kind comes to the fore. Nigeria and South Africa, as the public order became so corrupt and retarded that ordinary citizens could comply no longer, the practice arose to deal with thieves, rapists, and others by 'necklacing'. There's always the old country practice of 'shoot, shovel, and shut up'.
I'm not calling for this state of affairs, mind you. It will be horrible. It also looks inevitable, barring a whole lot of epiphanies and stellar leadership that I don't see anywhere on the horizon.
As a member of the feline community, I am not in favor of belling any cats and I refuse to wear a collar.
Anyway, as long as the security services continue to obey orders, specifically, the order to shoot, the People Who Run Things can sleep safe in their beds. So far, nothing indicates that the police and/or army here or in France are about to break, much as I may wish otherwise.
Around here LEOs are community members, relatives, next-door neighbors. We elect our sheriff. Over the last several years People Who /Think/ They Run Things issued many power-mad edicts that our jack-booted thugs quietly declined to enforce. They are not fools. Now, it may well be that urban hellscapes produce different experiences, but those blighted dots are relatively tiny in context of America's purple mountains majesty, fruited plain, sea to shining sea, tra la.
Having the most guns (and in the US the cops do not) is not at all the point, though. Cops don't shoot a lot of people (and aren't very good shots), contrary to PWTTRT propaganda, and they don't stop crime. Respect for and trust in fair(ish) law enforcement stops regular folks from taking the law into their own hands. Once PWTTRT toss that institutional norm out the window, ordinary people recalculate risks and responsibilities and historically have proven both ingenious and ruthless. Nature red in tooth and claw.
I suggest PWTTRT are a narrow slice of the population with a ginormous tiger by the tail. They can't even control a school board meeting these days, yet also are not reading the room, at all. Tar/Feather/Rails are not mechanisms to overthrow authority or institutional norms but social means of enforcing agreed norms on the individuals corrupting authority. I guess we'll see what happens.
Was this doom posting really necessary? :(
I was initially excited at repercussions meeting Seattle for some of their reckless behavior, but left with a sigh at the reminders of the legal and procedural hurdles to holding the government accountable.
sigh, bring back the guillotine?
Noriega was a Panamanian dictator. Or at least he was when I was stationed there and I ended up walking through a pro-Noriega rally to get to my girlfriend's house. :)
That was a slip-up on my end which I fixed, thanks for letting me know!
I remember listening to a Radiolab story (https://radiolab.org/episodes/no-special-duty) on Castle Rock vs Gonzales (they also talk to Joe Lozito) and being shocked and horrified. As I recall, the legal consensus, at least from the people they talked to, was that once you legally bind the police to protect people you automatically slide quickly into a police state because you remove their "discretion" and therefore they're required to enforce every law all the time without exception. I've never been sure how good that argument is (it sounds a little bonkers, but not totally unfamiliar given what little I know), so I'd be very interested to hear more discussion about it. Is there truly no middle ground, and this is just one of those instances when you have to come to some kind of terms with the safety vs freedom conflict? Or is there some kind of careful reform that could maybe make a difference here?
I listened to that Radiolab episode a long time ago. I personally flat out do not believe the excuses the state makes on this topic. But you shouldn't take my word for it, and I think the best test would be to consider corollary professions and see how they deal with legal liability. If you hire a security guard, and he just runs away as he sees you getting stabbed, you would ABSOLUTELY be able to sue the pants off of him and there might even be criminal charges depending on the circumstances. I can't think of a similar situation where the stated concerns actually seem valid.
Officials in the US and elsewhere are soft fools, and in current and coming circumstances those who know no history (and nothing about human nature) are in for rude shocks as we shift into the hard times, hard men phase of reality. Where institutions fail, people get creative. It sounds like a joke or metaphor to say these crooks should be tarred and feathered (and run out of town on a rail), but that's a real thing people did in America not that long ago. It's a brutal public torture to punish officious fools hellbent on destroying the lives and livelihoods of normal folks who just want to be left alone to run their own lives. Not only effigies have been hung from lampposts. We are a hairsbreadth away from something that will not be pretty. Watch France.
We might not have boiling pitch lying around on an everyday basis in 2023, but that is where the indomitable spirit and creativity of our kind comes to the fore. Nigeria and South Africa, as the public order became so corrupt and retarded that ordinary citizens could comply no longer, the practice arose to deal with thieves, rapists, and others by 'necklacing'. There's always the old country practice of 'shoot, shovel, and shut up'.
I'm not calling for this state of affairs, mind you. It will be horrible. It also looks inevitable, barring a whole lot of epiphanies and stellar leadership that I don't see anywhere on the horizon.
As a member of the feline community, I am not in favor of belling any cats and I refuse to wear a collar.
Anyway, as long as the security services continue to obey orders, specifically, the order to shoot, the People Who Run Things can sleep safe in their beds. So far, nothing indicates that the police and/or army here or in France are about to break, much as I may wish otherwise.
Around here LEOs are community members, relatives, next-door neighbors. We elect our sheriff. Over the last several years People Who /Think/ They Run Things issued many power-mad edicts that our jack-booted thugs quietly declined to enforce. They are not fools. Now, it may well be that urban hellscapes produce different experiences, but those blighted dots are relatively tiny in context of America's purple mountains majesty, fruited plain, sea to shining sea, tra la.
Having the most guns (and in the US the cops do not) is not at all the point, though. Cops don't shoot a lot of people (and aren't very good shots), contrary to PWTTRT propaganda, and they don't stop crime. Respect for and trust in fair(ish) law enforcement stops regular folks from taking the law into their own hands. Once PWTTRT toss that institutional norm out the window, ordinary people recalculate risks and responsibilities and historically have proven both ingenious and ruthless. Nature red in tooth and claw.
I suggest PWTTRT are a narrow slice of the population with a ginormous tiger by the tail. They can't even control a school board meeting these days, yet also are not reading the room, at all. Tar/Feather/Rails are not mechanisms to overthrow authority or institutional norms but social means of enforcing agreed norms on the individuals corrupting authority. I guess we'll see what happens.
Would to God that you prove correct. If I have learned nothing else, it is just how far the PWTTRT will go to maintain control.