The Wrong Priorities
The race debate prompted by George Floyd's killing rages on, with the protestors coalescing around a "Defund the Police" mantra, and their antipodes twisting pretzels in order to rebut the assertions of 'systemic' police racism. Just as I found the phrase "Defund the...
Who Needs Big Brother?
The American system of government has been described as a "great experiment," given how radically different it was from how the world operated at time of its inception. It was a huge success and inspired many imitators. That was a couple hundred years ago. Since then,...
An Honest Officer “Speaks”
A police officer friend of mine (then a paramedic, now NYPD) and I used to debate policing inside and out during our shifts together as a paramedic team. He was a law school graduate and an intellectually honest adversary. At the risk of treating him as a...
Corrupting the Moment
The BLM movement, which has emerged as the "voice" of the George Floyd protests, has chosen to embrace the mantra "Defund The Police" as its remedy to the problems and factors that have resulted in unjustified killings of civilians by law enforcement. As I recently...
Coercion is Useless
As I read this long but interesting essay on arguments for and against religious persecution in history, I flashed back to my college and post-college gamer days, specifically a running gag I had with a friend. In the Dungeons and Dragons milieu, clerical characters...
Sloppy Slogans and Real Reforms
Regular readers should, by now, be familiar with the reforms that we've proposed in the wake of George Floyd's death-by-cop. These reform proposals are by no means unique to this blog, of course, but the more of us that repeat them, the more chance that they'll be...
I’ve Known Many Chauvins
George Floyd's killer, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, has a history that reminded me of an incident and individual from my days working as a paramedic for the FDNY in Brooklyn. My partner and I were dispatched to a developing riot. As we turned across Surf...
Twitter’s Apparatchiks
I recently read a mea culpa, posted on social media, by someone who food-blogs. Apparently, his lack of messaging regarding the George Floyd incident and the Black Lives Matter movement was deemed a punishable lack of support. In other words, his failure to comment...
Lockdowns, Riots, and 30 Round Magazines
The riots (and more germanely, the looting) that have come to dominate the George Floyd story have added to a societal paradigm shift initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns. People's easy complacency about daily life is being shattered, and replaced...
Goldilocks Policing
I have friends in the NYPD who describe to me constantly being approached by "youths" that make a finger gun at them and say something like "turn your back on me, piggie, and see what you get." A lot of the cops have strapped on extra guns ("better to be tried by 12...
Liberty, Order, and Chaos
As the George Floyd protests continue to be overshadowed by the looters, rioters, and the simply violent, people who are used to splitting everything into the standard left-right divide are cherry-picking their culprits. Progressives are blaming white supremacists,...
The Cost of Blind Solidarity
A good friend, former law enforcement, sharp as a razor, and eminently reasonable, shared this yesterday. It's a solid condemnation of those who are engaging in "safe-at-home" virtue signaling while accepting or even condoning the very real carnage and destruction...
Low Expectations and Moral Hazard
The response to the killing of George Floyd by police has morphed from protests to violence. Looting is rampant across the nation. Reports (and videos) of assaults on shopkeepers and bystanders are swamping social media. Protestors, police officers, and unlucky...
Liberty and The Police
The protests (warranted) and riots (unjustifiable) prompted by the horrific death of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer produce all sorts of stupidity masquerading as truth-to-power armchair wisdom. This morning, I found my email in-box loaded with half a...
The New Sixty
Joe Biden was born on November 20, 1942. Donald Trump was born June 14, 1946. Barring a seismic shift in the political landscape, America's next president will be either 78 or 74 on Inauguration Day 2021. This will be a record, breaking the previous record (that would...
The Jellyfication of the WHO
A core mission of the World Health Organization (WHO) is to serve as the world's pandemic alarm system. In this, it failed, badly. The cause of this failure can be traced to a common theme: the nature of bureaucracy itself. It's a common theme on this blog. Reaching...
Target Misdirection
There's an interesting thing happening in the wake of the collapse of the Mueller probe and the Russian collusion narrative. The curtains are being pulled aside, bit by bit, and we are learning of misdeeds and shenanigans at the highest levels of government and law...
Convenience or Catastrophe
All over the landscape, whether it be real or virtual, the debate about re-opening the economy grows louder every day. The player-archetypes are both apparent and expected. At the extremes are the hypochondriacs and the hoaxers, and their excesses tend to drown out...
It’s Hard To Scream Nuance
A political friend shared this observation on social media this morning: Group 1. Virus is not that serious open up and soon as possible and give us back our freedoms. The economy is dying. Group 2. Virus is very serious and we need to keep everything locked down as...
Language is Power
Language is information. Information is power. Therefore, language is power. My wife and I are working our way through Season 2 of Killing Eve these days, and a recent episode involved Villanelle (the main character who's not named "Eve") conversing, in English, with...
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