Tied to the Tracks

 

Edwardsville, IL  Photo credit: Reuters

If you hadn't heard, that wind we had last Friday was the remains of a tornado that ripped through several states. Dozens of people were killed, all ages. Yes, in December.

Last night I read that at an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, workers wanted to go home after they heard about the tornado headed their way. Warehouses aren't built to withstand tornadoes, and they don't have basements. One man texted his wife or girlfriend saying that management wouldn't let them leave. He was killed when the storm collapsed the warehouse. Six workers were killed there. Amazon blames the victims, saying they were not sheltering in the designated area. Who do you think told them not to? Surely not the micromanagers at Amazon who track employee's movements and time their bathroom breaks!

That we even have a text from him describing the situation is remarkable, because Amazon typically has a policy that warehouse workers aren't allowed to bring their cell phones into the building with them. They had temporarily relaxed that policy--I think something to do with COVID--and were getting ready to start banning phones again.

Mayfield, KY  Photo credit: The Guardian

This morning I heard that in Mayfield, Kentucky, the same thing happened at a candle factory. Workers heard the tornado sirens and wanted to go home, but management told them they'd be fired if they left. Eight of those workers have been confirmed dead. Another six are still missing in the rubble. The factory emphatically denies that they prohibited anyone from leaving, but the fact remains that they did not shut down and have everyone seek safe shelter.

This is the kind of thing that, when I write about it online, I'm often accosted by conservatives who first deny that it happened, then deny it again after I show them proof, then switch to blaming the victims and turning it into a culture war thing. I'm so weary of this dynamic. How do you argue with someone about the best way to waterproof a roof when they deny the existence of rain?

I told my wife--who hasn't worked for an employer in a very long time--about these warehouse tragedies...wait. Let me interrupt myself right there. Let's call these what they were: massacres. If a manager tied employees to a railroad track in front of an oncoming train, we'd have no problem calling that murder. A tornado sounds like a train, and it does even more damage when it rips through. These people were in the path of it, and their managers metaphorically tied them to the tracks. As such, I feel we should call these incidents massacres.

Mayfield, KY Photo credit: NY Post

This is where I'd expect to get some pushback from the aforementioned conservatives. "Nobody physically restrained these people. They're all adults. They made a choice to stay and make money instead of running for their lives."

We are conditioned from childhood to obey our taskmasters. When there's a school shooting, why don't all the kids head for the nearest door or window at the sound of the first shot and run home? Like 18th century army officers ordering their troops to stay in formation in the line of enemy fire, their teachers tell them to stay put, and they obey. Does that make it the victims' fault that they got shot, because they failed to flee? No. And why are the kids even there in the first place? Given the choice, most of them would stay home. They're there because they have to be.

Same deal with the workers. I assure you that not one person killed by the tornado in either of those workplaces was there fulfilling a lifelong dream of working for Amazon or Mayfield Consumer Products. Indeed, seven of the workers in the candle factory were actually inmates from the local jail (they all survived, though the deputy who was guarding them was not so lucky). No five-year-old says they want to be a picker when they grow up, and then eagerly looks forward to it all the way up to the day they're finally old enough. Those people--the "free" ones, anyway--were there because they needed the job to pay for the basics of survival. And had they left to seek safe shelter, and gotten fired, the unemployment office would have offered no help, because they would be classified as either having quit or having been "fired for cause." Then they have no income, no way to pay the rent or mortgage, no way to pay for groceries or utilities--a breath away from homelessness. A person shouldn't have to stare down an oncoming train just to earn a living. These were massacres.

As I was saying, I told my wife about these workers not being allowed to leave. Her response was, "Not allowed? Let's see them stop me! If I hear those sirens go off, I'm outta there and nobody's getting in my way!" As I said, she's self-employed. There's something about autonomy that allows common sense to rise up and displace obedience, perhaps because one gets into the habit of not having anyone to obey. We need more of that. If fewer people were pressed by necessity into obey-or-die (and maybe die even if you do obey) situations, we'd have more people acting sensibly. Until then, employees are caged hamsters running on a wheel, trying to earn their morsel of food, and the owner of the cage must be held entirely responsible for their well-being.

The Consequences of Prohibition (or "Not Everything Has to be Mandated")

(Written July 2, 2015, probably in response to some zealot wanting to criminalize plastic bags)

"I'm not one for unnecessary laws, but..."
...you are, though.

Let me illustrate how this would play out in a place like New York City.

A cop sees a young man wearing his pants so low that his butt is hanging out. The cop is irritated by the sight of this and wants to give the young man a hard time, so he stops him, hoping that in the course of a field interview, some kind of probable cause for an arrest will reveal itself. The young man is understandably irritated by the stop.

The young man is carrying a bag, so the cop says, "What's in that bag? What did you steal?"

"I didn't steal nothin'! Look, I got a receipt!" and the young man opens the bag to retrieve the paper. When he opens the bag, the cop sees a stryofoam take-out container inside. The cop tells him styrofoam is illegal and writes him a ticket. The young man says, "This is bullshit, I ain't done nothin' wrong. I didn't even buy this in the city."

The cop tells him to tell it to the judge. The young man, really irate at this point, says, "I ain't tellin' nothing'! I ain't payin' this damn ticket. All I did was buy lunch! You tellin' me it's illegal to buy lunch now? You gonna have to shut down ever restaurant in this whole goddam city!" The young man rips up the ticket.

The cop tells him that accepting the ticket isn't an admission of guilt, it's just an order to appear in court, and that if he's going to refuse, the cop will have to take him into custody. The young man starts to panic, gets louder and more belligerent, pushes the cop away, and it's on. The cop tries to wrestle him to the ground. In the course of their grappling, the young man puts a hand on the cop's holster and pulls, not even realizing what he's pulling on.

The cop has been conditioned through training to recognize this as an attempt on his life, so he breaks free, draws his weapon, and fires two shots. The young man gets up, facing the cop, and in a blind panic, reaches for the gun, hoping to make the cop stop shooting him. The cop, in turn, empties the rest of his magazine into the young man, killing him.

For the next six weeks, the media is awash with reports of "POLICE EXECUTE COLLEGE VALEDICTORIAN FOR POSSESSION OF STYROFOAM." Cultural leaders of whatever ethnic or religious group the young man was part of claim that the police are committing genocide against their community. Liberal academics take it seriously and jump on the bandwagon, bringing most other educated people with them. As a result, award-winning articles and best-selling books are published describing how the city has been secretly engaged in ethnic cleansing for decades.

Protests and riots happen nationwide, and pretty soon someone half a continent away who never even knew the guy with the saggy pants murders a couple police officers.

Every law written has to be enforced, and enforcement is both inflexible and extreme. So before you pass any new laws, decide how many lives it's worth.

Breakdown of the Sandra Bland arrest and a look at double-standards

(Written on 7/31/2015)

Y'know...I've seen parents before who deal with a misbehaving child by counting down to the moment they'll take disciplinary action. "1...2...two-and-a-half..." I see that and I think, "You're training that child to disobey you. What's the point of the counting? All you're counting is the moments of defiance you'll allow. Once you've told them what to do, and it's clear that it's sunk in and they know what's expected of them, you don't give them a while to think over whether or not they feel like doing what you said."

In light of that, I'd like to do a little count of my own here. I've been saying--and nobody wants to hear it--that most of what the media and every armchair police chief calls excessive force isn't, and that even when there is a case of excessive force, with very rare exceptions, it starts out as a legitimate use of force. Google "police use of force continuum." It's online. Anybody can look at it. Basically, whatever amount of force you want to use to resist, the police can go you one better to make you comply. You remember "Rock, Paper, Scissors?" Well, it's kind of like that, but not circular. It's a straight line.

Say some people are arguing, and it looks like it's going to come to blows. They're disturbing other people. A cop shows up. That uniformed presence is the first act of force. Just him being there is supposed to deter them from escalating. But let's say they ignore him or tell him to fuck off, and they keep at it. At that point, he'll escalate to verbal commands and touch (a hand on a shoulder, etc.). If they go beyond that to "passive resistance"--not running or fighting, but refusing to move or to be moved--at that point the officer is to use "soft techniques"--pain compliance techniques (pressure points, stunning muscle groups), take downs, joint locks, etc.. If it escalates to "active resistance"--running or pulling away--then the officer steps up to using a Taser, a canine, or baton restraint techniques. Opinions vary on whether pepper spray and Tasers should be used to counter passive or active resistance, but each department has its policy, and that's about where those fit in. (Any DT instructors reading this, feel free to chime in.) If the suspect starts assaulting the officer--shoving, hitting, wrestling--then the officer can step up to incapacitating strikes with fists or baton. Bean bags and rubber bullets fit in here, and in departments that allow it, "vascular neck restraint" (a.k.a. "sleeper hold"). Finally, if  the suspect uses a weapon, attempts to disarm the officer (even just trying to grab the baton or pepper spray), or launches a life-threatening weaponless attack, the officer then steps up to using lethal force, usually a gun.

Review that. It seems unfair as hell if you're the suspect and you've got it fixed in your head that you don't deserve to be arrested and that you can get out of it if you just throw a big enough tantrum. No matter how you fight back, they clamp down harder, and it leaves you feeling powerless and frustrated. That makes some people fight back even harder, but eventually, most of them get the message at some point and quit fighting or at least scale back and wait for a better opportunity to try again.

But back to the count I mentioned above. Sandra Bland was argumentative and blowing off steam, and the trooper who pulled her over was letting her run her mouth. Like I always said, I don't care what they say as long they do what I tell them. But then he asked her to put out her cigarette. This wasn't about his fear of second-hand smoke. A cigarette can be used as a weapon to gain initiative. You flick embers in someone's face, and it gives you a moment to draw a gun, grab theirs, whatever. So he asked her to put out the cigarette. It's from that point that I'd like to start our count.

1. "You mind putting out your cigarette, PLEASE? If you don't mind?"

"I'm in my car. Why do I have to put out my cigarette?"

2. "Well you can step on out now."

"I don't have to step out of my car."

3. "Step out of the car."

"..."

4. Trooper opens her car door and waits.

"Why am I.."

5. "Step out of the car"

"No, don't...no, you don't have the right."

6. "Step out of the car!"

"You do not have the right to do that."

7. "I do have the right. Now step out or I will remove you."

"I refuse to talk to you other than to identify myself..."

8. "Step out or I will remove you."

"I am getting removed for a failure to signal?"

9. "Step out or I will remove you. I'm giving you a lawful order."

"..."

10. "Get out of the car now, or I'm gonna remove you."

"Then I'm calling my...you can't touch..."

11. Trooper reaches in to pull her out. "I'm gonna yank you out of here."

"Okay, you gonna yank me outta my car?

12. "Get out."

"Okay, alright." [Finally? She only needs to refuse 11 times?]

Trooper radios for assistance.

"Listen, don't do this."

13. "Yeah, we're going to." Trooper reaches in to pull her out.

It appears as though Bland strikes the trooper and he jumps back. [Refer to use-of-force continuum noted above.] "Don't touch me."

14. Trooper reaches in for her again. "Get out of the car!"

"Don't touch me! I'm not under arrest. You don't have the right to say..."

15 "You ARE under arrest."

"I'm under arrest for what?" [As if she has to approve of the reason before he has the authority to arrest her.] "For what?"

16. Trooper again radios for assistance. "Get out of the car!"

"..."

17. "Get out of the car! Now!"

"Why am I being apprehended? You tryin' to give me a ticket for failure..."

18. "I said get out of the car."

"Why am I being apprehended? [incoherent] "...warrant."

19. "I am givin' you a lawful order. I am gonna drag you out of here."

"So you gonna...so you threatenin' to drag me outta my own car?"

20. Trooper pulls out Taser and points it at her. "GET OUTTA THE CAR!"

[How hard is this, people? Are her legs broken from kicking him too hard? What's the excuse here? He just made it as plain as can possibly be. She's verified that she understand that she's under arrest and that she understands that he wants her to get out of the car and that he's going to drag her out if she doesn't comply. Any of you reading this would have sense enough to get out of the car at this point. If he wanted to murder her, he wouldn't even have needed her to get out of the car. He could've just gone all Ray Tensing and shot her right there if he wanted to murder her. Not only doesn't he do that, he's still trying to elicit her cooperation after she's refused to get out of the car NINETEEN TIMES already. She's already moved up to assaulting him--one step short of justifying deadly force on his part--and he still hasn't actually tazed her yet.]

"And then you [incoherent] me?""

21. "I will light you up! Get out!"

"Wow."

22. "NOW!"

She finally exits the car...continuing to lecture him and question him, asserting her dominance to show that she's the one in control of the situation. Why?

No, really. Why?

The medical examiner's report said that she had marijuana in her system, and that marijuana can act as a "mood amplifier." Okay. I'd always thought marijuana mellowed people out and made them giddy and lethargic...but, okay.

Is that why Trayvon Martin reportedly sat on top of "creepy-ass cracker" George Zimmerman, beating Zimmerman's head into the pavement? Because his mood was "amplified?" Is that why Michael Brown refused to get out of the road when Officer Darren Wilson told him to? Is that why Brown struggled with Wilson while he was still sitting in his patrol car? Is it why he continued to advance on Wilson even after being shot? Because his mood was amplified? Is an amplified mood the reason why Eric Garner told arresting officers, "Every time you see me you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it! It stops today!" before pulling away from them as they tried to handcuff him? Is it why Walter Scott ran away after being stopped for a broken tail light and then tussled with Officer Michael Slager? Is it why the "Jena Six" beat Justin Barker unconscious and then continued to kick him in the head?

Or maybe they did all those things because cops are racists...and this aggression seemed like a wise way to respond to that. Well, it makes more sense if you don't actually think about it.

When men are incarcerated for violent crimes at drastically higher rates than women are, we just automatically dismiss it with, "Or course, men are more violent," and blithely turn a blind eye to all evidence to the contrary. But when blacks are convicted more often that whites? Oh, well, that must be because the cops and judges are racially prejudiced. Even the black ones. As for why latinos don't get killed by police at the same rate as blacks? Well, that couldn't have anything to do with hispanic culture indoctrinating people to respect authority to the point that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about how a South American co-pilot found it preferable to die in a crash than to speak up to correct his superior. The lower rate of latino deaths couldn't have a cultural explanation, because that might give people a hint that the higher rate among blacks might also have a cultural explanation.

In explaining why rates of violence and support for gun ownership rights is so much higher in the South, Thomas Frank and other academics have had no problem expounding at length about how the "honor culture" of the Scotch-Irish settlers is to blame. The theory is that since those original settlers were descended from animal herders rather than from planters, they were naturally more violent and that this cultural influence persists today, long after the herding. It's no trouble using culture to explain the violence of a bunch of shoot-em-up, red state rednecks, but try the same thing with regard to the rate of interpersonal violence and murder in the African-American community? We mustn't speak of such things. It's taboo to even suggest that African-Americans have their own distinct culture.

Succeeding at failing

I follow several homesteading pages on Facebook. One of them recently asked of its readers, "What is the one thing about this lifestyle that sometimes rubs you the wrong way?" This is my response.

The thing about it that bothers me the most is that success is failure.

When you first start out, you may have a normal life. You can have a full-time job, go on vacations, have an active social life, and maintain a respectable reputation in the community. You may have a small vegetable garden in your yard and have a worm bin under your kitchen sink--maybe you even can your own jelly or applesauce once a year--but none of that interferes with the other aspects of your life.

Then you get a little deeper into it. Your garden is large enough to attract attention. You want chickens and a clothes line and a rain barrel. Maybe you start making your own bread. You still have your job, and your social life is mostly intact (though a few friends might start expressing concern), but going away for more than several hours requires more planning than it used to, and you start having to be concerned about rules. Maybe it's the HOA or a municipal code--nothing you'd go to prison for--but in your quest to live more freely, you're experiencing some push back for the first time.

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I wrote the above stub around Thanksgiving 2016. Where I was going with it was to say that when you're a super-boss, living-off-the-land homesteader, you're more than likely living a life that mainstream society sees as the opposite of "success." You're not a celebrity. You're not rich. You might be poor. You may live in a house you made yourself out of sticks and mud, that doesn't even have running water or electricity. You poop in a hole in the ground and have to dig in the dirt or kill animals to find something to eat. They'd call this "abject poverty" and see it as a sad sign that you had failed to amount to anything, instead of seeing that you were fully immersed in living your dream lifestyle. You wouldn't be popular, probably not even with your own extended family. Your neighbors would describe everything about your life as "an eyesore" and "a blight on the neighborhood, pulling down our property values." You won't be well-traveled, as someone needs to stick around to feed the animals. Most Christmas gifts from you will be handmade. That cousin who was hoping for a gift card from Best Buy will likely get a mason jar of honey or some homemade venison jerky. In a consumerist culture, thrift is not a virtue.

Flexible Principles

From 2017

I've been seeing talk again about censorship, or more specifically, things that don't count as censorship because they're not cases of the government making it a criminal offense to express certain ideas. This topic is one that serves as an excellent illustration of how liberals' principles have become highly situational over the past generation.

In 1990, a museum in Cincinnati that showed an exhibit by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was brought up on obscenity charges, at least partly because the exhibit contained child pornography. The case became a rallying point for liberals, who felt that the government had no place putting limits on art. In response, one of the exhibit's most vocal critics, William F. Buckley, editor of the National Review, said,

“Are we taking the position that any creation executed by an artist is ‘art’—and that it should be immune from criticism?” he asked readers. “Let us suppose that an artist painted a synagogue in the shape of a swastika. Would we be obliged to withhold criticism of the painting, in deference to the liberties of the artist?”

In that case, the official position of liberals was that there should never be any impediment placed on free expression, not even in a case of child pornography. In this case, it was a case of actual censorship, with the government stepping in and pressing criminal charges, but liberals said it was wrong.

Fast-forward to 1999, still in Cincinnati. Marge Schott, owner of the Reds baseball team, was forced out of management of the team, not because she mismanaged it, but because she had frequently embarrassed the team by making shockingly racist statements, both publicly and privately. Note, Schott had not broken any laws in making these offensive remarks. When she said that she felt that Adolf Hitler was good for Germany at first, but that he then "took it too far," she was not in violation of any obscenity laws like the museum had been with their kiddie porn display nine years earlier. When she made fun of Asians or referred to her outfielders as "million dollar niggers," she had not violated anyone's civil rights. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, she had neither picked their pockets nor broken their legs...at least not the people she was making the butts of her jokes, that is. She may very well have caused financial injury to the baseball team, which is why the team's board forced her out. She was owner, managing partner, President, and CEO, yet it was permissible to take all that away from her because she legally spoke words that hurt people's feelings and may have caused them to spend their money elsewhere.

If American liberals had been consistent as champions of free expression, this is the point where they'd jump up and say, "Hey, if we'll stop the government from jailing pedophiles, surely we have to stand up to a corporation trying to silence an old woman who's just expressing her opinion." It didn't happen, though. Instead, they were busy clutching their pearls over Schott's latest insensitive remark.

"Not the same thing," I can hear you saying. "The Mapplethorpe exhibit was government censorship. The Cincinnati Reds are a business that made a business decision. Nobody has a constitutional right to manage the Reds. They don't have to pay her if she's going to embarrass them. Nobody has to pay to give Schott a platform."

Okay...2003--the Dixie Chicks, while performing at a concert in the UK, said,
"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."

The President took it in stride, saying that the thing about America was that these women were free to express their opinions. Country music fans, though, were outraged. They protested and boycotted the band. Their top single fell from #10 to #43 in a single week. The week after that, it fell off the chart completely. Major organizations cancelled promotional deals with the band. Association with them was financial suicide.

The left, though, was outraged by the outrage. Not typically country music fans, American liberals came together to embrace the Dixie Chicks and celebrate them as righteous martyrs, cruelly and wrongfully persecuted for expressing a political position. Other celebrities, notably Madonna and Merle Haggard, spoke out publicly to support the Dixie Chicks' right to express themselves freely. No arrests had been made. No charges had been filed. Although some radio DJs were fired for playing Dixie Chicks songs, the band itself remained employed. The only "penalty" they were subjected to was that they earned less money because their erstwhile fans chose not to pay them to express those opinions. (They were subjected to death threats by some individuals, but they were not official government actions. Indeed, police gave the band a personal security detail to protect them from criminals.) The record label kept them. They continued doing concerts. They actually got some good publicity from the controversy, but the political left treated them as innocent victims or a ruthless hate crime because people who didn't like what they said stopped paying and stopped listening.

"B-but...Marge Schott was speaking hate. She was oppressing minorities with her words. The Dixie Chicks were speaking truth to power!"

Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson was asked in a 2013 GQ interview what he felt was sinful. He responded,
"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men." A&E disavowed the comments and suspended Robertson from the show. Some retailers stopped carrying Duck Dynasty merchandise. Robertson was not calling for gays to be oppressed, or for rights to be taken away from them. Indeed, in a follow-up interview, he expressed a compassionate, if socially conservative, view.
"Jesus will take sins away. If you're a homosexual, He'll take it away. If you're an adulterer, if you're a liar, what's the difference?"

Liberals screamed their roaring approval of the suspension, saying that A&E had every right to suspend someone. Same as with the Reds, it was a private company "refusing to give a platform to hate." In fact, though, it was A&E who expressed hate by censoring Robertson's religious views--and not just by suspending him over his politically incorrect religious views. A year prior, during a portion of the show where Robertson and his family prayed, editors bleeped the word "Jesus" as though it were profanity, and asked Robertson to stop saying the name.

It would appear, then, that by the ever-evolving liberal standards, it's okay for a business in the pursuit of money to silence religious expression, but not political expression. Er, that is to say, it's okay to be anti-Christian for profit, but not okay to be pro-Bush for profit. So now the principle is, in fact, totally devoid of principle. There is no hard standard based on an abstract rule of behavior. It's entirely down to content, judged on a case-by-case basis as to whether the speaker is saying something that offends or encourages liberals. That's no principle at all. That's just bias.

Since this time, America's political left has come out with rigid prescriptions on how men should sit on public transportation, which pronouns we must use for people of ambiguous gender, which gender is allowed to set office thermostats, and what skin colors a person must have to express a valid opinion about race relations,

Rough draft of a piece I was writing about police oversight in September 2020

 There are a couple things that I've found particularly irksome in the discussion around police reform. Well, there are many, but there are two main ideas I'd like to talk about.

The first is one that has existed since long before this George Floyd business, and even predates Black Lives Matter. I believe I first noticed it--or at least I remember first being irritated by it--in a book by Malcolm Gladwell called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. Prior to that, I had developed a very favorable opinion of Gladwell when I read Outliers: The Story of Success. I thought him to be a wise and insightful man, able to probe past our usual, lazy assumptions and find answers in previously unexamined connections. 

(Outline) point 1: Gladwell seemed to think cops should have superhuman powers of perception, judgement, and speed. I find it to be a common belief that police officers, because of the training they go through, possess abilities and traits not found among mere mortals. Paradoxically, this belief is often made by the same people who decry police training as being inadequate, and the officers themselves as dullards and bullies who couldn't qualify for any other job. [Schoedinger's cop: simultaneously superhuman and an incompetent loser]

2. Perhaps because liberals (because--let's face it--that's who's leveling these criticisms) look at police officers as being intellectually and socially inferior to them, there's a tendency for those demanding reforms to engage in a bit of Dunning-Kruger miscalculation of their own ability to make useful recommendations.

An example of this is the widespread suggestion that there be a civilian review board to investigate alleged police misconduct, and that the members of this board be chosen by popular election. As far as I've heard, that's the only qualification required--simply to be voted in.

Suppose we used the same approach in investigating alleged bad practices in the work of surgeons, civil engineers, and airline pilots. Kevin the cashier and Tasha the daycare provider will determine whether Dr. Osaka made the most appropriate choice in deciding which surgical technique to use for a given patient's condition, just because they got the most votes. 

I'm not saying that Dr. Osaka shouldn't have any oversight. I'm saying that the overseers should be qualified. At a bare minimum, they should know as much about the situation as Osaka does. Preferably, they should know much more. They should be experts among experts.

Presently, in cases of alleged police brutality, that's how it's done. Initially, it's looked into by the officer's own supervisors. If that's not sufficient, it goes to an Internal Affairs investigation, or perhaps investigation by an outside agency. Evidence is examined--video, witness statements, injuries to the victim, the officer's testimony, etc. State and federal law are consulted, as well as department policies and procedures. Lawyers--people who know a hell of a lot more about the law than a cop does--will be involved. If it goes to trial, a judge--or a jury guided by a judge--will make the decision after hearing expert testimony from the people who train the police, so that there can be no question whether the officer did what he was supposed to do or whether he went outside his prescribed procedures.

The problem is that after a thorough examination of all the evidence, it's usually discovered that the officer acted correctly. That doesn't sit well with Kevin and Tasha, who, based on a media story and a gut reaction, decided that the officer was guilty. They wanted to see him lynched. They wanted blood, and when they don't get it, they declare that the whole legal system is corrupt and covering up for the police.

The situation we have now is that some public officials are more worried about re-election than justice, so they want to appease Kevin and Tasha by offering up the accused officer as a sacrificial lamb.

"Back in my day..."

Gather 'round and listen to an old man tell a tale of how things used to be. You old folks, too, as many of you seem to have forgotten.

I grew up during the Cold War, back when the Soviet Union was still a thing. It was the Eighties, so they had long since given up having children do "duck-and-cover" drills, but being vaporized by the USSR was always on our minds. We understood that if a launch occurred, we'd have 20 minutes warning, and the only thing a person could really do to help themselves in that 20 minutes was to try to make it close enough to Ground Zero to be vaporized rather than suffering a lingering death from radiation poisoning. The goths of that era, the New Wave fans, actually had a reason to think life was pointless, given that other people, over whom we had no control, could destroy the planet several times over in less time than it would take for us to drive home and say goodbye to our loved ones.

Back then, we had the conservative/liberal cultural divide, but it wasn't like it is now. After Nixon and the Vietnam War, and with the coming of age of the massive Boomer generation, the political pendulum swung far to the left. But then in the '70s, with Democrats in the White House, the economy tanked. Factories and mills shut down, leaving whole cities newly unemployed. Terrorists from the Middle East were kidnapping people, and the Dems couldn't seem to do anything about it. Our biggest cities had turned into cesspools of violent crime. The liberals were an embarrassing disappointment, so the country started swinging back to the right.

Even union Democrats voted for "Ronnie Ray Gun." They wanted someone who would punish the urban underclass for collecting welfare, execute all the criminals, and kick Russia's ass. Right-wingers sported T-shirts and bumper stickers with slogans like "Kill a Commie for Mommy." At that time, conservatives weren't styling themselves as rugged individualists going against the grain--just the opposite, in fact. Liberals were the avant garde nonconformists, while "conservative" meant just that--favoring old traditions and fashions, and finding change distasteful. The media (mostly controlled by liberals, then as now) depicted conservatives as being overly formal and stiff, the men always wearing ties, none of them daring to curse--that kind of thing.

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I don't remember where I was going with this three years ago, but maybe someone will enjoy reading this much of it. It was probably related to that one about summoning the aleax.

Bugging Out

A friend recently expressed concern on Facebook that it was too late to start "prepping." As I was responding, it occurred to me that others might find this helpful, so I'm sharing it here as an open letter. While not related to agriculture, I'm posting it here on the farm blog, as what follows may serve as the basis for a class we could have at the farm (or elsewhere). More than just a place that grows food, I want Woodland Urban Farm to be a place that teaches the community how to sustain itself--even if, as discussed below, that means leaving. If anybody would be interested in attending any classes, hands-on workshops, or discussion groups about this or similar topics, let me know, and I'll see what I can arrange.

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If by "prepping," you mean living off the land or stockpiling enough supplies to allow you to ride out a long-term breakdown of supply chains, then you're right. The time to start was years ago. Your focus at this point should be on mobility. Here are some points to think about and plan around.

- If your subdivision became unsafe, where could you go right now with whatever vehicles, fuel, and money you can grab in five minutes? Could you stay there 24 hours? 72? A month or more?

- Think of four places--one each to the north, south, east, and west-- outside of central Ohio that you could go and stay for at least 72 hours.

 - If cars and buses weren't an option, how far could you move your family in an hour? In a day? Could you reach any of your safe places you listed above? Tips: Think bicycles & bike trailers; wheelbarrows/garden carts for little kids & gear; light boats to move on shallow waterways; animals that can be ridden or made to pull carts, bikes, etc. or carry packs. Not too many people around here are going to have horses, but some might have goats and many have dogs. In our location, look to Alum Creek to move south, and the Alum Creek Greenway Trail to move north or south (northeast or southwest, if you go far enough, as this trail is part of the Ohio to Erie Trail).

- How easily could you get out of the country if you needed to? Do all your family members have passports? What countries would let you in? How quickly could you get there? Could you do it without an airplane? Without a car? Do you have any safe places you could go once you got to your destination country?

 - Do you have enough of everything your family uses--food, water, toiletries, clothes, medications, etc.--on hand right now to sustain you all for two weeks? How quickly can you move it all into your car? Could you move it without a car? How far?

 - If you lost phone and internet service, do you have a means of communicating with any of the people at the safe places listed above to let them know you're coming? Do you have a way to leave messages for friends who might come looking for you? Can you do it without that information falling into the hands of unfriendlies?

- If your family is not all together (partner at work, kids at school, etc.) when you have to evacuate, how quickly and easily could you all rendezvous? If your children were to get separated from you while you're traveling, do they know how to find you or get found by you?

 

- How would you get around or through a roadblock? Assume you're outgunned.

- Are there other people you know who to whom you could entrust your children if necessary? Outside your neighborhood? Outside of central Ohio? Outside the country?

- Could you travel without being seen if you needed to? How far? How quickly? Consider this both with and without children, as there may be times when it's not safe to evacuate the whole family, but somebody needs to be able to get through with messages or supplies.

...and you can't always count on there being a heavily armed, 

donkey-riding, delivery man who steers with his teeth

- How far and fast can the slowest person in your family run? Don't count those small enough to be carried.

- How well can you defend yourself and your family from violence if firearms are not an option (weapons seized or broken, out of ammunition, etc.)? Tip: For thousands of years, wars were fought mostly by infantrymen armed with spears. How quickly are you capable of acquiring a pointy stick at least as long as your arm?

- Could your whole family sleep overnight in your vehicle(s)? If not, do you have camping gear sufficient for those who couldn't, and how quickly can you load it? Could you carry it without a car, while still carrying 10-days' worth of supplies for everyone? Can you build an improvised shelter that will accommodate your entire family?

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Nobody I know that I can think of--including myself--is likely to score 100% on this. It's useful to think about it, though, both to mentally rehearse what you know you can do, and to identify those things that are more of a challenge and start thinking now about how you would deal with those situations if they arose.

If any of you run into any areas of particular concern, let me know, and we can work on coming up with answers. If there are skills you need to learn or practice, maybe we (local people) can put together some kind of hands-on training and get people together for a workshop.

Modern American Slavery, and a peek at Relearning Humanity and an upcoming YouTube channel

I've been noticing something lately. It isn't hidden. It's right out in the open, but I haven't seen anyone else drawing attention to it, so I'm wondering if nobody noticed.

We still have a slave class in America.

I'm not talking about prison labor, or illegal immigrants, or low-paid minorities, or even the euphemistically named "working class," which has come to mean the poor and/or blue-collar workers. (Have you ever wondered why a lawyer working 60 hours a week isn't considered to be "working class?")

I mean that our economic model boils down to "Obey your boss or starve."

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I abandoned this post two years ago, but I've written so much about it since then...unfortunately, mostly lost to the bowels of Facebook and Quora. I have another whole blog devoted to this topic called "Relearning Humanity" that I apparently started way back in 2012 and only posted in sporadically for seven years. But I've recently decided to continue that theme as a YouTube channel. I've worked up storyboards for a few different videos I'd like to do, and I have a few other general concepts in mind.

I'm torn about the format. At least one of these videos would, I think, be done best as an animated short, probably with a voiceover narration. But that would require me to learn computer animation, which requires a good, functional computer and a whole lot of time, at a point in my life where there are too many other demands on my time. So the desire to make this perfect keeps me from doing anything at all.

I notice that most of the YT channels I watch regularly are just a person talking into a camera. Sometimes they're playing a fictional character or wearing a costume, but it's still mostly talking heads speaking to a camera. That's easiest, and I notice that these people put out a larger volume of content on a more frequent basis than animators and other YT filmmakers do. (Editing takes time!) So on the one hand, I really love the idea for this channel and want to take time to "do it right" and produce quality content, even if it's only just a few videos at first. But then, I see that if I want to get the message out quickly AND get more eyes on it by releasing videos on such a frequent basis that watching them becomes a habit for people, I need to just do it. 

One thing I don't like about that idea, though, is that I don't really want to make it about me. I want these ideas to take off and gain traction without becoming a cult of personality, or conversely, being dragged down by my own personal lack of charm and aesthetics. I'm a fat, cranky, dour-looking, pushing-50 man with perpetually messy hair, broken teeth, glasses that would glare into a camera, a stained wardrobe, and a voice made for print media. After enduring a half-century of in-person trolling, I'm not looking forward to putting my mug out there to catch everyone's ad hominem attacks and luring the occasional stalker to my home...or pouring my heart and soul into this and then nobody but my closest friends ever even looks at it.

So however I do eventually go about it, I want to get this message out that you don't have to have a boss, and that if you do choose to have a boss, there are things you can do to make yourself less dependent on that relationship for your basic necessities. I want to show people how to do that, how to "buy their freedom," so to speak. Think of it as a mash-up between "Your Money or Your Life," "The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving," dozens of books on homesteading and bushcraft that I've read over the past 40 years or so, and my own life experience up to this point. Part theory, part practical skills, and maybe, if the channel starts making enough money to justify traveling, actually going around interviewing people who've made the jump to living off grid, starting their own business, going mortgage-free, becoming independently wealthy, and otherwise telling their boss to take their job and shove it.

Summoning the Aleax

As I've observed politics and social discourse over the past 25 years or so, the thing that I think unsettles me most is the increasing prevalence of alignment shift. I'm not talking about a mechanical problem in the front end of your car, nor about changing alliances. I'm talking about "alignment" as the word is used in Dungeons & Dragons.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Dungeons & Dragons is a role-playing game where players assume the role of a character which they guide through an adventure of fighting monsters and searching for treasure, guided by a "dungeon master" who serves as part story-teller, part referee. Each player has a paper called a "character sheet" that lists their character's skills, equipment, and basic characteristics. Among these characteristics is one called "alignment" that describes the guiding values by which a character tells the difference between right and wrong. There are nine possible alignments, plotted along two axes. One axis is good-evil, and the other is lawful-chaotic. This means a character may be one of the following: lawful-good, lawful-neutral, lawful-evil, neutral-good, true neutral, neutral-evil, chaotic-good, chaotic-neutral, or chaotic-evil.

This acknowledgement of a difference between conformity and morality was one of the novel features that set the game apart from others that simply cast players as either heroes or villains. Robin Hood, who broke the law to commit acts of justice and mercy, would be a well-known example of the chaotic-good alignment, while a government official who strictly enforces the letter of the law to cause pain and suffering would be an example of lawful-evil.

In politics, people's worldviews are often described by a similar, two-axes method, with one axis being left-right, and the other being authoritarian-libertarian. In my youth, leftist authoritarians were practically non-existent in this country. From what I could see at the time, the leftists were hippies. They wanted to exist outside of systems of authority, in egalitarian communes where everyone could "do their own thing." They saw themselves as rebels against "the Establishment" or "the System" or "the Man," because at that time, the centers of power were all controlled by people acting on conservative, right-wing values. The people trying to hang onto old, traditional views and the people using violence, poverty, and prison to oppress minorities were one and the same. It went without saying at the time that if someone believed in empowering minorities, they also took a casual or even oppositional approach to rules and mores. The idea of a leftist being a totalitarian was alien, something that existed only in other countries or before my time. If we were taught about them at all, it was only to tell us that they were bad and scary.

As the Boomers grew older and took control of those centers of power, things started to change. The same hippy-leftist vs. totalitarian-right narrative was still dominant, because that's how the people controlling the message saw the world. But at the same time, these hippies-cum-power-brokers started to edify their worldview through force of law. Laws were passed to punish those who made life hard for anyone the left saw as an underdog. Feminism and political correctness became the official orthodoxy on college campuses. The environment was protected, not just by protests and boycotts anymore, but by government agencies wielding power.

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And that's where I abandoned this post over nine months ago, for whatever reason. Anyway, in Dungeons & Dragons, there's a little-known monster called an aleax that a character's god can send to punish the character for straying off alignment. Say an evil character had started being much too kind, helpful, heroic, and self-sacrificing for good causes. The evil deity that character worships would send this "angel of punishment" called an aleax to attack the character. It looks exactly like the character, and only the character can see or touch it. The aleax would fight the character to the death, as I remember. If the aleax killed the character, that was that. They were dead and presumably punished in the afterlife. If the character prevailed, though, and killed the aleax, they'd be given a second chance. I think the lore was that the character would be taken into the realm of their god to serve them for a year or something like that. Then they'd return to the mortal realm supposedly reformed and ready to play in a manner consistent with the alignment listed on their character sheet.

What I was getting at here was the idea that these hippies-turned-tyrants need the hippie god to send some aleaxes down to smite their asses and put them back on the love, peace, and do-your-own-thing path.

Umberto Eco's 14 Points of Fascism, and How They Describe the American "Left"

Before we begin, I'd like to clarify something. The title of this post refers to "the American Left," but that's a really poor descriptor for a group with no accurate name, a group I have dubbed "the Wokesters." It is not a reference to the Democratic Party, though the party often (insincerely) uses language that appeals to Wokesters in order to solicit their support. Nor am I referring to actual economic leftists, who favor some kind of egalitarian politics somewhere along the axis between Marxism and capitalism tempered by strong unions and an effective, compassionate social safety net. Most Wokesters would say they subscribe to such views, but plenty of other people who also do aren't Wokesters.

"Wokesterism" isn't about economic policy so much as it's about using stereotypes to split the population into The Oppressors and The Opressed, and taking a militant position against the Oppressors. Some have called this "Cultural Marxism" because of its emphasis on the downtrodden overthrowing the powerful, but Marx saw revolution as cyclical. The victims overthrow the tyrants, and eventually become tyrants themselves, only to then be overthrown by the people they oppressed. But in the worldview of Wokesters, the first tyrants are forever tryants, even if they're eventually enslaved, and the original victims are forever victims, forever incapable of evil. (If you think about it for a moment, you can see how this is probably the thinking that leads the victorious victims to become tyrants in the first place.)

Though this school of thought appears to have had its origins in third-wave (or "intersectional") and radical feminism, I believe it is more properly described as a postmodernist, second wave of anti-racism. To perhaps oversimplify it a bit, but in the interest of brevity, we can describe the thesis of Wokesterism as basically being, "Straight, white men are the root cause of all evils in the world. Even when people of color or LGBTQ+ people victimize each other, it's because of conditions created by straight, white men. The proof of this is that some individuals who see themselves as victims feel like it's so. Not only is that all the proof that's required, anyone who questions the veracity or objectivity of subjective, anecdotal evidence is committing further acts of aggression against the victims. Anyone who disagrees is a Nazi who must be silenced, shunned, and destroyed."

The first wave of anti-racism is the colorblind sort that prevailed in the Civil Rights era and persisted through the 1980s. It is perhaps best typified in the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote,

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Gen-Xers were raised on this idea, with everyone from our teachers to the characters of Sesame Street indoctrinating us to accept that a person's race, ethnicity, religion, sex, or disability is completely irrelevant to their value as a human being. We were taught to accept that the "wrapper" a person came in didn't determine what kind of person they were, and that it was evil to think otherwise. We saw the attempts by previous generations to grant or deny privileges based on these superficial characteristics as being both evil and absurd.

But this second wave, Wokesterism, defies and criticizes that idea. They say that in order for justice to be done, the injured parties and the perpetrators must be identified. That sounds reasonable on its face, but through the lens of postmodernist subjectivity, the injured parties and perpetrators are whomever the Wokesters feel like naming. They assign both blame and martyr status, not according to the objectively identifiable, documentable acts of individuals, but rather by prejudiced feelings about entire races, ethnic groups, etc. Wokesters claim that colorblindness perpetuates racism, while the first-wave anti-racists see Wokesterism as blatantly racist.

Now that that's out of the way, let's dig into Eco's 14 points*, and how the Wokesters are rushing to embody them.
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1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

To Wokesters, "Whitey" was the bad guy in the 1400s, he's still the bad guy now, and he always will be the bad guy, no matter what he might do to atone. One often hears opinions on reparations prefaced by, "While, of course, no amount of money could ever possibly be enough make up for the horrors of slavery...". If amends can never be made, why try? What good does it do? What's the point, other than to punish one class of people for things they never did while feeding the sadism and sense of entitlement of people who see themselves as victims for sins that were committed decades before they were born? True progressivism would seek forward movement--"We correct this injustice, and then we move on to the better reality we've created." But Wokesterism doesn't actually want progress. They just want power to switch from one group of bullies to another, and for the new regime to be the status quo forever more. They wish to create a new tradition of straight, white, male submission.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Umberto Eco, as a 20th century professor and novelist, was understandably focused on the fascism of 20th-century Europe when he wrote these points. Modernism was avant garde during the reigns of Hitler and Mussolini. The Nazis rejected Modernism because it attacked the romantic visions of the past that the Nazis found inspirational. But Postmodernism also rejects Modernism. Postmodernism elevates the subjective and outright denies the objective. Ironically, though, Wokesters accept certain subjective perceptions as Absolute Truth, while opposing views are condemned as heresy. The determining variable at first appears to be the identity of the person expressing their perception. But it's not even really about that. It's about adherence to Woke dogma. The moment a woman criticizes feminism, or a black person says they don't feel oppressed, the Wokesters turn on them. Suddenly, that individual's "truth" is invalid. This adherence to their own orthodoxy is the establishment of a new tradition, one vigorously defended as the only morally acceptable one.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

On May 25th, 2020, Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd for no apparent reason other than to callously defy the crowd of onlookers who were pleading with him to stop strangling Floyd. The rational, modernist view would say that this was a crime committed by one man against another man. Chauvin is the guilty party, and Chauvin should be punished for what Chauvin did. It might further allow that Chauvin had supervisors in the Minneapolis Police Department who also bore some responsibility for having allowed this to happen. Fair enough. The top of that chain of command is the Mayor of Minneapolis, or perhaps even the Governor of Minnesota. 

But that summer, we saw riots nationwide. Wokesters attacked police and smashed the windows of homes and businesses that had no connection to Chauvin whatsoever. Banging a hammer against a piece of metal here in Columbus, Ohio, is not going to fix a malfunctioning engine in China, and throwing bricks at police officers here isn't going to do a blessed thing to cause Minneapolis to change its police policies and practices. But that's logic, and postmodernists abhor logic. Their thinking was, "We're mad, we deserve to lash out, and you have no business criticizing how we choose to express ourselves." 

Wokesters use this same rationale to justify their seemingly aimless (but always authoritarian) actions regarding gun control, environmentalism, diversity, and the suppression of iconography that they find offensive.

4. No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism.

Put more plainly, Eco said that fascists regard disagreement as treason. We see this every time a feminist Wokester attempts to silence disagreement with her flimsily supported rants by accusing critics of "mansplaining." The mere fact that words are spoken by men is regarded as evidence that the words are wrong and invalid.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

This is a funny one, because Wokesters believe that they hold diversity to be the highest virtue. But as I pointed out earlier, they only tolerate diversity within the confines of their orthodoxy. In fact, the diversity they tolerate is only aesthetic. They don't tolerate any true difference in opinion. They regard "whiteness" as a sin. The mere existence of families formed around cisgendered, heterosexual couples is seen as deeply harmful. They're very clear about which people they find acceptable and which ones they don't.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

Read any fascist, anti-semitic propaganda and simply replace the word "Jews" with "billionaires," "corporations," "the One Percent," "Trumpers," "white men," "cops," or "Christians," and you'll find it's indistinguishable from the rhetoric of Wokesters.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.