Disputing Reality

 

I'm active on a Quora group about homelessness, and one of the most frequent and maddening statements I find myself arguing against on there is "Most homeless people choose to be homeless. It's a lifestyle thing." I tell these people they're wrong. Most people who are homeless are so because they don't have enough money for housing. The reason I fight back is because it seems they're denying that involuntary poverty even exists, and my rage trigger is people contradicting empirical reality.

"You can't see me!"

 

It's like that old Judge Judy line, "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining." So many things coming from identetarians that I object to, and that cause other progressives to tag me as a conservative, are about this. Like when a black, multimillionaire politician says that they're oppressed and that a white welfare recipient living in a trailer park is oppressing them and has greater privilege. 

Patriarchy

 

Or when a criminal literally attempts to murder a police officer, they fight, the assailant loses, and then people say, "The police killed him for no reason but being black." 

 

"You're saying I did what now?"

 Or when a guy puts on a dress and people say, "He's an actual, biological woman now, he's always been a woman from the day he was born, and if you don't believe that, you're a bigot." There's this creepily Orwellian formula to it: 1) Make a false assertion that can be easily disproved, 2) Aggressively demand that others accept your assertion as reality, 3) Punish and ostracize anyone who refuses to accept it. 

 

"Right?"

 

It's like the Wokester version of the Spanish Inquisition. One of the big things the Inquisitors went after people for was blasphemy, and one of the articles of faith they insisted on was the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. For those who aren't theology geeks, that's the belief that the bread used in a Catholic mass to represent the body of Jesus during the sacrament of Communion (where they ritually re-enact the last meal Jesus had with his followers before his execution) literally, physically BECOMES the actual flesh of Jesus during the ritual, as opposed to just being a piece of bread that symbolizes his body. Another one was that they required everybody to believe that Mary was actually a virgin. 

 

 

Oh, hey, we were just talking about you.

 

 

These are pretty far-out things to expect a person who's not schizophrenic to believe, yet the Inquisitors were so insistent about it that they'd actually torture and kill anyone they didn't feel was sufficiently enthusiastic in the expression of their belief in these things. 

"This is your last chance--tell me I'm a pretty, blue pony and say it like you mean it!"

 

That's my top pet peeve. When a person (or worse, multiple people) who are completely unhinged from reality bully others into playing along with their self-serving delusions, I can't just ignore it. I paid attention to "The Emperor's New Clothes." You don't pretend to believe in bullshit just because powerful people insist on it.

So anyway...

LGBT folks are way overrepresented among the homeless. The explanation has always been that angry parents kick out their queer teenagers, leaving them homeless. I always accepted this narrative. I felt bad for the kids and felt resentment towards their parents.

But I'm seeing conversations among trans people on Twitter and there's this running theme of "My mom kept a picture of me from when I was a kid" or "My grandma deadnamed me" and so on--basically "My family regarded me as being the same person they've known my whole life"--followed by "...so I cut off my whole phobic family and haven't talked to any of them in years." This is met with much cheering and encouragement, and general disparagement of anyone who won't play along with their delusions.

I see a LOT of that. I've yet to run across a single account of "my parents kicked me out for not being what they wanted." I'm not saying that has never happened. I'm saying that, at least from what I'm seeing, the voluntary runaways vastly outnumber the ones who were put out of their parents' home onto the street against their will.

 

"Misery loves company. If you can't make peace with your own family, encourage other people to abandon theirs."

 

I recognize that my perception may be a bit skewed because of the possibility that the kids who are homeless might have less access to the internet. Maybe there's some hidden economic dynamic where the people who cut themselves off from their families voluntarily are more likely to have internet access, while the ones that were kicked out are less likely to. I'm not saying I think that's true or that I've seen any evidence of it--I'm just leaving the door open to the possibility of something I could be overlooking.

But it doesn't look that way. It seriously looks like they're the ones being jerks and making ultimatums, and then crying that they've been victimized when they haven't been. As I've told right-wingers for years, "No, not getting to force people to do what you say isn't a violation of your rights."

On one of these discussions, I saw trans people complaining about not being able to change their birth certificate in some states. Why on Earth would you change a birth certificate? The whole point of it is to make a permanent record of facts that actually happened. You were born in a certain place. Your parents were particular people. You were born at a definite time and date. In most cases, you were born with a clearly identifiable sex. None of these things change over time. Even if you get adopted, it doesn't change your genetics. History isn't to be erased and rewritten because we didn't like how it went. I'm 5'9". I can't just demand that the Bureau of Motor Vehicles change my driver's license to say I'm 6'4". I can't become a citizen of Canada just by changing my birth certificate to say that I was born in Ottawa. I'm 49 years old. I can't just have my vital records changed to say I'm 19. It doesn't matter how intensely I feel like a tall, young Canadian. I'm not one, and lying about it on official records is--and should be--a crime. 

" I identify as being 21. Gotta problem with that?"

So now I've got to reevaluate my position on whether most homelessness is really involuntary. I need actual data so I have numbers to crunch. Are most homeless people just really, really poor, or were they all kids who ran away from home because Grandpa called them by their birth name?

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.