Okay because all too many are willing to go into knee jerk behavior where they see that one side of an argument is wrong they blindly defend the other side. This is stupid but it happens all too often.
So the latest issue is the protests/looting/riots in the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by corrupt police.
As the chart above shows, there can be lots of people who are wrong in this situation. There should not be looting, there should not be riots but there should not be a corrupt police force or a government that doesn’t respond to obvious problems. But here’s the thing, we, the people, pay the police and the government to be the adults in the room, and they are failing, miserably. And thus their sins are far worse than those committed by rioters.
The fact is that we pay taxes to the government to prevent anarchy, to defend and secure our rights. And for those payments, we have the right to expect certain things, and government has the duty to perform them. The first and foremost of them is due process of law. And they’re failing at this. Why? Because we seem to be hiring idiots at every level of government. Certainly, the voters are partly responsible for this, what with the major parties for the last few decades in the last eight presidential elections we have only once been offered a candidate with both brains and ethics by the major parties (long time readers know who I’m talking about, for those of you who don’t, ask yourself who is the only Senator to not vote with party and admit that Trump was guilty, guilty, guilty). But the problem clearly goes all the way down to code enforcers who think a kid’s lemonade stand is a public safety crisis and police who are, quite frankly, completely inept at their jobs and should be swinging from a tree limb. The most obvious of these are the police because they have guns and itchy trigger fingers, but make no mistake the Institute for Justice if full of stories of other people whose lives are made hell by the brainless legions of government employees who think that because they have the power they have the right to make the lives of citizens living hell.
Finally, government is supposed to be the part of society that thinks long term. The part that sees that corruption is starting in a part of its own apparatus (like the FBI warning that racist behaviors are increasing local police, so maybe they start working on how to find the bad apples and eliminate them). Or seeing that the criminal justice system was letting corrupt cops get away with murder and putting heavier internal punishments in place. Or maybe training, like the effective system that is in Camden, NJ…but apparently we did none of that. Or, maybe, just maybe, realizing that people the stress of lengthy lockdowns is going to exert stress on both the lives of citizens and the lives of police and thus make both sides more prone to being hostile to one another and working to reduce stress and reminding cops that they are paid to be the adults in the room and that they need to work extra hard to be that in these times. But we seem to want to do none of that.
And there are idiots who want to bitch and moan that protests should peaceful. Uh-huh, as has been pointed out all too often in recent days, the same people saying that we should only listen to peaceful protests are the same ones who wanted to bitch and moan about a football player taking a knee during the national anthem. I can’t think of a more peaceful protest. There also seems to be a heavy crossover with the idiots who liked to protest lockdowns with semi-automatic rifles (so peaceful). And last time I checked cops weren’t supposed to target the media and medical workers, but the cops seem hell bent on being the bigger criminals in all of this.
But any sane person could have seen this coming—certainly there was no way to predict when but with lingering social problems, a pandemic, millions unemployed, it was a given. When peaceful protests don’t work things get violent. Acknowledging this fact is not condoning the violence, but it is condemning that no reasonable moves were made to relieve the pressure and make things better. Such has been the history of the entire United States. Usually unplanned and inefficient at getting their goals done, with examples ranging from John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry the riots of the late ’60s, there have been some organized violent protests (everything the Sons of Liberty did in intimidating tax collectors from destroying their homes to tar and feathering, the systemized intimidation of Loyalist at the behest of the Continental Congress, the burning of the British naval ship the Gaspee, and still some disorganized killing of loyalists as there was a jump in the murder rate before the Revolution). But be it organized or not, it was all a very predictable out outcome of government incompetence.
Yeah, people should not be burning private businesses. Although, let’s be honest, there are so many questions about these masked umbrella men showing up breaking things. It’s irrational, ill-conceived, and doesn’t get anyone what they want. But government exists for the very reason that people cannot always be trusted to be rational. And it should be proactive in dealing with problems before they become riots or revolutions, not only after. And as much as I have major sympathies to the most extreme libertarians, I realize that near-anarchy will result not in a capitalist paradise but in a repeat of the French Revolution. Now I still would argue that protesters should do everything they can to be the adults in the room, because the least child-like actors are the ones who tend to win in the long term and just because the cops right now are trying to be the most tyrannical asses around shouldn’t be excuse to be just as petty—I know it’s hard, but be the adult in the room.
So, yeah the people who are committing crimes and burning buildings should be arrested and prosecuted. But if that is where you think that government actions should stop you are completely missing the point.
So what does need to be done?
Among the first things that need to be done is reform for police organizations.
You know, I used to think that if we just got body cameras on every cop the worst abuses would stop because every cop would know they would have a record of their actions and thus would watch what they do…but Floyd’s murderer knew he was on camera and continued in tactics that are only acceptable in the Reich. I had assumed that cops were only emotional, ignorant, and short-sighted. But I now know some police departments are hiring full blow sociopaths, and not even high functioning ones. How else do you describe someone who not only can murder a man who is begging for mercy, but who can do it knowing he’s on camera? But still, body cams should be put in place for the ones who aren’t sociopaths.
And a lot of money needs to go expanding internal affairs (honestly this not just a problem with police but with all levels of the government) and their ability to initiate prosecutions and let the public know what is going on. There needs to be a lot more transparency on the record of every officer. We clearly need better psych screening, but I suggest we start with the simple idea that any cop with racist tattoos be fired immediately (I’d prefer gutshot with a shotgun at close range, but I’ll deal in reality). Horrifically that would take out a staggering number of cops right then and there…and it’s so sad we’ve let it come to that.
Attached to that we need more community involvement and oversight. And to acknowledge that there are still some good people whom we should follow their example.
And unions with their ability to defend their corrupt members need to be neutered (anytime you have government unions you have corruption).
And as stated above the seemingly far superior training program of Camden, policy needs to be adapted to every other police force in the nation. If someone can improve on it, great, but it needs to be the absolute minimum.
Now we could try and pay for all of this or we could cut costs. I prefer the latter. How? One of the biggest (and most racist) boondoggles in existence is the war on drugs. Since its inception, it has been a waste of time, money, and resources that only serves to hurt people. Keep the public intoxication and intoxicated driving laws, and put in a reasonable age limit, like 26 (it’s also what should be the voting age) and literally let everything else be legal. Almost all police abuses, from barging into people’s houses on bad warrants, to the murder of thousands of dogs every year by police, to the criminal racket that is civil forfeiture, qualified immunity that makes crime legal for cops, militarizing the police, to an unhealthy percentage of our incarcerations trace back to the war on drugs. Get rid of that and just not care what adults do in the privacy of their homes and guess what we can get rid of the entirety of the DEA, a good portion of the ATF (as much of their work is detailing with guns going to those in the black market drug trade), and most of the bullshit done by the state, county and city police. I’m making an educated guess here but I would say that this could remove anywhere from 10%-30% of all police forces. Which either leaves those cops to go IA, reassigned to real work walking communities, or just firing the corrupt SOBs. And when drugs are not illegal then you won’t have street gangs and cartels using violence to keep their product safe which in turn will lower crime rates even further and further reduce the need for police work (Season 3 of The Wire was right, legalize it and you will end a lot of crime, as has also been shown in every nation that has either outright legalized it or turn a very blind eye). And a lot less crime means even less need for cops.
But this is only a start.
Police may be the most egregious and newsworthy form of petty bullies using government force against a civilian population but it is not the only kind. Every state, county, and city needs to go through all of their laws and codes and remove every power and regulation that has no purpose. Because understand it is in abuses of regulators acting like little Napoleons for idiotic rules that spark confrontations with violent cops (or do you need to remember that Eric Garner was choked to death by NY police because he was selling cigarettes without the proper permits to avoid paying the ridiculous NY taxes…and we used to praise men like John Hancock for selling things like contraband tea to avoid taxes, but now police are as petty and vile as the redcoats we used to justly shoot). There will regrettably always be petty tyrants in government because power attracts the corruptible (it doesn’t corrupt it only attracts those who want to be corrupt), but we can limit what they can do by limiting their powers.
You want to further stop this kind of insanity? Read Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, and realize that there is still a lot of de jure racism in our laws (although ignore Rothstein’s recommendations on how to fix things, he seems to think that if the government that caused the problem then MORE government will solve it), and as long as its there it’s going to attract the corrupt to enforce those laws. Get rid of all the zoning and housing regulations, and NIMBY BS that prevents affordable housing, actually implement full-scale school choice to prevent lack of education from still being something that holds people in the same economic bracket they’re born into, put in a nationwide UBI to replace the current insanity of welfare that keeps some people busy with a nearly full-time job to prove that they need assistance instead of actually going out and getting a job.
And there are dozens of smaller things, but to do any of that we’d need to realize that government’s job is to be proactive, solve the small problems with mild nudging and letting people live their lives long before it becomes big problems the merry playground for bullies and idiots.
The Conservative New Ager 