Tag: politics

Demoralization

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In the comments to a post at Say Uncle on massive failures from police crime labs in Massachusetts and Texas, Lyle said:

Part of the overthrow of the U.S. is demoralizing the population. Part of demoralizing the population is having incompetent buffoons in critical positions, such that we lose trust in the system. Eventually, so the idea goes, we’ll be so fed up and disgusted that we’ll cry out for a “strong man” who will “do something” by getting past all the politics and red tape, i.e. a dictator.

In the comments to a post at BoingBoing that Uncle linked wherein a Brit berated a man for “taking the law into his own hands” and taking a gun to check on the welfare of his daughter instead of calling the cops to do it, another commenter responded:

Call the police and they might just kill you
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-50…

Police escalate car chase to deadly conclusion
http://www.thedailybeast.com/a…

Even the mayor isn’t safe
http://www.seattlepi.com/natio…

Police helping the mentally-challenged
“With his dying words, he… never understood why the defendant had beat him. He said ‘All I wanted was a Snickers bar.'”
http://digitaljournal.com/arti…

Newly-Released Surveillance Video Shows Police Officers Brutally Beating, Suffocating, and Tasing Kelly Thomas to Death
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2…

Sure, a lot of cops, maybe most, are there to help. I’ve met some of them. But in this country, it really is a crapshoot. You don’t want to call the cops unless you absolutely have to.

There are a lot more of those, too.

Where have I heard the term “demoralization” before?

UPDATE:  The Kelly Thomas link goes to a different homicide-by-cop.  The video of Kelly Thomas getting beaten (not tased) to death is here:  Full, unedited video. 

“STOP DIGGING!”

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Reader Phil B., the Brit expat now living in Middle Earth, sent me a link to a wall-o’-text essay,  Reactionary Philosophy In An Enormous, Planet-Sized Nutshell, by one Scott Alexander. Aside from being a tremendous source for Quotes of the Day, it’s an absolutely outstanding piece of work I cannot recommend strongly enough.

But it is, absolutely, an überpost. Get a beverage and a snack before you sit down to savor it. Excerpt:

Reaction isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s not suggesting there’s a secret campaign for organized repression. To steal an example from the other side of the aisle, it’s positing something more like patriarchy. Patriarchy doesn’t have an actual Patriarch coordinating men in their efforts to keep down women. It’s just that when lots of people share some really strong cultural norms, they manage to self-organize into a kind of immune system for rejecting new ideas. And Western society just happens to have a really strong progressivist immune system ready to gobble you up if you say anything insufficiently progressive.

And so the main difference between modern liberal democracy and older repressive societies is that older societies repressed things you liked, but modern liberal democracies only repress things you don’t like. Having only things you don’t like repressed looks from the inside a lot like there being no repression at all.

The good Catholic in medieval Spain doesn’t feel repressed, even when the Inquisition drags away her neighbor. She feels like decent people have total freedom to worship whichever saint they want, total freedom to go to whatever cathedral they choose, total freedom to debate who the next bishop should be – oh, and thank goodness someone’s around to deal with those crazy people who are trying to damn the rest of us to Hell.

And that’s just for openers. Go. Read.

Quote of the Day – Sultan Knish Edition

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Via email from Unix Jedi:

But now you are a liberal in 2013 and the society is already very liberal. You are the product of liberal professors who learned at the feet of other liberal professors for 3 or 4 generations. You grew up in a liberal community to parents whose grandparents were already singing red campfire songs. Like them, you came of age as a member of a natural elite.

The newspapers you read, the textbooks you studied, the movies you watch, the professors who taught you and every adult you grew up with all reflect your point of view. You have no sense of being marginalized or out of step. Nor do you have any sense that there is another point of view out there. Only ranks of ignorant teabaggers paid for by corporate money who are about to be swept away into the dustbin of history as soon as the multicultural youth of tomorrow put together another Hip-Hop Against AIDS protest.

You live in a bubble and you see no need for an open society or for maintaining the integrity of institutions such as journalism or the scientific community. The very idea of objectivity is at odds with your entire way of thinking because it presumes that there is some higher truth than the one propounded by the progressive reality-based community. And you know, with the casual faith of any born believer, that this is not possible.

Read the whole thing.

“The typhoon waves are starting to break over the bridge.”

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Interesting piece in The American Spectator, His Queeg Moment.  Excerpt:

In Herman Wouk’s classic World War II novel, The Caine Mutiny, there is a moment when a group of the ship’s officers are getting away from the increasingly eccentric Captain Queeg by relaxing ashore.

Suddenly the malcontent Lieutenant Keefer asks the others: “Does it occur to you that Captain Queeg may be insane?

In fact Queeg is not insane, at least not at that time. He is simply grappling, more and more disastrously, with a job too big for him. Come the crisis of a typhoon, he becomes paralyzed and nearly sinks the ship by failing to give the obvious orders. At the subsequent court-martial he appears quite normal until he breaks down under the pressure of cross-examination. Before this, the officers have searched the regulations for guidance, but the regulations refer only to a captain who is clearly and unmistakably insane, not one who is merely guilty of eccentricity and bad judgment. At a lower level of responsibility, Queeg might have performed adequately, but with Keefer’s question, the remaining respect for Queeg’s office has gone.

Obama’s second inauguration speech may be his Queeg moment — an undeniable demonstration that, in an emergency, he is incapable of grappling with reality.

RTWT.

Quote of the Day – Disappearing Generals Edition

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From the Investor’s Business Daily article, The disturbing pattern: Obama rids America’s military of yet another top general:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a special ops veteran who was McKiernan’s successor. He resigned when his staff was quoted making derogatory comments to an embedded journalist about the administration in general and VP Joe Biden in particular. If mocking Megamind Biden is worthy of resignation, then most of America needs to step down by lunch today.

It’s a pretty serious piece, though, and I recommend you read the whole thing.

I Have an Idea, Joe

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIuk3G9Xixc?rel=0]

Let’s replace all of your security team’s submachineguns and semi-automatic pistols with double-barreled 12 gauge shotguns.  They don’t need thirty rounds (or eighteen) to protect you, right?

In fact, I think all Secret Service protective detail agents should be equipped with Ruger Red Label shotguns and two shells apiece!  If it’s good enough for us, it ought to be good enough for our employees!

Oh, hell, let’s let ’em have Stoeger Tactical Coach Guns so they can hang flashlights, lasers and optics off the rails.