I keep running into the idiocy that I’ll call “therapeutic approaches to crime.” Or if you prefer how my kids portrayed this on the regular, with extreme sarcasm, it went something like this:
“Hey, where are my comic books?”
“Don’t know!”
“What do you mean don’t know? They’re in your room. You took them without asking.”
“It’s a fair cop, but society is to blame.”
Which was Monty Python, of course, but also what I keep running into from people with various letters after their name who come up with justifications in all seriousness.
You know, like the special flower on X who was sure we could get rid of crime if we just increased minimum wage to $30. Or the even more special flowers who think that paying everyone for breathing would get rid of crime. Or the socialists/communists who are convinced that you should abolish the police and have social workers intervene instead. Some of these are actually evil and don’t mean anything of that, except where they could make society worse to destroy everything so they can then install their dictatorship of choice. But some are just stupid, and truly believe this. Partly because — of course — this is indoctrinated into everyone in school. Which is why you find “serious” books about Jack the Ripper’s victims talking about how they were victims of society, really, not just of a deranged killer. (Yes, I know they were victims, not technically criminals. Kind of. More on that later.)
Part of it is years upon years of people being told anything bad anyone does is “society’s fault” for “driving them to it”, partly it’s all the stupid tales of how evil mean our ancestors were for executing people for “stealing a loaf of bread”, part is the remnants of the old bizarre early twentieth century idea that if only people were “educated” enough they’d stop committing crimes. And partly it’s the sludge of Freud working itself through the culture.
It’s hard to remember but in the mid to late twentieth century Freud was not only taken absolutely seriously, but also as the explanation for everything TM. Learned people and experts absolutely believed his crazy cakes theories. (Turns out Freud was a brilliant psychologist, who absolutely diagnosed the problems with ONE patient. The patient was himself.) So, you know, every geek who hadn’t yet got around to even THINKING of sex was known for an absolute fact to be a mass murderer just waiting for his repressions to burst forth and kill someone. It was a fact TM.
Because of this there are a lot of softheads running around absolutely convinced that if we just give the poor troubled criminals a bit more love and understanding, they’ll be completely law abiding.
After all, we’ve come a long way from the time they hanged people for stealing a loaf of bread, and to quote Obama’s speech writer: “The arrow of history bends towards mercy.” Which is exactly the sort of patented insanity smeared with bullshit we can expect from the SCOAMF.
Because history never came with an arrow, and mercy is a luxury good.
What do I mean by luxury good? Well, the reason people used to get hanged for stealing a loaf of bread is that for many families that daily loaf was all that stood between starvation and survival. A loaf of bread, in terms of worth, both in cost of materials and work and for that matter of ability of anyone to buy it was a much more expensive and vital thing than it is to us.
The baker who set up a hue and cry when his loaf was pinched was not the evil man willing to send the poor orphan to the gallows for so little. It was because the money from that loaf was desperately needed by his own family.
Now, Sarah, the loaf of bread thing is probably just an exaggeration of silly Victorian writers. Perhaps. But you find penalties for things that are almost as silly. To us. People hanged for stealing a few shillings, or a cheap piece of jewelry, or perhaps a length of fabric. Or other equally harsh penalties.
Look, what you have to understand is that we’re unimaginably rich when compared to most human beings throughout most of history that we don’t sweat the small stuff. Until someone impinges on our ability to survive (and it takes a lot), we’re willing to let it ride and to try things that anyone with two grams of sense would know wouldn’t work, or only work in very rare cases.
But throughout most of history what criminals took was normal people’s ability to survive, and it was trivially easy. Because people lived close to the knife’s edge. So they couldn’t afford romantic ideas such as that someone became a murderer because his mom refused to buy him a teddy bear when he was 3. (Or gave him a sexy teddy bear when he was three.) What they could do is deal swift justice on those who impinged on their ability to survive. (And sometimes yes mistaken justice, and mob justice. Because humans. Scared humans.)
It wasn’t until the Victorian age that it became fashionable to feel sorry for the poor criminals and talk about how they couldn’t help themselves.
Which brings us right around to the victims of Jack the Ripper. Who were of course victims, and no one deserves to die that way. BUT on the other hand, most of them were petty criminals. “Sex workers” then and now inhabit a half world, where other crimes happen, and most of these women were petty thieves as well as prostitutes. But more importantly, most of them existed in that space where criminal and victim flow into each other. They might or might not have ever turned truly criminal, but they lived on the petty scale of not having honest work, prostituting themselves, drinking themselves stupid, and seemingly being unable to pull up.
It is people like this that the good liberals of the early twentieth century envisioning rescuing with “education” as though by teaching people things they could stop them being alcoholics or having basic effed up personalities. And they’re the people that the late twentieth century people envisioned rescuing by asking about their mothers. And the people our blinkered little socialists think are only effed up because “capitalism is an unnatural order that causes mental illness.” (In the sense that it allows people to live long enough and eat enough to worry about mental illness, they might be right.) They have this entire mythology of a garden of Eden without G-d where everyone shared and shared alike and there was no private property before a mysterious fall (variously ascribed to agriculture or other nonsense) when suddenly capitalism entered the world and everyone became victims or victimizers. Look, it’s a stupid religion, but I don’t fault them for their beliefs. I fault them for trying to impose their nonsense on reality and making us worship their fucked up gods. If they contented themselves with living in the monastery of holy redistribution, snarling at evil capitalism at the proscribed hours of the day, I couldn’t care less.
But as is, they insist on bringing their fantasies into my reality. They claim that police is evil not because they use force, not because — on occasion — they’re less than honest, not because — on occasion — they don’t catch the right guy. No. Police are evil, in the dear socialists little minds because they enforce established rule and “capitalism.” So far they are telling the truth. They hate law enforcement because it keeps the established order going, with the dear socialists occupying the space between lunatics and academics (BIRM). Where we let them exist because they’re impotent and we’re merciful.
BUT what they want is to occupy the space where they command all force. Where they’re at the top and enforcing the rules. To get there, they need to encourage disorder and riot, and get normal people scared. (Also they believe if things get bad they’ll automagically be on top.)
This is why the socialists with power try to convince everyone else (And convince academics and the indoctrinated (again BIRM)) that what we should send to the scene of the crime is not a policeman but a social worker. Not because it will help anything, but because they know it won’t.
And that is a problem.
You see, we’re immensely rich. We can afford to let people steal any number of bread loaves. We can afford any amount of illusions, like that homeless addicts who threaten the public are “victims of society” who are “unhoused” and just need a place built at the expense of the public. We can afford insanity like USAID and its distributions of money for Peruvian trans operas or whatever the hell that was. We can even afford to pay people to riot in and burn our cities. And survive.
What we can’t afford are socialists and their bullshit.
Because what they’re threatening is the idea of private property and the ability to keep that which you’ve wrested from the Earth by the sweat of your brow.
And if we lose that, as a society, we’ll be back to being so poor we have to hang the urchin that steals the loaf of bread, because that loaf of bread is the margin between survival and not.
Coddling criminals is a stupid indulgence. Coddling socialists is a potentially life-threatening one.
It’s too expensive. We can’t afford it.
According To Hoyt 
Cannon: A Quinn Martin Production
Tonight’s episode: A Costly Indulgence
LikeLiked by 3 people
Very well said, coddling those who would do us wrong, whether common criminal or socialist schemer, costs us all too much. The damage is visible all around to those who will look. Good post!
LikeLiked by 1 person
One of the most spectacular backfires of recent history by the Left was their screaming insistence on police body cameras. Of course they thought it would document how horrible the jackbooted thugs were, randomly shooting and killing “chilluns” for no reason. Instead, now we have dozens of YouTube channels (I can give you a few of my favorites if you want) where we can see exactly what police have to put up with. Being adult daycare for drunks. Mental health problems where people who used to be safely locked away are out on the streets and causing violence to innocents. Those who BLM and their ilk were defending as “innocent’ who turn out to instead be serial repeat offenders who are loud, disrespectful, violent, will do anything to avoid the consequences of their actions, and are backed up by a “community” that won’t hold them responsible for anything. And DAs who won’t prosecute and judges who won’t sentence.
I’ve always had respect for law enforcement, but I have a LOT more now for the good ones, which is the vast majority of them.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Yeah, the bodycam movement might the left’s biggest own goal of the decade.
LikeLiked by 3 people
In urban areas there are too many eyes, human and electronic. In rural areas shoot/shovel/and shut up still works.
LikeLike
Amen, sister Sarah!
LikeLike
Lazerus Long called an armed robber a free-lance socialist. We need to use that kind of language.
… Where all men are paid for existing/And no man must pay for his sins …
LikeLiked by 8 people
Part of it is, as you say, “It’s society’s fault”. Sounds a lot like “systemic racism” and “social justice”. What those all have in common is contempt for the individual and individual choices.
One thing the “hanged for a loaf of bread” brings to mind though is the Old Testament injunction “an eye for an eye” which is so frequently cited to justify vengeance when it is exactly the opposite. God commands that justice means you take no more than has been taken from you. If a neighbor or stranger takes something from you or injures you, God’s command only allows you to take the same from him, not, if he blinds you, you kill him and his kin. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” as in vengeance is left to Him, and is not for you to take.
LikeLiked by 3 people
God denies to us “the Chicago way”… on multiple levels :P :P :P
LikeLiked by 2 people
Good thing for me I’m not religious.
LikeLike
Roman “Lex Talionis” said similar.
LikeLike
The Doctrine of Marx, as applied by today’s Leftroids: “Death for one Offe-nsive Word!!”
And they get to decide what is Offe-nsive.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Collective guilt and punishment is one of the most evil things humanity has ever come up with.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I will say that I miss Freud. I prefer the concepts of an unconscious, of deep-seated drives, and of sexual desires to decreeing one must follow today’s fad politics. When a trans woman murders her family, Freud explains it better.
I am flummoxed by the modern pursuit of barbarism.
LikeLike
Jungle. You still get the collective unconscious, archetypes, and so on, but at least Jung realized sex wasn’t the reason for everything. He even had a tendency to point some of his patients toward the church.
LikeLiked by 1 person
both mostly frauds, alas, and nasty pieces of work. Freud more so — both fraud and nastiness — but wouldn’t choose either even though I rather liked Jung when I was young.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Appreciative snort.
LikeLike
Jung’s personal life was rather….messy. I liked him too, and the Asbury Park public library had the Collected Works, so I read almost all of them.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yep. Jung.
LikeLike
Old Dan O’Neill strip Odd Bodkins. Fred and Hugh are chatting; one says something close to ‘If Freud had lived in Dublin instead of Vienna, he would have blamed alcohol instead of sex.’
LikeLike
Apologies if this was /sarc. But barbarism is the default. It is civilization that is difficult. It is civilization that must be carefully inculcated, trained, and reinforced across generations. We are not born civilized.
The pursuit of barbarism may be laid at the feet of the noble savage, which was a ploy of Rousseau I believe. It has been lifted whole stock and refurbished into the neu -isms of the twenty-teens. Functionally, the barbarian hordes are invited to destabilize the existing structure of culture/politics/norms/etc. Chaos provides opportunity. Opportunity is seized to increase power. Power leads to control.
All think themselves to be the good Party members that will profit from the backs of the unwashed masses. Very nearly all will be shot, hanged, or pressed into the gulags should it come to it.
LikeLike
I disagree. The default is animal. A great deal of learning and self-control is required to achieve barbarism.
LikeLike
Need more coffee. ☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕☕
LikeLike
The song said it best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7TT4jnnWys
LikeLike
“Yes, Officer Krupke, you’ve done it again.
This boy don’t need a job, he needs a year in the pen.
It ain’t just a question of misunderstood,
Deep down inside him, he’s no good!”
LikeLiked by 2 people
I have never really seen this discussed. But after the end of the Russian civil wars and the reds had won, well there were 10s of thousands of orphans. Communist theory thought these kids would be perfect. No old parents teaching them terrible things, like living a normal human life. So these kids just turned into feral youths. They were good for nothing. Of course Stalin just had them shot. So think of all these DSA. And where we’re headed.
LikeLiked by 2 people
They were called bezprizornye. Solzhenitsyn speaks of them in The Gulag Archipelago.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I may have seen it there. If so thank you for giving me a source and this blog has some truly well read people(not me)
LikeLike
it’s a fair cop but society is to blame.
all right, we’ll arrest them instead.
Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl.
LikeLiked by 3 people
And now Monty Python (John Cleese) has publicly endorsed Rupert Lowe.
LikeLike
The nutjob that murdered Charlie Kirk was coddled from birth, and highly educated. How much more education and coddling did that freak need? ☹️
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s Society’s Fault! Society didn’t “deal with” that Monster Charlie Kirk so the “nutcase” had to do it!!!!! [Very Big Sarcastic Grin]
LikeLike
Hey, that nutjob was corrupted by the religion he was raised in. That’s why he grew up and became a freak!
Never mind that his siblings grew up in the same religion, and turned out normal …
LikeLike
I agree logically, but I also have to admit it’s the double standard that always trips me up first emotionally.
“Society is to blame for Bad Things!”
“You don’t smile enough – that’s your fault and we’ll hound you mercilessly!”
…I mean. Pick one?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Society is to blame only when the result is flammable. All other times, people are to blame.
Society is to blame for crime, so let all criminals out. Society is to blame for infidelity, so remove the social stigma.
But if “my” spouse cheats, that’s obviously h/er problem. If some one steals from “me,” that’s personal and must be punished.
Blaming society is a tool, and can be deployed at will just like any other tool.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’ve had a lot more of a protected life, from birth through who I married, and our family we have grown.
Still. I have to put it this way: “If I didn’t have standards, their standards would cause me to have whiplash.” Just saying. I can’t keep up. Not that I remotely want to try. Thus, stealing from my son’s generation “Whatever.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Leftists think they have higher standards because they have double standards.
LikeLike
Standards require principles, consistently applied. Leftroids have neither principles nor consistency, which would interfere with chasing the whim of the moment. They believe that makes them better than all those Eeevul Conservatives.
LikeLike
LikeLike
“It’s a fair cop, but society is to blame.”
I have been forced to seek out demons and Norse gods to get around this in my writing. It’s been programmed so deep in my head that it keeps popping out at the most inopportune moments.
Super nerd Jimmy Carlson gets dumped on the front step of Hela’s fortress of Helheim, in Norse hell. Thanks largely to Jimmy behaving himself in a civilized fashion and not lashing out like a berserk when challenged, he gets an interview with Hela, Queen of the Underworld.
~
“That’s what I do here,” Hela nodded, pleased that he had seen it. “Those who suffer greatly in life need looked after for a time before they can face their final reward. That fool Odin thinks this is a torture chamber you know, the place where the worst offenders are punished after death.”
“Legends are mixed on that,” Jimmy told her. “There are a lot of stories, ma’am. Like the story of Siegfried, where they pretend that guy was a hero.”
“Everyone has their journey,” said Hela philosophically. “Try not to worry about it, mortal man. We all take what the Fates give us and do what we can.”
“That’s what they said,” agreed Jimmy absently as he recalled his conversation with the Norns, mind wandering now that he wasn’t fearing for his life quite so much. “Do you know anything about photons, your Majesty?”
“He likes photons,” supplied Beatrice at Hela’s skeptical expression. “He’s trying to invent a way to keep certain one-eyed kings from dropping humans in Niflheim.”
“A pike in the eye would be my choice,” snorted Hela.
“Spirits grow back,” said Jimmy, thinking about it. “And we aren’t sure who it is or why. It might be that king, or it might not. So, I’ve been wondering why light acts the same here in the celestial realm as it does at home. Seems weird, honestly. A lot of other things aren’t the same at all. How does a goblin reconstitute itself after being vaporized? That’s like unscrambling an egg. Entropy does not run backwards unless you push it. Where does the energy come from?”
Hela observed him closely. In the intensity of his thought, he had forgotten where he was and who was sitting with her arm around him. “Time for you to go back to Midgard,” she decided.
~
My idea here draws on the old legends of Hela, written before Marx, Freud, Jung and the rest of the Victorian age grifters slithered into the popular culture. Those who perpetrate evil are punished. No hesitation. Jimmy is concerned about making -sure- to get the right guy while Hela reaches for her spear. Because Hela knows the hearts of men, she doesn’t need evidence.
The evil ones are chased away to hide from their guilt in the misty pine forest of Niflheim. Those who suffer evil in life are comforted in Hela’s manse, that is the job of Helheim. The guard dog Garmr decides who enters and who gets bitten on the backside.
Bottom line, Hela and Garmr both decide based on the -individual- and the content of their spirit. People get what they deserve. Society is not considered.
That’s because in the ancient world the modern formulation “society” was not a thing. There were people, and there was a polis. This is a notion that goes back long before Plato and his Philosopher King. The polis is where the people live. The people create the polis, not the other way around. The people strive to do their best so the place where they live will prosper, they don’t blame the polis for their personal shortcomings and failures.
I strongly think the story is more enjoyable when the characters decide how things are going to go. You can drop a strong character into a crappy situation and marvel at how they move through the mess with style and grace. Much better than watching a dumb-ass with no moral fiber flounder and fail, then blame society. Part of that “dingy stories” thing.
/here endeth my rantings./
LikeLike
We can afford the occasional loaf being stolen. What we can’t afford is people taking garbage bags into stores and filling them with an entire shelf’s worth of individually inexpensive products. That’s what we’ve had to deal with in some blue cities.
Also…
“Only a lad!
You really can’t blame him.
Only a lad!
Society made him “
. — Oingo Boingo
LikeLiked by 3 people
Chad Felix Greene on Twitter yesterday was posting on the various volunteer charities he’d worked on and how all of them fell apart because the people they wanted to “help,” either didn’t want the help being offered or they took shameless advantage and took so much noone else had anything.
Our little local food bank requires ID, address and proof of income. Some folks may be abusing it, but on the whole it seems to be working.
Someone else on Twitter suggested the bodega owners would clean out Mamdani’s city grocery and resell the items in their own places. Would not surprise me.
LikeLike
If the bodega owners really do start doing that, then I would expect NYC’s government to retaliate.
LikeLike
It WILL happen. If not the bodega owners, somebody absolutely will resell those goods for a profit if they’re actually that far below market value. The first people to get there will profit, and for everyone else, the special government shelves will be empty. Then there’ll be an apple-a-day (keeps Mamdani away) rule, and nobody who might actually need deeply discounted food staples will be able to get enough of them to make a difference.
LikeLike
It looks like the Mamdani Groceries (MG henceforth) are going to have their running farmed out to some commercial enterprise. Mamdani seems to think he can hire actual grocery companies to run them, but most will avoid that like the plague as they can see they’ll get blamed for the inevitable failure AND that might be cutting their own stores throats. So I expect to see the usual nepotistic behaviors seen in kleptocracy/coprocracies the world over. Some good for nothing brainless EdD will be put in charge of running the MGs. They will, in good socialist fashion, try to uplift the poor and needy (Who honestly, are neither in any meaningful way; they’re just bad versions of the Artful Dodger without the charm). Those “poor and needy” will then be selling the stock off the loading docks in case quantities in a time likely measured in milliseconds to the highest bidder. Losses like this are still one of the highest sources of “shrinkage” in grocery stores. There will also be large quantities of retail theft on the front side of the store as the local workers will be helping friends (by passing items AROUND the scanners), and shoplifting just seems to have become the modus operandi of the locals. The Bodega folks will likely take advantage of the discounts provided at the back of the store to improve their bottom line. And the NYC luminaries such as Ms Nixon, Mr. Allen, etc as well as the few remaining mere mortals will the privilege to provide funds to sustain MG. One could feel sorry for the Gothamites, but they chose this path (well a little over a third of them that voted did) and they could have easily avoided this idiocy. It’s a darn shame NYC got lifted out of its 70’s and 80’s hellhole nature to go back to it
I turn to our poet Laureate
Sadly the finger only wabbled for about 30 years…
LikeLike
If you raise the minimum wage to $30, the ink wouldn’t even be dry before they declare a livable wage to be $60, and start advocating for that.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Well, yes. Inflation would follow the artificial increase. They enjoy an infinite ratchet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just like college tuition after the Fed started issuing college “loans.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
John Stossel has reduced Leftroids to mumbling idiocy with: “Fine, then, why don’t we just raise the minimum wage to $100.00 an hour? That would make everybody rich, right?”
LikeLike
How can you expect anyone to live on less than $200 per hour?
LikeLike
Because the simple nature of economics is if you have more money chasing the same amount of goods, voila you have inflation. This basic of Microeconomics 101 seems to have never entered the realm of thought of those who keep pushing to raise minimum wages. They also forget that the REAL minimum wage is $0.00. Look at a modern McDonald’s. Almost all in the Northeast (where we have ludicrously high minimum wages) have order kiosks instead of 3-4 teenagers earning minimum wage taking orders as the minimum wage and benefits rules mean that a bunch of teens chatting and hitting on each other ain’t worth the $15.00+ /hr that the state requires they be paid. Kiosks are a couple grand each (plus software development) but once created the incremental costs are minimal. You just have someone to pass out orders and take cash should someone have the temerity to pay with other than credit or debit cards. And usually thy are also running the Fries or similar tasks.
LikeLike
PNW too. McDonalds and Toco Bell both, that I know of.
LikeLike
”The arrow of history bends toward mercy.”
That arrow being a purely Marxian religious icon, by extension that implies that future communists will be more merciful than past communists.
But why?
That system still will founder on the rocks and shoals of human nature, and the people at the top will still need groups (“classes” in their religion of envy taxonomy) to blame when things don’t work. And the hoarders and wreckers and Kulaks do not, of course, deserve any “mercy”, standing as they do astride the path to pure communism and utopia for the workers of the world.
So, why?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Their ‘Arrow Of History’ needs to be inserted forcefully into their backsides. Maybe then they would learn something from it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Bent arrows are useless for purpose.
Another inevitable Marxian achievement.
LikeLiked by 2 people
FM quotes a Marxian koan
I have one statement to make on that “Balderdash”. I would use a reference to certain ungulate output but
Long ago my wife and daughters made me codify my various theories into a “Rules of Acqisition” (Ala the Ferengi, Elder Daughter had been watching too many Deep Space 9 repeats)
Here are three rules related to Marxian philosophies and governments in general
LikeLike
The “arrow of history” does not bend toward mercy. But civilization permits mercy when the crimes are less heinous and heinous crimes are less frequent.
Punishment of lawbreakers is civilization’s self-defence. When someone cuts ahead of you in line, calling them out and shaming them publicly is sufficient defence. But when someone robs you at knifepoint, the defence of both individual and civilization requires that the malefactor suffer, and we’ve decided that prison time is appropriate.
If we stop punishing those who prey on the civilized, civilization itself is at risk. And those who would destroy civilization understand this better than we do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That only works if they are capable of shame, and don’t regard “calling out” as a diss that justifies deadly force. See Chicago, LA, etc.
LikeLiked by 2 people
A further thought on the “Arrow of History”. If it bends towards anything it bends towards chaos. This is due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics (AKA Entropy). There has been SOME suggestion that increasing Entropy is the main thing that defines “Time’s Arrow”, as in most physics the operations appear reversible.
Entropy may in some local areas appear to decrease but overall somewhere entropy is increasing (TANSTAAFL – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). The good news is we can prevail LOCALLY for a TIME, in the Long term (Eons) Entropy will win unless we have totally misunderstood the universe…
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Deinstitutionalizing” mentally ill people was touted as the solution to grim mental hospitals. Unfortunately, the “community based” clinics where they were supposed to get the meds they needed never materialized; the forces of NIMBY and BANANA mobilized, waving signs and petitions and filing lawsuits. So they were left to the streets; even the alternatives that used to exist, like SRO hotels (even the Y no longer offers lodgings, and I’m sad about that—they were a cheap option when I was traveling) no longer do.
Even though both sides of the aisle bore blame for this, the Usual Suspects screamed that evil Ronald Reagan had caused it just out of motiveless evil.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A well meaning local group wanted to build a mental-health facility for veterans on some land north of town. That land happens to be very close to a school. This led to concerns being voiced, and after much to-ing and fro-ing, a compromise being reached.
Now, what about people who happen to be veterans and who prefer not to be medicated or get other “help” for their conditions? No one cares to deal with that, because the legal system is tilted toward, “do not confine people against their will if they are not violent.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
The closing of Agnews State Hospital, the local psych care facility, including long term care, pushed the vast majority of the “mental hospital” residents out to “board and care” homes, many run in the run down old Victorian homes downtown, clustered in the oldest neighborhoods around San Jose State University. That meant my freshman year featured other-than-students sleeping off their self medication exercises in the landscaping in the quad, when they were not screaming at nothing at the top of their lungs – and I was a commuter student. My friends in the dorms said at night it got even more enthusiastic on campus. Those “board and care” homes seemed to do a lot more board and less care.
Eventually gentrification and the increasingly crazy Silicon Valley Real Estate market pushed those Vics up out of the low-cost category which the halfway houses and board-and-care could afford and, while campus got less spicy, that just pushed those folks onto the streets.
But I saw first hand what “out you go, hope it works out for you” mental health treatment plans did to those folks.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wasn’t paying much attention to political/governmental affairs at the time, but if memory isn’t dis-serving me, the elimination of mental institutions in California seemed to coincide with Jerry Brown’s (spit) first term as governor. (And JB was governor just after Reagan.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Uncle Ronnie rightfully felt that care of the mentally ill was a state issue. But the states, without the flood of Federal money coming in, just turned most of their inmates loose and blamed it on Ronnie. Apparently mental health was critically important when Someone Else’s Money was paying for it. When their own treasuries were involved, well, “de-institutionalizing is the only thing to do.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aside: I see Fauci the Excreble has plead the 5th to all questions in spite of his “everything, everywhere, all the time” Autopen pardon, and the clear ruling from Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915).
I need to go read the transcript in case it’s there (I bet not), but I am not sure how his lawyers squared that circle. Is he renouncing his acceptance of that pardon? Can one unaccept a pardon years later, only while testifying to Congress, and then reaccept when one walks out the door? Is this just a delaying tactic hoping the courts saying “nope, See Burdick (1915)” takes long enough that the Donks retake Congress? Will the Donks still protect him after all the “I am such an admired supervillain“ diary entries?
LikeLiked by 1 person
FM, apparently there’s 3 paths he could take:
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just looked and AFAICS there’s no legal challenge actually filed against the Autopen pardons.
There is a quote from Comer saying the Fauci Fifth throws shade on the pardons validity:
But a Presidential Pardon in the hand is worth a gazillion politician quotes at press gaggles, and even the beneficiary of a blue sky acting as if the sky is orange does not make it orange. The Burdick ruling kinda goes through the validity question and concludes there’s not any limit on the President’s pardon power, especially from Congress, and it would be fair to conclude the courts can’t dink with it either, even under a presumption that POTUS was POTATUS, but none of the Constitutional actions to declare so were used, even by Kammy to get into the big chair.
The state criminal charges thing is a real question. I think things like the Rodney King/LA Riot Federal prosecutions after state charge acquittal were in fact double jeopardy, but if those were valid then Texas or Florida filing state charges against Fauci should be valid as well. I do not like the precedent for when the work turns – it seems like it’s one more step toward what gave Republican Rome Gaius Iulius.
Were I Fauci I’d be more concerned about civil action. He made a ton of money in the course of his job, including huge cash awards they let him keep stemming from his WuFlu sainthood. If I were DJT I’d look into preemptively waiving any and all Qualified Immunity defenses for Fauci and anyone else with a Presidential Pardon under the theory that actions pardoned while working for .gov which a jury would find to be liable for judgements and penalty are by definition beyond the valid defensible scope of their job.
The perjury one is probably the best explanation, but if he told the truth now he could say his prior lies in sworn testimony were covered by the Autopen Pardon, then were back with Congress in the Courts trying to undercut a purely Presidential Executive function, and that’s a tough sell.
LikeLike
Reply in mod. Tough to opine on legal thangs without invoking the syllable of doom. It shall eventually emerge, blessed and respondent, into the glorious light of day.
LikeLike
And for when the most glorious and attractive mods release it: That shoulda been ^when the worm turns^.
LikeLike
For those with interest in what an actual lawyer has to say on the Fauci Fifth:
LikeLike
As far as #3 goes, all he has to do is tell the truth.
I hear the truth will set you free.
LikeLike
“You don’t care about the truth. If you don’t like the truth I tell, you’ll charge me anyway.”
That will be the approach.
LikeLike
Fauci telling the truth, and nothing but the truth, might get him hanged, pardon or no pardon. He, IMHO, certainly deserves it.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Fauxi deserves an appropriate place in history. Right next to Josef Mengele. 😡
LikeLike
The miscarriage rates. Dear fucking lord, the miscarriage rates. The fury of the women who wanted to be mothers…
LikeLike
>>>>might get him hanged<<<<
I suspect you misspelled “lynched”.
Fauci, Fauci, a la lanterne!
LikeLiked by 1 person
At the speed of the Federal judiciary, particularly when Democrats are involved, Fauci’s lawyers might be happy with just kicking the can down the road in the hope that he’ll shuffle off this mortal coil before anything serious happens. He’s 85, so there’s a good chance that strategy would work.
LikeLike
#3 is a punch so blatantly telegraphed they heard it at schools for the deaf.
The treacherous shitweasel has the right to refuse to knot the rope for his lynching.
We are also perfectly free to infer “shitweasel” from what he chooses to say now.
Now expose the self-dealing millions from manipulating businesses with his weaselshit, so various tax agencies can verify his state and local returns. Like Capone, he is unlikely to have properly paid on shitweasely income. And the Poopypants Pardon does not cover state taxes, nor current evasion on hidden or “overlooked” assets.
Move in next to him. Own a pack of beagles taught to bray on queue. Train often.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Absolutely. That was a given.
Probably the best bet. I suppose he still has assets overseas, but I’m not sure who, outside of Xi, wouldn’t give him up.
My option #2 is what I see as the worst possibility. Our legal system runs on precedent. I’m afraid we’re setting a bad one, especially as that precedent was set once already by what NY did to Trump.
LikeLike
He’s (apparently) an asshole, and he is old.
If he got himself into enough trouble, he may have no good strategy, beyond trying to spin things out a bit and dying of old age first.
He is 86. It is not unconditionally clear that he must have all that long.
He’s a key person of interest in the hypothesis of screw ups across professions, and a long pay off of losses for law and for medicine. It is basically unclear that his lawyers must be sane about their own professional exposure, risks, and liability.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, but a civil action or three can sue the estate…
LikeLike
At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s convinced himself all his lies were actually “noble truths,” or some such. He may be unable to admit his sins.
LikeLike
Re: being unable to admit one’s sins — this is why purgatory would be indistinguishable from hell for some people. Because the whole point of purgatory, as I understand it at least (I could misunderstand it, since I belong to a Christian tradition that doesn’t teach it as doctrine so I’m not super familiar with the details), is to get people to let go of the sins they clung to so tightly, so that they will become ready to enter heaven. But for anyone who has persuaded himself that his sins were “noble deeds”, his pride won’t let him let go of them. And we circle right back around to pride, the sin of Lucifer, being the most deadly sin of all.
LikeLike
At least he’ll face divine justice even if he doesn’t hang the way he richly deserves in this life.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Earlier than Victoria, I think. You can find the idea that crime is created by society in William Godwin. And it was popularized by his daughter Mary Shelley, in her story of how an artificial man is driven to murder by abandonment and social abuse.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Didn’t Rousseau start off the entire thing?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, not that I know of. I haven’t actually undertaken to read Rousseau, though. But I’ve heard of him as having theories about education and the social contract, but not about crime as such.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, this is my beef with “Victor is the real monster” readings of the original novel (no objection to film adaptations that go down that route so long as they are entertaining). Victor is the original monster, for making a son by unconventional means and abandoning him, but once his perfectly articulate and intelligent creation starts murdering inoffensive women and only mildly offensive children, it’s pretty clear the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
LikeLike
It also seems to me that Victor has a bad, bad case of postpartum depression.
LikeLiked by 1 person
snort
LikeLike
OT: Humble Bundle has a sale of Original Disney comic books similar to the ones our Hostess likes.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Put the blasted link in WPDE.
https://tinyl.co/4lV4
LikeLiked by 1 person
blink blink blink Link?
LikeLike
WPDE Ate it so I put it in a reply. Without TinyURL:
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/disney-masters-collection-and-originals-fantagraphics-books?mcID=102:6a67b3844590110e87038b91:ot:60fc6ab9730d25f07252d309:1&linkID=6a67b9cce13ab66f450a5d12&utm_source=HumbleBundleNewsletter&utm_content=cta_button&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=disneymasterscollectionandoriginalsfantagraphics_bookbundle
LikeLike
All of the Theater Kids seem to think that every criminal is Jean Valjean, stealing that loaf of bread (or ribeye steak ) to feed a starving child.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Makes one wonder how many people will waltz into Mamdani’s city-owned groceries and walk off with stuff without paying, doesn’t it.
LikeLike
Ah, but that would be a crime against The People, comrade, and answered most severely…
LikeLike
Casts skeptical eye. Security keeping people getting what they “need” for free? Surely you jest.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m dead serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
LikeLike
Considering the amount of work and time it takes to make 3 loaves of GF bread (allergies/intolerances are sooooooo much fun), stealing a loaf of that bread would get some strenuous responses. (One hour to mix everything and get it into bowls to rise, then a few hours in the breadpans to rise/bake, then finally to cut them up.)
There’s a reason why a sub-one pound loaf of GF bread retails for $7.99. The homemade version is priceless.
LikeLike
OT: I have saved your snailmail. Will send books to library. Slow boat/book rate, of course.
LikeLike
Any bread takes that long. Bakers are at their bakeries long before the retail opens.
LikeLike
I think a lot of people are basicly Pelagians, believing that all people are inherently good and merely need good role models to follow.
I’m on Augustine’s side, myself.
LikeLike
The Pelagians have a grain of truth on their side. Humans do react to role models. It’s nowhere near the level of determinism, but our mirror neurons do activate when we see positive behavior prospering and negative behavior penalized. We should have more of that, just to see how much it might help.
As for people being inherently good … ah, I wish. I only wish. (There is a scattering of people born wholly good, perhaps, but how do we shove the entire bell curve over to their position?)
Republica restituendae.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It was years and years ago when I read this, so I won’t be able to track down the source. But I read about a guy who lived in Bangkok and became casually acquainted with several “bar girls” during his stay there. (“Bar girls”, he explained, were hired by bars to dress attractively and sit with male customers chatting with them, thereby encouraging the customers to buy more drinks, both for themselves and for the girls. And though it was never “officially” part of the job, most bar girls would be willing to go home with said customers for a little extra cash. So they were sort of part-time prostitutes).
He decided at one point that he would try to help some of them get out of that lifestyle, by hiring them for simple jobs, such as showing up at point A to pick up a package and deliver it to point B. Easy work, doesn’t take skill or resources they don’t already have… and yet so many of them just wouldn’t show up to do it. They’d agree to do it on the phone, but then didn’t want to put in the effort, even to earn a bit of extra cash. He eventually concluded that they didn’t want to get out of that lifestyle; they were lazy enough that they just wanted to continue as they had been. He also concluded that it’s not that prostitution makes people lazy, it’s that already-lazy people would settle on prostitution as one of the easiest ways to make a living.
LikeLike
So, the thing I never followed up in the post. I read about the Ripper victims. Almost every book talks about how their deaths were because they were “abandoned by society” but most of them had chance after chance after chance to pull up. But they liked drinking and whoring…
LikeLiked by 1 person
And then the same people who think those women were “abandoned by society” will advocate for equal-results socialism. Meaning that if anyone gets further ahead in life than someone else, the person getting further ahead in life MUST have their money taken away and given to the lazy. Thereby creating an entire society full of two kinds of people: 1) the terminally lazy, who are thus encouraged in their laziness, and 2) the people who have learned that it’s not worth the effort to get ahead, and thus act terminally lazy themselves. Thus creating a whole society in which you can’t depend on anything as simple and basic as delivering a small package halfway across town.
LikeLike
Missed a category.
3) Those who hide their efforts and rewards. If they don’t they’ll be looted (take your pick of the looters).
LikeLike
I’ll note that this guy was rediscovering what so many people have always known. There are two (or more!) kinds of poor people, those who are poor because of bad luck (usually temporary), and those who are poor because of bad habits (usually permanent). Some people’s bad luck lasts for years, and some people manage to kick their bad habits, but the way to bet is that the bad-luck people will be up on their feet within five years (and a lot less if someone gives them a hand up), while the bad-habits people will, unless they kick the habit, never escape poverty, even if someone gives them a hand up.
This is not a new discovery. There used to be specific words for those two categories: the “deserving poor” (the ones who would make good use of a hand up), and the other category. I never actually encountered the term “undeserving poor” in print, but I’m sure it was well-understood even when unspoken. But those terms got abandoned as being “mean” or “rude”. Yes, it’s a nasty thing to say about someone when you say “don’t bother giving him money, he’ll drink it away” or “don’t bother giving her an easy job to do, she won’t bother to show up”. But if it’s true, it’s something you need to know so that you can spend your limited resources on the people who will actually be helped by your attempts to help.
LikeLike
If every person in the country was handed a million bucks tomorrow, most of The Poor would squander it all within a year or two. People already successful would become more successful. Only a few of The Poor would actually improve their lives.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Most lottery winners end up worse off than if they hadn’t won. Some manage to buck that trend by investing the money rather than spending it all right away (and acquiring a taste for expensive living which they can’t sustain).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lottery winners are advised to 1) Find an estate lawyer, 2) Find an estate financial advisor, before picking up their lottery winings. Smart ones do so.
The HGTV lottery winners who (appear to) use most their lottery winnings to pay for their “Lottery Dream Home”. Question? How do they pay for yearly never ending property taxes? Which in most states (Oregon, California, excluded) fluxuates with house value, year to year? Behind the scenes this may be accounted for.
Different take. We take the local “Tour of Homes”. Number of reasons. 1) What are the current trends and colors? (Not that I like all of them.) 2) New products. 3) Resources for our projects (companies, trades). 4) Locations. 5) Houses themselves.
We did find our “dream home *plan”. “Dream location”, OTOH, has always been elusive. Not gotten better over the years.
Had to laugh at one development in small town north of us. It is touted that property taxes are a max of 4% of property value for county, school, and city; ever (new home, the state property tax limitations do not apply on initial purchase). Supposedly less than **Eugene/Springfield. This was when new homes were running $200k+ (hasn’t gotten better). The problem is we can do the math, without a calculator. Response? Silent “Um”. Spoken “Okay …”
Our current home property taxes (county & school) are still < $2500/year (after the 3% discount for paying all in November). Thus the location problem.
(*) With tweaks. Tweaks, thanks to HGTV, that have “evolved”.
(**) Sister & BIL house was initially (they built) in the $200k range. Their taxes (they are city, same county, different school district) are < $7k/year.
LikeLike
Yeah, this is why an inheritance, a windfall, or landing a higher income sort of position are not the remedy for the way that I live life. You need habits in the rest of your life to support really good work habits, and you need good work habits to be able to deliver value even if you get a position that gives income for value. Positions are temporary if you do not perform, or do not mesh.
LikeLike
My brother and I each received half of Dad’s mutual funds. I earmarked some for charity and divided the rest between brokers. After a couple of years I took the money from the broker with the worst outcome and gave it to the other one. I haven’t touched it since.
My brother blew through his share in less than a year.
LikeLike
My cousins. Watching this exact situation playout in real time.
Three of them. Parents built a multi-million dollar local empire. More than enough to get the state death tax salvating, even with non-revokable trust (do not think that is salvation). Not sure about the Federal. There is a reason why the trust is in the oldest hands. Younger two cannot spend their entire portions out. They are not getting it all at once. There is scheduled distributions. Their yearly distributions are reported to be gone well before the next one.
Another cousin is entering trust management situation, soon. Do not know the specifics. Of the three siblings, one passed away 10 years ago. One gets a minimal monthly stipend. The trust manager, will distribute to herself, and the grandchildren per the estate trust and will. I just do not know the grandchildren to know how the money will be wasted, or not.
Us, my sisters and I? You know those motorhome bumper stickers that state “We are spending our children’s inheritance!” Ours should read “We are TRYING (and failing) to spend our children’s inheritance!” (We are not getting a motorhome.) I guess it is not uncommon for people to retire who have saved for retirement, then fail to spend in their retirement.
LikeLike
My beloved served in Thailand during Vietnam. He says there’s actually a cultural element; families send their daughters to Bangkok to be whores. They send part of their earnings home and because it’s a tradition there’s little social stigma attached at home.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The ones I really love are the socialists who talk of seizing the Means of Production as if that would suspend thermodynamics and they would not have to keep saving up for capital forever.
Or the ones who say they can’t raise wages in their workers’ co-op because the capitalists keep competing on price, so they can’t raise prices.
LikeLike
The idea of hanging for the theft of a loaf of bread is, I believe, wildly overstated. I dug in a little on this. Hanging for theft was reserved for felony theft (1 shilling in the 16th century, equivalent of several hundreds to thousands today). This was often (sometimes?) ignored with cases of jury nullification leading to the theft amount being “adjusted” so that the death penalty was not applied.
The sentences for petty theft were generally transportation (to such undesirable locations as the USA and later Australia). Much of the more barbaric punishments; gibbeting, for example; were dropped in the UK by the early 19th century. By that point, hanging was reserved for the most serious of crimes (murder, treason, misgendering). It is, I believe, still possible to be hanged in the UK but only for treason in war time.
Despite Dickens and others, local authorities were much more humane than one might think. For example, the death of an indigent woman just outside Bristol in the 19th century caused considerable angst in the city and lead to reform of the workhouses. I am sure Dickens was portraying what he saw but I suspect his portrayal was less widespread than one might conclude from reading his novels (he was, after all, a journalist). Were all schools Dotheboys Halls? Probably not.
The UK was considerably more socially liberal than it has generally been given credit for and there were many moral, normally religious-based, movements with positive results. For example, the plimsoll line leading to safe shipping; the eradication of slavery on moral grounds; the war on alcohol by such organizations as The Salvation Army (less the alcohol, more the impact of alcoholism on families); even workhouses, despite later abuses. Another example is the reaction to the Irish famine. The UK is seen as coldly ignoring this. but that wasn’t the case and a considerable amount of charity was generated. Ultimately, though charity fatigue developed.
I am not ignoring some of the less pleasant aspects of British history, all countries have them, but merely suggesting that the history is more complex than the rather simplistic view pushed currently by those of a particular political bent. What seems to have been forgotten is the significant liberal (again, meaning open-minded), often religious, movements of the 19th. and earlier centuries. Of course, an ultra-fascist government, grinding the face of the poor, is a much better story.
One of the things that disgusted me was, when Betty 2 died, the immediate reaction from certain folks was to say good riddance because she had never apologized for slavery, … I am no supporter of the Royal Pretenders (sorry, Betty 1 was the last true English monarch – after that we had Scots, Dutch and Germans) but that reaction was contemptible and based on an entirely spurious understanding of history.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“(murder, treason, misgendering)” — well played, sir.
LikeLike
I believe the UK police are applying to re-introduce hanging for:
Stabbing offenses, of course, are merely to be addressed with a moderately severe lecture about running with knives.
That’s enough to put me in jail.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I outdo you on that. While I disapprove of kings on PRINCIPLE the last true monarch of the US was Richard III. And I say that knowing he wasn’t a saint. The Tudors….much as I love the period to write in, were usurpers. BAD ones.
LikeLike
Usurpers perhaps, but at least they were English not Scots, Germans or (even worse – shudder) French.
Cleary H8 was not the best of rulers but Betty1? One would be hard pressed to find an English person who would not think her a great monarch. I could see the Scots being less impressed but given the instability and frailty of their own royal line, they have little room for disdain.
LikeLike
The idea of hanging for the theft of a loaf of bread is, I believe, wildly overstated
Apologies – was not criticizing our hostess – should perhaps have read
The idea that people were routinely hanged for stealing a loaf of bread is, I believe, generally a gross exaggeration
In other words, it seems to be generally believed that Oliver Twist would have been hanged if caught stealing handkerchiefs. in practice, he would have been transported. I suspect this was less an issue of punishing the crime than an issue of suppressing the offenders.
LikeLiked by 1 person