Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

We live in very odd times.  A conversation with a friend who has a Pit bull dog, yesterday, led to his saying casually of course he couldn’t have a pit bull in Denver.  I was aware of this, but had never given it any thought.  Mostly I come across it on Craigslist as people who MUST move to Denver are getting rid of their dogs so they can move.

And here we come to my experience with the dogs.  Like everyone else – though this happens mostly on TV it leaks to real life as well – I’ve seen pit bulls tied in front of houses I wouldn’t approach anyway – though the last time that happened was seven years ago when I got lost walking the kids back from middle school, so it might be a trend that’s passing away.

Yes, those pit bulls look like terrible dangers and generally scary.  But then the houses the dogs were tied in front of looked scary too, an indicative of the people who lived there.

Then there are the Pit bulls I still meet.  The office I rented at the end had only one other office rented, which means I didn’t feel very safe.  Perhaps the people in the front office didn’t either, because the owner brought in his Pit bull, who was a sweet, slobbery dog, very well behaved.  Other Pits I meet while walking or at stores, are exceptionally well behaved.

This is, of course, because they’re high dominance dogs, naturally.  And if you are a responsible owner who has a high dominance dog, you TRAIN that dog until it’s one of the best mannered creatures around and far safer in public than most humans.

Yes, of course if you are stupid and you get a Pit and raise it the way most people seem to raise their kids – by indulging their every whim and never setting limits or consequences, you’ll end up with a feral beast.  People who raise their kids that way do too – and yes, I know a lot of the left thinks the solution for this is to outlaw kids.  But people who raise their animals – or kids – that way would only be safe with stuffed dolls.

(Yes, I know Pits were bred to fight.  So were your ancestors.  Take a powder.)

This connected in my brain with the whole outrage over the Connecticut shootings and how we absolutely, imperatively must outlaw private ownership of guns because… shuddup, do it for the children.

As though criminals care whether something they do is illegal or not, and as though crazy people can’t come up with other ways to cause massive damage: less survivable ways.  Need one remind everyone that the first World Trade Center bombing was achieved by fertilizer?

Perhaps they intend to outlaw manure?  (Maybe that’s the aim of the Carbon Laws.)

Yes, guns are horribly dangerous.  They’re not the only thing that’s horribly dangerous, though.  I know several gun owners who could arm entire small countries, and when I visit them I feel SAFER there because I know if SOMEONE unsafe were to attack for whatever reason or none at all, they have the armament to protect us.

Forbidding the owning of guns doesn’t ban the danger because the danger is always in the human mind.  We’re a curious monkey, and some of the things we’re curious about are very, very dangerous.  As Terry Pratchett put it, if you put a button in the most distant cave in the world and painted a sign to put next to it saying “Pressing this button will end the world” the paint wouldn’t have time to dry before someone pushed it.  Worse, they’d push it not to destroy the world, but to see what it would do.

And yes, I know of the several bans to keep people from eating/playing with/drinking whatever they want, but the one that totally makes my jaw drop is forbidding all peanut products in schools and planes because of people’s allergies.  Yes, I’ve heard that just being in a room with peanuts can start the allergy.  Can I say bullhockey?  People with that violent an allergy wouldn’t be able to be on a plane, period – people like us travel with nuts.  We have to, because it’s the only portable thing we can eat on a plane.  Sometimes they’re peanuts.  We have yet to kill anyone.  And since the airlines do not search everyone for peanuts, I’m going to assume this is bullhockey.  Because if peanuts ANYWHERE on the plane were that dangerous, they would search people.

Yes, I can see where rubbing peanuts on someone might be an issue.  I’ve known people that allergic.  BUT most people are allergic to EATING peanuts.  So… we’re banning peanuts in public because… some people might not be able to help themselves and might gobble down stuff that could kill them?  Um…  As someone who can’t eat carbs, in the few flights that have lunch (usually bread-stuff) or snacks (pretzels) this affects me adversely.  Note, however, that I don’t fall, helpless-victim like on the pretzels or bread, because they’re in the same space with me.

And no, banning peanut butter from schools isn’t justified because these are kids.  These kids are in school.  That means by definition they are house-broken and capable of following instructions.  “Don’t eat that because it will kill you” should be a hard and fast one.  I mean, when I was a kid we were turned out to play outdoors at three or four, and there were a list of things we couldn’t do because they WOULD kill us (like run out in front of cars.  Drink bleach, etc.)  Weirdly all of us failed to DO those things just because we could.  (Yes, there are mentally handicapped children in the schools, but those have assigned teacher-aides, so the point is moot.)

What these three cases have in common is a curious mental confusion about what is what and where responsibility lays.

And some of this was part of the great liberal project (real liberals, the kind I identify with) started in the seventeenth century.  In a time of swift and sudden penalties, that took no extenuating circumstances into account, and which were unimaginably harsher than we can think of (torture being a normal method for extracting confessions for such crimes as pickpocketing) real liberals brought in a more nuanced justice and a weighing in of causes and consequences.  If someone steals a loaf of bread for his starving children, it’s not in any way the same crime as stealing a horse to resell in the next village.  (Okay, some judges took that into account, in England at least, but it was a big on the discretion and didn’t always happen.)

The problem is that what real liberals started, insane liberals finished.  The end game of this project in law can be seen all over Europe where murderers are condemned to some time in jail (in Portugal it was less than ten years at one point.  We used to joke about dragging the people I wanted to off to Portugal, because I was willing to pay that penalty) because there’s always “extenuating circumstances” and where even in safe neighborhoods like my parents’ people live in fear of criminals breaking in.

Here the end run of that system by and large was the seventies – at least in criminal law – and we’ve been walking it back to some extent ever since.

On the other hand, the same thinking has gone from the law to everyday life.  No one is responsible for anything, because there’s always explanations and reasons and “I couldn’t help myself.”

In many cases this is even true – probably.  I am forever in shock by how many of my kids’ classmates seem to be well… feral.  No one ever bothered to teach them to control their impulses or to think rationally about what they have and what they need and how to get there.

The end result is minds that confuse feelings with thoughts (the corollary of “if it feels good, do it” turns out to be “if it doesn’t feel good don’t do it” even if the momentary discomfort is needed for future happiness.) wants with needs and who can see nothing further than instant gratification.

I submit to you NOTHING can make society – or the world – safe for those people.  In the end they either learn otherwise (painfully) or they die.  On the way they cause untold misery.  BUT the more you try to protect them from the induced stupidity of their own upbringing, the more misery you cause to people how had nothing to do with it.

Worse, you place the blame on the wrong THINGS – or animals – and not where it belongs: in the people who choose to use the things or animals to create harm  (or choose to do nothing and let animals cause harm.)

We want to excuse everyone and think everyone good at heart… and maybe this is true to an extent.  Everyone certainly has good potential.  But those that choose to do good can also do harm.  And yes, sometimes they can do harm without meaning to – but it’s still their choice.

When you remove that, you’re putting the blame on things and creatures who can’t choose.  And you’re restricting the choices of everyone.

To absolve the guilty you must ALWAYS blame the innocent, even if it’s innocent THINGS.  And that mis-placing of blame will always result not just in curtailed liberty, but in greater pain for everyone in the long run and in a society that rolls over and begs for tyrants to save it from itself.

The monkey mind that chooses to press the button that says “end the world” can also choose NOT to do it.  But for that, it must be able to think through causes and consequences.  And to be taught that, we must start by putting the blame where it belongs.  And we must understand that mercy, like all other admirable qualities, has dark twins called indulgence and misplaced blame.  Even virtues aren’t free and we must always be aware of their costs.  TANSTAAFL.

As a few of you know one of my favorite Heinlein books is Puppet Masters and part of the reason for that is the idea of a hidden world under the world we all know. This has been an attraction of mine since at least 12, when I began living in a secret world. I.e. the things I read in the paper, the person I had to pretend to be at school to get good grades, the things they “taught” me that I had to pretend to believe were the daylight world and what could be shared with everyone else.

Underneath it was what I knew wasn’t so. (Though the full extent of some lies, like the kindly, idealistic Soviet Union only became evident when I read The Gullag Archipelago at 14.)

If this sounds like a recipe for insanity, it is. It is also, I think, where a lot of people broke. If schools, and media and even entertainment and even entertainment translated from places like America which we all knew were bastions of the right wing, all reinforced certain memes — the kindly altruistic communist; the greedy industrialist; the oppressed worker; the saintly victim of society, etc – then how could I dare believe that what I saw with my own eyes was true?

I dared because I saw it, and because I have a good dose of stubborn as heck baked into me. I come from a long line of stubborn as heck people.

However note that my generation in Portugal by and large turned out not leftist (even if they are sometimes reflexively right in the European sense.) There is a reason for that.

If you were raised in a cocoon of artificial narrative, when you find one thing about it was a lie, you assume it was all lies. Being raised in that sort of environment where “everyone agrees” and there is “one truth” and everyone else are fringe or “wing nuts” is a danger, because once the cocoon breaks, the tendency is to assume everything you’ve ever known is a lie.

Keep that in mind. There will be a quiz later. (Actually it’s important for a later point.)

So, Heinlein’s Puppet Masters (and I don’t care if Patterson calls it piece work or what have you) hit a point with me, from the moment that he goes in through a secret entrance, but really all of the book. There are at least three other novels to write there, and the one I can’t write, the one that scares the heck out of me, the one that would turn out to be probably dark and dreary, is the one of the person living in the masquerade, as it falls apart around them.

(Toni W. once told me I have a tendency to start with my characters knowing nothing, and that it would be better for the plot if they started out knowing exactly what they’re facing. She’s right of course. And I hate to start with characters who know nothing or are so strange to the environment that nothing makes sense. That’s been part of the issue with Through Fire. I HAD to start there. It was the character I had. I tried Simon’s head but Oh, my, no. But someone or other said that everything we write is biography. Hence my books tend to be about people who think they KNOW reality and they know what’s true. And then it shifts under their feet. They find everything they’ve ever known is a lie, and they have to choose to charge on or go back into the cocoon of illusion. This is why the sf trilogy that’s planned (OMG, yes, I DO have a lot to write) will probably be indie. It’s so much that, I think it would drive Toni nuts.)

The part that scares me most about puppet masters is exactly The Masquerade. The non-possessed people living there thought all life was normal. The news, all organs of information went on as normal. And meanwhile, more than half of their neighbors – maybe their family members – were aliens.

You can imagine it going on. Sometimes I wonder if we’re living in something like that. (Okay, show me proof that they’re not controlled by mounds of tapioca between their shoulders! How would anything our government does be different?)

I will say right up front that I see why we needed a public education system with a semblance of unity. At least we needed a “things every American knows.” Yesterday night, I read The League” the True Story of Average Americans on The Hunt for WWI Spies by Bill Mills. I read it because it’s on KULL and because there are spies in the Dragon books, and technically, it has a WWI “feel” to it.

However, let me say it’s partly a lie. I mean, the title. A lot of it was the American Protective League hunting for other people: draft dodgers, people who talked down the war effort, etc. I’ll talk about it a day this week, because if you think that we’re in perilous authoritarian government times, you mustn’t know much about Woodrow Wilson. Never mind.

The point is that reading the book makes it clear how fragmented people were, and how many unassimilated and with no intention of assimilating immigrant communities there were. And how that could be a danger in a world where countries were fighting for their nation, not necessarily for any principle. (WWI.)

I think the book has a slant and I think they didn’t realize how they made me want to kill the Wobblies with fire, (because they sounded just like what we’re fighting) but that’s something else (of course, back then they couldn’t know everything they thought was wrong. Which brings us around to our premise again.

To make the United States competitive in a world of race/breed/history based nation states, our leaders (ah!) though they had to forge unity. By the seventies this was unity under the narrative, hence the Department of Education. Because there was one right set of beliefs…

The problem is between that and the press which had fallen for the seduction of “rule by the smart people” and flattered themselves they were smart, and an entertainment industry that had been taken over by progressives after WWI and was monolithically progressive after WWII, we got the narrative. Good, undiluted propaganda from the top, not that much different from USSR propaganda, where most of the memes originated.

Most of the organs supposed to educate, inform, amuse us were wearing a mass of tapioca between their shoulders.

They still are, only now it’s coming apart because we can talk among ourselves and reach crowds, and that makes it harder for the “narrative” to stick.

We’re seeing that with the UVA rape hoax, with Lena Dunham, the author of a poorly watched show who, nonetheless got given the gold ticket of promotion to the top of the bestselling world on her tawdry “autobiography” and who was crowned the “voice of her generation” and who, it turns out, is the voice of the neurotic liars of her generation, only.

Then there is this: New York Mag’s Boy Genius Investor Made It All Up.

Monday’s edition of New York magazine includes an irresistible story about a Stuyvesant High senior named Mohammed Islam who had made a fortune investing in the stock market. Reporter Jessica Pressler wrote regarding the precise number, “Though he is shy about the $72 million number, he confirmed his net worth is in the “’high eight figures.’” The New York Post followed up with a story of its own, with the fat figure playing a key role in the headline: “High school student scores $72M playing the stock market.”

It’s a lie. Of course it is a lie. But it serves the narrative of the genius, who can make it to the very wealthy in a manner that’s approved (the stock market) and who is of interesting ethnic origin and… Too good to check.  Because the narrative has been with us so long that we echo it without realizing, that we “feel” it’s right even when we know it’s wrong.

Now, for me, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The rape hoaxes? Sure, I know they’d do that, because the president wants more power over campus and because the left is afraid of males. BUT this? Qui Bono?

It’s only a series of impulses, of undefined “fits the narrative.”

Which – jornolist apart is what unifies the narrative of the left. They all have this same vague idea of what’s in and what’s out, and each independently carries his dram of water for it. Hard to prove, and it makes people who believe their lying eyes feel like crazy, when all the “best people” coordinate like this.

Heinlein once said there was no event Time reported that he had been at that Time reported even close to the truth.

I’m starting to believe he was right and it’s not just Time: it’s all of the MSM, all the learned monographs, all the education system.

The problem is this: what do you do when the masquerade falls down. It’s falling down and it will continue. It has to, because you know, the only way a masquerade can be kept is with full control over everything the masses see and hear. That might be why the left thinks 1984 is a how-to manual. But you see, they might have been better off letting us go to space. Yeah, they’d have lost control over some of us. OTOH the computer revolution where the techies went to play instead, will cost them control of all of us except the willingly enslaved.

So as the narrative breaks, as the earth shifts under our feet and the sky comes tumbling down, what are we left with?

The problem with leaving the cocoon is that you don’t know the boundaries outside it. You start questioning everything. Everything you’ve ever known proves to be a lie, that means you known nothing, like a babe unborn.

I’m trying to read a lot of older primary sources, to identify where we went wrong, but my fear is that we’ll hurtle back to “our loved Egyptian night.” That is, I’m afraid that once the progressive narrative is proven wrong we’ll try to hurtle back to the less liberal factions of the eighteen hundreds – or before. There are already people online going that way.

The problem with that is that way of life is dead. The same technology that made it unviable then has continued, and it has spawned other tech. That would not work now. Small things, like personal communication devices, like the pill, like modern medicine, like robotics – all make that way of life unviable, save for a very short, very painful time.

Note I’m not saying all of those developments are good or bad – but they have changed our environment and us. And society could not be as it was before the coordinated lies of the “progressives.”

So, where do we go from here?

Where we always went. The future is never assured, and the more I read the more I think the beginnings of the progressive era about 100 years ago were worse.

We can survive this. We can forge the future we want for our kids. Take what we can from the past and believe our lying eyes. Some things, like human nature, are immutable. Some precepts such as “envy is corrosive for individuals and society” are immutable.

Take what you can and build. Expose lies when we can. The overcoat must be pulled off and the shoulder-rider shown to the world. Resist the temptation to hurtle into some old philosophy that “explains everything.” We should always have suspected progressivism BECAUSE the parts fit too well and all the lies supported each other. Real life is not that coherent.

Start from the fact that a cocoon is a lie, and it lies shattered at your feet. It’s time to try out your new wings. Yes, your world is in ruins, but the world you can build is so much bigger and better and brighter, because there’s some things we can now do.

I see the sky tumbling down.

Be not afraid. The future is wide open and it’s ours to build.

*Note by Sarah — oh, h*ll, so I published this early. It’s okay. It’s a good post and it deserves it. BTW, I disagree with Kate. We should consider legalizing prostitution. After all, politicians go free in the light of day. One of these professions deserves to be in jail, and it ain’t the hos.*

It’s All Over Bar the Shouting – Kate Paulk

But not for us. For the SJW crowd. Yes, there will be a lot of really ugly shouting, and some of the people who are incorrectly labeled vertebrates will probably buy into the screaming and hand the SJWs whatever equipment they possess.

How do I know this? It’s called MetalGate (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oZCZicsuHc). Yeah. Having discovered that hard-core gamers aren’t going to rollover for them, the SJWs have decided to go after metal music. I mean, seriously? This show is going to need several truckloads of jiffy-pop and a huge-ass volcano and that’s just the prelude.

Then of course there’s the level of delusion that can claim heavy metal is a “hotbed of deeply rooted conservatism”. Apparently conservatism has been redefined again, because the last time I looked mosh pits were emphatically not in the definition. Although I will admit to a certain amount of amusement at the prospect of anti-SJW coalition meetings where every stereotype of every group the SJWs have gone after try to communicate (and try not to look at each other with horror).

This reads to me as the desperate ploy of a group that’s losing its marbles and trying desperately to pretend that reality is with it.

They’re losing the plot everywhere. In Europe, nationalist groups are gaining strength, voice, and power. Thanks to the fears of the European governments, it’s difficult to tell if those movements are sensible or not – the laws against “hate speech” also prevent open discussion of the problems that come with long-term non-citizen residents who refuse to integrate into the society (and worse, refuse to allow their children to do so), the policies creating a permanent guest worker underclass, and the problems that arise when a sufficiently large percentage of said underclass follows an ideology that includes unreasoning hatred of anything civilized.

That mess was created by the SJW and their ilk refusing to acknowledge that some cultures are flat out barbaric. They may be barbaric because they’re stuck in the kind of environment where nothing else survives, or they may just be captured by the kind of megalomaniac that enjoys that (or a mix of both – my personal vote), but that doesn’t change what they are. Any person raised in those cultures is going to grow up a barbarian regardless of skin color.

Then of course, there’s the Intertubes, where, deeply concealed in the pictures of cute cats, the lolspeak messages point to such gems as Linux Journal’s thoughtful piece (http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software) about the influence of parents and family on what people choose to do with their lives, from the perspective of a woman who happens to be one of the top coders. I rather suspect her story matches up with a lot of us Odds, particularly the part where we get recognized not as “a woman [insert profession]” but a “damn good [insert profession]”. Which is the way it should be. The last time I looked there were very few professions that required the use of a vagina or a penis, and most of those are illegal in a lot of places (which is a separate argument I refuse to start here). Note that the comments overwhelmingly support the author and every SJW argument attempted got shut down by commenters very quickly. This tends to happen a lot in communities where people don’t care if you’ve got an innie or an outie as long as the quality of your work is up to scratch.

A rather nice little rant on the real diversity of the SF community and the SJW idea of the same can be found over at Prose Before Ho Hos (http://prosebeforehohos.com/2014/12/10/on-diversity/). Take note of the SJW Holy Trinity (because yes, it is a religion): the Race; the Gender; the Holy Sexual Orientation. If it doesn’t fit the SJWly Trinity it ain’t diverse according to them. From this perspective, I can easily see why the SJWs have such a low opinion of traditional Christianity. Obviously they’re projecting from their own religion and can’t understand that other religions just might manage to behave differently (especially since adherents of their apparent favorite official religion have this strange tendency to be as irrational and hostile as they are, only with more blood (since it’s a little difficult to cut off some poor bastard’s head without lots of blood)). Small wonder the SJWs seem to think Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 were instruction manuals. Bradbury is not amused (http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/451/451.html).

All this madness is different only in degree from the spew of propaganda emitted by the Soviet Union with increasingly strident tones up until 1991, and the Third Reich from about 1943 until the end. The SJWs don’t have extermination camps; they have doxxing and SWATting. But they, like the socialists and communists before them, are dying.

They can still do a hell of a lot of damage in their death throes, and potentially even take out a few of our allies. But they will fall. The only thing in question is who will fall with them, and how much bloodshed will be needed.

Yesterday someone on facebook linked an article that illuminated something for me. And it’s stupid that I hadn’t seen it before.

Yesterday here someone asked about the narrative, how liberals feel a need to control “the narrative” and how everything that runs counter the narrative must get pounded.

I thought I’d posted here, before, about the narrative but it turns out it was in a private facebook site, and one of the members took off from that post and started a podcast series called “Shatter the narrative.” I must look for a link, but for various reasons I’m using my remote computer, so will probably only do that at home.

I can’t dispose of the narrative in a single post, because the narrative has more tentacles than super Cthulhu and infiltrates every portion of our lives. The best way to put it is to say that when Reagan said liberals knew so many things that just weren’t so, he either didn’t realize or didn’t mention so do conservatives. Thanks to full control of the schools for at least sixty and probably more years, the “progressives” have fed us a myriad little lies. Not only the big narrative, the idea that history comes with an arrow and moves in their direction (though that’s part of it) but also a million little ones, things like people who live in the suburbs are unenlightened, smart people don’t get married or have kids, smart people aren’t religious, etc. etc. etc.

Even those of us who came to figure out that the big central narrative that top down government is the answer was wrong will find ourselves taking for granted one or more little tentacles of narrative that have wormed their way into our brain as an “of course”. And even when we know it’s not right, we have no clue why it’s there and why it’s become a piece of the narrative.

See, if it were only the schools they controlled, it would be easy enough to get rid of. Most of us get rid of the vast bulk of blatant indoctrination we get in school as we grow up. BUT the narrative is supported by the news, and more importantly by entertainment. The narrative is supported by movies and books, and by stuff built and embedded into those in such a way that we never examine it.

Take for instance the time a fellow conservative waxed poetic about Splendor in the Grass. Yeah. She IS a little older than I.

I’d never seen it and it is free on prime, so I watched it. And my jaw dropped. Perhaps because I was then the mother of teens and knew their female friends, the whole message hit me in the face like a wet fish.

Wait, what? The girl has a nervous breakdown because – those annoying chastity rules! – the boy is having sex with someone else because she won’t put out. This is not viewed as the boy being a jerkoyd who can’t control himself, but her overrestrictive upbringing making her neurotic.

WHAT? I’m sorry. When is the last time you heard of a teen having a breakdown because he or she DIDN’T have sex? I mean, sure, when we’re teens we’re all sure we’re going to. But most adults know that sex is not just sort of glorified jumping jacks and it’s not about freeing energies that will hurt you otherwise and what not. I’m here to tell you that the worst that will happen to a teen girl who would really like to have sex and doesn’t is that she’ll write so many sonnets she’ll acquire an amazing vocabulary of rhyming words.

Yeah, I was neurotic [Were? – Ed. Shud UP-SAH] but then most teens are, being neither fowl nor fish nor yet good red meat. But because I was neurotic, I imagine what a sexual relationship at that age would have done both to me and the poor dolt saddled with me.

So, why does no one who talks about how this book is a classic and all that mention that its premise is out there, the looniest kind of disproven Freudianism ever?

Because we’ve bought into the narrative.

I’m not knocking sex, mind you, but if you have problems, having sex particularly in a relationship that due to age/requirements of growing up can’t be stable seems like a good way to add to them. (A friend of mind gives this rule as “Don’t stick it in crazy, or crazy will stick to you.”)

Now think on how many movies and books have that premise of “teens must have sex, or they’ll go crazy, crazy I tell you!” as one of the unexamined secondary story lines. Um… most of them? Or for that matter how many books and movies have that premise about adults and sex. I mean, sure, I’m married and well I enjoy the benefits of marriage, but I’ve seen enough of the world to tell you both that it’s easier to be a celibate than in a bad relationship and also that some people SHOULD be celibate, not being emotionally capable of the involvement that comes with an intimate relationship.

However in every book, in every movie, anyone who is celibate by choice is suspect. This has infected things so far that the new Miss Marple series is all about sex and repression.

And that’s just a small part of the narrative – a bit of undigested Freud, crossed with Marx’s aim of ending bourgeois marriage – but it’s EVERYWHERE.

There are other bits that are everywhere, that we know are wrong, but that I at least never understood why. Take for instance the assumption that progressives are smarter.

This always seemed like an odd narrative. I don’t know about ya’ll but the last time I met a progressive who was smarter than I was… was… um… can’t remember. (I know several people smarter and more knowledgeable than I, but they’re all either very conservative or out there libertarian.) There is one among my friends who MIGHT be both progressive and smarter than I (she WAS progressive. I’m not so sure now.) but she never had a chance being born with a red diaper. The others? Pah. Better at repeating the narrative, sure, but heck, I know even that better than they do. And I saw the contradictions, and fought free.

So why does the myth persist? Why is it so important to them?

I’m never surprised when I post something that gets under their noses and they call me evil, or impugn my morals, or cast aspersions on my manners, my ideals or my life. That’s par for the course. It’s stupid, of course, but it’s par for the course. I mean, I remember when I was declared worse than Hitler for telling them that wishing death on those who disagreed with them was evil. Good times. The irony, too, was extra ironical and had more sauce.

BUT why the “you’re stupid.” This is particularly hilarious when applied to someone like me who has all the credentials they adore. Now I’m the first person to say this has absolutely nothing with to do with real-world intelligence, because that’s a complicated, messy thing and as I’ve proven here many, many times, I have both unfathomable heights of knowledge and competence and bizarre depths and black holes of ignorance. (Some of that through growing up in another culture where the cultural referents are different.) And I’ll grant you my typos are often the stuff of legend.

But I do have a graduate degree in Languages and Literature from a well regarded foreign university; I have read most of their “literature” and even like some of it (mostly Borges, okay?); I’ve long since resigned myself to the fact that my tastes in movies and TV run to Masterpiece Theater and BBC (sorry) and I can hold a polite conversation in the salons of the glitterati. I also happen to have a piece of paper certifying my IQ as being in the … well… very far up, and that I have a membership in a society for people suffering the like affliction. (Only I haven’t renewed in years because it is not a marker of congeniality or even rationality or much of anything. Let’s put it this way: Dilbert had it right. Most members of Mensa work menial positions and have issues navigating life. Of course so do most people.)

Again, real intelligence is a messy and complicated thing. One of my sons is a real, bonafide genius, and drives me insane, both with his obsessions with a subject or a puzzle and with his total disinterest in things he (and everyone else) should be learning. My complaints about this to my cousin-sister (we were raised together, so she’s more like a sister) who is a specialist in teaching the super-gifted brought out laughter, “But that’s typical. At that level they only learn what they’re REALLY obsessed with, so there’ s these holes. Oh, also, once they master what fascinates them, to the level they want to, they drop it and never pick it up again.” (which fits younger son and drawing.)

So, why is it the left both awards themselves the “so smart” label and praises anyone who parrots their line as “so smart” and reviles anyone who questions them as “dumb?”

We know they do it, but why?

It took this article from Sultan of Knish to make it click in place for me.

You see, they have to believe they’re smart and that anyone who agrees with them is smart. That’s because their entire belief system about government and society hinge on “government from the top down” which can only work if “the right people” are in charge. I.e. it can only work if the people at the top are “really smart.”

Hence too, their tendency to cult of personality and their cult-like belief that an ivy league school is the same as an IQ test. (Hint, an IQ test is the same as an IQ test, and even that has nothing to say to your ability to function, survive and thrive in the real world.)

So though I normally don’t talk about my IQ test or my membership in that high IQ society, because I think it says absolutely nothing about me as a person or even about my competence in my chosen field, I now understand why the two times I lost my cool and threatened to scan in my membership card it caused the troll to run away in one case forever and in another case (on Facebook) for a month which with that one is a record.

And ya’ll will forgive me if I do it more often and maybe even scan it in, right? I DON’T think it makes me superior to anyone. The ability to take IQ tests well is not in fact something that’s well paid in the real world. (Which is why I don’t talk about it.) OTOH it smashes the left narrative that all the smart people are on their side, or that intelligence can be proven by parroting progressive slogans.

And that in turn smashes their idea that they can rule by virtue of being “so smart.”

Of course, most of the progressives have the stigmata of not-so-smart kids who have been pushed beyond their depth. Oh, you know them as well as I do. You went to school with some of them. Daddy’s daughter or mommy’s son, usually from money, who had tutors from second grade on, and who were told they were SO smart, even though their grades were mostly bolstered by penmanship and manners. Remember those kids? The haunted look?

They were keeping up the smart façade, but they knew in their hearts they weren’t all that smart and so they struggled.

In the same way, our “elites” have that haunted look of always looking over their shoulder and being afraid of being unmasked. Which is why they’re so loud in parroting what “teacher” – in this case “scientists” and in particular “social scientists” say – says. Because then they can continue being praised for being “so smart.”

And why they must scream so loud anyone who doesn’t parrot received messages is “dumb” and “stupid.”

Which is okay. We bad kids in the back, making jokes and blowing spitballs, are still beating them on grades, and we know what is wrong with the pap we’re taught too.

Because in the end, reality doesn’t care if you’re saying the “approved truth” or if you’ve been “certified” smart. Reality only cares about what works. And top down government never works, not even with really smart people. (Arguably it would be worse – if that’s possible – with really smart people, because of those blind spots and areas they’re not interested in.)

Which is why the narrative that we would be fine with the “really smart” people in charge is a fable suitable for incurious, ignorant children.

And it’s why in the end, we win, they lose.

Smash the narrative. It’s about time.

*Wrote this very late last night after a day of writing.  Equalite looked wrong but I couldn’t figure out why.  That’s because it’s egalite, of course.  Apparently my half-asleep “wrote a lot” brain is illiterate.*

People aren’t angels. No matter how oppressed they are. Not even considering if they’ve been victims or not.

I’m trying to finish Through Fire and on limited time. Oh, yeah, and the two main leads in Through Fire – I re-wrote an emotional pivot and now I have to rewrite other stuff – are trying to hose down the seacity with testosterone. It’s… uh… interesting? For a definition of interesting that starts with “if I were near you guys in real life I’d have beaned both of you with a frying pan. Or a burner. Whichever came first.” Not that the other males and females around are being particularly nice.

Like the other books in the Darkship/Earth Revolution twin series (look, ma, twins!) this book is divided in sections. The amount to which these are self contained varies. I don’t think any of the sequels have as much self-contained parts as Darkship Thieves, which is ALMOST four novellas mashed together. Anyway, the sections signal at least a shift in speed and tone of events. Kind of like a sing saying “ramp ahead” or “watch for the dip.” In this case the four sections are Liberte Fraternite Egalite and Ca Ira.

However, as far as the book is concerned, the problem of the novel is to aim for equality. Not equality of standing, not equality under the law but equality of results. Whenever you do that, the results are always streets running red with blood.

I find it interesting that it is more or less explicitly the aim of the ones who call themselves “Social justice” warriors. Not enough writers of a particular skin shade? Then there should be, even if for a variety of cultural reasons, fewer people in certain subgroups read science fiction. (And don’t sing to me of oppression. In Portugal it’s considered really odd for a girl to write ANYTHING but Romance and for anyone to write anything but historical. Or read. – or it was thirty years ago, at least. Not oppression, culture.)

If your idea of justice is to have the same results regardless of where everyone starts, the result is of course not justice but the most profound of injustices.

Take for instance the difference between male and female. If you try to change that by fiat of law you’re going to get in serious trouble. And we are. Let’s forget that the hormones do change the brain in certain ways and that, regardless of culture, women are going to have different reactions to babies than men will. (These are women in the general and collective. Individual women will be stubbornly individual. The fact remains, in the aggregate and statistically.) Let’s talk about physical differences. Physical differences are such that not only are women more likely to be raped (in the sense of forcibly penetrated) but also more likely to suffer bad consequences from such an episode. (As in, women can conceive.)

The social justice warriors solution to this is to make men and women EQUAL by fiat. This includes countering the weakness of women’s physique with the ability of any woman at any time to cry rape on any man without the man being able to defend himself. That makes him more legally vulnerable than she is physically vulnerable, and voila, equality.

This is not actually true, of course. Two wrongs actually don’t make a right. What you end up with is a number of women who are raped and for whatever reason don’t talk about it (like, fear of the rapist) and a number of women who pretend to have been raped to get back at innocent men and thereby destroy their lives.

Even giving women absolute ability to be believed without proof and regardless of contradictions in the story (what some “feminists” are suggesting in the case of UVA and Lena Dunham) you’re not going to get every woman who was raped to come forward. And you can’t say that the majority of the reports in those circumstances would be truthful. Why would they be?

I keep reading women pronouncing on how people won’t report rapes that didn’t happen, because no woman wants to humiliate herself or make herself unfit for political society by claiming to have been raped when she wasn’t.

Uh. Really? I didn’t realize we were living in the Victorian age. Nowadays, what with slut walks and no slut shaming and all that, saying you were raped has zero shame for the victim, and all the opprobrium on the accused, even when completely innocent. (As Barry One has found out.)

These women – though they are, at least allegedly, women – seem never to have met any woman of flesh and blood.

Here is a hint. Real people are human and they respond to incentives. Also, real people, male and female go through really stupid phases (we call it adolescence.) Under the influence of hormones and unrequited love, young women become the most appalling shrews and young men become almost painfully stupid. This means giving either of them power over the other is not social justice but the ultimate injustice.

Men and women are different: in their mind and in their body. For my money the best way to keep women from suffering the disadvantages of being the (physically) weaker sex is to teach them to defend themselves. Karate, other martial arts, self-defense classes and of course guns.

The social justice warriors hate that though. You see, it makes the responsibility for keeping themselves safe and equalizing (eh) their circumstances dependent upon individuals. There’s way less opportunity not just for graft and corruption, but a lot less opportunity for the “social justice” “warriors” to exert power over others and work out the unfathomable personal grudges corroding what passes for their souls.

And so they prefer to pretend that while men are evil, bestial beings, women are akin to angels and devoid of a baser nature. Even if teenage girls could take revenge on boys who ignored them with a single word, they won’t because they’re superior beings. Also, of course, the wings might get in the way of the pointing finger. It must be the way I tell them. I can’t laugh for crying.

Speaking of – I just read the most bizarre (and I mean that) – Pride and Prejudice fanfic. Having written all day a couple of days ago, I defaulted to reading something mindless, hence fanfic (though got from amazon under the KULL program.)   This book had 4.5 stars, and though it seemed to be a minor variant, it turned out to be jaw-droppingly twisted. It was sort of like watching a train wreck.

First of all let me say I have nothing against Christian fiction. I think a lot of it drops the affirmations of faith that seem necessary in the genre at the oddest places, but I skip over them as I skip over sex in normal romances. But this one… this one…

England has its own brand and movements of evangelical Christianity. I haven’t made a study of it, but just through reading autobiographies and such, I know what some of them are, and also what expressions they would use in the Regency.

The most offensive thing about this novel is the way that everyone in Pride and Prejudice is suddenly a Southern Baptist. Worse, they are Southern Baptists in the modern age. No, this is not how they are identified, but it is how they process Christianity, express themselves and talk to each other about religion and life.

Some of the other minor violations: Mr. Bennet was a preacher before inheriting Longborn (What?), Mrs. Bennet appears to be bipolar and far more despicable than Austen would ever write her, people react and act in ways no one in real life acts, unless it’s in a small, trusted faith community. For instance, if a total stranger thinks I’m depressed and comes talking to me about how they love me because Jesus told them to, they’re going to get stared blankly at. If they try to hug me forcibly they’re going to get hurt.

It reminds me of when I was a store clerk in North Carolina, and a lady asked me the time, and I told her where the clock was in the store and told her I couldn’t read it that far. (I have bad astigmatism, but at the time I didn’t have bad nearsightedness. Still, it was hard to read at THAT distance.) Instead of saying “thank you” she loudly prayed for my sight to be healed. RIGHT in the middle of the store. I didn’t know where to put my face. And it’s kind of like I’d react to a stranger saying “Jesus is telling me to come and ask you to tell me why you’re depressed.” Instead of which, the person in the novel just goes along with it and is sooo happy and responsive. It reads like a tin ear for human relations.

Leaving all that aside, I call this “the novel where everyone got raped.” Honestly, I think it’s only Lizzy and Georgiana (though I wouldn’t bet Anne and maybe even Lady Catherine weren’t. They just don’t appear in this novel.)

The point though is that these two rapes are central to the book. They are there purely for plot reasons. Both of them are fairly unlikely in the circumstances. And both of them are resolved in very odd ways.

However, relating to the post, these rapes are not considered, in any way to reflect badly on the characters: on the contrary they are what make the characters worthy of sympathy and interest.

Now, I’m not going to say the rapes should be held against the characters. Rape is always the rapist’s fault. However, more and more I’m seeing rape played for a cheap sympathy trick. Which I suspect is reflection of how it’s viewed when the “consequences” of claiming to have been raped (note, not reporting to the police, but claiming it to your friends, neighbors and acquaintances) are sympathy and unconditional belief as well as consequences heaped on whomever you choose to accuse.

Given that view, why would women be angels? Why would they not surrender to an impulse of revenge? Would you believe women are superhuman? Why?

Surely a well formed conscience wouldn’t make false accusations. But how well formed is the conscience of someone who was raised on the idea men are inherently oppressors and that the world inherently owes women compensation for the horrors of being born with a vagina?

As someone said, rape crisis centers should believe every woman unconditionally. College authorities, reporters and frankly everyone else should examine the story for holes. And the accused should have the right to defend themselves.

Everything else; everything purporting to generate perfect equality for two completely different biological forms, will end up in a gigantic game of tit for tat, in which there’s no winner.

Egalite makes for a great revolutionary cry. But when the revolution winds down, equality of results ends only in equality of death and blood.

Foxfier, here.

I homeschool our three kids—in as much as you can school, rather than just
be a mom to a one and three year old– but the five year old is doing fairly
well. From logging into the computer (with a password for her account) to
reading random short signs when we’re walking around and struggling with
reading a traditional clock, she’s learning. A lot of why we’re
trying to homeschool is safety related (we believe it’s a bad idea to teach
children that laws against assault don’t apply to protecting them, they only
apply to prosecuting if there’s a defense attempted) but a sizable chunk is
simply that it’s fun to feed her information as fast as she can chew
it down. Any mercy we’re taking on the poor teachers saddled with a child
that has that much pig headedness on both sides of the family is incidental.

So here’s a bunch of the resources I’d recommend, along with some that were
suggested at Ricochet.com; I hope others will add their favored resources,
since not everyone is doing elementary and pre-K education. All the
internet ones have good things that are free, although some sell additional
material. Mine are pretty heavy on print-outs. I’m thinking of making it a
“page” on my blog for easy sharing/updating, so please suggest new
additions. Title them something like EDUCATION RESOURCE and a short
description, perhaps?

Especially I’d like those who have a religious view to give the exact flavor
of their current observance, and what they consider a high quality source
for it. (I am an observant Roman Catholic, and would point to Catholic.com,
for example.) Likewise, if your job is one where there’s a lot of
misinformation, what the job is and a good resource; all those things where
you read something in the newspaper and growl about how incredibly
wrong what “everyone knows” is; please don’t argue with folks about a
source unless you share the belief/job it’s explaining, please, please!

My mom did the best she could to teach us outside of school, just like our
Hostess did for her sons, but my mom was greatly hobbled by the problem of
finding a source of information that was accurate and intelligible to those
who didn’t already know what was true. School really didn’t help,
between skipping subjects or leaving out very important bits. I have a
basic biology education that would make my science teacher sit down and cry
because it couldn’t be duplicated (in part because it was tied in with
emergency medical work on animals… you simply aren’t going to get 35 kids
in to help with a pig giving birth, or pulling calves, or even butchering a
bull that was hit by a car in the middle of the night) but there are a lot
of chunks of history where I simply don’t know a source I could trust.

ABC

http://www.starfall.com/n/level-k/index/play.htm?f”>Starfall’s
ABCs – used their free part to start the kids on computers, ended up
subscribing to the entire site. (not expensive, once a year, multiple
computers) Good to just put the kids in front of with a mouse and
occasionally help with website navigation.

http://www.kidslearningstation.com/preschool/alphabet-worksheets.asp”>Kid’s
Learning Station letter printouts – Tracers, printing, matching, word
association, fill in the letter worksheets, some letter based games,
coloring sheets. Biggest complaint is that each sheet is one at a time, so
it takes a lot of clicking to make an A-Z book.

Kid Zone Tracer
Pages – Choose what they trace in block, script or cursive, has several
automatic options at a click, and can copy a line through the rest of the
page. Great for teaching “this is my name” type things.

TLSBooks.com
Handwriting Worksheets – has reading and printing practice, with block
printing, Zaner-Bloser® Traditional Style script, D’Nealian® Style script,
cursive. Tons of cute pages.

All Kids Network
worksheets – letters, shapes, matching, spelling, reading, fill in the
blank, sorted by topic instead of what it teaches you. (ie, “summer” not pre
writing through word-search) Has pre-writing exercises that my three year
old can manage. Mostly.

Scholastic
Success With: Kindergarten workbook from Scholastic. I bought a bunch
of these from Costco several years ago and finally started on it– my
daughter mostly loves it, and if you add a basic 25c notebook they can copy
the letters more. Reading the directions can be reading practice, as well.

Bargain Bin dry erase boards from the Back To School supply bin, markers,
and permanent markers (I suggest something colorful for easier tracing).
Make your own “tracer board.” It’s fairly easy with a ruler, and rubbing
alcohol does nicely to erase the permanent marker if you’re quick.

Mead flash cards, or any other set that looks good to you; I spend a lot of
time at the bargain bin, and with a little ingenuity a lot of the basic
cards can be used for two kids at once. (Example: ‘younger, what is this
color? Correct. Elder, how do you spell red? Elder, what is this number?
Correct. Younger, count to sixteen, please.”) Use some sort of treat,
anything from sunflower seeds or goldfish crackers to jelly beans or mini
chocolate chips as a proportionate reward.

Have them tell you what random letters are, or what sound a letter makes, or
what letter makes a sound. “What is the first sound?” and
following questions are also helpful.

Numbers, Math

Starfall again, although
their free
samples are very
limited.
Heavy on songs. A bit quick to “help” kids find the right answer, although
it seems to have actually helped my eldest figure out the right answer.

Kid Zone “math” sheets–
everything from associating the numbers with their written symbol to basic
word problems. Go to the bottom for more suggested sources. Again, lots of
clicking.

TLSBooks
numbers/math sheets.

More
Coloring Books– actually, lots of worksheets. Numbers, letters, math…
maybe I should make a section for “worksheets.”

Donald in Mathmagic Land- less for direct learning than for getting the idea
that math is useful, and as a mental health break for parents. (I suggest
Saturday morning.)

School
House Rock– you can get a collection of all of the videos for about
thirteen bucks.

Uno deck. For little kids, play in “teams” with mom and dad; when they’ve
got the idea, they can play against you on their own. (Thus far, a kids
only game isn’t happening.)

Flash cards. Both actual numbers or math related ones, and the treats from
them. It is amazing how high a two year old can count when there
are jelly beans on the line.

Randomly ask them how many of something there are; we’re working on
memorizing multiplication tables verbally, too, any time I think they might
be bored. Sorting things by size is also useful.

Khan– Need to be able to read, so
they haven’t tried it, but I tried some bits and liked it well enough.

Reading

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_sb_27?tag=accordingtohoyt_20&link_code=wsw&_encoding=UTF-8&search-alias=aps&field-keywords=McGuffey%27s+Eclectic+Primer&Submit.x=17&Submit.y=12&Submit=Go”>McGuffey’s
Eclectic Primer. Check Amazon, we got the 1909 “revised” set up to
sixth grade for something like ten dollars.

Classic Dr. Seuss, both you reading and them reading.

Some good poetry, like Kipling.

Disney or folk songs- the rhyming and rhythm seems to help get the idea of
the parts of words, although I’m not phrasing that very well. I believe
it’s called “sound awareness” or something like that.

Drop the Tranny‘s
Dolche sight words. Found it as a Chrome extension, but the site works fine
on its own, too. Some of the words can be sounded out, some have to be
memorized, but they’re words that a kid needs to learn– click on the card,
it says the word.

Science!

Zoo membership. Our local flashy one is about twenty bucks a month, depends
totally on what you’re near; learning depends very heavily on the parent,
since every one I’ve been is so soaked in kool-aid it’s scary.

Obsessively stopping to look at the leaves on the flowers, trees, grass and
anything else that will hold still.

Find out if your local library has any online resources; it is
incredibly helpful to be able to “order” your books and pick them up
quickly when the kids want to go look at their books.

Randomly asking them to classify animals. Try not to laugh too hard when
informed a duck is a mammal.

Reach
Out Michigan– basically just a collection of links; some are very
useful.

Learning
Science.org – collection of links.

Periodic Table Song

Eureka Physics videos –
educational videos, fairly basic. Not sure how well it sticks, yet.

Online Labs – have not actually
used it, but another collection of lots of free, online labs for various
science topics. Looks kind of advanced. (actual link is to chemistry)

Principles
of General Chemistry – free online book.

Logic, Rhetoric, Speech

Stoa USA Speech and Debate

National Christian Forensics and
Communication Association

Introduction
to Logic, Fallacies – explains what fallacies are, a bit of history,
informal fallacies and false fallacies (reasoning that seems fallacious but
is, on consideration, not)

Memoria Press –
Saving western civilization one student at a time. Link to the
“articles” page; haven’t actually tried any of their stuff, but a
lot of different classically minded friends have suggested it.

Essential
Latin

http://adamhoward.net/latin/latin.html”>Talkin’ like the Ancient
Romans

Word
Work Interactive Notebook for Greek & Latin Roots

Library

Project Gutenberg

The Internet Archive‘s
Digital Book collection

http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/kip_fra.htm”>Kipling’s poetry
via the Kipling Society

The
Founding Documents

Making of America primary
source digital documents collection (UofM)

Making of America
primary source digital documents collection (Cornell)

History

What
Did People Do in a Medieval City?

Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire

General or Other

Web Exhibits – “an interactive
museum of science, humanities and culture.” Has some very pretty stuff.

Education.com 10 sheets a month for
free.

The
Homeschool Mom – massive collection of resources and articles,
sorted by subject. (the tags at the top of the lesson plan page are how you
find, say, general math)

My
Big FAT Homeschooling List – same thing that I’m doing here, but at
another site.

The Rules of
Chivalry

Roy
Rodger’s Riders Rules

Typing Club –
learn to type, very basic

Learn States
and Capitals – drag and drop names to places. Sticks surprisingly well,
although I don’t know if my daughter identifying Rhode Island as “the orange
one” will help in real life.

PBSKids.org – mostly helpful for learning
to use the computer, but has some relative size/amount games that seem to be
getting the idea across, several reading games, and my kids know an amazing
number of dinosaurs by species.

So… that torture report.

One of the advantages of being interested in history is that it gives you perspective. Sometimes – often – the perspective it gives you is “Thank heavens I was born in the mid twentieth century and not the mid sixteenth.”

One of the reasons for this is their treatment of prisoners. Normal Judicial Procedure in Shakespeare’s England was to sweep up all suspects and witnesses, dump them in jail and at the magistrate’s leisure interrogate them to determine if they were in fact guilty of anything.

So, suppose you’re on the street, and the guy next to you gets stabbed. You’re going to jail. While in jail, you’ll have to pay for your own food and you’d best have some bribes available for creature comforts.

But Sarah, you’ll say, we’re not in the sixteenth century. We’re more civilized now. Yes, and thank heavens, though in many ways we’re also softer, and I want you to remember that, as we go on.

Torture was extensively used in the sixteenth century. We’re not talking “won’t let you sleep” or “you must stand up” or even “no water.” No, we’re talking really honest to Bob torture, where they tore you apart bit by bit until you were permanently damaged. It was the only way they knew to get people to talk. Hold on to this, too, there is a reason.

I know in Marlowe’s time – so just before Shakespeare got big – there was a playwright who was arrested on suspicion of nothing much, and when he came out he couldn’t write again, because he couldn’t hold a quill. (And he couldn’t walk, and other stuff.) It’s been very long since I worked in that time period, so I don’t remember his name.

One of the reasons most of us, sane human beings, think that Anne Boleyn was innocent was that the confessions were not only tortured out of her supposed lovers, they were REALLY tortured. We’re talking the stuff of nightmares. Think of the worst possible way to torture someone. Yep, that’s it.

Torture of that kind is used almost nowhere in the world these days. Correction, it’s used nowhere in the western world. You and I and even the anonymous people reading this blog to go scream on twitter what a horrible person I am, know this still goes on, at this level or close enough in the Arab world and in some of the more benighted parts of so called “developing countries.”

When I posted Cedar’s article on police corruption, an Indian FB friend posted that at least police don’t routinely flog the soles of your feet, just because they can, etc.

Yes. So, this goes on in a great part of the world, up to and including the unimaginable Elizabethan tortures if you’re talking Iran or Syria or any of those charming places.

Even next door, I have heard you REALLY don’t want to be arrested in Mexico.

But Sarah, say you, what does this have to do with us? We’re the United States. We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We believe in individual rights. Our criminals aren’t tortured, why should our enemies be?

Okay.

First, let me say I disapprove of torture – by which I mean REAL physical torture. Do I need to say this? Oh, yes, I do, there are idiots and SJWs (but I repeat myself) reading this.

I disapprove of pulled fingernails. I disapprove of cut this and that. I disapprove, even, of cane flogging the soles of someone’s feet. Other things I disapprove of – not a complete list – include but are not by any means limited to: beating someone with rubber hoses, burning someone with cigarettes, etc, etc, etc.

What about other levels of torture, i.e. “enhanced interrogation techniques” – sleep deprivation, loud music, etc – how do I feel about them.

Oh, I don’t like them. Depending on the severity of them they can extract false confessions, and I don’t think they should be used on citizens, protected by the constitution of the United States.

Besides, to be fair, the resistance of someone raised in modern America is not that of a man in the sixteenth century. Sure, if you read student doc, a blog on the er… interesting things that show up in emergency rooms in urban America, you probably suspect as I do that such resistance to pain and discomfort is much higher of someone raised in the underclass. Thus the observation that someone who has a low ratio or teeth to tattoos can show up shot through the heart and survive something that a normal suburbanite would never have endured two seconds. But I guarantee they’re still pampered princesses compared to people in the third world who, themselves, might be more sensitive than ANYONE including the upper class in Elizabethan England (who lived in conditions we can’t even fully imagine.)

And that, you see, is the rub. The rub is that first that life, liberty, pursuit of happiness thing? Those are rights given to us by the constitution. By us, I mean Americans by birth or adoption. We are not in fact mandated to give that protection to anyone else. And in many cases it might be ill advised.

Oh, boy, I can hardly write for the screams of the SJWs at that last one.

Chill. Listen. I know reading comprehension is not your forte, and also that you know a lot of things that just ain’t so, however do try to comprehend that this is not a civil war, in any sense. The people on the other side aren’t Americans. They don’t think like Americans, they don’t believe like Americans and they haven’t grown up like Americans.

They’re not also the little brown peoples of your pampered (and racist) imaginations where, because people can tan (to about my level, but never mind) they are inoffensive, clueless, a bit stupid, and will only do bad things in reaction to American evil. Do try to understand these people, though very different from you and htough, perhaps, raised in conditions of privation and material want, are fully realized human beings with their own agenda.

Their beliefs are not the same as yours, but they are – to them – just as important and as real as your beliefs are to you.

Oh, sure, some of their beliefs match yours. They’ve been told by their teachers, just as you were, that America is the source of all evil, and that if they wipe America from the map everyone will be happy or at least that they get to rule. (In this last one they’re at least more realistic than you are, not that they would, get to rule, I mean.)

They and you are wrong. In their case they were told this by their corrupt leaders who are afraid that America will prove so attractive it undermines their tyranny. In your case, you were told this by your corrupt leaders, who want to cater to your vanity and lead you to destroy the constitution and rules that keep them from becoming full tyrants.

But that is a side spur to this. What matters, right here, right now, is that these people are fully actuated human beings, possessed of self determination. And they hate us.

No, please, don’t say “not me”. Be you ever so “progressive” and ready to throw your co-citizens under the bus, they still hate you. In fact, they might hate you more. Their values aren’t ours but tribal honor and loyalty is something the Arab world understands at a gut level.

What this means is that they will try to harm us. 9/11 served as a wake up call for some of us. I suspect it did for you too, and that’s why you’re already siding with the enemy because you think they’ll win. That’s because you view every American through the lens of your circle. Trust me, some of us are neither cowards nor wilting flowers.

And that’s the rub. The other part of the rub. Neither are our enemies.

The people who want to hurt us grew up in conditions that make our normal treatment of prisoners a summer vacation.

Worse, they come from a part of the world where internal restraint of possible violence is not a thing. If you don’t torture them, they don’t assume it’s because you are holding back due to your impeccable morals. No, they assume that you’re not torturing them because you can’t – either because you fear their retaliation or because you’re soft. That means that they will be more sure than ever of their side’s win, and they’re not going to talk. Because, hell, if they talk, their side will do unspeakable things to them. Things that would make Elizabethans blench.

But Sarah, you say (well, those of you who aren’t SJW’s. Those are already shrieking and I don’t understand banshee), that doesn’t make it right for us to torture them or even to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” on them.

Right according to whom? Right how? By whose moral law?

Yeah, sure, it’s against most of the religions dominant in the west (though not where these people come from.) It is also morally repulsive – to us, by Western codes – to hurt someone who can’t defend himself.

Is it realistic, though? Meaning, is it something that can work outside of a movie?

I don’t know. And neither do you. It is not your job to do this, and you can’t know. They’re dealing with a completely different culture, with people raised in much higher hardship levels than even poor people in Detroit, okay? More, they’re dealing with people raised in a culture where might makes right, and who turn that around and assume if there’s no might, there’s no right. Worse, they’re dealing with males in a culture that is a true and extreme patriarchy, a culture where most of these guys think of themselves as invulnerable and untouchable by virtue of being male and by virtue of their religion. If you don’t pierce that cultural bubble, they’re not going to talk.

But surely, Sarah, you say, we’re civilized and there’s stuff we can do to get the truth without torturing people.

Um…. M’kay then. I like science fiction too!

The truth is that the whole psychological science thing never came along as sf writers thirty or fifty or even seventy years ago predicted. The human animal is too unpredictable for an exact science.

Which leaves with the old, icky methods.

Now, perhaps – perhaps – you can work on them with mercy and lovingkindness. Perhaps it works just like in the movies. I don’t know. I’ve never done this work. I knew someone who used to interrogate would-be communist terrorists (a different beast, from a different culture) who said if you have to slap a prisoner you are incompetent. For most prisoners you could get them to crack with the “good cop” routine. But he said in a pinch, and if you had an urgent need, you had to resort to sleep deprivation or making them break potty-training. (Apparently Heinlein was right about this having a devastating effect.) Which are I presume “enhanced interrogation techniques.” (Though not to the water boarding level.)

Here’s the thing: this is not my job, and it is not yours, and it certainly, thank heavens, is not the job of the Sandra Flukes of this world.

So – I don’t know under what time-pressure people were working, and I don’t know what they had to do. And I’m not going to judge them.

It is important to have supervision. People with power over others will get out of control. But it’s also important to know the person coordinating the compilation of this report was Harry Reid and what he’s trying to do. (Mostly make us look away from Gruber’s deposition and from the slo mo disaster this administration has brought to America.) And it’s important to remember two things: you’re not the men doing this and you don’t know their circumstances.

It’s also important to remember that most of the people being interrogated are NOT the peaceful camel herders that the movies portray. These people have histories that, to quote from Grosse Pointe Blanke, read like a demon’s resume. And that’s important, both for what they could do and what you have to get through to make them crack.

Put it this way: Imagine we had a president who really cared when innocent village girls are kidnapped by the Boko Haram. I mean, cared about it more than to have his wife tweet a pouty-face picture saying “Bring back our back our girls.” And kindly, don’t tell me that it’s a foreign country and none of our business. Note that “our girls.” Let’s say we’d captured one of the rat finks who kidnapped these kids. We have to find the rest before they are raped/killed/sold into perpetual sexual slavery to strangers.

What would you do to get that one guy to talk quickly? Think carefully and don’t flatter yourself. You’d do whatever you had to do.

To do anything else would be to go into a street fight and try to fight by Marquess de Queensbury rules. Those work fine in the boxing ring, if everyone is following them. In an alley fight, they’ll get you massacred.

So – do I think we owe it to our higher selves to be better than the parts of the world where prisoners are routinely tortured? Sure. If for no other reason, because it hurts those of our men having to torture. They’re not built or educated for this.

But I also think there’s times and circumstances, and I have neither the training nor the experience nor the knowledge of the circumstances to say “and you must never do this.”

The chokepear and the iron maiden should be out of bounds, but waterboarding? I don’t know. It depends.

To release a report of this kind, with this kind of sensationalism, devoid of context is to invite the ignorant public (and I’m part of this) to pass judgment on things they can’t even imagine.

We can demand that our agents work with as much decency as possible, but we can’t, from where we sit, decide where that line is. We simply don’t have the equipment to do it.

Yes, I believe in individual life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for as many people as possible. But make no mistake, I’m an American first and last. And if you need to violate the rights of those who aren’t Geneva signatories, who don’t recognize any rights and who would blow up men and women and children in a normal morning, in the middle of NYC, to preserve the life and liberty of Americans, it’s not even a contest. Do it.

It goes along with the right of self defense. We have the right to find out what they’re plotting so that we can use to stop attacks on us.

What about innocent camel herders? What about them? Most of these assets we interrogate aren’t so easy to capture that we’re sweeping up crowds, en masse, from the Arab street. Whatever movies tell you, trust me, if we were doing that, you’d have heard about it. In detail. These are people who have committed acts of terrorism in the past – proven, often watched and self-confessed – and will commit them again in the future.

Unless we can figure out what they’re up to.

So, do I like torture? No. I’m as capable of getting on my moral high horse as anyone else. A nd I think the Elizabethan system made for lousy policing, and if we start going that way, even internationally, that’s a BAD thing.

But I also think we’re nowhere near it and our agents, thank heavens, don’t have an unfettered hand in decisions. They are watched and overseen.

The rest of us, here on the street? Sure, they ultimately work for us, and to be fair, we should keep an eye on them. But unless you take the time to read all the reports and have a clearance that allows to you to get what the rest of us don’t, be aware what you’re reading is only half the truth.

And you can’t judge men doing difficult and morally perilous work on the front lines. You just can’t. You can say “I’d prefer we didn’t do this” – so can I. But screaming about the eebils of America? Oh, please. Try being picked up for a traffic violation anywhere in the third world.

Grow up. Understand you don’t know everything and that your moral rules and scolding are not and will never be the last word.

You can hold onto them only because rough men are willing to do rough things on your behalf.

You are not now, and if you’re very lucky you’ll never be, in the sort of morally perilous position where you have to choose between your moral beliefs and someone else’s life.  You’re not in a position where you have to choose whether to be rough to a prisoner or risk territories being taken in which women and children will be raped, treated like chattel, and suffer unimaginable torture.  (For illustration look at the areas taken by Isis.)

Your job is to understand this and to stop demanding that people choose between the black and white that exist only in your imagination and in the movies produced by people for whom a hangnail is unimaginable torture and going without their favorite bottled water an emergency.

Your job is also to wonder why this report was released now, on practices that started being discontinued in Bush’s second term, and to wonder what exactly the people in power now are doing that they’d rather hide behind whipped up outrage at actions since stopped than to examine the actions of the powerful right now.

Stop emoting and start thinking.  Yes, your friends will think badly of you, and the SJWs will shriek some more.  (We should harness that.  Could power entire cities, I tell you.)

But you might prevent you and yours having to suffer far worse than is detailed in those reports.

Maybe.  If you are very lucky.

I’m still mired deep in writing, though the treacle has got somewhat less sticky and I can see the end from where I am.

However, for several days now, I’ve had this song stuck in my head:

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin’ trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Good morning America how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

I know the song echoes of bitterness and all that, and it’s supposed to be on how all these people are disposable and… whatever.  Ignore that.

The thing is, I’ve always loved that opening because I’ve always loved early morning America seen from car or bus.  The little houses by the side of the highway, the fast food restaurantss opening up, traffic slugishly trickling out onto the highway.

I fell in love with America twenty eight years ago, when I was an exchange student.  The first week was… interesting, but not American as such.  They gathered a large batch (there were three batches) of  incoming AFS students, from all over the world, into WC Fields in NY for an orientation about basic things like manners, how to ask for things and such.

And it was very interesting.  Did you know that released to the wild, adventurous young people cling first to people of their country, then people of the same linguistic grouping, then to people with whom they perceive a cultural relationship.  Take Portuguese, for example — first they clung to other Portuguese and then in order were willing to group with Brazilians, Spaniards, all South Americans.

Except for the outliers, of course.  Those of us who were there to discover the different mingled freely.  There were very few of us, but we had great fun.  And it was interesting, at a thinking level, realizing how many of the things we used to judge people on first meeting were built into our culture and not universal.  Take my group-leader-orientation manager, Chris  (wonder how life has treated him?) from NYC.  He was I think in his second year of college and what I then considered cute but I was sure there was no point playing up to him.  Why?  Well, he wore a thick, visible silver chain.  So, of course, he was gay.  (Hits head on desk, forcefully.)

With all that, there were hints that week of what America was — the things it was that were not part of any other country I had experienced.  Take the volunteers.  One of my favorites was my house father, Keith (and these years later, I can’t remember his name.) who was a long-distance trucker (and who for reasons known only to him woke us up with loud renditions of George Washington Bridge, in the morning.  Much more pleasant than an alarm clock.)  He was taking his vacation time to come shepherd a group of lost duckling foreigners through their adaptation to America.  It was a thankless task, with no pay and no prestige.  I can imagine very few countries in which someone would volunteer that cheerfully to give up their free time.  As did all the other volunteers, probably a hundred of them, from all walks of life.

Still, that week was about the world and about all the different people.  It didn’t — to me — relate to America.  And then they put us on the bus to send us to our host families.  I think I fell in love with America when breakfast was handed to me.  Why, you’ll ask?  Well, this was the late seventies and fast food breakfasts weren’t ubiquitous.  What they handed us were boxes from some hospitality service.  But the box contained a sealed orange juice cup, a sealed cup of fruit salad, a stick of French toast with the syrup for dipping and — I think — a cup of coffee filled hot by the volunteer at the door to the bus.

Before you think I fell in love with food…  None of what I was handed was my favorite.  But it was so ready, so self-contained and so perfect for the situation, that I was charmed.  And then when I thought that at that time in the morning there were these little packets ready for any travelers who might be setting out, I was captivated.

In that Greyhound Bus, crossing PA — I did my exchange student year at Stow, Ohio and graduated from Stow High School — I saw the little houses, the cars trickling onto the highway, and I was finally bowled over by the energy, the determination, the… joy of America, where each person got up and went to work that early…

You could say you — all of you — had me at hello.

During the year, rough spots and all, my love for America grew and though I was eventually lucky enough to fall in love with an American and end up here, I suspect I would have ended up here anyway, even if I had to trail a foreign-born family behind me.

It is not a grandiose love.  When it comes to the constitution — as I believe I’ve said before — I’m a fundamentalist, and I love the idea of America — “no kings, no queens, no lords, no ladies, we won’t be fooled again.”   However, like all true love that leads to a long term relationship and stays around as you both change, it is a more humble and work-a-day emotion and what I love about America is a more everyday sense and feel…  Those things that don’t change beneath the trappings of governments, fads, and the latest cultural turmoil.

Three –?– years ago I was disgusted with something or other at the Federal level, and generally depressed.  And then I went to pick up Robert at middle school (Okay, more than three years.  Eh.)  The middle school is close enough to walk to, and it was spring.  I passed families playing on the front lawn, people working on their cars, students sprawled on lawns with their books, and many, many, many people involved in some home-improvement project.  And I fell in love with America all over again.

I don’t remember the book — eh.  I’m mid writing — but PJ O’Rourke, in one of his books has something about a restaurant in Russia at the end of the Soviet era and about how most of the issues with the place could be solved by an American, a bottle of lysol and a rag.  I remember it, because I often find myself thinking the same when I travel abroad.

The plane landing on the Hudson brought this home to me.  All those passengers helped each other out, in   scene much different from what Hollywood — who often doesn’t GET the miracle that is America — would have portrayed.  All of those boat owners, individually rushed to the rescue.

America is what Americans are, and Americans are people who get up early and go to work, and who are interested and creative enough to antecipate situations like a bunch of kids being packed in a bus early morning, in need of breakfast…

Good morning, America, I love you.  And I always will.

The Brazilian author Lucia Benedetti wrote a book about WWII called Three Soldiers. I discovered this book when I was eight, I think, and conceived a great fondness for it, which is weird, considering most of the characters in the book are rough men, and the book revolves around both the necessity and the horror of war, and how it changes men.

(Later on, in the states, I found she had written other books, and those were available here. They were a disappointment being infected with both man-hating feminism and America-hatred, but Three Soldiers, at least in my head is untainted by those. I don’t know if this is true, because I haven’t read it for thirty years, having left it behind in dad’s library and since it doesn’t seem to exist in English translation.)

Three Soldiers is where my fondness for war stories originates, and there are many scenes I remember very clearly, such as when the three (Brazilian) soldiers insist they’re not going to visit the tower in Pizza. At the end of the day, much the worse for the drink, they’re climbing the tower with (I think) an equally inebriated American, all the while shouting “no tower.” And there is a scene in which they dig a shelter in the ground which becomes a “nightclub” of sorts. There are also, of course, scenes of battle.

I no longer remember where in the book, but there is a conversation, when the guys are on leave, and none of them can understand why their officer won’t sleep around. They all have cozy arrangements with Italian girls and they ask him why he doesn’t. He says he’s married. And they say, “Oh, but so are half the men.” And then he tells a story.

He says there was this man who decided to build a house, but instead of cement he decided to use excrement. And all the people around, instead of telling him it was folly and stupid and smelly, applauded and lauded his intelligence until the whole thing collapsed in a smelly heap, and then they moved away from him, looking disgusted. He says “that’s what it’s like building a marriage with adultery.”

The parable seems accurate for adultery, but that’s not what this is about.

When reading the news today, from the Lena Dunham craziness, to the unraveling of the VA campus rape accusations, to Hilary telling us that we should have “empathy” for our foes, to the insanity that is the international situation, to the further insanity that is the national situation, I keep thinking of that house built with excrement.

Look, “liberalism” started with good intentions. I’m not talking here of classical liberalism but of that more active, more ah… “positive” liberalism that has at various times called itself “progressivism.”

Okay, the intentions weren’t very good, but they dressed up as good. In Sweden they instituted socialism because they were afraid the proletarian revolution was inevitable, and here too, I guess. Prizes and accolades should be given to that great fabulist Marx who convinced half the world that the masses were about to revolt.

Anyway, the idea at its root was for the upper class to keep control by controlling the doling out of socialism, so they didn’t end up like the Tzar of the Russias.

But it was dressed up in good intentions: care for the poor, universal education, keeping people from starving, enlightening the masses, etc. etc.

Only the dressing doesn’t matter when what’s underneath is just a wish to keep control and also when it’s all funded on a crazy lie: the idea that classes have cohesiveness and will rise and fall on their own and that these great social changes happen spontaneously like yeast.

There were other lies too, behind it: the idea that the economy is a fixed pie and wealth can’t be created, only endlessly redistributed. And the idea that there was some beautiful, innocent, pre market time when people owned everything in common. That was Rosseau, not Marx, but it was there, at the root of the ideas that went to forming this hodge-podge we’ll call progressivism.

It didn’t work as planned.

I mean, either doled out from above or by violent revolution, socialism or its darker red shade, communism, which have different details but both of which are based on reverence for the collective and disrespect for individual property and striving, this regime formed on supposed good ideas and aiming for supposed utopia proved a disaster.

And so, like all the cults, when the end of the world/messiah/spaceship from the Magellanic Cloud fails to materialize, it elaborated reasons for its failure and conditions it needed to meet for utopia. This is how the idea that revolution would come from third world countries came about, and recently the idea that revolution is from the downtrodden, among which the funniest “downtrodden” class is university educated, white, pampered women.

The problem is this – the progressive movement, when it started, was in fact using “good ideas” or “good sounding ideas” to cover up the fear of communist revolution and to help the elites hold on to power.

But the ideas were no obviously risible. Marxism offered itself up as a scientific view of history and therefore predictive of the future, and since that was the great age of science in other realms, who was to say that it wasn’t true? It might need to be tweaked – Darwinism has been – but it could be essentially true and right. Besides, it stripped from history the random appearance of great men who dreamed great ideas and the chaotic events that happened just because things happened to fit a certain way and made it sound like given certain rules things would happen.

That idea has been dead a long time. These ideas died in the mass graves of communist dictatorships. The idea of a top-down creation of a great society died even in Nazi Germany. What’s more the idea of the great proletariat revolution died with a technology that emphasizes mass production less and less.

Many people aren’t aware Marxism is dead and gone, an ideology walking around in its naked bones, all of them rotted.   That is because before death was obvious, this zombie ideology had conquered campus and the press and even our entertainment and had slid, unnoticed, into people’s thoughts.

And what’s worse, what is truly horrible, is that when the rot became obvious and the lies plain, from the lie of the beautiful pre-historic communes to the rot of the soviet union, our press didn’t report it, nor our entertainment dramatize it. Instead they made excuses. It wasn’t communism, it was China, Russia, it was Cambodia, it was Cuba, and in the end, it was fallible humanity, which was not worthy of the great progressive project.

To keep believing, to keep holding on to their future utopia, and more importantly, to keep feeling superior to the rest of us, the progressives invented post-modernism.

This is sort of the equivalent of the kid whose *ss has been handed to him in a playground fight coming up with rules that prove he can’t lose and you can’t win.

Oh, I’m sure you’ve been in this situation, all of us have. The kid says his father is eight feet tall, and when his father shows up he’s five eight. And then the kid says, “Well, in my mind he’s eight feet tall, and you can’t say otherwise, so there.”

In the same way the post-modernist project insists there is no objective reality. Reality is what you say it is.

This is when they started building their house with excrement.

Instead of looking around and saying “Okay, this sounded like a great idea, but it doesn’t work in the real world” they held onto it, tighter and insisted the flaw was with the real world.

They could believe this because all the channels that informed/educated/entertained the public had been taken over by their co-religionists and were repeating their beliefs at them.

I watched mass media turn the minor recession of the first Bush years into a major crisis and what’s more blame it on Reagan’s policies which had brought us out of the severe Carter contraction and malaise. I watched them call again and again for higher taxes and more government, because that was the only solution. And people bought it, because what else were they going to do? Go outside respected media sources? But that was insanity.

In the same way, I’ve watched in fascinated horror as they try to pull the same trick – now to pave the way for Hilary – with everything from shows about women executives to the “war on women” and the campus rape crisis.

I’ve watched them inflate a so-so jobs report, which is propped up (as I predicted when Obamacare passed) by low-paying temporary jobs into “major good news” just as I’ve watched the summer of recovery one and two and three and four and five, and whatever many fall flat.

I’ve watched them puzzle over why it’s not working.

It’s not working because they need full control of all channels of information.

In other words, the only way the man who builds his house with excrement can pass for sane and shrewd is if he has full control and can make everyone around him clap and admire, or at least seem to. The minute there is even a guy going “Ew. You’re trying to build stuff with sh*t” the people who were thinking it smelled mighty foul are going to say “Ew” and next thing you know people are disgusted, or pointing and laughing.

Which is what fabulist Lena Dunham who became the “voice of her generation” on nothing much but proclamation is finding out. That’s what the woman who wrote about the UVA case, is finding out, as it’s causing people to dig into her older reports and realize they’re not even good Lifetime Movies. It’s what Vagina Vigilante Rose Eveleth found out when she made a scientist cry for wearing a cool sf-babe retro shirt, and people told her she was full of sh*t. It’s what the SJWs are finding out across the board. Their antics either puzzle people, or make them laugh or – at worst – disgust them. It’s what the president is finding out, as he goes into profanity-laden rants at the press which has fallen on their swords for him. It’s what Michael Man is finding out as people discover that, yep, climate disasters can be not-man-made.

And these poor cultists don’t understand why. It’s not just that they have for years built fortresses around their lies, with hype, and with giving each other accolades and prizes, and with no one else being able to puncture their echo chamber, no. That’s part of it. But the worst part is post modernism. You see, it’s their truth, so how can it be wrong. We should believe accusations of rape automatically for instance, because you see, they fit the Marxist narrative, and so being true in reality doesn’t matter. If reality doesn’t agree, it’s reality that’s wrong.

Pity them, my friends. They’ve built their house with excrement and lies. It’s now collapsing on them and they have no idea why. Pity them, but laugh and point, else they’ll convince themselves that you’re somehow making their perfectly sound home fall down.

In the smelly mess that ensues, it might be too late for them, but perhaps a new generation will learn the difference between sh*t and cement.

In the mean time we’re all going to see more sh*t and if we’re very unlucky more blood than we wanted to.

But in the end, we win, they lose.  Has to be, because sh*t is a lousy building material.

Be not afraid.

The Two Sides Of The Police Coin – Amanda Green

Over the last few months, I’ve noticed an increase in comments in social media – not to mention the mainstream media itself – condemning the police. They look at events like what happened in Ferguson or New York City and say those incidents prove that the police are no longer looking to serve and protect. Some take the position that the police are out to screw over any minority, especially if that person is a young black male. Others claim that cops are all egotistical, power-hungry pigs who get off on screwing anyone who isn’t in the old boy network. It doesn’t matter to either side what the circumstances surrounding an incident might be. If an officer drew his gun and fired, he was exercising unreasonable force and should be charged.

The suggestions about what to do whenever an officer discharges his weapon in the course of performing his duty have ranged from immediately terminating him and instituting an investigation into what happened to an automatic felony charge without benefit of a grand jury review. What those advocating these sort of responses seem to overlook is that their so-called solutions are as much in violation of the officer’s civil rights as they claim the officer’s actions might have been.

As much as I don’t agree with either position, I can pretty much wave those approaches off. Those clamoring for instant charges against cops are having nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to current events, a reaction fueled by the media that is having a blast doing its best to tear down not only law enforcement but the way the public views those who have chosen to go into it as a profession.

What I can’t wave off are the calls by some to completely do away with all forms of law enforcement. These folks believe that we would be much better off without police of any kind. According to them, we would police ourselves and our homes and neighborhoods would be much safer than they are now. After all, when you call 911 for help, you are running the risk of having a bad cop respond and shoot your, someone in your family or your family pet.

Let’s get something straight right now. I’m the first person to admit there are bad cops out there. But there are also bad doctors and bad teachers and bad any other profession (skilled or not). Bad cops are worse than crooks. Those men and women who have sworn to serve and protect and who then violate their oaths deserve to have the full weight of the law thrown at them. They have not only violated their oaths but they have violated the trust that has been put in them by the public they are supposed to serve.

However, this trend of condemning all cops because of the actions of a few is more than a little troublesome. The generalizations it makes are dangerous ones, not only for law enforcement personnel but for the public as well.

Yes, there are bad cops. But there are a hell of a lot more good ones than bad. The reason we hear about the “abuses” by cops so often these days is because of the media. For those of you not old enough to remember, there was a time when you’d turn on the 10 pm news and see sensational stories about the addicts and pushers offing one another or the innocent kid caught in the cross-fire. Now we hear about the cops and, in all too many cases, the story is framed in such a way as to paint the cop as guilty before the facts have been determined.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, there are more than 900,000 “sworn law enforcement officers” in the United States. If, as the detractors of law enforcement claim, all these men and women were corrupt, the first thing that would happen is the media would be silenced. Those corrupt cops would strong arm any reporter who dared try to expose their criminal activities and demand justice.

Let’s face it, with 900,000 people doing any job, someone is going to take advantage of their position. But that doesn’t mean everyone else will as well.

As for the suggestion that we move from professional law enforcement personnel to policing ourselves, well, think about it. Without a professional law enforcement arm to protect our communities and enforce our laws, it will be up to each individual to do so. They will have to be vigilant and watch what happens in their neighborhood. They will have to learn how to use firearms – or other forms of weapons – in such a way that they don’t automatically present a danger to themselves and others just by picking up the weapon. They have to be willing to step up and possibly put themselves in danger to protect their own loved ones or someone they might only know to nod hello to.

But most of all, for it to work the way the law enforcement detractors seem to think it would, these men and women in each neighborhood would have to never be tempted by the same things that tempt our professional cops. Anyone want to bet how likely that is to happen?

Sure, there are places where the community can and will police itself. Most of those are small towns or neighborhoods where everyone knows who lives in their area and they keep an eye out for one another. That doesn’t work, on the whole, in larger cities. Too many people never take the time to get to know who lives next door to them, much less down the street or one street over.

Our society has changed in the last fifty years. When I was growing up, we knew everyone up and down our street. Parents knew each kid in the neighborhood and they wouldn’t hesitate to correct a child if they saw the kid doing something she shouldn’t. There was a trust and sense of community that isn’t there in most places any more.

But that sense of community wasn’t limited to the adults either. As kids, we might not have always liked one another but, by ghu, no one had better bully or try to pick a fight with one of our neighbors. If they did, we would descend en masse to make sure they never tried again.

There was also a freedom we had as kids that our own kids don’t get to enjoy. Once we were old enough – and I’m talking grade school age – we’d get on our bikes, tell our folks where we were going and we’d be gone all day. Sometimes we stayed in the immediate neighborhood and other times we might ride to one of the neighboring towns to go to a park or play with friends there. If that were to happen today, some “concerned citizen” would be calling CPS on our folks and reporting them for child endangerment. Heck, they are calling the cops on parents who let their kids play in the park directly across from the house – with the parent watching.

But this is the world the cop haters think can police itself and we’d be a much more peaceful and happy society as a result.

Sorry, but I see only disaster. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t take too kindly to someone trying to take away my son simply because I let him play outside, especially if he was being supervised at the time. How many injuries and deaths from just this sort of thing would happen without there being an unbiased (hopefully) third party to intervene and decide what the facts might be?

Then there is the claim that crime stats have decreased in some cities after police forces have been downsized. Well, do quote Homer Simpson, “Doh!” Of course the stats are down. Crime stats are manipulated by not only the police but by the city/county and by the feds. The police do it to keep the city council and local citizens happy — and to get new recruits. The city/county does it to try to keep federal monies and the feds do it to justify their own programs.

This is something we have seen in Dallas of late. By changing how they defined certain felonies, the major crime stats fell dramatically from one year to the next. It had nothing to do with the number of cops on the street or the number of brutality complaints, etc. It didn’t even have anything to do with the number of actual crimes committed. It had everything to do with how those 911 calls were classified and how the data was compiled.

Like it or not, cops are human and they make mistakes. When those mistakes are the result of negligence of worse, and when they result in someone being hurt or property being damaged, those cops should face the justice system. That does not mean trying them in the press nor does it mean they get special treatment. It also doesn’t mean they are denied certain rights like having their case presented to a grand jury unless they waive it.

I’m not going to apologize for not jumping onto the bandwagon to condemn those good men and women who put their lives on the line every day when they put on their uniform and go out to protect their communities. I’ll even admit that this is something I am passionate about. I have worked with cops, good and bad. I have absolutely no loyalty or sympathy for a bad cop. They need to be sent to the pen just like anyone else who has committed a felony — or, if a misdemeanor, they need to face justice there as well. But we cannot shackle the hands of good cops to such a degree that they can no longer do their duty to serve and protect. Don’t like the way the cops in your jurisdiction act, then apply to join the civilian review board or run for office so you can have oversight over them.

All that said, yes, there need to be limits on what a cop can do and there needs to be a valid and unbiased review process in place. They are supposed to serve and protect, not rule and conquer.