Dateline Florida:
Another criminal trial has started which purports to invoke the so-called controversial "stand your ground" statute.
The Florida statute provides:
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
That’s not all that different from the West Virginia statute:
A person not engaged in unlawful activity who is attacked in any place he or she has a legal right to be outside of his or her home or residence may use reasonable and proportionate force against an intruder or attacker: Provided, That such person may use deadly force against an intruder or attacker in a place that is not his or her residence without a duty to retreat if the person reasonably believes that he or she or another is in imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm from which he or she or another can only be saved by the use of deadly force against the intruder or attacker.
The facts of the Florida case as reported in the press are:
Four young black men were at a convenience store in a car with the radio/stereo blasting. An older white man in another car asked them to turn down the volume. There's no information about whether that request was friendly, neutral or hostile. The young guys refused, and again there is no information about how calm or heated the refusal was. An argument ensued. The older man says he saw a gun barrel appear out of the back window of the younger guys’ car. He drew his own legally carried pistol and fired several rounds. One of the young man was killed. No weapons were recovered by police from the young men's car.
The older man has been charged with murder.
So the press is full of the usual rhetoric – An innocent older citizen defended himself from a bunch of young thugs; or an old racist pistolero assassinated a kid. Both of these "obvious" conclusions come from people who have no more information about this particular case than we do. So once again, the old song lyric lives on: "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Since I wasn't there, I have no opinion on what the verdict should be. If the guy is convicted in a fair trial, that’s fine; if he’s acquitted in a fair trial, that’s fine.
I do have one observation and one conclusion which do seem fairly obvious to me.
The observation:
Sometimes, "Stand Your Ground" laws protect factually innocent people from culturally or politically popular prosecutions. If it is always required that one "retreat" from a confrontation, some people will be put in the peculiar legal position of either defending themselves or being shot themselves.
That's a hell of a choice.
The reason is that in lots of situations, retreating is more dangerous than "standing your ground." There are so many permutations on how conflicts can develop that one simple set of rules is impossible to write. However, you can't out draw a drawn gun and you can't out run a bullet. If retreating adds to the net danger, then retreating is a dumb idea.
It is all fact specific.
Okay – Now the conclusion:
Legal justifications aside, this young man should not have been shot. This confrontation should not have happened. Saying that you do not have a legal duty to retreat has not a great deal to do with whether or not you SHOULD retreat. The shooter may or may not have a legal justification. He does not have a moral justification.
In any confrontation, the default choice always should be to retreat and avoid the confrontation. By "default," I mean that unless you have a really good reason based on probable expected outcomes to remain at the site of the conflict, you need to leave. Or, if you want high negative indexed terms, you should turn tail, chicken out, take a powder, go home to mama or do anything else that hurts your widdle feelings and pride. The alternative is it you will be involved in a possibly lethal encounter.
This default is magnified tenfold when you are armed. By bearing arms, you're not just exercising a right. There are all sorts of ways to exercise rights in stupid and harmful ways. By arming yourself, you are saying that you are capable of determining when it absolutely is necessary to exert lethal, deadly force against another person in your own defense or the defense of someone else. You are also promising to keep the weapon holstered and avoid a confrontation unless you have that most compelling reason not to do so.
Assuming that the young guys in Florida had the car speakers wound up to 747 engine volume, they were being damned impolite and demonstrating that if their parents taught them manners, the lessons did not take.
No matter. There are no such thing as mere words that justify any fight, let alone a lethal one. But here, we have a guy who is armed. Any confrontation carries with it a lethal potential. The loud radio is not sufficient to give rise to that potential in the least degree.
"Lethal" sounds like only a moderately distasteful word. So let’s stop and experience some of the full import: By "lethal," I mean that you have a bullet impacting someone’s body, tearing a wound channel and killing them by blood loss, shock or destruction of necessary organs. You have a body, an autopsy and a funeral. That kind of lethal. Not a lot of people see gunshot victims. If you do, you will remember.
I have no idea what was on the shooter’s mind in Florida. Likely, it was not "I'm killing a kid today" but the confrontation should not have occurred. The shooter should not have put himself in a position where the probability increased that he would justifiably draw a weapon. (“Shooter” is another negative term, but it’s used without pejorative. He had a gun. He shot.)
And this has nothing to do with legal responsibility and everything to do with the moral responsibility of every armed citizen.
These unnecessary tragedies seriously dilute the strength of our determination to live as a free people with natural rights, including the right of self-defense. If the armed community does not use constant restraint, intelligence and common sense, we are proving that some of us just cannot be
trusted with rights.
And if we prove that, it will be all the easier for those rights to be taken away by a paternalistic government or a spooked majority.
In these hills this day, the Fellowship is in grief. One of our brothers, Mike Garrett, was killed while making a rescue on 1 February 2014. Mike was a paramedic at Monongalia County EMS and a volunteer at Nutter Fort (Harrison County) Fire Department. In the news and on Facebook, the Fellowship is talking, sharing and supporting one another.
You have to wonder what drives these people. When there is danger, the “smart” thing to do is run away. They don’t. They run to the danger and only leave after everyone else is safe. They know full well that their jobs are dangerous, like so many jobs of service: Not only fire, rescue and EMS, but also the police, the military, the specialty structural or cave teams, and others.
So today, I’m turning these Dispatches over to a guest blogger who has written about those jobs. An anonymous blogger. Some of what s/he says is from personal experience, and other accounts are from his/her friends. But all of these things really happened.
“Why do we do it?
“That’s so hard to say. Maybe I can tell you about some calls and you can find meaning from them.
“A fire in the night. Damn cold. The radios wake firefighters up at home. They drive fast to the firehouses to get into bunker gear and drive the engines to the fire.
“When they pull up, someone says, “I think everybody is out.” Well, then they think they have to go inside and check. From the cold, it is into the heat. 200 degrees near the floor, where they crawl. More like 800 degrees near the ceiling.
“The heavy smoke means nobody can see past their hands. It also means that there are unburned hydrocarbons in the air which may erupt in a “flashover.”
“All’s clear. This time.
“It’s still cold. Neighbors soon see a sight. Several firefighters are carrying long lengths of hose which are stiff and frozen. They will have to thaw it, dry it, and repack the engines. Then they can go home.
“Here’s a simple one. The EMT’s are called to take the ambulance to an “unknown problem.” As they pull up to the scene, the dispatcher gives them more information. “Wait for the police, this is a shooting.”
“Yeah, they already knew that. They just got out of the bus and saw the guy with the gun.
“Some trucker rolled his truck on a back road. Not a pickup, a semi with a trailer. The trailer is full of canned stuff. It’s heavy. The truck is leaning on a couple of locust trees, and they're all that’s holding it up. There’s a tow truck hooked on from above, but if the truck rolls, that tow truck will flop like a fish at the end of a line. The truck driver is pinned solid in the wreckage, and he can’t wait for the hour it would take to crib up the truck on a muddy hill.
“Two guys at a time can get in the cab to work. One of them remarks, “You know, if this SOB rolls, we’re dead.” The other replies, “Well, I might get out, but you’re toast.” “Yup.” They continue to work. The driver lives. The rescuers go home, this time.
“It’s not some sort of “aren’t I good and brave” that’s going on in their minds. There is danger to someone.
"We have to go. We cannot walk the other way. We don’t know why. Except that’s what we do.”
OK, back to Roger. Do you see the problem? Those who live this life cannot articulate the feelings. They just don’t come out.
There is no one who can summarize the reasons that the Caregivers Serve. The best effort so far may be from the Last Homily of Father Mychal Judge, given at Engine 73/Ladder 42 House in the Bronx on 10 September 2001. Father Mike was the Chaplain of the FDNY:
. . .
We come to this house this morning to celebrate renewal, rejuvenation, new life. We come to thank God for the blessings over all the years - the good work that's been done here and especially the last few days. We can never thank God enough for the reality of the lives we have. So, standing in His presence this morning, and truly this is a chapel, let us pause for a moment, perhaps close our eyes, and thank God for some special blessings in our individual lives.
. . .
That's the way it is. Good days. And bad days. Up days. Down days. Sad days. Happy days. But never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do. You show up. You put one foot in front of another. You get on the rig and you go out and you do the job - which is a mystery. And a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig. No matter how big the call. No matter how small. You have no idea what God is calling you But he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us.
. . .
What great people. We love the job. We all do. What a blessing that is. A difficult, difficult job and God calls you to it. And then He gives you a love for it so that a difficult job will be well done. Isn't He a wonderful God? Isn't He good to you? To each one of you? And to me! Turn to Him each day. Put your faith and your trust and your hope and your life in His hands, and He'll take care of you and you'll have a good life.
The next morning, Fr. Mike responded to the World Trade Center. The emergency operations office for the City of New York was located in the towers. Mayor Giuliani asked Fr. Mike to accompany the Mayor and other city officials to another command center several blocks away. Fr. Mike refused, saying, “I have to stay with my men.”
Less than 30 minutes later, he was giving Last Rites to one of the first firefighters killed when the first tower collapsed. Fr. Mike died with and for his men.
Honestly, I don’t intend or expect that many people will understand fully what drives the Responders and the Caregivers. And that’s OK. We understand. And we believe that God understands, too.
Tonight, I think of Mike Garrett. And others I have known who died in the line of duty: Carlos Dillon, Bill Stone, Tom Kickler, Diane Efaw, Eddie Alban, Danny Fernandez, Jim Atkins, Jimmy Yvorra.
Rest easy, departed brothers and sisters. We’ve got it from here.
To set the stage: A company called Freedom Industries operates a facility on the Elk River, upstream from Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital. That facility is part of the coal recovery and distribution process. To do its work, the company has a lot of chemical products stored there.
The confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers is located right in the middle of downtown Charleston. (A bit of nickel knowledge: That was the site of a winter camp of the noted frontiersmen, Simon Kenton.)
At the Freedom Industries facility, early in January, at least one of the above-ground chemical tanks leaked. About 7500 gallons of one (or possibly two) little-understood chemical were released into the Elk River. Aerial photos taken shortly thereafter showed the sheen on the water as the chemical spill flowed into the Kanawha.
Freedom Industries is upstream from the intake for the water treatment plant of Charleston. Of course, there are also lots of other water plant intakes down downstream from there. Around 300,000 people who depended on municipal water systems were without potable water to drink for more than a week. The water in the system could not be made safe by boiling or any other common means.
The lawsuits have already started and Freedom Industries has filed for bankruptcy.
Let's dispense with the question of fault quickly. Freedom Industries is liable. It is liable using the same reasoning used by Gerry Spence in the Karen Silkwood case, where the issue was a spill of radioactive materials. If you keep a tiger, and the tiger gets out of the cage, you are responsible for the harm the tiger does. Period. Because a tiger is so dangerous, you have a duty to use extraordinary efforts to keep the tiger caged.
Just so, chemical users have a duty to use extraordinary efforts to keep chemicals secure from release into the water or otherwise loose in a way which will endanger the public.
Freedom Industries screwed up big time. It let the tiger out.
But before we feel all shocked, offended and morally superior, let's see the first lesson from the Elk River spill:
There are lots and lots of tigers out there in flimsy cages. We profit from having the tigers and as long as nothing goes wrong, we don’t think about whether or how they can get out of the cage.
A random example: Most communities have some sort of large public swimming pool. Most pools use chlorine as an agent to keep the water clean. Anyone who swims (or does laundry) knows that the odor of chlorine is harsh and uncomfortable even in minute concentrations. Anything more than a minute concentration of chlorine is a health hazard. Chlorine was one of the first chemical agents used in warfare, seeing action in World War I. When the wind was right, the "chemical soldiers” took cylinders forward, opened the valves, and let a heavy and deadly gas cloud spread to the enemy. The inhalation of chlorine was often fatal and when not fatal, often caused grevious and permanent respiratory injuries.
The cylinders used in war are just like the ones which contain the chlorine at big swimming pools. So - Do you know how secure the chlorine is kept as your local public pool? Do you have any idea of the degree of danger of an accidental release? Do you know how - or if - the pool staff has been trained to handle the chemicals? How about the security of the chemical from someone who wants to release it with a malevolent intent?
I didn't think so.
In a typical "Band-Aid" fashion, the West Virginia legislature is "taking action"! We have seen new proposed legislation which increases the oversight of above-ground chemical tanks.
Whoopee.
The Band-Aid approach is hardly unexpected. It shows how deeply the Political Class Cares (so keep those votes coming). Because it is aimed at a very small part of the problem, we can say that it's not that expensive. Besides, they'll figure a way to tag the chemical industry with the cost.
. . . and conveniently forget that the people pay for everything anyway.
This illustrates the main de facto function of the Political Class, to decide how to spend other peoples money so they themselves look good.
The best lesson from the Elk River Spill is that we should look beyond the immediate cause and realize that the above-ground chemical tanks are a tiny part of the danger.
Obviously, those tanks were a problem – Freedom Industries failed to keep the tiger caged. That violated the industry standard of redundancy: If the tiger escapes first cage, there needs to be another cage between the tiger and the people. Or, in the case of chemical storage, there has to be some secondary method of containment.
So we have to deal with the fact that there are lots and lots of bad things which can happen which have the potential for widespread public harm. And when meeting that harm exceeds the capacity of the local responders, we have what's
called a disaster. (Actually, that’s one definition of “disaster.”)
Generally, we have little or no redundancy in our entire infrastructure. But this is an infrastructure upon which we depend for day-to-day functioning and in many cases for basic sustenance.
We as individuals are so dependent on public services – infrastructure – that when any of them go out of service, we as citizens often perceive ourselves weak and unable to cope. And so we look at Big Daddy government to ride in and save
the day.
Like Hurricane Katrina - “You’re doing a great job, Brownie!”
Bad things can happen. There are 200,000+ chemicals used in industry. As to most of these chemicals, the levels which people can tolerate and the effects of long-term low exposure are only poorly understood. We do know that some chemicals – e.g., PCBs and dioxin – are dangerous or lethal in extremely small concentrations. Indeed, dioxin exposure at “safe” levels has led to illness and death of lots of Vietnam veterans. (Including my now-deceased brother.)
Elk River, one incident, took away the clean water source for 0.1% of the American population. That was with one tank. A simple (and inaccurate) extrapolation would say that 350 tanks of the same product could take out the entire nation’s supply of drinking water.
Another infrastructure where there is little redundancy is the power grid. The power grid is a patchwork controlled in many places by antiquated equipment. There is insufficient profit in the power industry to upgrade to robust and redundant control systems. As long as the primary system works, as long as the lights, computers and TV’s are on, the public doesn't notice and wants to keep their power bill down.
Our entire "just-in-time" delivery system is another large infrastructure. To keep shipping costs down, businesses receive products and materials just when they are about to be used. That cuts down drastically on warehousing. Indeed, at WalMart distribution centers, the ideal is that nothing gets stored. Products come from the receiving dock to a sorting area, where they are paletted for immediate shipment to stores.
The disruption of the transportation system will lead to immediate shortages of food and other products upon which we heavily depend. The kinds of things that can take down the transportation system are legion: Deteriorating bridges, weather phenomena, earthquakes, terrorist/aggressor action, and those are just the ones immediately come to mind. Of particular concern are the weak points in the system which can be exploited by humans with a bad intent.
The response to Elk River was immediate and reasonably effective, but it has within it the lesson of inadequate response. This was 0.1% of the American population affected. The effort put in to supply this one commodity, drinking water, to that part of the population was very large and expensive and covered used the disaster response/materials of most providers east of the Mississippi.
Even so, there was a drumbeat that aid was not coming in fast enough or in enough quantities and that the government wasn't doing enough.
All in all, we got lucky this time.
So: What are the answers? Surely there has to be an answer.
Gotcha – Complex problems seldom are solved with simple answers. Certainly, legislation regulating one minute part of the problem is nothing more than a little Band-Aid with a lot of brass band.
The truth is, nobody, no government, no NGO, no private agency has the guts or the insight to forecast the threats, organize them for probability of occurrence and extent of potential harm, and then do what it takes to prepare for them. On so many occasions, we depend on "good old American know how" to come up with ad hoc responses to problems. An ad hoc response (or, in the industry vernacular, picking a plan out of your ass) seldom works. Multiply Elk River by an order of magnitude, then you might exceed the national ability to keep people safe.
This whole lack of planning reminds me of that old song about fixing the roof. The roof leaks when it rains and that's bad, but during the rain, we can't get on the roof. On sunny days, we can can get on the roof, but we really don't need to because it's not raining so the roof is not leaking.
We have a leaky roof. As long as we are unwilling to plan realistically and make the sacrifices in advance, we are going to be subject to disruptions which we can scarcely imagine. Individually, these are improbable in any given year. Taken together, a very bad event is inevitable in any decade.
I wish I could predict a happy ending. But that would take finding a new mindset, or what would look like one everybody except the very old, and to find a spirit of sacrifice
that nobody shows these days. And, worst of all, it would also require guts and truth from the Politcal Class, which have long been AWOL.
There’s a dandy social commentary waiting. It’ll have to wait. Tonight is free-form writing time.
It’s cold in West Virginia. Damn cold. Well, it’s winter, what do you expect? And citizens here and all over the north and east are staying away from the outdoors as much as they can.
As I was driving from Morgantown yesterday, I was reminded that this isn’t possible for everyone. There is a Fellowship which goes extra hard in the cold or the heat or the deep snow.
I was passed on the Interstate by an ambulance with some of my brothers and sisters from Webster County. Presumably, they made an inter-hospital transfer to Ruby Memorial, one of the large teaching hospitals in WV or to Monongalia General, which specializes in some particular kinds of care. The R-mobile has various insignia on it, including the “Star of Life” - the universal emblem of the Emergency Medical Services - front & rear. So as they passed, I gave them a sincere thumbs-up and they gave me a breath of the air horn. That’s just a simple acknowledgement in that Fellowship.
And I know that back in Webster County, more EMS crews were either in stations or out on calls.
And in every other county - ditto. For that matter, this goes for all 2,000+ counties in the United States, and in provinces, shires and so forth around the world.
The people of the emergency services - fire, ems, police - don’t have a choice about their work load and don’t have an appointment calendar. When the alarm comes in, a crewed station will be out the door in 45 seconds or the next due station is put on the call.
Consider that. Folks are at work. There's not a lot of sitting around, there is vehicle prep, house maintenance and training, training, training going on all the time. Those who have called emergency services see fairly calm people in the midst of chaos. That’s because those professionals seldom see something unfamiliar. In the worst of times, they can say, “Do it just like in training.”
So from the warm station, they find themselves out in sub-zero temperatures 45 seconds later. Then there are long walks, long treks carrying heavy equipment, and moving from outside to inside and back over and over. For the fire departments, the “inside” may be several hundred degrees worth of warm. For police, usually there is some level of threat or violence. Among other things, they cannot wear warm gloves because their hands have to be free to defend others and themselves.
The 45 seconds is the rule on midnight shift, too. There, they go from a warm bunk into the cold or the heat or the rain or whatever is out there.
I used to love those calls at night. A fellow I knew, Jim Page, wrote a book on the subject, “The Magic of 3 AM.” Everyone is focused on the call, the location, the problem. But they also have time to feel the different pulse of the city or countryside. In the fog, they see the red lights popping reflections from the mist back toward them. They feel the road through the floorboards and the big breath inhale of the large truck engine as it runs up the gears. On a long response, they have time to reflect -- on the call, on themselves, on picayune stuff perhaps. “What are you doing after we get off?” “Gonna hit the grocery store and then try to catch some zz’s.” That sort of thing.
If they are volunteers or have a second job, the “zz’s” have to wait until the evening. These are dedicated people. Through fatigue, they will function.
I remember one of those fatigue days. I was at the end of trying a murder case that had gone for a week. (That’s a long case in WV.) It was August, hot, and during the trial, I would take a midnight motorcycle ride just to get some perspective and fresh air. We finished the evidence and the argument, and the jury was out for a couple of days. I needed a change of scenery. So after the first day of waiting during deliberation without a verdict, I called my buddy and we found a volunteer station in the county that needed coverage that night. This was in a small town, and it was nearly a “retirement” station at night, a place that you could count on getting a good night’s sleep. At midnight, we had a snack and turned in. At 0010 or so, a call came in for a long response to back up some other crew. We pulled out at 0010:30.
And we pulled back in promptly at 0600, when the shift ended, after running all night on half a dozen long calls. Our principal reaction was, well, we asked for it, and it was kind of funny.
Oh, I got to snooze on a courtroom bench for a hour or two before the jury came back.
This is natural for these people. They do not complain and they find these things funny. There is a certain pride - no, a darn GREAT pride - in doing these jobs well under all sorts of adverse conditions. These are the people who this week have noted that the school systems are raising sissies by calling off for a little bit of bad weather. They have a point: children cannot count on getting easy lives handed to them. Fatiguing stuff, scary stuff and wildly disgusting stuff HAS to be done in our society.
Someone has to clean up shit. Both figurative and literal.
One of the better lessons I learned was from a Chief named John Green. He was a hell of a man. We came back from a call where we’d used a couple of body bags and they needed cleaned out. That’s part of the job. A couple of new guys were there and we asked them to help. They were unused to this and expressed some reticence. John then explained the “code” of service. “Boys,” he said, “it’s OK to get sick. Go ahead. Go loose your lunch. Cry. Curse. Wave your arms around. And then get back here, because we have to clean out the body bags.”
What a wonderful lesson: SOMEBODY has to do the shit jobs. They only get worse if you wait.
I hope that the brothers and sisters from Webster Springs got home and got to go relax at home. You can be guaranteed that if they were called later that day, they went in 45 seconds. That is what the Fellowship does.
Maybe all of us who bitch now and then about our hard lives - the traffic, the kids, our “unfair wages,” the cable going out - need to remember and ACKNOWLEDGE the people who clean up the messes.
Just thinkin’.
Weather remains a traditional and (allegedly) interesting subject of discussion. Despite the fact that we cannot alter the weather, it may be a useful and positive discourse topic. That’s not because we need to care about people's opinions of weather, but because those discussions reveal a lot about personalities and cultural trends.
We can conclude tonight: The current cultural trend is that America has become the Land of the Whining Sissies & the Home of the Cowardly Lions. Let's see Francis Scott Key find fit that into song lyrics. (“Oh, the rockets’ red glare; Flushed the patriots from there . . .”)
Government offices stay tuned to CNN so that they will know what's going on in the world. That may explain things about how inefficient government is. I caught CNN Thursday afternoon when the big "news" was that a winter storm was coming.
On No. 3 EquityCourtTV, the story would have been "Hey, there's a storm coming. It’ll snow. And it'll be cold - Duh.”
Then No. 3 EquityCourtTV would go to some REAL news.
Not so CNN. The announcers were breathless. The "reporters" were giddy. I would have sworn that we were hearing from a couple in the back seat of a car on Lovers’ Lane.
The prose was priceless:
". . . the massive storm barging across the U.S. . . ."
". . . slam headlong into another storm system . . ."
". . .100 million people in the path of the storm . . ."
". . . horribly cold in Chicago . . ." [Possibly windy, too.]
"A snow emergency in Boston…"
["I'll respect you in the morning(?)"]
And, naturally, the storm was named. It was not just any old name, not Bob or Ted or Carol or Alice. This storm is Hercules!
The storm is so big that it merits a handle of mythical proportions. (Did we need to find someone to cut Hercules’ hair and take away "his" power? Wait, I may be confusing my mythical boogy-men.)
The assumption is that if we survive Hercules, it will be because our wise leaders acted boldly. You know, mere CITIZENS cannot deal with snow and cold!
Oh, now I can hear the howls of laughter from Saskatchewan and Alberta.
I have to wonder why weather doom is played up. I’ve thought of a few possible explanations:
- The weather is easy to report, and even easier to exaggerate. It’s exciting. OK, to some people it's exciting. It's not as if this is real news, which requires analysis and may be subject of disagreement.
- Stories of horrific weather pander to the malignant progression of softness of the American body and spirit. Give us a reason to be afraid and then it's OK. It's okay to be scared! After all, Wolf, Robin and "the most trusted names in news" tell us to be scared even though they're not scared. And then, after we have cowered in the storm and it passes, we can pretend that we did something really brave – We survived the attack of Storm Hercules!
I cannot help but picture some Japanese monster movie from the 1960s.
May be we need to strike 100 million little medals, with the legend "I cowered courageously!"
- And, finally, talking about this awful weather avoids the necessity of filling time with news that's hard to gather, harder to analyze and which would be thought-provoking with good reason.
After all, do we really want to hear that 10 members of the American military were killed and 30 injured in Afghanistan this week? What a downer! Besides, if we think of the people actually handling an Afghan winter in the midst of armed enemies, that makes our bravely cowering in CONUS a little bit of weak tea.
Do we want to hear that the Affordable Care Act has attracted less than one half of 1% of the population? Nah.
And how about the annual Congressional extortion racket? Congress just let 55 tax saving provisions lapse. Oh, they will reinstate them, but only after solons have milked interested donors for contributions (tribute?). It's an old congressional scam that’s part of the Let's-make-a-deal-and-score-some-bucks methodology of that Great Marble Whorehouse in Washington.
It's easier to talk about the weather. We do not want a discontented public. We certainly don't want to tell anybody any uncomfortable truths. We never want to hear any "I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore" from just people.
So for Heaven’s sake, let's talk about the weather!
Oh, the weather flabbling also gives public "leaders" a little sychophantic boost. If Boston has a snow "emergency" that results in anything other than post-salted-earth Carthage, the mayor, the governor and their cronies have proved themselves bold and brave.
One worry that is been expressed by a number of news outlets is that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio just took office and so is facing his "first big test of leadership." Commentators hope that the new mayor can "guide the city of 8 million through the crisis."
The truth is, should Mayor de Blasio have any trouble guiding the city through the snow, Hizzonor has chosen the wrong line of work.
It won't be the Mayor out driving the Department of Sanitation trucks which are plowing snow and spreading salt. That will be the thousands of sanitation employees who are working 12 on and 12 off as long as there is snow to be cleared. If the Mayor makes any decisions more complicated than "Yes, there’s still snow, so keep plowing," then he is part of the problem, not part of the solution. The plans for something like snow are already in the "cookbook." The emergency managers – the people who do the real work and who wrote the plans – simply will execute the plans.
This is not a situation like WTC, where Mayor Giuliani was praised for leadership in an unprecedented and unplanned-for emergency. But if even something with 3000 casualties were to happen today, it’s now covered by emergency plans. The city would not need and sure as hell would not want the Mayor fiddling with the plans. The people who actually need to respond are doing their jobs. They already know what the plans are and practice them regularly.
But if you need to be a victim, now’s your chance. You have Third Estate approval to cower, whine and whimper at the feet of Storm Hercules.
I think I'm going to read a while. This whole weather thing is just way too boring. I just can't get my Cower-Power in gear.
Phil Robertson of the A&E series “Duck Dynasty” gave an interview to GQ, Gentleman’s Quarterly. He was asked for and gave his opinions on a number of subjects. In that interview, he said that he considers homosexual behavior immoral because it is proscribed by the Bible.
That’s a fairly innocuous formula: They ask. He answers.
This is America. We do not have laws against sedition. We do have a First Amendment. He does. We do.
And A&E canned him.
And so we revisit that same old, tired bugaboo, “How dare you say that!” Or, to quote one of the nitwits, “Americans won’t stand for Phil Robertson’s comments.”
Some point out that A&E has First Amendment rights, too. So be it. The “rights” of the soulless still confuse me. I suppose you could say that A&E has the right to disrespect the Constitution just like an individual does.
As to the remarks themselves, it is perilous to talk “about” them. Or to “interpret” them. Let’s just read them:
Question: What, in your mind, is sinful?
[Note: Ol’ Phil didn’t bust into somebody’s home and start forcing them to listen to as sermon. He was asked for a statement.]
Answer: Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.
Don’t be deceived. [He’s loosely quoting the Apostle Paul from I Corinthians, now.] Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers – they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.
Later, after others interpreted this as personal hatred, he expanded:
However, I would never treat anyone with disrespect just because they are different from me. We are all created by the Almighty and like Him, I love all humanity. We would be better off if we loved God and loved each other.
This “love all humanity” is consistent with Robertson’s past writings and speeches/sermons. It's consistent with Christian doctrine and all of those red words in the Bible.
The whole notion that we would be better off if we loved each other surely is acceptable to anyone responsible. Well, if not, they have First Amendment rights, too.
So here we have a dilemma which has become de rigueur in American society. Someone exercises his/her absolute First Amendment rights and (1) they experience negative consequences such as loss of employment unrelated to the statement or opinion and (2) few people seem smart enough to separate a disagreement of opinion or values from the worth of a person.
Mind you, I disagree with Phil on the merits of the opinion. And I agree with him about a whole lot of things. And I disagree with other stuff he says, too. There’s the “God gave Man dominion” thing. I’m not a hunter and I regret all to hell that people go out and gun down unarmed birds. I won’t do it. I won’t go along on a hunt. I’m not going to write off hunters as evil people or mess with their job because they’re doing something legal with which I don’t agree. [Oh, I’m also a hypocrite - I consume poultry.]
Another aspect of this sort of “debate” is that there is no moderation. Some of us just can’t stand it when somebody thinks differently. And we have little or no degrees of this agreement, just an on-off switch. If somebody agrees with us, they are good. If they disagree, they are the spawn of Satan and should be cast into either the literal or secularly metaphorical lakes of fire.
I regret that the (majority?) of the people, centrists, remain so quiet. That silence is understandable since people with big mouths equate disagreement with disloyalty or betrayal of this or that cause. I can understand why centrists don’t want to bother with the noise. We don’t have to like it.
I wonder if there is room for a “Reality Party” United States. Maybe we could call it the “We Aren't Hotheads Party.”
Here’s a true story of genuine, strong disagreements which don’t become shrill, shrieking, psychotic episodes.
West Virginia, as students of American history should know, was born out of the American Civil War. The counties west of the Blue Ridge were populated mostly by people who felt ignored by the state government in Richmond. In the secession crisis of 1861, there were areas where sentiment was divided. One of these was in Barbour County, West Virginia, where the county seat is Philippi. (Much of my practice is there, and it is a delightful place.) Philippi was the site of the first land engagement of that war.
At the beginning of the Civil War, there were only a few lawyers in Philippi. The general sentiment of public officials was in favor of the Confederacy. From January 1861 until June 1861, the time of that battle, the Confederate flag flew over the courthouse.
Two prominent lawyers practicing in Philippi were Spencer Dayton and Thomas A. Bradford. Dayton was a very strong supporter of the Union. Bradford supported the state’s rights view and placed loyalty to Virginia first. Also, they were good friends. They ran against one another to become delegates to the Richmond secession convention. After that convention passed a secession ordinance, Unionists in town had a secret meeting in a shoe store in the middle of the night to select delegates to a Union convention in Wheeling, near the northern tip of then-Virginia. Four delegates were selected and three of those backed out at the last minute because the way out of town – a covered bridge which still stands – was guarded by Southern sympathizers. Dayton was the fourth. He left his home quietly in the middle of the night. As he approached the bridge, he spurred his horse into an all-out run and got past the guards. He attended the Wheeling convention which repudiated secession and established a “Restored Government of Virginia.”
Bradford, also having the courage of his convictions, was an organizer and Captain of one of the first militia companies to cast its lot with the Confederacy, the “Barbour Greys.” He left town in the spring of 1861 and fought with the Confederacy until the end of the war.
For most of the balance of the war, Union troops occupied Philippi. Then, as now, occupying forces aren’t always very benevolent. The troops were destroying property of Southern sympathizers. Dayton went to Bradford’s now-abandoned office and packed up Bradford’s law library and effects. After the war, Bradford returned and his friend Dayton gave him back the tools to restart his law practice. Later, as a State Senator, Dayton was one of the “Let-Up Republicans,” who supported blanket reenfranchisement of those who had fought for the Confederacy.
All Phil Robertson did was state opinions that he cannot enforce on anyone. He is punished for mere words. Thomas Bradford was received back by his friend after bearing arms against his beloved Union.
That is the essence of the Constitution in America. That is the essence of mutual respect with which Americans should hold one another. If someone holds opinions contrary to yours, his/her opinions are no less sincerely held than yours nor are they entitled to any less personal respect – no matter how loony you may think the ideas. When we confuse the position with person, the idea with the individual, we are promoting social chaos and resolving precisely nothing.
In the meantime, the world goes on as the chattering birds of wounded feelings peck at their own images in the mirror and ignore very much concrete.
By the way, a Methodist minister in Pennsylvania, Frank Schaefer, was fired and defrocked last week because he wouldn’t swear to quit doing gay weddings. One might argue that one a little differently, but really it’s not. He deserves the same consideration as we should be giving Robertson.
Maybe we’re all hypocrites?
The Pope recently published a 50,000 word essay or encyclical or the like, Evangelii Gaudium. As the name suggests (to all three of my Latin scholar friends), the theme is evangelism. In short, evangelism is the assertive spreading of the Gospel, the “good news,” i.e., Christian doctrine.
Among the minor themes is that people in contemporary society go overboard in consuming things, worshiping money, and generally hosing the poor. That theme is hardly a new one in Christian thinking. “Red Letter Christians” – those who seek first the words of Jesus, which are printed in certain editions of the Bible in red – read prominent warnings against love of money and disdain for the poor.
Rush Limbaugh, sturdy feldwebel of American ideology, boldly penetrated the Pope’s shtick this time. Rush assures us that the Pope’s ramblings are pure Marxism. He points to the possibility that leftists (hiding in the Curia?) intentionally mistranslated what Il Papa actually said in the original language. (Spanish?) Or, Limbaugh theorizes, the College of Cardinals goofed and elected a guy as the Vicar of Christ who is really the Shade of V.I. Lenin.
Since the English translation is on the Vatican website, that kind of narrows it down to the "goofed" theory.
So is Francis a Commie-Red-Marxist? Is Rush just not too bright? Or is this Rush’s own propaganda flimflam?
I’m voting “C,” the flimflam option.
The length of this post so far proves how effective the flimflam is. And how easily we can be pointed opposite to the clear teachings of Christ or against the clear imperatives of generally accepted moral behavior. Incidentally, the same teachings are found in nearly every religious/ ethical/ moral system – Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Humanism, whatever. I look at the teachings of Jesus but the flimflam is on all people of goodwill.
So why is calling the Pope “Marxist” such an effective slur? This quick characterization is really good propaganda because it is quick and uses already-existing negative images – and, most importantly, it takes reasoned argument to dispel the fraud. In our sound-bite-Tweet era, if you can’t say it in 10 seconds or 140 characters, 80% of your listeners will lose interest and their minds will wander away.
We Americans don’t like Commies, even now that the “old” Cold War is ended. Without the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, good opinion manipulators are moving the appearance or name tag of Marxism to the American so-called political left. Mind you, that has nothing to do with actual Marxist doctrine.
[Oh, yes it does!, whined someone in Tater Junction, South Elbonia just now. Fine, get out your Classics Illustrated Comic Book on Political/Economic Doctrine and fondle yourself quietly.]
Rush has merely borrowed a term with a high negative index – “Marxist” – and slapped it on someone who mentions money, the poor and, by inference, class. And the tag sticks. But like a pile of manure with icing, it's still not a birthday cake. The beauty of this technique is that the user need not explain or even have the first clue about what the tagline means. Nobody likes Commies, he’s a Commie, q.e.d.
Propaganda is a fascinating subject about which there is a lack of understanding. Propaganda is a toolbox which contains methods of persuasion. Period. The doctrines promoted are not the propaganda. As such, true propaganda is neither inherently good nor bad, moral nor immoral. The subject may be.
Nor does calling something “propaganda” make it so.
If anybody asks, “Who’s the best propagandist ever?,” most people say Goebbels.
Not.
The guy couldn’t use 3 words where 73 would do. Goebbels' information campaigns were successful in that the targeted population kept their opinions consistent with the “party line,” even in the face of eventual good reasons to the contrary. But let’s face it, he started with a very soft target (people in a depression & quasi-anarchy) and had huge resources devoted to “public information.” Eva Braun - a noted Teutonic dim bulb - might have pulled that off.
A few really skilled propagandists immediately pop to mind. There is Reagan (and his writers) – “Evil Empire.” “Tear down this wall!”
Bush II – “… Cowardly [9/11] terrorists.”
Ayatollah Anybody – “Great Satan.”
And with good propaganda, it becomes absolutely offensive to resort to logical reason to disagree: The terrorists were craven cowards!
No they were ideological zealots, morally bankrupt and bat shit crazy. But flying an aircraft into a building – especially when you’re sitting in front – isn’t cowardly.
Right, tell it to the True American.
To refute the sharp tang of propaganda when it is applied randomly and illogically. “What the hell are you talking about?” is an acceptable and reasonable response, but is not very persuasive.
Even Rush has had illogical propaganda used (poorly) against him. Al Franken wrote the quirky book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, where a lot of footnoted facts and reasoning were buried in hysteria. (We have heard little from Franken lately. He became a United States Senator, where he is indistinguishable from the other 99 straight-faced comedians.)
With the response to Rush’s latest, I have to ask: “Rush, what the hell are you talking about?” I don’t think you can warp Marxism out of Frances’ nice (if wordy) exposition of Christian doctrine even if you borrow that other guy’s comic book.
Marxism is a doctrine of materialism which posits predetermined historical forces which supposedly develop in a predictable manner. A primary focus is the relationship of different economic groups to the means of production and how that changes. Bending that into a moral warning against worship of money and consumption and respect for “the least of these” is the non sequitur game-of-the-week touchdown.
Yet some significant part of the American public – 1%? 5%? – will have a reduced respect for this Pope and for a part of Christian/moral doctrine by virtue of this little episode.
Rush’s fault?
Surprise. No.
To paraphrase both our Lord and Savior and Harry Truman, “Nitwit’s will be with us always.” And we need to expect that.
The fault lies squarely with an intellectually and morally lazy and scared American people. Control and naked power used push us around will become more and more heavy-handed until and unless Americans generally develop a habit of thinking and then find the guts to speak up.
Rush, I liked you when you were a nonpolitical and funny DJ on WIXZ in Pittsburgh. These days, you and whoever writes your stuff are poor excuses for citizens.
