Detroit armed government workers are apoplectic over a public display of contempt for their authority – which they say is really just “concern” for “public safety.” But their steam-out-of-their ears overreaction to this incident suggests otherwise.
A burnout was committed on I-94.
Only tires were harmed.
But video was taken – with the license plate of the Camaro doing the burnout obscured and birdie-flips to AGWs conveyed. This concerned the AGWs very much.
Five-star “General” James Craig held a press conference worthy of the hunt for Dillinger. “Here’s my message,” the “General” said: We are going to find you and when we do, we are going to arrest you and we’re going to seize your vehicle.”
Over a burnout.
One performed, it must be said, with due diligence for public ssssssaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.
The road was briefly blocked to traffic by the Camaro driver’s allies to prevent any harm being done. And none was caused – except to the fragile ego of the “General,” who practically stomped his feet with rage: “They’re covering their license plates with a message . . . I’m not going to tell you what that message is, but it’s despicable.”
No, Herr General.
What’s despicable is your devoting this much energy – and taxpayer resources – to hunting down a guy who did a burnout.
And his friends – who helped him do it safely.
The Herr General has already confiscated a Dodge Challenger owned by one of the Camaro driver’s friends for doing nothing more than watching the burnout – and making sure it was executed safely.
A Challenger is an expensive piece of property. The V8 version starts at $34k. Seizing a vehicle worth $34k – or even $10k – amounts to one hell of a fine for watching a burnout.
But burnouts are a threat to public ssssssssaaaaaaaaafety!
“They are not professional race car drivers,” the Herr General scolds. “Imagine blocking a freeway and engaging in this 360 burnout sideshow and the car loses control, flips the median and goes into oncoming traffic,” Craig said. “It could happen. You put people’s lives at risks (sic).”
This is what a guy like the Herr General would say, of course – though it is almost certain he also does (or did) burnouts while in “hot pursuit” of prey, but that is ok because it is “trained” AGWs performing the maneuver. Never mind if you – a non-AGW – have also been trained and perhaps better-trained than the AGW, whether behind the wheel or with a gun.
It cuts no nice because it isn’t “training” that’s at issue but privilege. AGWs enjoy it; non-AGWs do not. And it enrages AGWs when a non-AGW dares to do something only AGWs are supposed to be entitled to do – such as close off a road and squeal tires just for the fun of it.
It’s interesting to contrast the overreaction to this burnout with the indifferent reaction of AGWs like the Herr General to crimes committed by AGWs.
For example, Richard Billingslea. This now-ex AGW received two years probation for brutally and without any legal justification Hut! Hut! Hutting! a man who didn’t express sufficient deference.
D’Marco Craft was trying to buy cigarettes at a gas station; when he saw Billingslea inside, he decided not to go inside – reportedly because Billingslea had “harassed him many times” on previous occasions, for “no legal reason.”
He prudently attempted to avoid the AGW who had previously harassed him – thereby expressing “contempt of cop,” which isn’t an offense in law – and is a reasonable defensive reaction to the presence of an AGW – as subsequent events made crystal clear.
Billingslea and another AGW followed Craft to his car – without any lawful reason for doing that, either – and accused Craft and his passenger of “trying to pick a fight.”
The Hut! Hut! Hutting then commenced.
Craft’s passenger – 39-year-old bus driver Michaele Jackson – was thrown face-first onto the sidewalk, then given a face-full of Mace and hurled WWF-style into a rack of Twinkies inside the gas station.
Craft was hurled into the AGWs’ taxpayer-funded car and spirited to jail – probably accompanied by squealing tires – where he was allegedly beaten and charged with felony “resisting arrest.”
When video of the incident surfaced – despite the best efforts of Billingslea to erase it – the charges against the victims were dropped – but few against the Hut! Hut Hutting! AGWs stuck.
A “no contest” to a charge of aggravated assault was the eventual “deal” given the AGW – along with two years probation and “anger management” sessions.
Nothing more.
His car was not confiscated.
And the Herr General did not express his “concern” over the actions of a man with a gun and a badge committing a crime of violence, with great contempt for the “safety” of the public.
Instead, the Herr General defended the AGW’s actions, claiming that one of Billingslea’s victims “did take a swing” at the AGW who was attacking him. Which the victim denies but even if that were true, it would have been in self-defense.
That arouses “concern” – of the wrong kind.
But an unauthorized burnout?
Hut! Hut! Hut!
. . .
Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet (pictured below) in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a sticker – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
My latest eBook is also available for your favorite price – free! Click here. If that fails, email me and I will send you a copy directly!
I’m calling a truce. I wrote a long text that somehow went away. All I want to say is lighten up a little and don’t fall for the cult of Libertarianism so hard. I’m not typing it all out again. Every cult has it’s flaws.
I saw you in the bathroom video and I still can’t believe it’s the same guy that’s so stubborn here. The face doesn’t match the rhetoric for some reason. The radar detector guy is the face that I put on the rhetoric easier.
I think that they shot my computer because I was making too much sense again in my comments to you. They can do that you know. Or don’t you.
Nice crib. It’s a place like that that I always wanted. I should have moved 10 years ago. But I thought of helping my sister move first. Big mistake. Yep, stubbornness is a flaw.
LW,
You say Libertarianism is a “cult.” Why? Cults are defined by mindless obedience to the cult’s leader, or to dogma that cannot be questioned. Cults are fundamentally controlling the cult’s members. Libertarianism is the philosophical and principled opposite of a cult. It is defined by the idea that the individual is sovereign – over himself. That no one has a morally valid ownership claim in any other person. Practical Libertarian ethics flow from this moral principle. It is why I argue that no one has the right to force someone else to pay their salary or any part of it. And why I argue that laws which coerce people with the threat of violent repercussions or actually do them violence where no harm has been caused to the person or property or others are immoral laws.
You may consider Libertarianism “unrealistic” and “impractical,” but it is – unlike conservatism – a system of logically defensible principles based on a moral philosophy utterly opposed to any form of coercive collectivism.
Good Luck. One day you will understand what I’m talking about. Or maybe you already do and are paid to take this stance to flush out everyone else in the comments that are as diehard as you on this subject. How far is Langley from you?
Picking and choosing which comments of mine to post is proof to an agenda here. You go for it. I can’t change your mind and you will never change mine. My only flaw is that I won’t give into your harping. Your flaw is that all you do is harp the same thing over and over again.
So which Libertarian candidate are you working for this year? Since you believe that voting matters. Yep, you have your views, and don’t care about what happens to your neighbors. Because they are part of the problem too. They are forcing you to pay for what they want. Yeah, I can see that all this is going to work out very well for you. Trust me. You will remember my words on this subject. That’s not a threat, that’s a promise.
Clover,
What a concatenation of incoherent non sequiturs! “How far is Langley from me?” About 250 miles. And what has that to do with the non-aggression principle? Or anything I’ve been trying to debate with you about?
I am not “die hard” so much as “die fact.” You are clearly not able to understand the difference between not agreeing with me as regards practicality – as you define it -and principles and facts, which transcend opinion. You want/need AGWs – which you believe gives you the moral right to force me to “help” finance them.
You then segue into your usual practice of denouncing me for what I have no argued – or said. I “…don’t care about what happens to your neighbors.” No, Clover. I reject the idea that someone else’s wants – or needs – imposes an obligation on me that’s enforceable at gunpoint. It is startling that you cannot understand the difference.
You end with implied threats. Which, if that’s what they are, only confirms you’re a thug. Which is amusing given your protestations about “caring” for others.
eric, my mother came in one day and since she had no news that interested anyone, she began a litany of bs and this time it was about a local AGW who was having some sort of trouble(they always are and go through spouses faster than I do underwear). Anyway she kept on about it and my dad and the wife and I were deathly silent. Don’t slow her down, let her get it out and we can move on.
But she made one statement about helping him and I interrupted her and said “Mama, if I were driving down the road and couldn’t hold it a bit longer and pulled over to pee and that SOB was on fire, I’d get back in and go a few miles further to avoid pissing on him”. She looked stunned and turned it off. We then went on to have more interesting conversations. She sat stunned and my dad had a slight smirk on his face he turned around and played with Ace(the dog)so he could have a good reason to have a smile on his face. At least they both loved our dogs.
Everyone loved Ace and he loved everyone. He didn’t like other dogs though but he had standards. He’d look over a dog and if it didn’t appear to be a worthy opponent he’d just blow them off, turn his sights to find one that was.
Ayn Ran’d a cult. Wrote some Gary Cooper* characters on the side (& she’s, her nonfictional self, still confused\conflated with her fictional characters to this day). That once goldbug & future fedhead was monoculti inner sanctum’d…til his bread were buttered better on the flipside. Rothbard wasn’t admitted, admissible, any more interested in joining that club than Groucho woulda’ been, laughed as he was leaving, to go start up libertarianism. Then he laughed as he left that, too, to pop an ancap in some asses.
*A fave: “I don’t work with collectives. I don’t consult, I don’t cooperate, I don’t collaborate.”
((A ain’t A. A symbolizes A. And\but hurling symbols do “decapitate” many. Sorta like how dueling banjos foreshadows good ol’ boy greek pedestaling. Compound sentences just ain’t compound bows, tho.))
But both L & AC are two ittybitty cults among many.
A cult isn’t defined by what it stands for. Or how many cultists it cultivates & boasts. A cult is defined by what it stands for being either impossible, or by its being impossible to generalize sow\reap. And by, especially, proselityzers for either impossibility insisting otherwise.
The supernatural messiah, end of season 1, is unscathed in the plane crash…everybody else dies…he lays on hands & brings two back to life. Your mission, should you decide to give it to the audience, Jim…. & prolly next season those two revives’ll join the growing ranks of the cult. (Art on the teevee only imitates life.)
The superpowered secularist Bard to a Roth exponent quits (yet another)one series, starts the next, & rides it all the way to true & logical & profound conclusions – for them those conclusions apply to — & even on to his final reward, too (maybe he just ran outta’ time). His mission, if he ever actually decided to sing lesson that particular choir, woulda’ Jimmyjammed the slide the same way as the flyin’ “messiah” (very much includin’ the sally field version: “you like me! you really like me!”). But along the way, or wake, similar, & lesser, & even lesser than that, secularists, supernaturalists, cafs, decafs & 1/2caf-1/2decafs tagged along, grew the ranks. (Scale, size, don’t mean as much as most – ‘cept maybe muscle toneless size queens – size cultists keep the faith•believe alive in. A horse is a horse, Shetland to Clydesdale. But in any & all cases beware friendly strangers & foe friends bearing, or ridin’, Trojan gift horses.)
Didja’ read what’s inscribed on Butler Shaffer’s bench? “Civilizations are created by individuals. They are destroyed by collectives.”
Cults are collectives. Collectives are cults. All of them. Seahorse to Seabiscuit to Clydesdale.
Proselytizing is gonna leave a mark – cuz that’s what it is, a contusion (but what came first, the confuciuson or the eggroll?) — make Chris Farley characters outta’ all Cane’rs, no matter how Abel they might be or seem to be or Queeg’s cherries mutiny destiny be. Cue those village denizens’ In The Navy (was that a terrible tune, or what?).
Proselytizing individual\ist is an oxymoron, self-cancelling catch-22…at least in terms of what s\he claims to be, believes\he be.
*Arguing* (debating), as an exercise end in itself, well that’s just good stuff on ya’ Maynard. I like mustard, too.
“INTJ”’s (or any other map that ain’t territory) are born, not made.
Not taught into being.
Not proselytized into being.
Not bludgeoned into being (leaving a little room for the big bang of conception).
Same goes both for intj’s that join (jyrenes?), & intj’s that jeer the join (jeerenes?).
Jeer the gerrymander (that eel coulda’ been a legless salamander, a slime wailin’ sire\n, but it wasn’t called, co\mandered, that way…or maybe it was).
Jeer the jury box\ing Helena (weird story…but it has legs…that disarm).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWPfoTH3iXc
Jeer the pascal wagerers that can’t not congregate together alone into cultrooms o’ “social” anticivilzational catechism-chantin’ collectivity…
…but do it for the fun & exercise of it…
…not outta’ expectation words’ll smith ‘em into stoppin’ bein’ whowhat they are, if only its wordebated just so\often enough.
Lotto sperm sticks & bingo egg stones set the bones & words’ll never break them.
Them four bases – acgt/acgu — is symbols, not the ball field.
& all Vanna’s vowels & all the kings consonants can’t reassemble a humpty into a sympathetic\heroic bogey character…nor disassemble the freight train o’ Doc Frankensteins who are full o’ the faith otherwise.
Biology’s sellers surround, but buyologists done bought into other pitches, & no-hitters just keep on keepin’ the stands full & the seats warmed, & the breaded extruded meat product circus goin’.
But I’ve heard the gladiators was all vegetarians.
Even that ol repub guv terminator’s pitchin’ plant bases these days. Maybe plant based steroids is next. He usta’ be the Austrian oak, after all. Always got the impression he thought he had a mind like a venus flytrap, too.
Nobody could make any of this extra•vegan•za up.
Ozzy, definitely a 4-D chess player. He has no competition. And that’s a good thing.
This guy had a bit part in “Looking for Bobby Fischer”. If you saw the movie you will know who I’m talking about. I can also picture this guy with a dog and a girl in a well in his basement. Or looking through a mask made out of steel mesh.
I know you will never critique what he has to say here. Like who could right.
Clover,
Your comparing me with serial killers is interesting given the thing I’ve been trying to hard to get through your skull is that Libertarianism is the only moral/political philosophy that explicitly rejects the use of coercion and which is based on absolute respect for the sovereignty of the individual.
You are the one who puts victims in his basement well – ideologically speaking – because you are the one who defends and advocates the use of coercion to compel people to obey/hand over money for the things you consider “common sense” and “necessary.”
I may be a kook – but I’m not an aggressive, violent kook. I don’t want anything from you or anyone else that isn’t freely given and have no interest in controlling you or anyone else in any manner whatsoever – so long as you cause no harm to others or their property by your actions. If you do cause harm, then you have an obligation to make it right. But absent harm caused, you have an absolute right to be left alone.
And so do I. And so does everyone else. Live – and let live. Mind your own business. Pursue your own happiness and leave others free to pursue theirs. Keep your hands out of my pocket and your nose (and gun) out of my affairs. I’ll extend the same courtesy in return.
It’s sad you not only can’t appreciate the peacefulness of this doctrine but seem unable to even understand this doctrine.
Poor ol’ Clover!
Ha.
Have been noticing the tip of my tongue more. Forgetfulness is regaining its memory, & reminding me of it, more & more.
So have just lately been thinkin’ of takin’ up chess language as a part of the effort to keep the sponge as wet & functional for as long as possible.
Won’t be out until July, if schedule is met, but Square Off will be offering an AI interactive chessboard – the opponent’s, or “opponent’s,” pieces move as by “the invisible hand”… same as everything else moves, only more obviously so.
A ouija chessboard.
From the cool depths of my ♪cool, clear water♪ well, that seems like a pretty cool temperature to me.
Jason Mraz is good…: Before the cool done run out I’ll be givin’ it my bestest & nuthin’s gonna’ stop me but divine intervention…but seehear Sungha Jung’s interpretation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyMQRVA2pnc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MycEFlLDOkY
Competition. The lovely subject. And object. And verb.
Lovely in its own right, but also more so cuz, actually, so rare (& getting rarer all the time), dependent as it is on the lovely underneath o’ understanding, followed by that understanding being verb’d into action.
If most everybody understood it, competition, actionated it, it’d be average, but with a great personality, maybe.
Instead, understanding’s rare, inversely proportioned, maybe in descriptive fibo numbers & ratios, to the swarming surround fibber numbers.
Since it’s an inside game, & nothing else, same as everything else, there has always been plenty of competition here. Gobs of it.
It’s all material. Even the immaterial. Critiques for example. Or any other moves. It all just gets added to the rest of the material.
So pick a spot. Any spot. Exercise’ll firm those formerly, maybe?, fab muscles. You lose it all eventually, but what you don’t use is forfeited even sooner.
Otoh – the bad hand full o’ bad fingers – if the Lectern has cannibalized your brain, fed some of it back to you in that good ol’ “the first one’s free, kid” fashion fishes fight to bite, the hook is in & set & it’s prolly past too late.
Whole lotta’ McFish sandwiches on the fin out there, “competin’” to be eaten, circlin’ ouroboros drivethru’s, slip slidin’ Sisyphus speedways, cruisin’ Custer cul de sacs, doin’ bier barrel polkas.
I guess that you are still out there and I want to reach out to you to explain a few things that might help you.
I know that you don’t like it when I call you autistic. But I truly believe that’s what you are. It’s not a slight, though I guess it might have been in a way when you kept repeating what you believed in. And what you believe in has very strict rules like what Libertarians adhere to . People who have autism really like rules….
Clover,
You seem to like “rules,” too. The difference between us is that I don’t demand other people abide by my rules. You, on the other hand…
Why not attempt to debate the merits of Libertarian ideas of self-ownership and what flows from that? For example, the right to not be forced to hand over money to finance things other people consider important – but which they’re not willing to pay for entirely themselves.
Let’s also discuss this business of threatening people with violence who’ve caused no harm to the person or property of another.
Instead, you characterize me as “autistic.” Maybe so. But even if I am, it doesn’t have any bearing on the merits of Libertarian ideas.
Hi Eric, etc.
I know that you are probably asleep on your sofa by now. But you will be up at 4am for sure. Because that’s what people like you do.
I just want to let you know that I enticed about thirty people to come and view your thoughts on Libertarianism. I told them you are the principal of principles. Though you lack probity in your replies to comments because you are basically a poltroon hiding behind those same principles. So don’t expect any more comments, just more views. And you should thank me for that. Maybe they will send in a donation. I told them not to be grammar notzees and to ignore your punctuation flaws too, because what’s most relevant are you views.
I hope you achieve your anticipated and needed donation level by April 1, 2020. You know, that would be just one less thing.
That’s it!
It’s already Monday morning here and sunny. A little chilly, but what can you expect right.
Alex reporting from Siberia. Have a great day! I know that I will after shoveling some snow first. And then I’m done (28).
Good morning, Clover!
I decided to let one of your 92 posts in the Spam queue get through – so that the readers can see for themselves what I’m dealing with. Dozens and dozens of posts deriding me as a “hypocrite,” “poltroon” and worse – but without a coherent basis for any of these charges. I’ve explained, several times, the Libertarian principle of non-aggression and my own elaboration of it. You have denounced me for it, but without anything resembling a disputation of any of the principles I’ve articulated on the basis of contrary facts.
For instance, I’ve explained why – in principle – I oppose the use of force by anyone to compel others to provide them with money, or to subsidize “services” they haven’t asked for and don’t want. The specific case at hand in re this discussion was AGWs – but the principle applies generally. You seem unable to understand this. The principle, I mean. Instead, you claim I am “autistic” for making the principled argument.
Another example: You are upset that I have not allowed all of your posts to be published; that I have routed most of them to the Spam queue. You present this as evidence of my being a hypocrite. But – as I have explained already – you have no rights I am bound to respect with regard to airing your abuse (or even your views) on my site. For the same reason you have no right to sleep on my sofa or help yourself to what’s in my fridge. Libertarians defend property rights. You have no right to be here – on my property. I allow you, if you abide by the rules. Just as I’m sure you have rules guests must abide by when they visit your home. It is not hypocritical of me (as a Libertarian) to deny you a platform I pay for, to abuse me at my expense.
You should know, as an aside, that it takes a lot to get shunted to the Spam queue on this site. Repeated personal attacks and serial refusal to acknowledge facts, either due to obtuseness or an intentional desire to troll (annoy) the serious readers here. That’s why you’ve been banned, Clover. Not because we disagree. Lots of readers posting here disagree with me and I often stand corrected. But I won’t tolerate serial personal attacks, refusal to deal with facts and trolling.
Finally, as regards poltroonism: You accuse me of “hiding behind my keyboard.” That’s you, Clover. My full identity is public knowledge. Here I am. I am not hiding behind anything. I am also not threatening anyone with violence, as you have. Perhaps I am a “poltroon.” But I am not a thug or even a bully – as you manifestly are.
Hi Eric poltroon,
The problem with you is that you twist everything to what suits your agenda. You let out these leaks as though they are actually truths. And the difference that I had with you and the article here had nothing to do with Libertarian principles. But that’s where you took it because that’s where you feel safe. That’s your battle ground, where you can explain why you want to be left alone with your stuff, now that you feel that you don’t need anyone else.
That led to me telling you that you are autistic. Because that’s what you are. I deal with autistics on a daily basis. Though not in a clinic.
This leak of yours is just a finger in the dyke for you. It’s damage control, though the damage has been done by you already. Nobody wants to see you anti-cop rants anymore as you can see by the hits on the articles. Yeah, some may look at the article, but only to see how you spun it, or how far back you had to go to find it.
Admit it, you’re basically a weasel who takes little bites out of everyone around you to build your weasel nest. It’s your nest and can’t have other people around for long. Autistics tend to have OCD too, along with other overlapping mental issues. And I’m not saying that you can’t function in society because you can. It’s just how you go about it. And in this case it all came to the surface when you were taken out of your comfort zone by someone who disagreed with you. That can’t happen in your world. Everything in it’s place and a place for everything. Including what’s you see as right and wrong in your head and there is no bending to other opinions unless you can put the spin to those too. Maybe for sympathy. Because autistics love playing that card too. They have no empathy, but demand it from others.
This back and forth was just a distraction for me. I have other better things to do of course. So I’m really not up to being frustrated by another autistic.
You take care alright. And go get a little help. Maybe it will help you to see how you treat the people around you. Yeah, poor, poor Eric is a good boy. See I just explained to you again. LOL
LW
Clover!
You claim I “twist everything to what suits your agenda.” But you’ve not deal with any of the specific points I’ve made with regard to Libertarian principles. Instead, you diagnose me as “autistic” and accuse me of “poltroonery” – a bizarre assertion coming from someone who is apparently afraid to use their full name here, unlike myself.
eric, he deals with “autistics” every day, though not in a clinic setting. No shit, cops put any old sort of moniker they like on their victims.
They don’t worry about clinics, ceptin when it’s one of their own and prolly not too much then. It’s just a good excuse to go ballistic on everyone who isn’t part of that thin blue line of shit.
Amen, Eight!
Isn’t it a wonder to behold? Especially the anger . .. which is palpable. I’m a lot of of things, some I am not proud of. But I’m not a thug – and loathe thuggy people. Probably why “LH” and I don’t vibe!
Watched “Unbelievable” on Netflix. “Based on a true story.” And when you read the Wikipedia version of the true story – beware wiki, of course – it tracks tight. Some very bad cops in WA. Some better ones in CO. But the overall in the most & main in the copper dementality is, indeed, aught’ism – or else.
Ozy, aught’ism, you say right right.
Just one vowel•ook ♪ that’s all it took ♫ right? Right. (Linda Ronstadt’s got Parkinsons, can’t sing – among other indignities — but the billionaire’s still going strong. Justice ain’t a regular feature of this buggy place.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsEwBzfdMnk
Ought’ism.
“Stop resisting!” is one of those classic copper penny lines. Grammar, spelling, police like that one too. One’s the thin blue line, the other’s the red ink line.
What goes around, bleeds around. See? Si.
Got a book on the nightstand, Domesticated: Evolution In A Man-Made World (Richard Francis).
Did wo\man domesticate language, or was it the other way round? And which one of those – or is it both? – constitutes domestic violence?
Coppers know a lot about DV. & about covering for it, covering it up, too.
Flashing on an old one by Carl Sagan, Deman (oops! but you can read between the vowels, right?) Haunted World.
Then there’s this, from Finding North – How Navigation Makes Us Human (Foy):
“My new smart phone amuses me. It’s not an iPhone of any number or an elite Android, but it still looks cool, this Samsung bought on credit; it is thin & shiny with black-silver trim & stuffed with applications. With it I can speak text messages, play an astonishing number of colorful games, take pictures in back of me, find out to the minute when the next C train is due to arrive at Columbus Circle. The navigation apps, Google Maps in particular, are efficient. As long as I am not in a tunnel or the equivalent of an Afghan ravine, they tell me exactly where I am with very little lag. Even more importantly, while I’m driving they show me where traffic is building, to a resolution greater than a city block. Goodle’s function works better than Garmin’s Imogen, although the process of trying to plot routes beforehand is as clumsy, & just as many fast-food restaurants & other irrelevant chain outlets pop up if I zoom down to a given area.
The more I use the map application, the more I listen to Google’s version of Imogen, the more I find myself lusting for the navigation app when I’m travelling without. More & more I desire to watch the little blue circle that represents me gliding steadily along the Cross Bronx Expressway or up Route 1 toward Rockland. I like being told precisely where I am in that bright little square of world. I download a free compass app called Compass 360 Pro that reads the earth’s magnetic field to find north, just as eels & pigeons do. It’s supposed to display my latitude & longitude at the same time but for some reason does not, maybe as punishment because I won’t download fancier apps being advertised by this one.
Abandoning the compass app, I return to the screen I like best, the maps function; back to the little blue dot that is me in the world. Yet even as I play with it I also feel – there’s no other way to say this – castrated. My smartphone, it seems, has already taught me something valuable. The passive/reactive behavior summoned by this sort of tech, the caudate nucleus activity of which Bohbot spoke, is not merely some abstract theory based on statistics & surveys. It occurs as a solid syndrome, hardwired as a virus latching onto cell receptors, when initiative on my part, however wrongheaded or inaccurate, is subsumed by obedience, or strong attention at any rate, to the direction of outside systems.
As fast as I’ve become addicted to the accuracy of Google Maps, I have also come to feel helpless, controlled, ordered about because I have no personal bearings, no ability to find my way independently, as soon as I start using it. I see cross streets, the outlines of rivers, but so obsessed have I become with the azure circle that I pay little attention to the map’s background & forget it as soon as it slides offscreen.
That feeling of being controlled leads me to wonder about another aspect of modern navigational systems, something that might appear self-evident but the implications of which, I think, too often go unrecognized: if I know exactly where I am at all times thanks to these systems, it follows that the systems, & those who program & control them, also know where I;ve been, where I am, & where I am going as long as I am using my device, & even when I’m not. My smartphone, after all, tells service providers my exact location at all times, as long as it’s powered up. So does my computer the second it “handshakes” with a modem. The minute I use a credit card, a highway toll pass, or any of the numerous other passes I own that allow me onto public transport, through customs, or into an office, my position is instantly on display for anyone with access to the relevant networks. Is not such knowledge a degradation of privacy & therefore a form, however potential, of control?
I could, of course, escape the grid: cut up all credit & debit cards, plus any other document with a readable microchip; crush my cell phone’s SIM with a sledgehammer, pay for everything with cash, & move to a place so isolated it won’t have electricity, cable, gas, oil, or telephone utilities. But how long would I last like that? How long before I needed to go into town to buy aspirin, or propane for the camp stove, or sardines? As soon as I emerged from my self-imposed frontier lifestyle, as soon as I parked on Main Street or set foot in a store, the growing web of closed-circuit TV cameras would capture my position for the benefit of whoever might be watching.
I remember my musings in Colorado about the pioneers, the early Americans who defined themselves by how they found their way across the great unmapped spaces of this country, where they could vanish if they had a mind to. That America is gone forever.
The crucial importance of navigation to memory, identity, & consciousness is hard to refute. So is the idea that navigating for ourselves through direct interaction with our environment must have evolved historically as a vital component of consciousness.
It follows that anything persuading us to forgo the process must erode our ability to function as conscious, creative individuals.
This decrease in ability happens on a superficial level, through using devices like my Samsung. On a deeper level, however, allowing ourselves to be navigated divides us from a simpler truth, one I’ve obsessed about lately, which is the unbreakable link between navigation, getting lost, & the fear that happens when we get lost.
The fear, once again, is important. I began this journey because I got scared when I woke up & didn’t know where I was at the rest stop in Wareham. That panic had the same frequency & texture as sthe fright I suffered making navigational mistakes off Hedge Fence shoal in Nantucket Sound & near Goodwin Sands in the North Sea. Whatever it says about my rheostat, such fear makes sense in the most basic of ways, because to not know where we are means we cannot move rightly or act sensibly. That “Oh shit I’m lost” reaction is a rational one & yet – this is important – it’s very different from the fear of getting ourselves into a position where *we might become* lost.
This second form of angst: the fear of ever acting in such a way that we could lose track of where we are; is gaining ground in our society. I see it in my fellow passengers, on airplanes that fly over our planet’s most gorgeous landscapes, who look at nothing but in-flight videos. I see it in the street, in the subway, where more & more people exist in the mode of texting, playing video games, following Mapquest instructions, their primary relationship always with the little screen that cues them to the next direction they are told to go in: shunning the dramas of ugliness, anger, humor, & harmony visible in the faces & theater of people around them.
I see fear in the downstream effects of screen obsession: less creative thought-processing in the centers Bohbot studies, which might correlate to a decline in overall creativity measured by the Torrance test, since it takes courage to risk new thoughts. I recognize it in rising levels of depression, clinically linked to deterioration in the time sense on which our key position-finding skill, dead reckoning, is based. (The core of our time sense, according to Boston University neurobiologist Howard Eichenbaum, also lies in the hippocampus, which registers the sequence in which spatial events occurred – the basis of temporality – thus tying together even more tightly the navigational triad of speed, course, & time.) I see it in our growing geographical ignorance as American school systems favor more “useful” math & science disciplines that will enable students to score jobs as data-entry clerks & pipeline engineers, even as 50% of those students cannot find New York on a map. Thirty-seven percent of them, at the height of the latest Middle Eastern conflict, had no idea how to locate Iraq.
I see fear in many intelligent, educated people I know who flat-out refuse to turn off their device & navigate their own map of whatever nature. Few among them would admit they’re scared, but I think they are, & rightly so, because they have largely forgotten how to find their way without being told how to do so. This isn’t fear, my friend Mac says. He is one of those who will not turn off his device even during a dinner with friends; the issue, he claims, is one of ease versus effort, of better use of his time. Yet I believe it cuts deeper than that.
I tell Mac about the limits of short-term memory. What happens to our life, I ask him, when we spend so much of it cutting ourselves off from the footling scraps of information we can retain, in favor of those fire-hose volumes of data pumped into us by the systems that control our screens? What happens to personal freedom when the information-tech sector, which in itself constitutes 20% of our economy & runs infrastructure for the rest, has a vested interest in boosting consumers’ addiction to the tools that navigate us?
What will happen to humans, as economic & political animals, when the exponentially growing networks – already far beyond the capacity of a single human brain to monitor, & placed as a result under the tutelage of various embryonic forms of artificial intelligence – acquire (as inevitably in networks of such complexity they must) their own brand of consciousness & with it the drive to expand their influence even further?
And what happens to this planet, pincered between burgeoning population, rising temperatures, extremist ideologies, & finite resources, when so many of its most educated citizens forget, both literally & metaphorically, how to navigate its complexities?
I describe to my friend Bohbot’s idea that we use satellite navigation to travel to a new place, & put it aside to find our way home. Such a balance, I suggest, might answer the question I asked myself earlier about how best to approach these technologies: use the systems when we need them; switch them off when we don’t so as to reopen our minds, for once unfiltered & unscreened, to the world around us.
But Mac just laughs & checks his text messages for what must be, given his average rate of checking, the fortieth time today.”
Now zoom out & pan: technology is nothing more, or less, than arsonist accelerant added to flammable language. How flammable? Because what should be a tool has been used to “turn” (you know what the quote cage means) many into tools. The “singularity” ain’t coming. It already came. A lonnnng time ago. Skynet was always a fait accompli. And Farenheit 451 ain’t about burning hidebound books & words, it’s about hide & go seek bound self\other-immolation. Simon changed names to GoogleGarmin – redolent of grammarian — & now, as before, what it sez, mostly, Milgram goes. Zzzzzt!! HAL sez “no” to opening the pod doors, then sez “electrical fire cleanup on aisle 7 deadly sins”…& that toolish humanimal brought it all on itself, over & over & over again, seeking for that Matrix womb•attery factory perfection. Scared shitless stupid AF is mofo sapiens, in its atheistless foxhole.
One appropriate tune that DX’s what’s always been in vogue, & RX’s what never will be:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLTAf6SDIqQ
That’s what they say. But, as mostly usual…
If persistence is a virtue, stubbornness is a superpower.
Which ain’t to say there ain’t blackhats that got that superpower. Blackhats got that one in spades.
How in the world is libertarianism a cult? There is no leader and the reason libertarians are unsuccessful in preventing the growth of statism and collectivism never mind reversing it is attributed to organizing them akin to herding cats. It’s the exact opposite of a cult. It’s a disorganized mass of people who can only agree on a few generic principles.
If they “only agree on a few generic principles” then I guess that they are not truly Libertarians are they. Yeah, just throw them in with the conservatives as Eric does with me….What? LOL Well that is what you said. And I guess to get true Libertarians you would have to send them to fun camp. So why do people need to put a label on themselves? Isn’t this part of the problem today. Common sense can’t just rule? No, who would want that? If you are going to divide and conquer you first have to have people associate, and resonate with a party. That guy in Germany a long time ago railed against this very thing. He gave a speech about how the country has been split into all these different parties. He preferred one. And if you want to debate what he was able to do without the squabbling between all of the different parties,… maybe later.
First you would would have to be deprogrammed from all of the lies and the propaganda that the victors have been feeding you all of your life. Oh, nevermind, I don’t have the this for a good reason. Oh yeah, and propaganda is now legal here. So there will soon be no place to look for anything other than propaganda. Kids will be brought knowing no real history. And that works well for the people in charge of forming you views……..Ok, I got my mind right again!! I know,…..You getting wound up again. Relax. I’m gone!!!
I’m done, no really I am, I’m serious this time. There are too many parties out there to go to. Some with only one member. LOL
LOL…….I guess you can call this a parting shot huh Eric. I guess I just couldn’t help myself. I mean the bending and twisting and the pounding to beat round pegs into square holes just amazes me sometimes.
LW,
What is “common sense”? Is it like the “common good”? Who decides what, exactly, these things are – and is what’s decided by these other people morally enforceable upon those who have a different opinion? How so?
Libertarianism is based on a few principles that can be defended objectively and thus are not matters of your opinion versus mine vs. someone else’s.
Libertarians hold that the individual is absolute sovereign over himself – that no other person owns anyone else. That each individual has an absolute right to be left in peace so long as his actions don’t cause harm to the person or property of others.
What part of them troubles you?
You are babbling. Of course a political classification has to have some common ground. That common ground for libertarians has nothing to do with “conservatives”. That is evident if you have ever attempted to figure out what “conservatives” are trying to “conserve”.
“So why do people need to put a label on themselves?”
You’re the one doing the labeling. I only pointed out that the libertarian label and cult don’t go together. That is, you are in error.
“Common sense can’t just rule?”
Who is this man named “Common Sense” and why should he rule everyone else? Again libertarianism abhors rulers. Mr. Common Sense can’t rule everyone else due to the knowledge problem. There is no way for an individual or small group to understand the wants and needs of a population or how they will react. This is why government causes so many problems even with good intentions and good people at the helm.
“First you would would have to be deprogrammed from all of the lies and the propaganda that the victors have been feeding you all of your life.”
I was deprogrammed long ago. Except I understand what things are, which apparently you do not since you confuse libertarianism with a cult, Hitler, and who knows what else. That’s your programming showing.
Hi Brent!
I can’t figure out what LW is attempting to communicate – except in vague generalities. Which is why trying to discuss specifics (and principles) with people like him is so frustrating.
He refers to “propaganda” and “lies” but never addresses (specifically) the points made in re using force or its threat against people who’ve caused no harm… and so on.
He’s up to 27 posts in the Moderation queue, by the way!
I see your point now. Why would you want to pay for this. This is all that they do all day. And what if he falls, who’s going to pay for that?
Though what you see might not be what you get. He could be on his way to your house to just ride back and forth all day. LOL It would be proof that you were right again.
LW,
You seem unable to understand a pretty simple expression of preference – and a moral argument. It is not merely that I “…want to pay for this” (i.e., AGWs). It is that I deny your right or the right of any other person to force me to pay for anything I do not want. This works both ways. I have no right to force you or anyone else to pay for anything you don’t want. Services and products should be freely bought and paid for by those who want them. No one should be forced to hand over money for products and services “mandated” by others – or because a “law” says they must (or else). Because it is immoral to use force against any person who has not harmed you or your property.
Just a question.
So you took the job that you took to review cars as a source of income. So if you get compensated in any shape or form by the automakers, even if they give you a car for free to drive for the week, I am therefore paying your salary by the added cost to the car because of this right? I don’t have a choice if I want you to review a car that I want to buy. In fact I don’t want you to review the car that I want to buy. But you do it anyway and I’m forced to pay for this review by you.
Well that’s how I see. I don’t know how you could see it any other way either by your logic. But that could change soon. I think a lot of your cognitive dissonance will more than an ounce of forced cure.
LW,
I earn my living by writing and speaking; I do not get any compensation from the car companies. They do allow me (and other journalists) access to their new cars to briefly test drive them for purposes of reviewing them. But the idea that you are being forced to pay my salary for this reason is ridiculous. In the first place, because the price of a new car is not higher because a journalist test drove a press car. In the second, because you are not forced to buy a new car – even if the car’s price were higher because a journalist drove a press car for a few days.
The taxes which provide the AGW’s income are not optional. You pay – or else. You are also forced to accept the “services” of the AGW. What happens if you elect not to buy a new car – for any reason?
Nothing. Are you under any sort of duress to read my articles or visit this web site? Are you free to go?
Do you understand the distinction?
I know, everything done for the common good is shake down. Sure, why does anyone have to pay for anything that doesn’t effect them personally at the moment. Though receiving the benefit of what the others around him paid for. And I do realize too the the ‘common good’ excuse is a good excuse to raise taxes.
The police protection that everyone gets is for the common good. Your neighborhood wouldn’t be as safe as it is if it weren’t for the police to keep the bad guys at bay. Depending where you live though for now. Maybe you’re safe out in a rural area where there aren’t many bad folks to deal with and of a certain demographic, but the cities are different. So if they removed all the police protection for the general population in the cities people would be richer and more free? Or just replacing them with ‘peace keepers’ who YOU will pay instead having the police paid by YOUR taxes through the local government.
If you believe that removing all of the police is the cure all that ails this country, all you have to look at is to what happens after there is a natural disaster and the looters move in. Sure some people will defend their property because they can, but some people can’t. Especially if you’re older, disabled, are unarmed for any reason, and not likely being in a group of “rooftop Asians”.
I don’t agree with a lot of taxes that are levied under guise of ‘the common good’, but some I do. The fact that you have to pay for other parents kids to go to public school, while you pay to send your kids to a private school, is definitely one of them. All welfare is a burden on the taxpayers and is used to gain votes. But there a still some programs worth keeping.
Not all the people who work for the government are thugs or thieves. If the local government that keeps the traffic lights in repair where you live, even though the one near your house is is ok for the moment, do you feel that you are being shook down? Or the keeps the sewers in repair so your community is not too smelly, or a petri dish of bacteria. And seriously these things can’t be a personal choice if you want to pay for it or not. I mean is everyone to be handed a check list of what they want to pay for or not even though they will receive those benefits if they pay or not. To me that’s a shake down of your neighbor too.
I agree that there are a lot of government jobs that can be eliminated. Did you know that the highest state worker is usually the football coach at the state university. They get paid in the millions. That’s one person that I don’t want to pay for. That is the most insane.
Railing against the police because you see bad apples everywhere isn’t fair to the police who put their lives on the line every day. No, it’s not the most dangerous job in the US, but it’s one of the most stressful. All you have to do is look at the number of police suicides.
All this back and forth started when I said that the ‘kids’ weren’t kids, they were gang members who were not ‘just having fun’ shutting down the interstate. And I also saw that trying to tie it to the two cops under the police chief who you say under reacted in that case and over reacted in the other to fit your view that all AGW’s are thugs and tax eaters. I haven’t changed my mind on those two issues to fit yours. And I won’t. And I’m not going to get into a philosophical debate where too any blanks have to be filled and the logic of the events are twisted.
I’m for the common good and against being taxed too much. And just because you have a well, a septic tank, no street lights, and a safe almost unpopulated area, don’t question the judgement of those who don’t. Like I said, pointed out, sent you links, and discussed, your view isn’t of the most informed.
I know, all AGW’s are thugs, all AGW’s steal money to pay their salaries, and it was just a burnout.
I’m glad I’m not a Liberal-tarian. Too many conflicting stances for me to hold. Yep, it all only works when you have a moral population. If not, it all goes out the window. And that’s what’s going on today. It’s a plan. Bombard them with bullshit until they can’t take it anymore. I need a break.
LW,
Who gets to decide what the “common good” is? You? Those people over there? By taking a vote? And by doing that, these people can morally force me to provide funds for what they consider to be the “common good”? Do you not see the problem with this? It is an invitation to open-ended tyranny according to the whim of those who have the power to enforce their opinion of the “common good.”
You say you are opposed to being “taxed too much.” How much, exactly? According to whom? By what standard? Here is my standard: I am opposed to being taxed at all – because I owe no one a cent unless I have obligated myself (freely) to pay for a service provided or a material good obtained – or as compensation for a harm caused.
That is an objectively defensible, principled standard.
@LW.
Voluntary vs. Coerced.
Individual vs. Collective.
Contract vs. Enslaved.
Which column do you support?
Neither, because they are both equally coercive aside from semantics.
LOL. Are you serious?
If so, please explain how.
LW, I know this isn’t just a Texas thing but everybody is armed. It would never have made a difference except for prosecutors and judges if we’d never had govt. protection. When every vehicle is loaded with guns, people with bad intent know not to jack with the population.
For most of my life the Sheriff was generally a farmer who was a good guy who farmed and everyone liked. For the most part, our sheriff’s didn’t even wear a gun. The rare event of rustling almost always ended with the general population delivering them to the courthouse/jail.
No one who works for the government needs to work for the government for what they do to get done.
Private security guards provide better security than police officers do because they don’t spend most of their time turning victimless criminals into inmates and collecting revenue for their employers, the people on city councils that decide how everyone else should live, according to their own arbitrary opinions and self-interests.
FWIW, you appear to be a Haymarket-style anarchist, but you probably have zero experience in what that was.
Bill, since you never say who you are replying to, I guess it’s me.
WTF does a labor riot in Chicago have to do with anything I said? You’d be right I have no experience in it except for the Trucker’s strike in 75 I got my windshields smashed carrying a load to Galveston “before” the strike began. And there were no unions involved. It was a strike of almost completely independents since the big carriers didn’t live and die by the price of fuel and hauled “regulated” freight.
I grew up in a very polite society. People didn’t even cuss out loud except to a contemporary. I certainly miss those days of non-violence.
I asked the question “are you suggesting that we don’t need Police?” I forgot that my uncle grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota and he told me that he was 16 before he even saw a sheriff for the first time! I wish he was still alive so I could ask him what they did without police.
I work for the government. My paycheck is derived from taxes. I don’t force people to pay my wages , my employer does. If you want to stop the madness you need to cut the head of the snake off. You are making me think “do we need Police?” They have never really been of any help to me , only a harassing element. Do you suggest that we don’t need police? Are they completely unnecessary?
Hi Anon,
You don’t personally force people to pay your salary; but the fact remains – if you work for the government – that taxpayers are forced to pay it. I understand this is an uncomfortable thing to say – and to discuss. But we have to deal with it if we really do want a return to a system in which people can’t use the power of government to force other people to provide them with material benefits, including a paycheck paid for by money taken by force from other people.
None of this just happened – much less happened overnight.
We’re stuck with an inherited system that has enmeshed all of us to one degree or another in this unsavory business of materially benefitting from – and not benefitting from – policies that have turned us into both taxpayers and tax eaters.
The only way out f it is to be direct and honest – with words and with ourselves.
Where to begin? I’ll start with the obvious… or ought to be.
“Taxes” are just a euphemism for theft made legal. How is it a moral wrong to march over to your neighbor’s house wearing a gun and demanding money because you need a new roof – but not a moral wrong for that neighbor to vote to make you pay “taxes” to pay for his kid’s schooling? If a thing is wrong for an individual to do it, then how can it be ok for several individuals (i.e., “the government”) to do it? It is said that the only legitimate government is that which has the consent of the governed. Well, great! But what if I – or you – do not consent?
And so on.
As regards “Do you suggest that we don’t need police? Are they completely unnecessary?”:
Let’s define our terms before we discuss this. What do we mean by “police”? If we mean what I style armed government workers – and what the AGWs style “law enforcement” – then the answer is obviously, no. If you believe in individual rights. Because if you believe in them, then you cannot support forcing any individual to pay for AGWs – and ought to oppose enforcing laws, just because a law was passed.
Moral laws are those which codify and parallel individual rights – to absolute self-ownership of his physical person and all the property he acquires either through the use of his faculties or the effort of his body, or via voluntary free exchange. To be left in peace so long as he causes no harm to the person or property of another.
Anything which affronts the above can be legal, of course – but is immoral, if you believe in the above enumerated conception of a human being’s rights. And if you do not believe in them, then what you have accepted is a kind of random/situational “morality” determined by the whim – and might – of whomever happens to have authority. That is to say, force.
Almost all of the “laws” being “enforced” are of the latter sort. No harm has been done; no one victimized. Yet a person is punished – which strikes me as tyrannical.
Peacekeeping – as distinct from law enforcing – strikes me as the moral option. And peacekeeping does not require forcing anyone to pay for it, either. In a free society, every person would have the explicit right to keep the peace – by defending himself, if the occasion arises. And free communities could voluntarily fund peacekeepers in the same manner that volunteer fire departments are funded.
Imagine how much more relaxed – how much more free – life would be if you knew that no one could legally threaten you or legally punish you unless you did something to injure another person or their property!
The standard objection to this idea is: But some people will do bad things! Of course. And do they not do them today, in the police state we live in? And would it not be preferable to live in freedom rather than in a police state? Who is the greater threat – a government worker who may harm you with impunity just because you “broke the law”? Or the possibility of having to deal with a ne’er do well who may try to harm you, but against whom you have a legal right to defend yourself?
Long time reader.. this, sir, is an article. Never have I read these concepts put so eloquently, or concisely. This is how it should be. This is how it used to be and not that long ago. As a little girl, I remember it being an exciting thing to report, spotting a police officer, because it was so uncommon. I count at least five each morning on my 10 minute commute. Each sighting indices that bump of adrenaline. This stuff is poison, and in you so you can run from tigers and bears, not for this. And you’re not suppose to surge with it several times a day. This is why high blood pressure and early death. I’m getting sick of it. I’d almost rather die. Seems the only way to be really free anymore.
– induces – fucking autocorrect to
Thanks, Anon!
I really enjoy the back-and-forth with the people here – even the Clovers! They help me to flesh out my arguments 😉
Why do you have to label people “clovers’, even as to go far as to put clover on their chest so to say, and then beat them down. Is it to dehumanize them first?
And Anon, the once sweet little girl, seems to have acquired a potty mouth that makes her first comment on her views as to what is eloquent kind of fucking moot. But I thank her for that.
LW,
I only “Clovered” you after you let loose a torrent of vicious personal abuse in response to measured and civil attempts to explain the point of my article, which was to contrast the reaction of AGWs to mischief with deliberate physical abuse of innocent people by AGWs. You have every right to disagree with my argument. And I would never “Clover” you merely for disagreeing with me.
I “Clovered” you for abuse – and for refusing to debate facts.
There was only one of your facts left to debate on that I guess that I overlooked. I covered all the others. And that was that all cops steal money from people on the street and on their private property. That’s a philosophical debate I will never win with you. But you have this pictured in your mind and I don’t.
LW,
Well, let’s focus on this one thing – whether “all cops steal money from people on the street and on their private property.”
That’s not exactly what I said. You added the qualifier “on the street” and “private property.” I stated that AGWs are paid with money stolen from taxpayers. This is indisputable. I consider it immoral because I regard theft as immoral. Taxation is theft – performed under color of law. But is just as much theft as an ordinary street mugging.
AGWs also steal “on the street” – by handing out “tickets” – which are demands for money backed up by threats of violence. This is done for “violations” of law – which is theft in the absence of harm caused.
They also practice “civil asset forfeiture” – the seizure (theft) of cash found in the possession of their victims, without even the fig leaf of charging these victims with any crime.
Facts.
Remember the guy who refused to pay the “tax” for the volunteer fire department’s equipment? So when his house burned down they just sat there and watched. LOL Yep, a real Libertarian that guy. I think they saved his dog though.
LW,
Why do you argue with me over positions I’ve never taken? Did I ever write or say that a person who elects not to pay for fire protection has a gripe when fire protection services aren’t provided? In fact, I have written and said precisely the opposite.
My argument has always been that people have a right to pay for the services they want – and the same right to refuse to pay for those they don’t want. But if they don’t pay, those providing service are under no obligation to provide the services.
That is the Libertarian position.
eric, I feel, no, I know, I owe 3 volunteer fire depts. They kept us from burning up in a range fire. They also saved us when the wife put a heat lamp on an ABS hose(I had installed a bolt for this)in the pumphouse that slipped off and burned the pumphouse and lots of engines and windows and other things.
These guys are the best. They do things that put their lives at risk for their neighbors. I might not have appreciated them properly til it was me.
I’ll never forget the wife and I come in when all the fires were out. We came to the house, barn, pumphouse, store room and all the vehicles, boats, tractors and other things and peeled off our ruined clothes and boots(nearly new boots for both of us), washed off with the cold well water from a hose and were damned glad to have it. When the pumphouse burned, we had no water except for some in barrels. It’s weird to find puddles of aluminum. and steel parts of engines and broken windows and doors.
We were lucky and I turned on a pump 2200′ away, and rigged it into the water system for the house and choked it back running into the tank so we had pressure we wouldn’t have had. It was on the complete time it took to build another pumphouse, dig down to non-damaged casing and added some back to the correct height, re-installed the pump and did the same for the electrical supply.
It was nice to have 60 lbs of pressure and filtered water once again.
I’ve noticed that those who insist on blowing their horns every time they drive by me parked legally on the public right of way usually turn out to be volunteer firefighters.
Some of them are stupid enough to terrorize me with their fire truck’s lights and electronic horns, and their COs never will identify or rein them in.
The vast majority of volunteer firemen use equipment and vehicles provided at public cost by taxation.
Bill, I’m just curious. How do you know they’re volunteer firemen? Not doubting you but our volunteer firemen look just like everyone else.
Unless I know the person who honks at me, I have no idea what he does in his volunteer time.
Clover,
Look, bud. I’m no longer a child, meaning I’m free to use any language I wish. I say all the swears I deem appropriate. I can think of a few to direct your way, but I chose not to. You get sign language. 🖕🏻 Leave me off your mind.
If you were a mature and educated adult, you wouldn’t have to resort to expletives.
Ah, Fuck You then. 🙂
Anon, I just broke out laughing. S’get em gal……
8, that last one wasn’t me. But thanks for the back up! 😘
Vonu,
I never claimed to be educated nor mature. Fuck ya, bud.
A person is smart; people are dumb. ~ line from a movie
And the subject of more than a few good reads, too.
The “we” thing, yet again.
People have boundary “issues.”
Persons melt & meld & disappear into “people.” And going-going-gone goes the intelligence.
And because of the boundary issues, we’s also lovelovelove “borders,” a la, “countries.”
Properties of property are so important that even those who by biology & training have no property interests in themselves still have vestigial memories (or maybe bad dreams, or heartburn indigestion) that itch & that are scratched by soothing Prep H “proud to be a murikan,” etc.
That particular cordon, in fact, gold stars the propaganda of “melting pot” & e pluribus unum & x-heads are better than one & pithy hanged quotes from that old counterfeiter & swamp creature Franklin.
((There’s a courtroom scene in Messiah, episode 4, I saw last night. That scene calls the fake property lines, boundaries & edges, of “national borders” out & to the mat. But, so far, the story also presumes to do that other thing, meltpot persons into people the world over. Some – too many — binaries is just coal mine canaries. Tweat one forward & retweat two back.))
Scientific sounding “upgrades” – court apologetics & rationalizations — are swarm “intelligence,” & hive “mind.” Those get some red pill person lip service but the blue pill people majority won’t hear of it, preferring sweet & treacle & copy/paste lambastes.
It’s like “share the work & the unit costs go down.”
But looking around at what others are doing so as to “efficiently” do likewise is copying – from other copiers – not working.
It’s cheating.
And what’s *that* do to unit costs?
What does mimicographs of mimicographs of mimicographs beget? Just blurrier & blurrier copies.
The psychological & emotional infrastructure of the bulk of homo sapiens is not a bridge that’ll bear any significant weight.
That is just the way it is. Was. Will be.
Corollary is-ness: Good persons don’t use, look to be supported by, that ever crumbling, rickety, infrastructure. But Broke Bad persons – & the hordes of we’d out people melts who copy/paste love ‘em — got bridges, in Brooklyn, & everywhere else, to sell.
People – politics – is the copy/paste wave of the standing d’oh!vation.
Person might then be the sound of one hand clapping…at least as far as people are capable•concerned.
Fun(i)rony, pumping iron\y, neverending is this: even the persons each that melt into people is each individual one unique.
Many of those don’t know that.
Many of those don’t want to know that.
What many of those do first\foremost want is wemogenization.
Their wemogenization.
And definitely not the other’s wemogenization.
But as long as the other’s wemogenization is out there, the one true wemogenization is “at risk” of not being the one true wemo, after all.
So, the solution is more pasteurization. As much as it takes.
Despite there’s never been that much ~ enough ~ to roll up all the bovines into the desired single pasture.
And despite the obviousness that there never will be enough.
How’s that definition of insanity go?
Back-forth *is* fun ☻ exercise is good:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUOiJOqrHlI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJ4wh1kwR8
Camera angles & optics & cgi – people stuff all – is fun to play & exercise with, too.
So where is this place that you describe in the world? I want to move there.
Let me state this at the beginning so there is no misunderstanding at first, that I think you are slashing (?) at the branches instead of tearing at the roots. ALL POLICE whether in a town of 40 or a city of 3 million, which is too large of a net to really be tossing, are representatives of the government, which is also a big no so clear net, we now have. Yes they have now been labeled “law enforcers” which is a very one sided stance without much room for appeal. But I believe where they able to know pretty much everyone that they represent that they still serve and protect. And by the townsfolk wanting to pay them because they can’t be ready to pick up a musket when they’re at work, or when sleeping when someone cries wolf!!
Yep, one of those old guys said that The Constitution was only for a moral society. Yep, we’ve moved away from that a bit haven’t we. Even though you an Anon don’t see it that way, because your views out of your front window of the Blue Ridge Parkway in of all places, Copper Hill, VA. don’t allow you to. (No I don’t work for the NSA the address is where you ask folks to send in some cash for your serve of putting up this site.) Maybe if you spent the night walking the streets of Baltimore or Detroit you might see things just a little different than the perfection that you look for, you know, being surrounded by the most wonderful neighbors and the smell of cookies baking in the air all year. Yes, what you speak of is something to strive for. But I don’t think that it was ever accomplished in real life. Like there were sheriffs in the Old West too that did a few beat-downs. I know, they didn’t need them either. Well, most people liked the idea, they never really did like posse duty.
So the police aren’t forcing people to pay their salary by stopping and extracting money from each person on the road. And most of the time they really do enforce The Golden Rule. But that’s still force though. Yep, we more volunteers instead of police. I guess you are packing for your volunteering at this moment in Virginia huh? The fact is the local government and surely with the help of the people voted for the extra police if they were needed. Unless you see any type of local government, no matter how small and underpaid as a threat to you. Like Anon who is going to kill herself if she sees another cop. You should address her issues first. They seem a little extreme to me and life threatening……..Is she the girl next door?
Oh yeah, in all the other bs you put me through I finally figured it out that you only wanted to address just one more issue that I seemed to ignore. And that was that the police steal money to have their salaries paid. Again it’s the Fed’s that are pushing asset forfeiture on the people and the police who work in these collapsing economies of these small towns to protect the few good people that are left. Of course you only hear of the guy going to buy a car in cash that gets pinched. AND I DO NOT SUPPORT ASSET FORFEITURE LAWS. I’M NOT GOING TO GET SIDETRACKED AGAIN INTO ONE OF YOU DEAD ENDS.
I’m done, nothing I say will be perfectly clear to you. Every word is debatable. Every sentence a twisted view. Every paragraph that doesn’t fit your view will be deleted. Like you did to me the other day to fit your AGENDA. That’s why I called you more than just a clover and you know it!
LW,
You believe AGWs are “necessary” and that they “serve and protect.” I am not interested in their “services” – so what gives them (or you) the right to force me to pay for them?
That is the core issue here.
The secondary issue, also important, is that the “serving and protecting” is no such thing. It is to a great extent harassing, intimidating and punishing people who’ve caused no harm to anyone or their property. Solely because they have transgressed some “law.” And – increasingly – not even that. For example, the arbitrary and probable-cause-free “checkpoints” that AGWs man.
You dismiss civil asset forfeiture as something the feds are responsible for. But feds are AGWs. And local/state AGWs routinely engage in the practice, too. Indisputable.
My only “agenda” is to articulate a principled, logically coherent argument in support of individual rights, as opposed to authoritarian collectivism.
“But I believe where they able to know pretty much everyone that they represent that they still serve and protect.”
Jack Yantis was from a small town where everyone knew everyone. The cops shot him dead. There were at least 4 cameras–between vehicle and body cams–but they were either “pointed away” from the incident, “full” or “malfunctioned” leaving the Idaho AG without “enough evidence” to prosecute the police.
Hop on your unicorn and fly over to western Idaho and tell Jack Yantis’ family that the assclown cops that shot him to death were “protecting and serving” and that’s just how they should feel about it too.
I agree with Anon.
Nicely stated.
Ok last comment on this but i think anyone who fucks with the police in a non-violent way is hilarious. winston get back on the meds buddy.
Winston is “apalled” by Smokey and the Bandit and the Blues Brothers
Yeah, they were too gentile and non-violent. ‘Rambo’ is a much better ‘movie’. Though only a ‘movie’, it just seems to just keep on inspiring .
I have a Mark II 5.5 inch stainless that could get you off of your meds for cheap. But how would I get it back. And I really don’t want to have to clean it because it’s a little complicated. A Mark IV is so much easier to clean and put back together.
Just kidding. I wouldn’t want to be held for someone else’s actions. Kind of like the top cop who was accused of being directly responsible for the two (fill in the blank) cops that he inherited.
Clover,
No one here – not myself at any rate – accused the Herr General of “…being directly responsible for the two (fill in the blank) cops that he inherited.” He stands accused of not showing more “concern” over the actions of the two AGWs under his command who committed a brutal physical attack than he did over kids doing a harmless (if juvenile) stunt.
The Twilight Zone episode is on now. I was wrong, It’s 10pm where you are now. Watch it you little monster.
LW,
I have 12 posts of yours held in the Moderation queue. The reason they aren’t leaving the Moderation queue is because they’re multiple paragraph harangues about what a “monster,” “moron,” “homo,” “asshole” – and so on – I am.
You also make veiled threats (“shut your shit down,” “… don’t expect for anyone to come and help you when your words can no longer back up your ass,” etc.)
I’m not interested in that kind of “debate.”
Your personal attacks weren’t published because they are personal attacks. Not because we have a difference of opinion in re the burnout incident and AGWs.
If you respond without making personal attacks and veiled threats, your posts will be published.
I understand your disagreement with me over the burnout incident. You are entitled to your opinion. And I am entitled to mine. What I’m really interested in is your response to my questions about AGWs, which you’ve yet to respond to. You have not answered my question about the morality of anyone forcing someone else to pay their salary (this applies to more than AGWs, obviously). You have not responded to my question about the morality of “enforcing laws.”
I’m genuinely interested – and I believe a fact-based, reasonable discussion is valuable. That’s why I keep trying to get you to respond… but all you’ve done so far is abuse and denounce me.
Hey, Herr General, what gives you the right to “clover” anyone anyway. Even if you didn’t want to do it. So who did? LOL And “clovering” someone seems to me as the equivalent of hitting someone with their purse. But thank you. It makes it easier to see where my relevant comments are. Well not the most relevant, but the ones you took offense to Herr General.
Ron Paul would be proud of you. You put the face onto the Libertarian movement that Libertarians would like to distance themselves from. And I want my sticker now. I was dumb enough to send you $20 when I didn’t realize that you were autistic. Am I going to get my sticker or are you going to throw a fit, stomp your feet and say no,……neeeeeevvver?…..But I will, I want my clover!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You have posted that comment where the Eightman is calling me a pussy and he wants to kick my ass. LOL Another story he can make up. LOL He should change his name to Eightball. Yeah, he’s a professional trucker. I bet he can tell you stories about all of the trucker bombs that he threw out of his truck window. And also about taking dumps in the middle of nowhere in West Texas. Yep, they changed that dumping law just for him. He just couldn’t hold it. LOL
I know he has gained so much knowledge from hanging around at truck stops for me to compete with . I’m also pretty sure that he evangelized all the hookers there. Well at least he tried by saying Oh God, Oh God!!!!!!!! I think the AGW’s are here.
Winston,
I’ve been trying really hard to have a civil discussion with you – to get you to reply (with facts) to the points I’ve raised. Instead, you spew abuse, at myself and others here. If you have a case to make, then please make it. I’m not hiding from you. If you can show me I’m wrong – using facts – I’ll happily concede it. I like to be right – but only on the merits. How this makes me “autistic” and “cognitively dissonant” I have no idea.
I’d really to just debate this AGW business – if you’re willing to do so on an adult level.
On the sticker: It was sent, but I will send you another if you’ll shoot me an email with your mailing address.
Clover,
What gives me the right to moderate – and “Clover” – abusive posters on my site? I’ll let you think on that one for a bit…
And why are you calling me “Herr General”? I am not preening around in a military costume with five stars on my lapel – or even a chevron on my shoulder! You miss the humor – and the absurdity – of a civilian AGW pretending to be a commissioned officer in the military.
Listen, if you read ALL of my comments I think that you would see that my points were very clear and spoken calmly while you never addressed any of them. You just kept harping and harping about AGW’s and never addressing the FACT that these gang members shut down an interstate and put people’s live in danger. And you still won’t. So you pushed and pushed patting anyone that agreed with you on the head and kept ignoring anyone that had the same view of the incident as I did. Then when these minions of yours, and you personally, basically started to question my sanity I had had enough. And by just focusing on the one point that you had left in your arsenal, which was the overreaction of the police, where there was none, and tying it to the other incident made no sense. But you wouldn’t admit that, and you still won’t. That’s why I called you autistic. And now holding my comments for a day in your personal moderation didn’t help things either. So when my comments don’t get posted I feel that I’m talking to personally. Now you post them a day later because you think my personal comments to you will make me look like a fool and you will enrage you minions again to come to your aid. Yeah, it’s a game and you’re in control. Yeah, I’m abusive, but you and your minions aren’t. You’er not abusive? By never addressing the FACTS that I put out and accusing me of not putting forth any FACTS is abuse. It’s the kind of abuse that divorces are made of.
Winston,
You’ve yet to address any of the points I made in re AGWs; why not address them? Instead you level serial personal attacks and then cry foul when I place you in the Moderation queue because of these.
Not because you and I disagree over whether AGWs over-reacted to a burnout.
I understand your position; you think it was criminal and outrageous to briefly close a road and do a burnout and flip the AGWs the birdie – and that the AGWs acted appropriately. My position is it was basically mischief and not criminal because no harm was meant. And the point of my article was simply to contrast the severe reaction by the head AGW to this incident of no-harm-meant or caused mischief with the reaction of the same AGW to the inarguably criminal actions of his “officers,” who without question intended to cause harm to innocent people by beating the crap out of them, macing them and arresting them on trumped-up charges.
You say “this makes no sense.” I disagree. I think it makes a great deal of sense because it shows what the priorities of the Herr General (and AGWs) are.
We will obviously never agree as regards the appropriateness of the reaction to the burnout; but I am surprised by your indifference to the entirely different reaction of the Herr General to the beatdown/macing/arresting under color of law – and baffled by your apparent inability to grasp the point I was trying to make by contrasting the two.
….he couldn’t get his mind right.
Go read ALL of my comments again. I addressed all of the issues that YOU claim that I didn’t address. I mean this is nuts.
If I want to have a conversation like this I will just call my sister. She’s autistic but won’t admit it either. And when she refuses to stay on a subject where Facts are presented to her clearly and calmly she will go off on any tangent she can create. Usually by picking up on one word that you said and wanting to debate that word. And as you become more irritated with the situation she will accuse you of raising your voice and becoming argumentative. Do you see any similarities here? No, I didn’t think so. And if you look at the comment above where I totally agreed with you about AGW’s and the burnout, that wasn’t enough for you either. Yeah, I’m the problem. I’m sure that my sister will agree with you. She’s that loyal to her own views too.
Clover,
What’s “nuts” is your adamant refusal to answer a few simple questions in re AGWs. Instead, you accuse me of being autistic – which is interesting, given I’ve managed to make a living for decades as a professional communicator.
Which, per one of my observations about AGWs, I manage to do without forcing anyone to pay my salary. Can the same be said about any AGW?
I think you may be running into the standard IQ gap problem. You, being (apparently as displayed) a reasonably bright person, are communicating in a language barely decipherable to those 20-30 IQ points lower.
These people don’t have a highly developed vocabulary so the words you use will often be vaguely familiar to them having seen them before but never having actually properly understood the definitions. At best they have a sort of, cobbled together from various misunderstanding, vague understanding of the definition.
If you want a glimpse of what they see when you write, take any article, run it through Bablefish or other translator, English to German, then back to English. Not exactly the same, but it will give you a reasonable approximation of what their brain does with your words. Do it twice to see Clover comprehension.
Thanks, Anon…
I think you’re on to something there. Rand referred to it as “the anti-conceptual mentality,” by which she meant an incapacity to reason in terms of principles. Instead, the person “knows what he knows” but cannot articulate it cogently, nor defend it in a principled manner.
An interesting commonality I’ve noticed is the tendency of such people to argue – to fulminate – over positions not taken by those they take issue with.
Sometimes, it makes me question my sanity!
Ah, yes. An easy filter I have used before.
Ask most people what principle they are basing their assertions or beliefs on. When they waver, ask then to define what a principle is. If that is beyond their abilities there simply can be no meaningful communication.
These people should be treated like the ‘Johnny Walker prophets’ on display at any bar. Entertaining for a spell, but best not engaged with any sense of purpose, unless you are OK with breaking their nose (metaphorically or otherwise) when they finally lose their shit over you exposing them as the fools they are.
This could go any number of places. But Rand’s conceptual rigidity takes it:
“It’s for your own good.” Whether that leverage is ever true for the one being levered, or not, parental prybar use should have an expiration date, shouldn’t it?
Well, it does expire. And so the words that justify continued trespass are changed. “You derive benefit.”
The free riders that oops! made a baby, & then rode the baby for its own good to age of “consent” or “emancipation” will bellow, pure projection style, that “free riders” are trespassers.
And trespassing free riders makes the continued leverage legitimate. Sure it does.
“It’s for our own good” doesn’t sound so good, tho, so the word lube gets slathered again. “We have the right…it’s our right.”
Cuz we & our have the utilitarian might which defines the right. Sure it does.
The fraud of force can always be worded to sound legit. Noble, even. And the psych weakness of cogdis sapiens has no choice but to wordlube fraud generously, since otherwise, they’d not be able to make it through a single day “intact.”
It takes a village…which is what shard retentive Sybills, fight clubbers – each & every shattered one – are.
Superficial appearance-wise, absent the psychology, it takes a village idiot.
“Idiot” synonyms denizen.
PTSD in Stockholm Love\s its founding fathers. & mothers.
Which is why & how “this is going to hurt me more than you” gets handed down.
And why “the best,” a la Mencken, others, tend not to reproduce.
“The best” are merely honest about just how conditional the human condition is.
“Conditional” synonyms lube.
“Condition” synonyms jobbery.
And that rhymes robbery not coincidentally.
I caught a fresh water eel once. I saw its head poking out of a hole in the side of a drainage ditch, offered it the end of a stick, & it bit & wouldn’t let go. (Similar to that snappin’ turtle in Cool Hand Luke…also similar in that it got ate, for lunch, too.) So I hauled it out of its hole & dropped it, still clamped to the stick, into a pillowcase. It thrashed vigorously, like the wild tube of peristaltic muscle it was. And the lube slime it secreted from every pore coated the inside of that pillowcase. Made it waterproof. I know cuz I half filled it with ditchwater, & the ditchwater was still there 5 miles back home later. Kept that eel in the bathtub. Just for a little study while. One thing I learned was that you can’t bare handle a 3’ eel. There ain’t no handles. There’s just slippery ooze. And a set of jaws of life-taking that you do not want clamping down on you.
That’s it, right there.
“Daddymomma, if life’s a bowl of cherries, what am I doing up to the pits in randy Bolivars?”
“It’s your scheming place in the scheme of things. It’s for your own good. Because I’m the daddymomma. This is going to hurt me more than it is going to hurt you. Simon sez don’t bogart the Bolivar…pass it around the joint stock (moo) company village, idiot.” …∞∞∞
Fraternity of manimal: rollllllllllllllllll another one, Sisyphus…peristaltic slime tube’s got its periscope up its own ass, down its own throat…roll on, ouroboros….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=8f-BUt0Eywg
Hi Winston,
I have read ALL of your comments and your right, in the beginning they were clear and spoken calmly. But, you quickly moved to insults and false characterizations of what others had said. My opinion of what the “kids” did is closer to yous than Eric’s but, in my mind, their action was significantly less “criminal” than the unprovoked beatdown. You repeatedly insisted that the main point of the article was to exonerate the “kid’s” behavior, it was not. You went on to claim that “everyone” here was doing the same, an obviously false assertion. You claimed, incorrectly, that the incidents have nothing to do with each other, which is bizarre because the point of the article was to compare the official reaction to the two events and use it to illustrate the skewed moral priorities of the AGW’s.
You see, this essay was an exercise in what, when I was young, was called “compare and contrast”. You could have merely claimed that you thought this was a bad example, that the “kid’s” behavior was far worse than portrayed, etc… You did make those claims but you went on to insist, over and over again, that the point of the article was to exonerate the “kids”. This is obviously false, and that is what I, and others objected to. Note the title, “Burnouts and Beatdowns”. Note this sentence, “It’s interesting to contrast the overreaction to this burnout with the indifferent reaction of AGWs like the Herr General to crimes committed by AGWs”. This shows that the point of the article was relate the two incidents and compare the reaction to each. Of course, you can disagree with the interpretation, fine. But, you keep insisting that the actual point of the article was to exonerate the kids, and then insult everyone who challenges you on that point.
Jeremy
Like I said, I’m not defending the police so much, as the disgust I feel for people to overlook criminal activity on one side to attack criminal activity on the other. And in this case it’s clear that everyone seems to want to exonerate the shutdown of the interstate to fit their agenda. To me that is just as dangerous.
Hi LW,
What the kids did may be criminal in a statutory sense; i.e., they did something illegal. But it’s not in the same category as beating people up – is it? The kids weren’t looking to cause harm; they were looking to burn rubber. The two AGWs were looking to beat the crap out of people who’d committed no crime.
I juxtaposed the two to make a point about AGWs – and to explain why kids (and others) might be motivated to flip AGWs the bird.
I wish I could get you to respond to my questions about AGWs as such. I’d like to know whether you believe they have a moral right to force others to pay their salaries and whether you think what they do – enforce laws (regardless of the rightness those laws) – is morally legitimate.
Hi LW,
“…it’s clear that everyone seems to want to exonerate the shutdown of the interstate…”
Channeling Inigo Montoya, “clear…, you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means”.
You continue to assert that the point of the article was to exonerate the “kids”, and that “everyone” is doing the same. What’s “clear” is that both of those claims are false.
Jeremy
He’s got his revered words Eric. & you’ve got yours.
The battle of the bands can never end, because for all the symbols flung at all the heads, none are decapitated (even if they are decapitated…cuz the queue), & only one, only every great once in a while, ‘goes on to become’ what s\he already always was (so listen to the purist-sadist “not my tempo”•rize his rationalize for to set the kid up for the killing blow):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6lFs5gbv_k
•••
Ah, so, grasshopper (who fared not so well in Aesop): actions speak louder than words …
And the action of equating action “against” the magic words (mere mala in prohibitum – secular sacriledge! sacre bleu laws! — mere statutory penstrokes – that can be anything, including 180 reversed\erased, before the first o\inkers can blink – tho, like with the metastasizing cannabis scam, usually *not* that quickly: the oinkers need time to color the “new” laws in their favor, first, just as the old laws were colored…) with the action against the actions of actual harms (mala in se, or even just unintended\accidental) to actual people … speaks the volumes that mutes your speakers.
You been Pelosi’d, by your ownself, autonomically. There ain’t no cure cuz it ain’t disease; it’s design. Defective, poor fabrication, but design nonetheless.
Crime is crime – but not because your handlers, exogenous *&* endogenous, say\write it is (or isn’t) & then sic you on “enforcement”.
“Victors” write the “laws,” same as the “history.”
And write both pretty much non-stop.
GI Joe command chain citizen is prolly up to 6 unknown felonies a day, by now.
But wait, there’s more, Ronco shop clerks!
All that fiction prose’ing posing as real & true is also great “job” security for AGW grasshoppers.
Right up until winter…the grasshopper-caused micro\local-global cooling kind…for which there won’t be much pity, or compassion.
What goes, comes.
Fearless Fosdicks’re gonna’ freeze. Winter is not the collaborator’s season.
But then Spring’ll come. And the fearful bulbs will sprout & bloom anew. And the nominations for replacement Fosdicks will ensue.
The cyclotron of “life”: “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
•••
There’s fabricators & then there’s fabricators.
When it comes to symbol Reverence, the “R” gear is the only one in the box.
Compare that demolition derby jalopy to this (This clip just serendipitously fronted my search for the Whiplash piece.):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCjy9cU-3NA
•••
Sticks & stones break the most bones that symbols have lionize-licensed the breaking of.
Piggy: “I got the conch!”
Roger: “That don’t trump my rock!”
Piggy won’t be home for dinner, but when Roger gets back to “civilization,” he may well “mature” into an employer of Piggy-types to wrap his rocks in velvet symbology.
Rocks don’t fall too far from the mama.
“Learn how to fall” sez Rhymin’ Simon. But bounded function “learning”’s got nada to do.
So “teachers” got the same kinda’ “job” security as AGW’s – whether they “work” for mama State, or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TY_hbcb74E
But…ain’t it fun? (Yeah, completely contingent, again\too.)
I’m not only leery that CIVILIAN law enforcement officials adopt ridiculous insignia for their costumes, akin to some banana-republic self-styled “Generalissimo”, but that they’ve become, in effect, paramilitary forces, willing to dole out gratuitous violence to those that either have offended them (the highest order of “crime”, if their reaction is an indicator) or to those that they’ve passed summary judgement against, not unlike the (thankfully) fictional Judge Joseph Dredd. It’d almost be hilarious, save that (1) in practicality, there’s little recourse the typical citizen abused by these costumed cretins has, and (2) that they’ve become more of a danger than the supposed criminal element that allegedly justifies their existence (i.e, the “thin blue line” MYTH).
What I find interesting is that when this country was founded, police forces as we know them today simply didn’t exist. What constabulary or sheriffs there were were few and far between. Funny, I don’t recall that one’s mortal life was in danger, walking the streets of 1790 Philadelphia or New York, as compared to same in 2020, WITH cops! Think about it.
I don’t remember either. But it’s not the cops you have to worry about in Philadelphia. It’s the gang members who also commandeer interstates. And the cops are outnumbered. The citizens aren’t, but seem to not be able to defend themselves as they did in the past. Neighborhoods tended to protect themselves from outside criminals. But today it seems that neighbors don’t know each other and totally depend on the police. So it’s the cops that take on the burden in good neighborhoods and bad. And while tying this I feel that I have already made this point on this this thread somewhere. Everyone has their hands full with criminals. The police brutality I guess has some of it’s roots in who is will to take these police jobs and the amount of criminality that they have to deal with daily.
Hey, but I’m a cover living in a large city. Eric is out to pasture in a county that has 1760 people in the whole county. I don”t know exactly how many people live within a square mile of me, but it’s easily more than 1760. And they are not 90% white.
Yeah, views from the pasture are different than the view from the cities.
LW,
No question, there is a problem with unofficial criminality. But is it not interesting that in the areas where this problem is greatest, the citizens have been legally deprived of the right to armed self defense? And who has deprived them of the means of self-defense? In my “out to pasture” area, there is almost no violent crime – and very little “gun crime” – and yet, almost everyone has several guns. AGWs do not protect us. We protect ourselves.
The people you mention, who are at the mercy of criminals, are at their mercy because they have been disarmed… by AGWs.
I understand you want to rely on the protection of AGWs. I reply that the courts have ruled AGWs have no legal obligation to protect anyone – but only to enforce the law. And that I prefer, as a free man, to rely on myself for protection. This includes protecting my wallet against those, like yourself, who believe they have a moral right to shove your hands into my wallet – with a gun at my head if I resist – to force me to pay for “protection” I did not ask for and have no desire to finance.
Let me tell you this, you know nothing about me. And I don’t want to get into your wallet. I have a CCL and I carry every day. And not because I think it’s cool or I’m some sort of Rambo. I feel that I need to. In fact I do need to. I don’t think I can convey that to some who doesn’t.
Chicago and Illinois haven’t been disarmed yet. You can carry concealed in Chicago, though if you read what people think they don’t realize this and rail about how disarmed Chicago is. Things actually changed for the better here after a long fight. But it will go backwards too for sure in the future. You know, red flag laws and due process later statements.
So when was the last time you pulled your gun to protect yourself? When was the last time you walked in a big city? When was the last time you were set up for a home invasion? When was the last time your life was threatened? If you come here I could pretty much guarantee that you wouldn’t be saying the things that you are saying. And if you got surrounded by youths I bet you would reach for your phone first instead of a gun. It wouldn’t help you to reach for your phone anyway. They would just take it from you and give you a beatdown that you might not survive.
Yeah, driving around where you live and observing the the scenery is different than driving around here and observing the scenery. That’s why you want to get rid of the police where you live, you want them there to police your driving. That’s all that they are needed for there. Here it’s a totally different story. Why can’t you see that?
LW,
I never claimed to know anything about you. I have merely been attempting to debate with you. You, on the other hand, presume to know a great deal about me. Interesting, since we’ve never met.
You keep making the argument that AGWs are necessary… according to you. I have a different view. If you wish to pay for the services of AGWs, by all means. But I reject the idea that because you value the services of AGWs, it is my obligation to provide funds for them.
You appear to have a problem discerning the difference between what you value and forcing others to value it.
And you haven’t responded to my points in re the morality of “enforcing laws” – just because it’s “the law.”
Eric,
Most liberals think of libertarians as conservatives. Most conservatives think of libertarians as liberals. Most libertarians think of liberals and conservatives as authoritarian collectivists, most of whom have never tried to think any other way than on the left-right political spectrum which is socialistic from the communists on the left end to the fascists on the right end.
Most libertarians have gone largely underground instead of being demonized by liberals and conservatives that keep trying to adopt the label without having the chops.
So what would a Libertarian do (WWLD) if they had ‘control’ of the country. Open the borders and disarm the police. Get rid of all taxes imposed for the common good? I would hope that they would get rid of all the tariffs and EO’s too. Yeah, they would get rid of all the laws that infringe on them or their neighbor. Yep, turn this country back to 1783. But also keep that fence on their property so they can do what they do in peace. They also would turn everything over to volunteers, but they wouldn’t volunteer, because they don’t have to if they don’t want to. I see Libertarians as altruists. Yep, tear down all barricades to the now land of the free that they have created. Yeah, that’s going to work. And everyone will become magically good, and moral because they are now working for themselves and supporting themselves through their hard work.. There will only be one law, The Golden Rule, and everyone will follow this rule or else. Sounds good to me.
Hey, anyone looking for a brand new “Ron Paul 2012 bumper sticker? I have a few left. So what happened in the primaries that year?
This country has bigger problems than just a few bad cops. But hey, the media shows those incidents and the sheep run with it. While the sheepherders laugh at how easily the sheep are led from one issue to the other to divide them. There is not one issue out there today that isn’t put out there not to divide people. Discussing the ideologies of the R’s, D’s and L’s is all a part of it. Common good and common sense be damned.
I here there was a bomb dropped in Baghdad. No worries, he wasn’t a D, R, or L killed. And it’s all for the common good of the nation. Right. Yep soon the cops will have those weapons. So why not see how they work first. Everyone wants the troops home but they don’t come home. Now who is really in charge here. Now there’s a question to debate.
LW,
You make an old – and tiresome – argument. It is that under Libertarianism problems would remain. You denounce the better on the basis of it not being perfect. It would be perfect in one way, though: No one would be subject to legal/bureaucratized harm on the basis of actions or non-actions which caused no harm to the person or property of another. Yes, you might have to deal with an obnoxious or even violent neighbor or common street thug. As opposed to an obnoxious and violent government worker – whom you may not legally “resist” (that is, defend yourself against).
I know which system I prefer.
If you decide to come here, I guarantee that you will look like a 7yr old house cat that has been thrown outside for the first time in it’s life. Yeah, calling the police to find your home again where you just sit on the window sill and form you views scratching at the window. Or you might look like Tweety Bird the old lady ain’t around and the cage door is open. LOL
I know, you took your bat and ball and went home. And you ain’t coming back. Well the other kids are going to pull their money and get a common use ball and bat. Don’t come back to the playground. You have no control there anymore.
LW,
Has the thought occurred to you that I live where I live because I can live here to avoid having to deal with violent thugs as a constant threat? Even the AGWs here are less thuggy – because they are fewer and farther apart. I used to work in DC – a very thuggy part of it. I chose to not work there anymore.
Your argument is that violent urban areas are dangerous and ergo AGWs are necessary. That is your opinion. But it does not address the moral argument I have made. The principle at issue. “Necessity” – as defined by X – does not entitle X to threaten “Y” with violence. This is the core thing you seem unable to understand – and discuss.
Oh yeah, the movie “The Gangs of New York” told a story of the early years in those towns. I just remembered.
And the police incidents are so far below what the criminals incidents are it’s not worth comparing either. Unless you live out in the pasture where you don’t actually know what’s happening with the boisterous youths in the cities. Here’s a link that surely won’t be posted.
http://www.cwbchicago.com/
LW,
I understand your position – the problem is that you won’t address the specific points I’ve raised. Your position is that AGWs – cops, if you prefer – are necessary and desirable. That they do “good works” more so than bad. I disagree, in principle – and have articulated clearly why. Several times. I have pointed out that no one – including AGWs – has the moral right to force anyone else to pay their salary or accept their “services.” I understand you consider this an extreme/unrealistic position. Maybe so. But that doesn’t obviate the principle I’m getting at.
I have specifically explained the difference between “law enforcement” and peace keeping; pointed out that probably most and certainly a great deal of the “services” AGWs provide (at gunpoint) involve enforcing laws upon people who’ve caused no harm to anyone.
I have elaborated the Libertarian principle that no one who has not caused harm to the person or property of another person should be threatened with violence merely because some “law” has been violated.
You call me a “Liberaltarian” – which is bizarre given liberals are authoritarian collectivists and Libertarians oppose authoritarian collectivism, whether of the liberal or conservative variety.
You seem to be the latter. A “conservative.” You support “limited” government; that is, a degree of authoritarian collectivism – imposed in a manner you think proper. You have every right to hold this view. As I have to question it. A debate of the relative merits is worthwhile – and I’m game – provided you can do so intelligently, on the basis of facts.
I got my mind right now!!!
All cops are AGW’s. All AGW’s are thugs. It was just a burnout. Get rid of all AGW’s. All they do is steal money.
All cops are AGW’s. All AGW’s are thugs. It was just a burnout. Get rid of all AGW’s. All they do is steal money.
All cops are AGW’s. All AGW’s are thugs. It was just a burnout. Get rid of all AGW’s. All they do is steal money.
Winston
Clover,
All cops are AGWs. Is this debatable? They are armed, they work for the government. True – or false?
All AGWs are thugs. I have explained why.
It was just a burnout. You worry something more might have occurred. But it didn’t. It was just a burnout.
All AGWs do steal money. They are paid with money stolen from others and they outright steal it – via what is styled “civil asset forfeiture” – and via “fines.”
True – or false?
I wish you would at least try to deal with these questions rather than stomp your foot and hurl abuse like . . . an autistic kid.
I have a feeling that these guys who will jump through the most idiotic hoops to defend you, and are patted on the head when they do that, are probably your biggest lobbyists. How Libertarian of you to protect them first. Hypocrite, I’m going to have to look that word up again. But I think that it fits here.
Clover,
I’ve put you in the Moderation queue because your comments are abusive – personal attacks. Not because you disagree with me. You have written at least a dozen replies, not one of which replied to my questions about AGWs. This indicates you have no answers – which annoys you. So you hurl insults rather than concede my points are factually correct.
I feel that I have been body slammed too by a LGW (Libertarian Government Worker). So where do I go to get compensation for that?
Yes I know I will never get to plead my case in front of the LGW court system because it’s just so like, Libertarian. And since you have taken control of all things Libertarian you can make up laws as you please. Yeah, they may not be written down, but there are certain unwritten faux pas that will not be taken lightly by Her General.
So what’s the rat in the cage name. Maybe I can talk it out of what it wants to do to my face. You know, like I can explain to Mickey that we are both caged in a sense. His visible and mine not so much.
I know that I’m helping you. Hopefully to make you better. And not to make you better at what you do. LOL
Clover,
How am I a “Libertarian Government Worker”? This is the strangest confection yet! I work for myself – and my readers, none of whom are forced to pay my salary (unlike AGWs).
I wish you’d simply try to deal with the substantive points I’ve raised. If you are genuinely interested in a reasonable discussion, at any rate. But I suspect you’re annoyed with me because I have questioned the right of anyone to force someone else to pay his salary and criticized AGWs.
Well, ok – but are my criticisms invalid? Am I wrong – on the facts? Please, explain.
Winston I actually agree with everything in this one post out of a hundred from you. Cops do nothing and if you need one youre screwed. you got one right!
I get the reaction difference from government, it’s like impeaching Trump over a shape of clouds reading into a phone call while GWB never got impeached and still walks free. However I think a better thing to choose is the indifference of these cops to the victims of real crimes but they have all the time in the world to someone who doesn’t respect their authoritah. These cops aren’t even concerned about the motorists who were delayed, etc. It’s an affront to them and that’s why they are putting the effort in.
I read an article of yours from 2012. The comments from the people who were here in 2012 sounded so much more informed then, than the commenters here today for some reason. I don’t know if they died off because they died, or died off because of the your views that slowly have seeped to the surface. I would hope that those people are still alive. Because replacing them with the bootlickers that you have here was a big mistake. I think it was you that caused this for some reason. They probably saw this site as a dead end. Yeah, they got to talk to each other, but had to hold their nose to the guy that ran this site. I don’t really know what turned them away then, but I can see today what can turn a person away from this site. And it’s you.
LW,
This is the third post of yours which contains no facts, no coherent argument/rebuttal of any kind. Just sour personal attacks against me and others. It’s especially funny that you would accuse anyone here of “bootlicking” given that principled Libertarians despise authoritarianism of any kind and the consistent theme of everything I write is opposition to “bootlicking.”
What is wrong with you? It’s a serious question.
Hi Eric,
“What is wrong with you? It’s a serious question.”
LW IS an AGW, that’s what’s wrong!
After reading all the comments it seems no one has illuminated the real crux of the article offered by Eric.
Perhaps a venture over to the Western Rifle Shooters Association website to read the article “To Shoot a Cop” will throw some light on what is coming.
Hi Doug,
Yup; see my post below in reply to LW; hoping he responds – and not with accusations about my sanity
I dunno. Seems like this guy is quite hellbent on defacing you over a minor disagreement. Obviously, the word ‘civil’ is not part of his vocabulary.
Wow! I don’t think I’ve ever responded this many times to any of your articles since I joined. This is definitely one for the books!
Hi Bluegrey!
I try – I truly try – avoid hitting the Clover Key. But after a certain point, what else is there? With regard to LW: I have ex-friends like him, who consider themselves “conservatives” who (so they say) distrust the government and want small government. Great! That means we don’t want more “law enforcement,” right?
Oops. Touched a nerve there.
“Great! That means we don’t want more “law enforcement,” right?
Oops. Touched a nerve there.”
Exactly! I get the same reaction whenever I post similar comments over on YT. The moment any of us mentions doing away with law enforcement (not police, per se, but law enforcement), everyone seems to go into a death spiral. They assume that we want chaos, when in reality, we simply want to be left alone to go about our business, provided we do the same in return. Sure, we may not agree on everything, but all we ask for is respect. At least, that’s how I was raised.
Hi Bluegrey!
Exactly. The term, “law enforcement” is hugely dangerous. It says nothing about right – or wrong. Just that the “law” must be “enforced.” Well, the Gestapo and NKVD also were law enforcers. Some of these (the Nazi variety) defended what they did in exactly these terms after the war. I was just following orders; i.e., enforcing the law.
It is probable that at least 90 percent of the laws being enforced are nothing more than bureaucratic thou shall nots (and thou shalls) . .. or put another way, “offenses” against the state – which has no existence except as a rhetorical device and so no rights which can be violated, morally speaking.
Only human individuals exist – and a crime, properly speaking, only occurs when an actual human being has been harmed on purpose by the actions of another. Lesser harms – the result of carelessness and so on – aren’t crimes, properly speaking (though the individual who caused the harm is still responsible). In both cases, the person who caused the harm should be held accountable.
But people how haven’t caused harm have a right to be let alone until they do cause harm.
Well. Rule of law. Equality before the law. A nation of laws. That stuff is old hat. And the enforcement sprockets that drive the chains are ipso facto “implicit.” So, the point is, or should be, what’s it – all the legalese – all about, Alfie?
And lets start, for sake of efficiency, by conceding what it’s *not* about.
It’s not about what’s optic’d in the mobiles dancing above cribs.
It’s not about what’s Iron Maiden’d in between bells pre-k-12.
It’s not about the crème de la coup universalizing of university.
It’s not about the pos reinforcement feedback & forward loopery of intoning the drilled catechisms to & within & amongst the choir.
Except for how all that contributes to, eases & facilitates, the grasping of what it’s all about:
It’s about rent seeking advantage.
And the mechanism, the engine that spins the sprockets, is the magical “thinking” – bells ringing, salivaries autonom.i.c.’ing — that, for most, words & language represent.
So. The old hat is the old mad hatter. And always has been. One nation of laws, under Mercury Stetsons – & dental plugs (quick, get the fluoride!) — for all.
And the followers of the old mad hatters, by biological constitution, & after being extruded thru a gauntlet beatdown of epic length, & who are thus no longer physically capable (if they ever were) of Sherlockholmes, don the hardhats & helmets of crash test dummy Stock(moo!)holms, instead.
And autistic Temple Grandin’s is always there to help.
The sprockets drive the chains of the cycle of abuse. Homo sadomasochist sapiens.
You can learn a lot on a racetrack.
And it’s all racetrack.
Got pulled by a bike cop once. Don’t recall exactly what I did to convey contempt. But it worked. Apoplexy. Spittle flying. “You will respect me!” he managed to wordstring.
Point is that people with low (to no) facility with words revere them, worship them, even more than the ones with facility worship & revere them.
“We got Kings over Queens!”
“We got Magna Carta!”
“We got Declaration-Articles-Constitution!”
“We got aggressively anarchistic NAP!”
Raise around the poker rosie & when everybody finally shows, everybody’s got 5 aces. And spares in sleeved reserve.
But no spare tires.
Someone painted “April Fool” in big black letters on a “Dead End” sign
I had my foot on the gas as I left the road and blew out my mind
Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare
Eight miles straight up downtown somewhere
I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in
Dropped into Skinner’s skint alive conditioning box is what condition many a condition’s in.
Mickey Newbury wrote, & did the best version. But the guy that covered it to highest sales also observed-advised:
You got to know when to hold ’em,
Know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away,
And know when to run.
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealing’s done.
Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep.
‘Cause every hand’s a winner,
And every hand’s a loser,
And the best that you can hope for
Is to die in your sleep.
Plus, he helped the Eagles to fledge. Even if he was mainly just helpin’ out another texas boy. And those peyote bird boys had some trues about prisoners, cells, check(mat)ed) in but no check out, authoritarians, etc.
But, contrary to told, music don’t soothe the savage beast.
Moosic does.
Best not be playin’ yer keyboard when the stampede’s headed your way.
The actual role of the Geheime Statspolizei, aka Gestapo, wasn’t simply to feret out Jews hiding from the Nazis. It was to deal with the enemies of the German state in an investigative capacity, much akin to the FBI. It was “secret” simply because it employed informers, spies, and its officers usually worked plain-clothed (i.e., something akin to Major Hochsteddter of “Hogan’s Heroes”, in the Hugo Boss-designed Allegemeine-SS uniform, simply didn’t happen), unlike the Ordnungpolizei, or “Order Police”, whom were always uniformed.
Of course, Nazi Germany didn’t concern themselves with such niceties as a subject’s “rights”, but to be fair, police in most contemporary countries didn’t either, INCLUDING the USA. It’s only with the media bringing to light police abuses, and especially in the past ten or so years with the ability to record and transmit encounters with the cops that these issues have come to light. Which is not a “bad” thing, as SUNLIGHT (i.e., “light of truth”) is the best DISINFECTANT!
So. Eric complains about clovers driving a bit below the speed limit. But blocking traffic on a major urban three-lane INTERSTATE HIGHWAY is OK? For HOW MANY minutes? Me thinks Eric has gone off the deep end. Thank god no one was killed because some law-abiding driver rear-ended a car at the back end of a long line of cars unexpectedly stopped on that freeway as a result of illegal activity far ahead. Had it occurred, I’d want manslaughter charges brought against ALL INVOLVED.
Hi Jay,
I tried to juxtapose the over-reaction of the AGWs with their indifferent reaction to crimes perpetrated by AGWs. I’m sorry I wasn’t more clear!
Jay, I and many other motorists have stopped traffic without endangering lives when letting traffic keep moving would have resulted in more carnage. 10=15 vehicles with emergency flashers going will stop everyone. You don’t need a cherry on top to get traffic stopped safely.
Back in the early 70s, when I was 18, I was drinking coffee and telling tales with some other lonely CBers in a Denny’s at Alameda and Santa Fe in Denver on a Christmas eve, when the lights went off. We found our way to the register and paid our bills, while one of us got on his CB to find out how far the outage went. Then he assigned intersections to each of us. I was assigned Alameda and Broadway, one a four lane one way, the other a four lane two way. A few minutes after I started directing traffic, a police officer parked and walked out to me. He wanted to know why I was directing traffic, and I told him the previous story. I told him that he had more important things to do on Christmas eve and told him I’d be there until the lights came back on. Nearly a hour later, the same police officer reappeared with his CO. They took over directing traffic just before the lights came back on, then they escorted me to my car. They were both amazed that a common citizen would be willing to risk his safety by directing traffic with nothing more than a flare, after which I’d just used my hands after the flare went out. I told them that it just seemed to be what I should do. They thanked me for my public service, wished me a Merry Christmas, and went back to work.
It probably would have been different if I’d been covering for the commission of a crime.
Ach. Being alive endangers live beings.
Last stevedore-mover we hired, died at 36, after a fall, at home.
Some this thread back themselves into arguing that interstates are attention-free & “inconvenience”-free zones, wombs, “by right.”
But only selectively so, of course. And not when the “higher” double’d standard – incl force majeur stuff – blocks or impedes the way.
Cake haver-eaters all want the guillotine, whether they can ever figure that out, or not.
Milquetoast narcissists stare into mirrors, see Charlie Bronson granting others’ death wishes, & never see that *they* are the “others.”
This was meant for the Eight guy!!!!!! The other story teller that’s…..well you know.
LW, “well you know”. What is it we’re supposed to know. That I’m a professional trucker, often on the scene of an accident and able to shut down traffic with my emergency lights along with plenty other people in cars and big trucks? Is that it? Does that hurt your tiny feelings?
A person with a lick of sense is grateful for people who know how to safely shut down a roadway and care for injured. What galls you is me not having a badge and threatening people.
What would an amatuer trucker be like, as compared to a professional trucker?
To be a deemed professional you have to be union approved. And that only takes a few Bejamins now. I knew union electricians that were afraid of only one thing……electricity.
Winston,
This was a reasonable post – thank you!
Hi Vonu,
I don’t get it.
“What would an amatuer trucker be like, as compared to a professional trucker?”
Are you dissin’ Eight’? Just wondering.
Anytime that professional is used to describe those who had to demonstrate the ability to drive a representative truck to pass the Commercial Drivers License test, it is usually done by one of two types of people. Some are those who generally place themselves at the top of the trucking mountain while they are looking down at those of us that they regard as less accomplished. Many of these are what are called truckstop cowboys, and they spend more time sitting in truckstop driver lounges than they do driving. The other, and more annoying, ones are those who have never driven a vehicle requiring a CDL to legally drive a real truck. The most common of these are those who drive pickup trucks and couldn’t get a real truck’s transmission into gear, due to a lack of knowledge that is fundamental to a real trucker.
I don’t have to diss Eight, his Texitis does it well.
Hi Jay,
This is beside the point of my article, but just for discussion: How about random roadblocks set up by AGWs? Aren’t these “checkpoints” – on roads where you don’t expect to have to suddenly stop – also unssssssaaaaaaaafe?
I’ve been stopped in a conga line on Route 221 in my rural SW VA county as the result of a “checkpoint” set up by AGWs… and sat there nervously eyeing my rearview, waiting to be rear-ended by someone who didn’t expect to have to stop …
Or do the physics of it not not apply to AGWs?
And: A guy doing a burnout isn’t demanding my “papers” – or forcing me to prove to his satisfaction that I am not “drunk.”
eric, and then there are construction outfits like Price Road Construction that make a habit of creating a stopping line, inevitably right on the other side of a sharp hill you’re going up and then finding the end of the line quickly on the downside. I still suffer today from a driver looking at his phone and running over me. His truck sent my truck 30′ down the road and tore up the road too. I still suffer from that and the only thing that saved me was NOT having a seat belt on. With a seat belt, the back of the cab would have hit me hard more than once.
So, did anyone blame Price? Nope, and they did that several times in a 45 mile stretch. Too much traffic that had never been on that road to mitigate the situation by expecting such. And they’d put the stop point right around a curve at the end of a long flat straight so everyone would be hauling ass. Price got no tickets though.
You should just give it up already. Seriously. These “kids” as you call them are gang members who commandeered and interstate highway to give a middle finger to the police and everyone traveling on that interstate, while also endangering and menacing those same people. And they have also done this before on a different major thoroughfare, so this also isn’t some random act.
Admit it, you chose the wrong situation to juxtapose your contempt for police overreactions. Yeah, I have contempt for police overreactions too. But in this case the police didn’t overreact.
If you would have separated this two incidents you might of had a case in one, but by tying what these “kids” did, to the police response to this criminal act, to what these other cops did somewhere else is too far of a jump. These two incidents have nothing to do with each other. The police in this case of these criminals endangering people on the interstate, the police acted correctly. In the other cases of police misconduct I guess we will have to wait and see. I mean give credit where credit is do. In defending this case by saying that it was just “kids” just having fun, remember also in this case that the enemy of your presumed enemy is not your friend.
Hi LW,
Why should I admit to what I’ve not done? I used this incident of youthful boisterousness with no harm intended (and no harm caused) and the over-reaction (full Hut! Hut! Hut! mode) to it as compared with the indifferent reaction to AGWs abusing people with harm very much intended – and under color of law – to make a point which seems to elude you.
AGWs are thugs – by definition. All of them. Because every one of them forces others to pay his salary. Because every one of them uses force to impose tyranny on people who haven’t caused harm to anyone (need I elaborate). Because every last one of them carries a gun and uses the murderous violence it implies to compel obedience to unjust, immoral authority.
A secondary point is this: People are sick of thuggy AGWs (which is all of them) and the effective immunity they enjoy. Giving them the finger – as it were – is more than justified.
You’re making a fool of yourself. This refusal to admit that you made a mistake is now coming across as a serious character flaw.
You have now divided your readership between those that will agree with anything that you have to say and those with a little bit of common sense and are able to think for themselves.
Here’s what has eluded you. You have advertisers right? Taking this stand where you see all “police” as thugs is really an extreme stance. And I don’t think that you speak for everyone to say that everyone that posts here also have this view of the police.
“Youthful boisterousness’, come to Chicago and I will show where you can take a walk and find this same type of youthful boisterousness. LOL Yeah, the looting of the stores on the Mag Mile and the carjackings here, too are just utes having a little fun with no harm intended either. Maybe the carjackings are just to they can get on I-94 here and do the same thing,…..all in fun.
All this could have been avoided if you would have just said that I made a mistake on this one……sorry.
Hi LW,
I am happy to concede error when made of aware of one; however, I do not concede that I have made one here. I understand you disagree with me in re my assessment of AGWs.
But that is another matter.
I do not understand your equating of doing burnouts (and even street racing) with looting and carjacking. Do you say they are one and the same things? I understand that you believe some of the people who loot/carjack may also do burnouts and so on. But they are not necessarily the same people. One does not necessarily follow the other, either. I street raced often in my youth. I have “eluded” AGWs. I have never carjacked or looted.
I’m curious to hear your answer as to why I am in error regarding AGWs. I repeat my argument here:
AGWs are thugs – by definition. All of them. Because every one of them forces others to pay his salary. Because every one of them uses force to impose tyranny on people who haven’t caused harm to anyone (need I elaborate). Because every last one of them carries a gun and uses the murderous violence it implies to compel obedience to unjust, immoral authority.
I understand this is not a view everyone shares; it is likely a minority view. But those are irrelevances as regards the facts.
If I am wrong – factually in error – on any point above, I will concede it. But I want facts. I think the discussion is one worth having. I look forward to your reply.
Let me just give you a just little information, because surely every keystroke on this keyboard of mine is monitored. I know more about the police state that we live in, and what they are capable of than you can imagine. But I’m not going to go into any details here.
I’m not naive whatsoever. And I bet that if I told you my story you might think that I’m crazy. Yeah, I’m making this stuff up right. Trust me, I’m not.
Just because you have figured out that the police might not be all officer friendlies doesn’t mean that you are the first to find this out. And I’m not questioning your sanity. At this point I’m wondering if you are autistic.
The only reason that I thought to respond to this article was because you and your minions decided that these gang members who shut down the interstate were just kids having fun. And then when the police decided to act on what they did, you try to equate this with what these two bad cops did. The police chief only defended what the one cop did because it had to be early in the investigation and like what was he supposed to do? Be judge, jury and executioner. I’m sure that there is an internal affairs division to handle incidents like that, and also a court system to determine if charges should be brought or not. And maybe he was outraged too. But he surely can’t say that and turn his whole department into chaos by not at least putting on a front that he is on their side.
The kids on the interstate are guilty, just as the bad cops are guilty. Nobody is saying that all kids who do burnouts should be executed. And nobody should expect the same of all police because of the bad behavior of some of them.
Like I said, I’m not defending the police so much, as the disgust I feel for people to overlook criminal activity on one side to attack criminal activity on the other. And in this case it’s clear that everyone seems to want to exonerate the shutdown of the interstate to fit their agenda. To me that is just as dangerous.
Hi LW,
You still haven’t answered my specific points in re AGWs. I’m interested – seriously – in discussing this. I am not doing this to mock you. I’m genuinely curious.
And note that I am not calling you names.
Once again:
AGWs are thugs – by definition. All of them. Because every one of them forces others to pay his salary. Because every one of them uses force to impose tyranny on people who haven’t caused harm to anyone. Because every last one of them carries a gun and uses the murderous violence it implies to compel obedience to unjust, immoral authority.
I get that you condemn the actions of the kids who did the burnouts. I will even agree with you that closing down the road to do it was obnoxious. But was it criminal – or just mischief? There was no intent to harm anyone. And no one was harmed. Yet the Herr General practically threatens summary execution. Contrast this with his reaction to video evidence of AGWs under his “command” beating the crap out of people.
Ok, I have come to the conclusion that you are definitely autistic. I know a lot more about people who are autistic now than I care to know. But this picking and choosing what you want to talk about is part of it. Go f**k with someone else. Or go get professional help. Rainman never admitted that he was autistic either. They never will . And you won’t either. Now go on and get into the real fight. But take your glasses off first. I would tell you to take the blinders off first, but you wouldn’t take that advice either. Here’s a middle finger to you. Niiiiitttttttwwwwiiiiitttt!!!
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to relay all your knowledge of motorcycle riding where you just lean into corners and use your knee to steer.
I think after all of your recent articles and now all of your recent comments that you won’t have any advertisers left. I only stopped here because I thought that you were up on the politics of the nation. But know I see that you are just a one trick pony. Yep, it’s AGW’s and the Orange Man good. Yeah, go vote harder. And you’re lucky to live where you live. You should have just kept your mouth shut and clovered around on your Kawasaki until you died in that curve thinking of stupid knee steering.
I really didn’t think that is would come to this, but you are something else. (that was nice of me instead what I really wanted to say)
Clover,
A fourth fact-free post! More personal attacks – in lieu of facts!
I’m still waiting for something more than “butt licking” and disparaging of my ability to ride a motorcycle – which has what do with whether the kids who did the burnout meant to harm anyone…?
And they ask me why I drink.
You know, I was really starting to feel you when you had mentioned about folks victimizing criminals and the like. But then you let this one minor disagreement get to your head. Instead of keeping things civil, you went straight to insults. That was definitely uncalled for! This is exactly what TPTB wants us to do: divide and conquer, and you fell right into the trap. Now I’m beginning to question your sanity!
Clover,
Number five. Sigh. You’re clearly unable to formulate an argument to counter mine in re AGWs. I suspect you are an AGW – and thus my argument hit too close to home. Sometimes, the truth is hard. But it doesn’t alter the truth. Being an AGW means you get paid with money forcibly extracted from other people.
Truth, yes?
Do you believe anyone – AGW and otherwise – has the moral right to force another human being to pay their salary?
AGWs enforce laws. Many – arguably most – of these laws are immoral because they apply force or its threat to people who’ve caused no harm to anyone. True – or false?
Do you believe it is moral to harm people who haven’t harmed anyone? Because they “might”? Because “the law” says they must do this – or not do that – irrespective of harms not being caused to others?
If you are an AGW, I’d genuinely like to get your reply – not abuse, but an answer to the above questions. I’m hoping you’ll try. It is a discussion well worth having and it’s possible you’re not a bad person – but rather a person who may never have considered exactly what it means to be an AGW and what AGWs actually do – as opposed to the specious claptrap about “serving” and “protecting” the public.
Ask yourself – honestly, now: What if I or anyone else have not asked for these “services” and would prefer to “protect” ourselves? Are you willing to leave me and others who would like to be free to say “no thanks” to these “services” in peace? Or would you use your gun and the sanctioned violence of an AGW to force me and others to pay your salary?
It’s hard but serious question that deserves a serious answer.
Unless, of course, the answer is too painful to deal with.
Hi, Eric. I’m guessing our buddy “LW” here doesn’t believe in civil discussions. Some of us (including myself) may have questioned and even disagreed with your writing about these guys simply having fun by shutting down a major thoroughfare, but at least we did so respectfully. Don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not going to let this rare occurrence get the best of me. Personally, I think you’re an excellent writer. Don’t let this one instance discourage you from doing what you do best.
Keep up the good work, and I look forward to reading more of your material.
Hi BlueGrey!
The occasional LW is the cost of doing business. I’d be concerned, actually, if the occasional LW didn’t arise. And of course it speaks to the strength of his arguments that he resorts to personal attacks. I will let it play out for a little while. But not beyond the point that it serves a good purpose – i.e., intellectual dissection!
Hi LW,
“And in this case it’s clear that everyone seems to want to exonerate the shutdown of the interstate to fit their agenda”.
This is not clear at all, which has been explained to you repeatedly. That you continue to insist otherwise indicates that you are unwilling or incapable of discussing this honestly.
Jeremy
Yeah, 2+2=5. I’m starting to get it.
LW,
So, are you incapable of having an honest discussion, or just unwilling to?
Hi LW,
“All this could have been avoided if you would have just said that I made a mistake on this one……sorry”.
And, all of this could have been avoided if you had just said, “I understand your larger point, but describing the “kids” behavior as merely “boisterous fun”, undermines it”.
Instead, you stubbornly insist that “Eric’s point in all of this” is to exonerate the kids on the interstate. While I, like you and some others, consider the behavior of those kids to be more than just boisterous fun, exonerating that behavior was not the point of the article. Burnouts, even as done by these “kids”, are not in the same moral universe as beating the crap out of someone for a perceived affront. That the chief, and those in authority, are more outraged by the former than the latter was the main point.
Note this sentence,
“It’s interesting to contrast the overreaction to this burnout with the indifferent reaction of AGWs like the Herr General to crimes committed by AGWs”.
Jeremy
Thanks, as always for the back-up Jeremy!
LW will hopefully respond to my points about AGWs…
What does licking each others butts taste like. I hope there weren’t any backups while this was being done. It could leave a bad taste in your mouths.
“What does licking each others butts taste like.”
Better than your mouth, apparently. Look, I may not necessarily agree with Eric et al about the whole “kids just having fun” thing, but I certainly don’t expect the world to revolve around me, either. You’ve gone too far this time. At this point, you’d be lucky if Eric doesn’t ban you. But judging by your attitude, it doesn’t seem like you would care anyway.
Clover,
This last post of yours amounts to a kind of plea for help . . . with debating. You apparently can’t. I’ve attempted several times to have a civil discussion with you about the incident that was the focus of my article as well as the general subject of AGWs. You are either unable or unwilling to discuss either civilly – or intelligently.
You lower yourself to “What does licking each others butts taste like” – not even punctuated correctly. But the larger point is you’re confirming everything I have said and written about AGWs.
Whatever you think about me, the fact is I don’t earn my living by force. AGWs force others to provide their living. You may consider me juvenile, irresponsible, autistic und so weiter. But I don’t harm anyone – either their persons or their property.
Can any AGW make the same claim?
Gil,
Is that you?
Eric, et al,
This reminds me of the phrase attributed to Robert Heinlein:
“Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig!”. Interesting that LW quoted from 1984, as he seems to have accepted that reality as legitimate….
LW,
Yes, blocking an interstate to do burnouts is a dick move; selfish, inconsiderate and possibly dangerous. Although, drivers are expected to deal with sudden stoppage of traffic, even on highways and, if they slam into the back end of a car coming to an unexpected stop in front of them, they’re at fault. In terms of safety and responsibility it doesn’t matter why traffic comes to a sudden stop, if you can’t respond in time to avoid an accident, you are driving unsafely. Sill, to make it clear that I am not defending the burnouter, blocking an interstate to do burnouts is a dick move. Giving a symbolic middle finger to the cops, not so much. Cops sign up for a job that requires the violation of other people’s rights. I don’t understand why this is noble.
“These two incidents have nothing to do with each other”.
Really?
“Instead, the Herr General defended the AGW’s actions, claiming that one of Billingslea’s victims “did take a swing” at the AGW who was attacking him. Which the victim denies but even if that were true, it would have been in self-defense”.
The entire point of the article was to juxtapose the reaction of the same person to two different events, and use that to show the aberrant mindset of AGW’s. Imagine the depravity of someone who is more outraged by the burnouts, and the anti cop message, than a cop beating the crap out of someone for a perceived affront. This juxtaposition illustrates the fact that many in authority are more outraged by affronts to that authority than crimes against others. Accepting your premise that the cops didn’t overreact to this situation, they did wildly underreact to one of their own assaulting a mere mundane. That was the point, the two events are related. You seem to be more outraged by the burnout, and the disrespect to cops, than the beating. That seems way off to me.
Jeremy
The investigation as to what these two other cops did or didn’t do is still under investigation. The investigation as to what happened on the interstate is over. That’s why I said that we will have to wait and see what becomes of the investigation into the police misconduct issue. It seems that you have already come to your conclusion as Eric has. If justice doesn’t come in the misconduct case then I guess you can connect these two incidents. But as someone else has stated, two wrongs don’t make a right. But as yet the top cop has not exonerated the two cops. Get it? And he shouldn’t from what I can see. Neither should the “kids” on the interstate be exonerated either. Which seems to be Eric’s point in all of this.
LW,
Again, the point is to juxtapose the reaction to two distinct events, Eric made those events related by juxtaposing them. You can say that you think he was wrong to do so, but you claimed that they have nothing to do with each other. They do, because the article specifically linked them, and explained why. Do you really not see this?
“The investigation as to what these two other cops did or didn’t do is still under investigation”.
Police routinely investigate themselves, and routinely exonerate themselves, waiting for the results of such an investigation, as if some truth will be revealed, is absurd. That said, the cop has been sentenced to 2 years probation, does that not indicate that an “investigation” has already occurred? But, your comment is irrelevant to the point of the article which, once again, was to juxtapose the very different attitude toward the two events. One thing should be obvious, if a mere mundane had pulled someone out of his car and beat the crap out of him, the official response would have been very different. That person would have been immediately arrested and, before all of the facts were known, almost certainly vilified by the police and the media. But, the blue tribe almost always defends its own, no matter how egregious the violation. So, the expressed outrage, over a far less morally significant event, comes across as disingenuous and self serving. Do you really not see that this, not exoneration of the “kids” on the interstate, was the main point?
Jeremy
Hi LW,
Actually, it’s not “under investigation.” In the case referenced in the article, the AGW pled guilty to aggravated assault. And even before that, the incident was caught on video. The Herr General had to know his AGW was a thug.
PS: You may be interested in the following reply to another reader who responded to my recent article: https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2019/12/29/reader-question-the-agw-menace/
Hi LW well chicago cops dont give a shit when our highways are taken over by social justice warriors. Not a damn. Not one arrest. For hours. Your comparison to this to carjackings and murders and mayhem I suppose are ridiculous. Equating ‘supposed’ harm to actual harm is nonsensical. I think doing burnouts on a public street and flipping off our oppressors is pretty awesome.
Yeah, you’re right, I mean if a gang member rapes someone that’s rape. If he blocks an interstate that’s totally different. And if he loots a store it’s totally different. It’s all in the good intentions. When looting the store he was never thinking of doing burnouts. So it was like 5 different people identifying as different parts of society. None could be charged with the all of those crimes as one person. They were all different at the time of the crimes. They attained different labels while doing their crimes. It in a different statistic. The rapist couldn’t ever be the looter too. Stupid me.
LW,
“… I mean if a gang member rapes someone that’s rape. If he blocks an interstate that’s totally different.”
Really? You equate blocking the highway to do a burnout with . . . rape?
“And if he loots a store it’s totally different. It’s all in the good intentions. When looting the store he was never thinking of doing burnouts. ”
This is perhaps the most jumbled-up mess I’ve read in weeks. Do you seriously not comprehend that a looter by definition has bad intentions – the harming of others by stealing their property – while a kid doing a burnout is just doing a burnout?
Thanks eric, I was just about to address this lunacy. I’ll never forget the time I did some burnouts and got charged with multiple rapes. It just didn’t seem fair. Hell, I wasn’t getting a dime raping them to buy new tires.
Too bad LW wasn’t there, he could have “whooped my ass”. Ha ha ha ha. I’d love to have seen that. In my day we were hard and strong. At 70 I’m still not a pushover.
My god, we have the greatest strawman builder ever. Ok, not the greatest but trying hard to get the award.
Just a big ol pussy, Always wanting to whip ass
And he’d have done it too if they’d have laid over in the grass. We all grew up with people like this. And they were the ones who never got into it when the shit hit the fan. Honest, Mister, I didn’t have anything to do with it…….but I tried to tell them not to. Oh, I remember those guys well.
If these drivers held up traffic on I-94 in order to perform their juvenile stunts, there are sufficient laws to punish that misbehavior. However, a “law-abiding” driver would not and SHOULD NOT cause a terrible, even fatal accident by rear-ending ANYONE, regardless of the cause of stopped traffic. One act of stupidity doesn’t justify the other, and to demand that the idiots doing the burn-outs be hit with manslaughter charges due to the CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE of another party reveals your ignorance of the law in general, let alone tort laws.
Unrelated to the OP.
Mazda recalls thousands of cars because electronic emergency braking system unwanted activations.
“Mazda Bug Randomly Activates Cars’ Emergency Braking System”
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/12/28/mazda-bug-randomly-activates-cars-emergency-braking-system/
If this had been Antifa or Black Lives Matter blocking the highway I wonder if Herr General would be as upset?
This 22yr old Camaro driver is white it seems. But the people out there with him weren’t all white. The picture that they have of him with his Chicago Bulls ball cap on tells a story. You don’t have to be black to be in a traditional all black gang anymore. Get it? So the top cop isn’t a raycist. And you’re not gong to get all these people out there to do stuff like this if you are not in a gang. Know what I’m sayin’?
Probably not. lol Remember, “minorities” can never do any wrong, even when they are wrong.
Sound familiar?
Is there an actual law against doing burnouts in Michigan?
My guess, probably not. So he is looking to hut hut someone over something that isn’t even a “crime” to begin with.
Why is that not even noted. It’s just a cop creating his own “laws” again. Enforcing whatever the hero says is the “law”……
Guess what? I don’t think that Eric is going to be thanking you “for the back-up” But who knows.
Here’s a question, “How can the cops be expected to admit that they made a mistake when they do, when the people who are accusing them of wrongdoing, when they did nothing wrong, won’t admit that they made a mistake too?”
Yep, deny everything and then make counter accusations comes to mind. Mules will be mules.
Hey, richb, there’s no law against taking a dump in the middle of an interstate either I would imagine. So if the police come and hut!!hut!!hut!! you while you are out in the middle of the interstate stopping traffic with your pants around your ankles, you make sure that you inform them that there is no law against what you are doing. You know, they be making s**t up just to mess wif you.
They would charge him with “Indecent Exposure” (is God’s image indecent?), defecating on (stolen) government property, and lewd behavior.
Brian, it’s so far between towns in Texas they changed the law 20 some odd years ago because people often couldn’t hold it.
There are laws, and then there’s common sense. Regardless whether doing donuts on a major thoroughfare is technically legal or not, these guys were clearly in DGAF mode and showed no concerns for anyone else but themselves.
In the UK it is classified as “Acceleration out of control” because sliding tires cannot be reliably controlled.
Some serious rubber here. But the artist had enough self confidence that he didn’t have to disrupt trafic or turn a cop into a baby:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIj_gj7JTZQ
“Contempt of cop” can be fatal, especially where I live (in the south). They don’t like it. So whatever you are doing criminally is compounded and all bets are off. Around here speeding cops often kill civilians in crashes chasing after goofballs over minor speeding crimes or other suspected offenses. Sometimes police don’t bother w/ lights or sirens on. Too bad if you are killed by some over-excited chaser cop. Tough.
These are rarely if ever over violent criminals who are escaping armed robberies. The excuse is that if “you” the contemptuous offender are openly defying police, then you must be punished forthwith. It is “disrespect” to the Blue Gang that is the real crime. Better learn that early or risk beatings or death. Don’t start believe the myth that police are robots concerned only about “serving and protecting.” They come first, you later if at all. Police “gang mentality” is sanctioned and encouraged.
You should move to Chicago then. Here, if there is a traffic stop for an initial traffic violation by the police, and the person drives off, the police are immediately told not to go after them. They are also aware that they should also not have their lights activated for that might make the person who just drove off on them drive away even faster. It’s now common knowledge to the locals that if a cop initiates a stop to just drive off. Of course then then the police never get to see what’s actually going on in the vehicle, or who is occupying the vehicle. Does that make for good police work? No, of course not. But it saves the city the liability of taking over the responsibility of the person who is fleeing. Yeah, it all makes sense when there are lawyers involved. It’s never the perps fault.
In one recent case that I heard over a police scanner the cop is running the plate of a person sitting in a running car. When the person sees the police behind him, which is at the same time the info on the plate comes back, he takes off. The info from the plate says that the car belongs to a person at the same address that the car left from. Now why would the person do that? The dispatcher and the cop come to the conclusion that this guy just stole this car at 4:30am and is now just driving away because there is no positive reason to give chase, so they just let the car go. Like what’s up with that line of thinking huh?
So these people are rarely violent criminals who try an elude the police in and around you? Then why are they willing to pile on all the charges that running from the police will bring?
I don’t condone illegal searches and seizures, and don’t condone what the police do initiate the violence that they are ready to unleash on people in an instant, but I would like to see that the people who themselves escalate situations to where they are the ones who will be the ones initiating/causing harm to innocent bystanders to be held personally responsible for what they did too. From where I sit I see it all the time where the criminal’s parents are suing the city because their good boy didn’t do nuffin’. And they win. Because they get a jury of their peers. It’s insane. And of course you can’t bring up the perps long arrest record, or his juvenile record because that record is gone. Yeah, the same parents that raised this criminal is now in line to collect on their failure. Go figure.
There is now a failure in the rule of law because there is a failure in common sense across the board. The juries are just as guilty as the justice system that has been corrupted too. The police are in the middle of this plan for the breakdown of common sense. And I’m not defending the police because I know that now they are chosen by politics or their ability to invoke violence at their will. The system is almost completely broken. But the new distaste for all that is law enforcement will not help to insure the changes that need to implemented sooner. All the anti-cop stuff will just turn the few remaining good guy cops to the other side too. So maybe we need to look a little closer at who’s zooming who.
No more rambling. It’s a complicated subject that has to be mostly considered on a case by case basis. But as always a police department is only as effective as to the people who they represent. So how many times do you have to get stabbed in the back by the people who you are representing before you just say f-it, when can I retire. Anyone that wants to be a cop today has to be nuts. There is too much truth to that statement that I’m not even going to go there.
Anyone who read Lysander Spooner’s “Trial by Jury” would know that today’s trial by jury and yesterday’s trail by jury are totally different because the peers of the former jury were totally different than that of today. Back then, the jury’s job was to rule on whether the mens rea was present or not, based on their knowledge of the defendant. Today, mens rea is ignored, producing a totally different jury trial.
Well, if the jury knew who this person was because he was a member of a small community, then I guess they would find him guilty or not guilty by what they would consider his personal intent. Today a jury of your peers just means people who have answered the call of jury duty. Which also means that they really don’t want to be there, they may not look like you, and what they know of the law they learned from at least “The People’s Court” I would hope. And not from Judge Joe Brown (if that’s his real name or stage name I don’t recall either)
Juries are scary. I’ve been on a few. There is always one person, or many, that didn’t seem to hear the same facts as you did. That’s all that I’m going to say about that.
The last time that I was on a jury, which was recently, the more that I said about myself so that I would be excused, the more they must have wanted me because I had said too much. I guess that both sides thought that they could sway me. I was the wild card.
People are basically uneducated today. It’s the education system that screwed them. I was screwed too. I just became more informed in the last decade. Like most people that became informed because of the internet. No more trips to the library if you wanted to get any information. Like who would want to do that anyway. That’s why the internet will micromanaged now too. You will still be able to get information, but what you will get is the party line. The one party line. And they will know if you are toeing that line. So be careful. Mens rea being present is more for a criminal court ruling. These juries that hand out money on civil claims are just helping the people who brought the claims feel that they have just won the lottery. Yeah, if they can keep the numbers high, who knows, they might be next to collect. Especially if they can get the police to chase them, or a hospital to help them. But maybe end up dead in the process. You know, but still being able to take care of their families from down there.
To be ignorant or free are mutually exclusive right?
Kwanzaa was created by the FBI, as explained by Ann Coulter at http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2017-12-27.html
Which law entitles AGWs to obstruct traffic for juvenile speed displays?
And we are going to rely upon assholes like these cops to defend our second amendment rights… God help us all.
God help you if you are ignorant enough to believe that they would have the training or the knowledge to defend anything or anyone. Even the SCOTUS has been clear, multiple times, that police officers owe us no such duties.
I love this column and read it religiously since I’m almost always completely in agreement with Eric.
But he screwed up here. This is not just “kids doing a burnout. There was a gang of them THAT BLOCKED A FRIGGIN FREEWAY TO DO IT!!
If they were just doing it on a back road or in a parking lot then I would agree 100% with it being tyrannical cop overreach.
But blocking a freeway (which could cause deaths by somebody getting rear-ended by a sleepy trucker) is simply inexcusable.
I hate the “hut hut hut” by crazed cops more than anyone but I’m behind them here.
(And yes those two violent cops that were mentioned in the story should be in jail and get criminal records).
Middle of the night, near depopulated Detroit, is prolly similar to a back road or a parking lot.
Been on blocked freeways & roadways many times. Blocked by accidents. Blocked by construction. Blocked by traffic. Blocked by storm flooding, rockslides, snow, felled trees. Blocked by cops.
I wasn’t there, but saw it: the Hoonigan crew, with cop\ernicu\s(not) aiding, blocked roads in Detroit.
An intersection at an overpass was “officially” traffic barrel barricaded & blocked. Which didn’t stop an inconvenienced nitwit (the inconveniences of being a nitwit?) from threading through it to be perpendicular to my truck as I came through on the green. My totalled truck was replaced, the seatbelt injury wasn’t. The nitwit’s truck was replaced, the nitwit wasn’t.
Nitwits & injuries cannot be replaced. No matter who, or what, blocks the road.
All blocks are equal, but some blocks are more equal than others? It takes an animal farm – where no harm no foul never fails to get the fowl frenzied — to raise a nervous ninny. And to raise the anal retents intent upon raising, well, “rearing,” those ninnies, too.
“Fair is foul, Foul is Fair” https://literarydevices.net/fair-is-foul-foul-is-fair/
Just as “prolly” is probably an English word.
People pinned to personalities penchant callin’ out colloquialisms sphincters is so retentive they gots no choice but to colostomy.
But to also set themselves afire, ring the doorbell, & lie down on the doormat…well, there’s no accountin’ for fun when it comes to brown baggers.
you are a liar. the article is about what a major thing was made out of it while detoilet has hundreds of shooting murders.
The difference is that the hundreds of murders weren’t witnessed by police officers.
It’ll maybe become the new rage and many x-ways across the country will experience similar episodes. Which makes the case for ultra fast EV’s…where else can you go drive 130 mph and gt there in 4.7 seconds? This defiance of authority, I’m afraid, is only a preview of upcoming events. Soon, just waking up in the morning and having a thought will be defying authority.
Hi Tom,
The problem with that scenario is that EVs are connected – they can be turned off, remotely, at will.
So can any of the cars that have been equipped with black boxes since at least 2000.
Then there are those that can completely controlled by remote control to the faked surprise of Leslie Stahl or the real despair of Michael Hastings.
The officers in this case either had no such remote control or knew not how to use it.
The reason Japan is doing so well with cars is WW 2. We wiped out their factories during WW 2 and built them new factories . They used the new factories to make cars and motorcycles. Our factories were worn out from building tanks and airplanes. Not good for converting back to making car and trucks.
Hi Rich,
Another aspect of this – the rise of the imports -is the effect of federal fuel economy and emissions standards, which practically crippled the domestic car companies. They were forced, effectively, to abandon whole lines of cars (and engines) which either could not be made “compliant” or which were made “complaint” by making them very badly.
As is so often the case, government is the root cause of the problem.
Japanese automakers produced a much higher-quality product than the Detroit iron of the 1960s and 1970s, but here is another important point.
There are very few pristine examples of Japanese cars and trucks of the era, as most of them rusted out far before their time. It was not unusual to see Japanese cars and trucks almost totally rusted out after only two or three years, especially in the snow belt. American cars rusted out as well, but not to the extent of their Japanese competitors.
Japan’s greatest manufacturing achievement was the adoption of W. Edward Deming’s ideas on statistical analysis and “continuous improvement”. Under his system, any worker could shut down the line without repercussions if they noticed a problem. The domestic auto companies would not adopt his methods until much later.
Yes, the domestic auto companies had to be dragged kicking and screaming into increasing the quality of their vehicles, but they finally have “seen the light”.
It is interesting to note that the foreign auto makers that have established automotive assembly plants in the USA have no problem with “quality”.
All of their cars were probably made in one of the American built plants in Germany, and funded by the loans that Prescott Bush arranged for Hitler in violation of the Trading With the Enemy Act, for which he was never investigated, let alone treason.
Um…why didn’t they just go to an empty parking lot or something to do their burnouts instead of shutting down a major freeway just for fun? As much as I despise the modern-day pigs, I’m afraid that I’ll have to side with them on this one.
Hi Bluegrey,
The Hut! Hut! Hutting! would have been just as extreme had the burnout been done in a parking lot. “Speed Kills” and all..
I guess you’re right about that. I was just saying that their fun shouldn’t inconvenience everyone else that’s trying to go about their business. That’s all.
Doing a burnout in a private lot can’t be prosecuted without the complaint of the damaged owner of the property. Any Hut! Hut! Hut! would have been trespassing by the police without the permission of the lot’s owner.
@Vonu
Absolutely correct. And entirely ignored by the “I know the law, I am the law, respect my authority!” Pigs.
Then it is up to you to spend you time and money to get rid of the charges. Never any penalty to the pig for enforcing non-existant, non-applicable, outside jurisdiction, charges.
Never any compensation for them having accosted, waylaid and threatend you, despite being entirely innocent.
Highway robbers backed by the unlimited resources of the state. I wish them all a lingering and excruciatingly painful death.
Anon, thanks. I was about to point that out. I have seen it happen and it was just as you said.
I don’t have a problem with young people doing “burnouts”, but I DO have a problem with these same young people stopping traffic on a freeway. Impeding one’s ability of “free (unimpeded) travel” is as UN-LIBERTARIAN as one can get. If there were emergency vehicles attempting to get through, THAT would be an additional UN-LIBERTARIAN act.
Why didn’t these young people contract with a parking lot owner to have a place to perform their “burnout” games?
Exactly! Everyone should indeed be allowed to have fun, provided it doesn’t involve disrupting everyone else’s daily lives.
Hi Bluegrey,
You’re right, of course, that the “burnout kids” inconvenienced others and what they did wasn’t laudable.But the point is the over-reaction to it, as contrasted with the blase reaction to something actually awful – because criminal – such as AGWs beating the crap out of innocent people.
Not to mention the ire of those whose ignorance of the law aided and abetted.
What about the federal reg putting adblue into and ambulance diesel, that ran out on the freeway, took 1 hour to get back on the road, and a patient died inside the vehicle that may have been saved had the ambo not run out of piss in its tank? Why was no bureaucrap charged over that incident? Eric had an article on this about 2 years ago.
Well said Ken, I get so sick of hearing “(insert Asian country here) stole our jobs” when indeed they were given away by greedy corporations looking to get more money for the executives and tough sh*t for the workers and cities they hollowed out and destroyed. I recall an article a few years ago stating that Chinese workers were beginning to demand higher wages/better working conditions so the corporations were on the hunt for other countries with slave rate conditions.
Another myth is the H1B visa scam where they import coolie wage workers because “Americans don’t have the necessary skills” garbage. No, lots of Americans have the skills, you s.o.b.’s don’t want to pay them.
Hit the wrong button, was in reply to Ken below, happens when you’re old 😊
It wasn’t all the executives. Remember, the stock holders want maximum value and dividends from their shares. And the shareholders get to decide who the corporate officers are. The big stock holders share a lot of blame in this. They will also pay huge bucks to get CEOs that will maximize the “value” and profit of the companies, which is part of the reason why we get huge salaries for CEOs. The major stock holders often act like the owners of baseball teams, bidding up the compensation for the best players. And like a pitcher, if you no longer have the right stuff, you are unceremoniously dumped. But it’s easier to blame a visible CEO than a team of nameless analysts at a bunch of mutual fund companies.
Henry Ford “got it right” when he CREATED a market for his cars by making them inexpensive while paying his workforce a decent wage. He realized that a well-paid workforce would be able to buy his products, among other things. It could be safely argued that Ford, CREATED the modern middle class. Automobiles, once “playthings for the rich” were made affordable for the “ordinary common man”.
Today’s vulture capitalist “mantra” is that labor costs must be as cheap as possible while the “value” (profit) to the stockholder must be as great as possible. Sacrificing labor on the altar of “maximum profits” NEVER works.
Of course, in the short term, with cheap Chinese goods flooding the market, the economy looks, good, but without CONSUMERS who hold jobs that pay reasonably well, all bets are off. There needs to be a balance between profits and labor.
Presently, labor is looked upon as a “necessary evil” to be minimized at all costs. The problem arises-without labor (jobs) there are no consumers. As I previously stated, a “balance” must be maintained. Labor is not evil, but a necessary component of capitalism.
Adolph Hitler’s economic successes and the rapid rise of the German economy was predicated on labor being assigned “value”and monetized-something that is missing in capitalist societies today.
If labor costs need to be trimmed to assure “profit”, something is seriously wrong. In fact, in the well-paid American automobile industry, labor costs account only for approximately 10% of total costs.
Offshoring production results in consumers (customers) being “lost”.
As to “tariffs”, the American country ran on tariffs from its inception until 1913, when the “income tax” and “federal reserve” was established.
The American economy is being propped up by the “social safety net” which obscures the TRUE economic situation in the U S .
I’m still waiting for someone to investigate the modelling done by the former Melanija Knavs for the Trump Agency while here on a tourist visa.
The ideal Amurican employee has the following credentials:
20 years old
20 years experience
Willing to work for $20,000 a year.
In my 65 years of living i have yet to meet a person with those credentials.
Employers however, keep looking for that person.
joeallen, I have had 20 years experience and made $20K and even though I was older, I’d work circles around the 20 year olds. I worked for a big corporation and when they’d have a lot of extra work for my dept, they’d put it all on me plus my full time work and joke with the 20 year olds who didn’t do shit.
I was getting my work done about 100 times faster than the guys my age and one day one of them saw me using a desk calculator as it should have been used, looking at the figures on paper and never looking at the calculator because I had no need to do so. He made the comment “I don’t know what you’re doing there” since he couldn’t do it. I replied, Yeah, it’s obvious. He’d been doing it for 25 years but never learned to do it any better than see one number, search the calculator for that number, touch the key and keep his eyes on it to make sure he got the right one. 25 years of that and he never learned to churn it out like a good hand could.
I don’t know how a 20 year old could have 20 years of work experience.
After I graduated from truck driving school at 35, I got a job with a company without taking a driving test. They had a policy of hiring only student drivers at least 30 years old with good pre-trucking driving and employment records. Because they had 24 trucks and only one unassigned one, and only one trainer who was tied up with a slow learner, they put me to work throwing off frozen loads at local grocery warehouses with their local driver. I didn’t know until much later that driving all the trucks out and back and helping throw off the loads was both my driving test and the most important part of my training. They asked a new driver who had been out of the same school 3 months longer than myself if he’d be willing to let me share his truck and be my trainer. We went out longhaul twice. Towards the end of the second time, we’d been running a light team schedule, and he was beat. He asked me if I’d be comfortable driving with him taking a nap in the sleeper. I said yes, and he went to bed. About 4 hours later, he stuck his head out of the sleeper and asked where we were. I told him where we were, and he asked if I’d been driving since he’d gone to bed. I told him of course, that’s what I was supposed to be doing. He told me that I was not human, I was a driving machine. When we got back, I got my own truck.
That company, C.O.D.E., sold out to Westway Express, where I got and drove the only new truck I’ve ever been assigned to in longhaul. When I quit longhaul 40 months later, it was because they wouldn’t give me a new truck I’d more than earned. I was driving 13,000 miles a month when I quit and I made just under $25K the last year I longhauled.
That sounds about right. I”ve found nothing you can do, even things that shouldn’t be asked of you and are often illegal, get you not a single point or an “atta boy” nor anything else. The best I have ever been able to hope for is not get blamed for blowing out tires, especially since I’d buy new ones with my own money. A raise? A new truck since yours has been in the shop for a couple weeks since it was worn out when you got it.
Now we’ve recently had two major carriers go under…….with Celadon making over a billion dollars it’s last year in bidness. It certainly wasn’t the drivers making too much money that caused it. Oh wait, it was two high ups who evidently embezzled a great deal of money. I’m still waiting to see what will happen to them. Probably a better position elsewhere. Meanwhile 3,000 drivers were left stranded with canceled credit cards.
Of course the answer to trucking problems will be solved by hiring people who don’t speak English nor require stuff like bathing or clean clothes. I detest having to go into a truck stop to pay a fuel bill. Standing in line can be an assault on your olfactory senses.
“It was the American corporations led by mostly Whites that moved the production from the US to the Orient for wage arbitration with the governments assistance.”
“It was the American corporations led by the now majority shareholders (Whites?) with the governments’ majority shareholders assistance that moved the production from the US to the Orient for wage arbitration (and other nefarious reasons).” FIFY
Sorry, this was meant for “Ken” even if he wasn’t directly responding to me below.
I’m done for today. I guess it’s was the positive comments on the first topic that annoyed me. I guess some people will agree with anything if they think that they will a pat on the head from the boss. No slight intended. But I see this hive mind ‘approval needed’ everywhere. Especially in the double down protection of the person they voted for, only because it was the guy that they voted for, current outcome and truthful observations be damned.
Maaaaaybe if the person who thinks that it’s ok to stop traffic on the interstate so these idiots who can provoke the police doing ‘just donuts’ should move to Detroit. Or take into account that by stopping traffic for no reason on an interstate could be dangerous. You know, maaaaaybe there now could be a family of five stopped on the interstate now for no legitimate reason but to taunt the police and they then get rear ended by a semi truck and die in a fiery crash, which of course could have been avoided.
Some of these stories remind me of the stories that make the news where a person ends up with a knife in their chest because he ate someone else’s ice cream cone. What is always left out of the story of course is what that person did ten other times to the person in question that resulted in the “I’ve had enough” moment. Maybe the Detroit police have had enough of these type of incidents. Maybe the people who live in Detroit have had enough of these type of incidents where the locals taunt the police. I read that the average response time for the police in Detroit is over an hour. So you’re right, they have better things to do, and these folks who take it upon themselves to shut down the interstate are part of the problem.
I know the police can overreact. I know that there are incidents to numerable to address with the deplorable actions of the police. But I don’t think that the main topic in this article fits that bill. The second topic yes. As to the your reaction to the first article, I think that you over reacted.
Hi LW,
It was just a burnout; kids having some fun – the good kind – and no harm done. This sort of thing would have resulted in a ticket and a scolding of the Roscoe P. Coltraine variety 30 years ago, before the culture became neuroticized over ssssaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety!
Today, it’s Hut! Hut! Hut!
The negative effects of stopping traffic on an interstate seems to elude you. If they did this in a high school parking lot that would be different. So it’s just kids having fun? So when kids do a drive-by and no one gets hit they were just having fun target practicing.
Equating what these “kids” do today with what kids did in the 50’s is disingenuous at best. I can see these same statements coming from these kids parent or auntie.
LW, the point that seems ot have eluded you is the gross overreaction of the police to a group of young idiots pulling an admittedly stupid stunt (but doing it in a relatively safe manner) in contrast to the the near non-reaction and excuse-making of the same police to the flagrant abuse of authority and wonton violence against citizens who’ve committed no crime perpetrated by the cops themselves.
“E Troop” to the rescue. Eric made a mistake in this case. We all make mistakes. It’s not human not to make mistakes. Sometimes you have to admit to your mistakes. It makes you a better person. Giving advice on one of your bad days is a mistake.
Yeah, you would have to suspend reality to spin this in any positive way. The police were right in this case. And the perpetrators who did their ‘donuts’ sounds harmless enough, but in three different locations on the interstate? To associate this incident to the overreach of the police state is, in my opinion, by releasing these ‘kids’ of their responsibility for what they have done, to releasing the police of the responsibility of what they have done is the same. In both case you would have to suspend the dangerous reality of the situation to fit your myopic paradigm. Right is right, wrong is wrong, even if you’re willing to overlook a few things in your decision of which is which.
Sorry, I was bored, “I had to come back”. At least it’s not coming back to see Josey Wales.
Everyone should know that when the cops hear about “donuts” they will be right there 😉
“Everyone should know that when the cops hear about “donuts” they will be right there “
That has to be one of the best jokes I’ve seen on this site so far! 😂
Cops are such asses anyway. It feels good to thumb your nose at them when they can’t do a thing.
I was letting a younger friend drive my hotrod one day and this guy with his head inserted came up beside us and wasn’t watching at all. He decided to pull into a service station that was closed. I told the driver to stop but he just barely had his foot on the brake so the guy runs into us.
We knew the DPS would be along soon so we sat right there and waited. There was a single tire mark where somebody had spun their tire leaving and it had been there a while.
Once we got it all worked out he turned to me and asked did I put that mark on the pavement there(as if it was anything but good for it). I said “My car? Leave that little mark? What do you think?
No telling what the idiot thought. He probably thought I had left it even though it was much narrower than my tires and had been there a couple weeks at least. They just look for some way to jack with you no matter how stupid “the crime” might be.
I can guarantee these guys were doing this for payback.
Several years ago, I was playing accidental tourist from doing driveaway while without a trip. After driving around in Alpine, I headed up the two lane towards McDonald Observatory. Since it was getting dark, I pulled into a small roadside rest area and went to bed. Before I could get to sleep, I heard a car put up next to me and then saw a flashlight scanning the cab of the van. Shortly another person appeared and the two of them talked for a few minutes until I figured out that they were a couple of cops. I gently got out of bed and stood up with my head sticking out the hatch atop my van. After watching them for a minute, I spoke to one of them. Both of their heads jerked up to look at me, knowing that I had the drop on them, and obviously meant them no harm. One of them starting explaining why they were there, but I stopped him, explaining that I’d been listening to them and knew that they had both been past there before I stopped and discussed my being there on the radio before stopping to check me out. I asked them if it was OK for me to spend the night there and they assured me that it was OK and they’d been concerned about the situation, so now they could watch out for me.
They were both Texas DPS officers doing what they should. That is why Texas DPS are my favorite LEOs in the state, along with Texas Rangers. I would have chosen Texas instead of Wyoming if I’d gotten the same consideration from the asses in Austin when they could have passed constitutional carry and didn’t.
Bill, probably what you experienced where you were might not have been as courteous in Houston.
But having said that, I’ve had a great deal more courtesy by Texas DPS than anywhere else. The N.M. DPS are more like that near Texas but up in the mountains in the north that might go away to some extent.
The DPS at the weigh stations on the Texas Border used to be nortoriously assholey making truckers move a load around(wallboard/sacked products, etc.)even though you might be close enough to legal but not adjusted to their liking.
You won’t find a trucker that doesn’t hate that.
I think the point is this:
Eric was wrong to call this completely harmless; stopping traffic on the freeway is an obstructive, obnoxious, jerkish thing to do even if done in such a way that no one (who is paying attention, anyway) could be hurt. You shouldn’t do it, you could just go to a dang parking lot or something, people do that all the time anyway and only the most obnoxious of nannies have a problem with it unless it gets really out of hand. Though to their credit, they did at least try to keep innocent bystanders from getting hurt, even if they went about it in a clumsy and obstructive way.
However, the police chief (appropriating military ranks to the extreme) foaming at the mouth and threatening dire vengeance on anyone even remotely involved, actually hunting down one of the participants after the fact and confiscating their car, at least partially because he feels PERSONALLY offended, is just ridiculous. It’s the same old “Someone is having fun? In a car? Outside of a racetrack?! STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!!!!11111!” attitude that has previously driven cops to bust up burnout contests which were taking place in a restaurant parking lot with the express permission of the restaurant manager, among many other idiocies. It’s like, if there’s an internal combustion engine involved, then as soon as you put one toe over the line you’re evil and if it’s a whole foot then you’re literally Satan incarnate.
Eric’s other point is that this whole thing makes the silence regarding – frequently completely unprovoked – police brutality that much more deafening. If these punks had jumped out of their cars and started menacing people with weapons, then they might have come somewhat vaguely close to the aggressive and deliberate acts of harm for which police officers – including “General” Craig’s own minions – frequently receive little or no comeuppance.
So they were trying to protect innocent bystanders while doing this insane stunt? How were they doing that? They had traffic control a half of a mile behind the last car in the backup that they caused? And remember that they did this three different times that night on the interstate.
As to the ranks that are created for these police chiefs, they are just lipstick on a pig…. What? These police chiefs are at most times a joke. Mostly affirmative action hires, or a woman to cover that PC thing, that rotate from larger cities to different cities when they are proven incompetent and ineffective. And even if you can find a top cop that can be effective, the courts that should back him and his men routinely release the people who they legally and rightfully arrest. Where I live it’s not unusual to find that the new arrestees are on electronic monitoring already, or are out on a low bond or none.
I’m not sure if this was personal. But when you speak for, or serve and protect a community, I guess it could be considered personal even if you not the person who the crime affected personally.
As for burnouts and donuts on private property, maybe if this show was happening too close to a road where other “innocent bystanders” could be affected, it should be stopped too. Just because it’s initiated in one place it doesn’t mean that it can’t have an effect on those on others that are nearby.
It’s clear that these kids were menacing unless you have blinders on. Whether they were armed or not is unknown. But even if they weren’t they still posed a threat as I saw, and I think everyone else saw who was there. They weren’t a flash mob on an interstate singing Christmas carols for sure. It reminded me more of the LA riots where no one was actually hurt by people taking to the streets until the first brick was thrown.
Defending anything that these kids did is pathetic. Defending the guy who made a mistake, by making another mistake by defending that mistake, makes you sound childish. And to associate this incident with police brutality is a non sequitur. There’s definitely a missing link here. No one got tased or shot by the police. All the police said was that this behavior was unacceptable and also illegal so the people responsible will be held responsible.
Shutting down a major public thoroughfare just to show off is unacceptable, period! Call me a party-pooper if you want, but I know how I would feel if I needed to be somewhere in a hurry, only to get stuck because a bunch of punks decided to make an interstate highway their playground!
Yes, the police chief may have overreacted just a smidge by taking it personally and threatening to “hunt down” the offenders and steal their car, but remember: two wrongs don’t make a right.
@LW and bluegrey: I’m not defending the punks, but just because this was a dopey stunt that inconvenienced a lot of people and shouldn’t have been done, does not mean that the top cop’s reaction isn’t a picture-perfect accidental parody of modern police culture. I mean, this has it all:
Ludicrous rank inflation because the police either want to feel or already feel like they’re in the military? Check.
Kneejerk response because cars were involved? Check.
Bleating out tired old “speed kills”/”trained driver” tropes for a situation which involved no actual speed, indicating an overall inability to think beyond cliches? Check.
Treating “contempt of cop” as an actionable offense? Check.
Threatening and wreaking dire vengeance far out of proportion to any inconvenience caused? Check.
Deafening silence when his side of the badge outright beats and abuses people completely unprovoked? Aaaaaaaaaand check.
Again, if you’d read my original post, I’m not defending these people at all, I mean, from a certain perspective you could say they betrayed car culture the same way a backroad bicyclist does but worse, but “two wrongs don’t make a right” works both ways. Was it dumb? Yes. Was it selfish? Yes. Could it have ended a lot worse? Yes. Does tolerating this sort of obnoxiousness court more of the same? Yes. Is the cop showing, in multiple different ways, that he is unfit to keep the peace properly? Also yes!
Hi Chuck,
Well-said, my friend – thanks for the back-up!
Oh, believe me! I know for a fact that these pigs are some of the lowest, dirtiest scums of the earth, and that they would much rather do away with us than to “protect and serve” us, just because they know they can get away with it. Like Eric said, there are no more good cops.
BUT…we shouldn’t use our anger towards our enemies to justify our own faults, either. We already have enough of that going on with these “minority groups” and SJW bastards. In this case, both the police chief and the guys were wrong; hence why I said two wrongs don’t make a right. At the end of the day, we all need to take responsibility for our own actions. As I said before, we can most certainly have our fun and enjoy life; so as long as we leave everyone else be. And in a half-abandoned city like Detroit, there’s plenty of places these guys could’ve went to perform their stunts, so there’s really no excuse.
I know you and Eric already understand this. I’m just writing this so whoever else reading the comments will know where me, “LW” and the rest are coming from so there’s no misunderstanding.
Actually, forget what I said about “LW”, because clearly (s)he has mental issues.
Shotgun, the talking head on the scene was hilarious. He couldn’t get enough drama in there but he kept trying. I laughed and laughed at the tv people really trying to make a big thing out of it.
A guy I know drove into the intersection downtown(only one light in town)one night. He did a couple three rounds smoking the tires, cackling out loud and everyone else did too. The cop was sitting a few feet away and when he straightened it out he flew out of town and the cop couldn’t even begin to catch him.
To be honest, the cop wasn’t that upset and everybody witnessing it was laughing so hard he couldn’t afford to get upset. Of course later, when he found him, he gave him the what for and threw him in jail for a while.
We used to have races around the courthouse square. We got into some pretty high speeds since you were always sliding sideways. It was great fun.
We did all sorts of things with the sheriff and DPS sitting in their cars watching us. There was one thing you couldn’t do and that was throw a beer bottle into the signal light.
Of course out in the middle of nowhere you could chunk a bottle into the flashing light out of a car with T tops. It made a hell of a noise.
I recall a friend coming into town and getting nailed for 112mph and got a ticket and ass-chewing and sent on his way. After all, no one was getting hurt…..except the state.
Hey Eight,
I agree, if “we” create an institution that rarely punishes, and often encourages, psychotic behavior, it should not surprise anyone that psychopaths are attracted to the job.
My point was that, even if all the cops were “good” people, the job requires the violation of people’s rights. It is intrinsically immoral because very few of the laws created by the political class are morally legitimate. No matter what one personally thinks of drug use and sale, prostitution, selling homemade pies, running an unlicensed business, etc…, all laws that criminalize such behavior are illegitimate. Those who enforce them are acting immorally.
Now, if the minarchist fairy tale of legally limited government existed, it would be possible for the job, divorced from the funding source, to be moral. As long as government arrogates to itself powers that cannot be morally exercised by an individual (all government), then people who enforce the “law” cannot do so morally.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Hi LW,
I don’t think I defended the burnouters… I criticized the over-reaction to the burnouters. Right?
No, you defended them as kids just having fun with a car. This whole stunt of shutting down of the interstate had nothing to do with actually looking for a place to have fun doing burnouts. It was an in your face FU to everyone involved. First it was to show who they were and what they were capable to do if they wanted to. Shutting down the interstate by blocking it with their cars and video taping it was the plan. The burnouts and donuts were the icing on the cake. They did this before as was mentioned in news video. And not on the same day. And by what they had on their license plate proves that this was the plan all of the time. It wasn’t a flash mob crated on social media for fun. It was a FU to the police too. Like you’re not going to stop us from doing what we want to do. And it was always about putting the public in danger as a result of what they had planned too. Again, this whole episode was not about kids having fun and just looking for a place to do donuts. It was about proving who they were, what they were capable of, and you’re not going to stop us as you can see as they menace the interstate travelers.
The police reaction was that we are going to stop you. And we will go to great lengths if we have to to make sure that this threat to the safety of others doesn’t happen again. Even going as far to take the cars that you use to do this if we have to.
Well that’s how I saw it. It’s seems really clear. But if you want to frame this in any other way to fit you view you’re going to have to keep ignoring what’s there right in front of you on video.
Sorry, but I just can see this as kids having fun. I see a bunch of criminals, whether they are over 18 of not.
LW, you see crime everywhere. You’d be the first to bust some hispanic women selling really good tamales, the orders taken the day before because they didn’t want to make huge amounts without people to buy them.
Never mind they are the best you’ll find, but they’re not “legal” cause they aren’t produced in a govt. approved kitchen. Their clientele know this and don’t give a shit. But you would because “It’s against the law”. WTF isn’t against the law these days.
Well, I think Texas finally got ride of sexual laws forbidding cunnilingus and such…..with your wife. It all stems from the self-righteous Shall we gather at the river. I grew up seeing and having to be there during this shat.
Well this all just too easy. But anyone giving an FU to the AGWs has my support.
To what negative effects, this case, do you allude? (Postal mushroom, on his own endogenous quaaludes, likes the sound “eludes.”)
Eric, I was thinking that the Dukes of Hazzard could not be made today. Not because of the whole Confederate flag thing, but because Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane and his deputies Cletus and Enos would be buzz cut Tactical Tommies who’d simply order a SWAT team to come up on the Duke farm…it’d be over in one episode.
Yeah, the thing is that these small rural counties can’t hire the local boys to oppress their friends and neighbors. They just won’t do it. So they hire some city kids right out of POST. The salary is very low so these kids are just looking to get hired and work a few years and then move on to some bigger jurisdiction where they can make more money. Rinse, lather, and repeat.
I reckon that’s how that Idaho rancher got gunned down in the middle of the night when he came out to put down one of his bulls that had gotten out and hit on the highway. So sorry about that … but the city slicker deputy was affeered for his life because someone not wearing a badge had a gun. Move on folks, nothing to see here.
Here’s your defense of the “kids” which was only implied in the article, but made clear here. And I don’t really want to continue this either, but….
And as I read this again I had to laugh. It now reminds me of the “Crocodile Dundee” movie where Mr. Dundee is with that woman out for a walk and they are accosted and threatened with a knife in an attempted robbery. You know the scene. “That’s not a knife, this is a knife” if you need a little help recalling it. And then afterward he excuses the “kids” actions as they were out just having a little fun. Of course she didn’t see it that way at all. But laughed at how he was just able to shrug off the incident as kids being kids. Right.
Looking for a nickname?……What? …I’m just having fun while thinking about how it seems that everything today is being turned upside down. Today it’s hard to figure out sometimes who the victim is and who the criminal is after the spin doctors get a hold of the story. Yup, those poor, poor utes had no place else to go in their 35k sports cars. And they were only hurting themselves by burning up their tires. And after having to buy new tires how are their kids going to afford to eat? I guess they should start a Go Fund Me Page huh.
Nobody was hurt. Until the hurt locker designees – that the action was, apparently, even if only partially, or ostensibly even, directed at – brought their sovereign immunity to bear.
Croc Dundee’s a good point…missed.
Nobody was hurt there, in that script, either. Since today’s scripted monopolists of hurt, & pre-crime telepaths, weren’t involved. Because there was at least one scripted adult in the scene. Or the scene was left to adult itself out, rather than be nannied & safe space scripted, could say.
Everything has always been “upside down.” Even before Shakespeare’s time.
Was going to make toffee popcorn. Think I’ll make cake, instead. A Meyer lemon upside down cake. With poppy seeds. For itself, which is to say for myself & mine, first, & in amused hat tip to all the head-hurt Dorothy’s out there, second.
There’s no pace like home because you can’t go home again.
SRV talks that nostalgia in this, greatest version, of Life Without You. And he might almost convince even people who know better. (“Inside”? Can’t leave home w/o it. Even if you’re Ed Norton-Brad pitt. Not even if your mind is beautiful & your fretting is freaking gorgeous.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7PQNvRZ10w
The “blocked off” SRV got flown into has a monopoly of force at that location, too. But its legit monopoly. Natural. Not contrived, co-signed, consigned.
But in general….if the mountain won’t come to amygdala, amygdala will go to the mountain. In a chopper. With a pilot name Pontius. At night. In dense inner, & thus outer, fog.
Eric will thank you for the “back-up”.
Now turn the car off in the garage where you are charging your phone and go back into the house, but remember to open all the windows in the house if the garage happens to be attached to the crib.
Not all rule breaking is progress. But all progress comes from rule breaking.
Conservative postal mushrooms, like LW, well behind the lines (& coloring within, in all shades of brownshirt & blackboot…but he did do, sorta’, a burnout back in the 70’s…lol), send their windborne spores into others’ rule breaking progress & decompose it.
Maybe so that their progeny can do better than they did: instead of fungus, their youngus can be happier pigs in shit.
On these Lake Woebegonevers – & the animal trainers various calendar designations — does Hallmark Cards depend. But at 20:1, Hallmark’s got no worries.
I, too, think gum poetree justice lovely.
Lovelier still is the rhyming symmetry that Johnny Gumseeds every L(a)W(n). What goes around comes back around.
The WW’s – for example — tragic fraction gets all the ink. The comic fraction of soooo many conservative rule-following L(a)W(n) mowee’s getting smoked, not so much…since the 20 does most of the inking.
Yep, I did a burnout, I didn’t become one like you. Or maybe you stained a head injury while trying to make that tight turn on your bike by leaning and using your knee to steer.
Hi LW,
Name calling is a poor argument.
Throwing a name, having it slipped, getting smacked, & importuning the ref to foul is poor conduct. But typical.
Hi Ozy,
I’m waiting for LW to reply to my latest in re AGWs but I suspect – although I hope I am wrong – he may be a “conservative” who does not see the inherent threat to human rights posed by forcing anyone to pay anyone else’s salary, just for openers. And then this business of using armed thugs to coerce obedience to edicts forbidding certain actions (or requiring others) which – as such – have caused no harm to any other person and are therefore ipso facto immoral – making the coercion of obedience and application of punishment even more so.
I have lost several “conservative” friends over my stance on this – and probably would have many more readers, if I were more “conservative” on this issue.
While I am sorry to have lost these friends, I’d have rather changed their minds – and unless I’m badly off base, I do not understand how anyone can disagree with me on the facts.
Eric…the off camber slippery slope is intimidating, & its easier to just let it be\come a Sisyphean groove. Which, being indefensible, must be defended…psychological “integrity” – of all the Sybil shards – demands that defense.
There was a bermed, high speed left that immediately switched right out of the exit, & up, into a jump than had to be landed left. You either swallowed those physics & digested turning the bike on the ramp & in the air, or you got Sisyphused by those who did.
You can learn a lot on a racetrack, including your own limitations – if you’re honest enough to include those limitations in your curriculum.
And it’s all a race track.
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
I was in the paint department at Home Depot & saw that quote tattooed on the inner forearm of young female clerk who was helping me.
Told her I never agreed with the sentiment, in the context of S’s cursed immortality. She disagreed.
So I said even tho the HD paint dept ain’t an exercise in sloped boulder rolling, lets say you stay put for 50 years & I’ll check back. She laughed.
But if she does stay put & I do check back, what’s the bet as to how she’ll frame it?
That’s it, right there.
This is your brain…this is your brain on paint fumes.
Eric,
I strongly suspect LW is a cop, and have since the first time I saw one of his posts.
eric, I’m hoping they’ll go away. You can’t debate people who can’t se the truth.
You and I may not agree with everything each others says but we can agree to a debate using logic.
Been working my ass off today. I”ll check back in tomorow and maybe their drugs will have worn off……some.
Amen, Eight!
I suspect most people following the “debate” with LW would agree with us and not him. Not that numbers make for right, but the fact remains that LW hasn’t presented any. He presents personal abuse instead. Sigh.
I have no problem at all with facts. Including those which run counter to my beliefs. Because I don’t want to believe in things not supported by facts.
LW apparently disagrees.
Yeah, I know, any old port in a storm. But to align with this nitwit is just showing how low you will go. You’re pathetic. I know of another autistic who will stoop to these same levels. So when I say that you are autistic believe it. So go see a shrink to make sure. An online test won’t do it. You will just lie to yourself as usual. You really can’t help it. The world that ‘you’ see is what you believe. It’s the filter in your head that everything that all the information that you receive has to go through. And that filter needs to be changed. But it can’t be. So a professional can help to put things to you that you might understand. Yeah, good luck with that too.
Go on youtube and look up this woman who has a site called Mindful Divergence. It could help you. But I doubt it. Maybe plant a seed to help with your condition………..maybe.
LW,
For an autistic, I seem better able to form a coherent, fact-based argument than you! I note – once more – that you seem unable to even respond to my points in re AGWs – except by ranting about “Mindful Divergence.”
If you’re so right – and I’m so wrong – why not prove it using facts rather than personal attacks?
Hey Eric,
“No harm meant – or caused”.
LW, repeatedly emphasized the intentional FU given to the cops by the burnouters. He seems to believe that this is a major outrage. While he does offer some tepid and highly qualified criticism of the beatdowners, it seems clear that he considers the affront to police authority to be far more egregious than the unjustified beating.
He definitely fails what the great WNG termed the Tom Joad test.
“Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there”.
The Tom Joad test is simple, do you instinctively side with the cop, or the guy. LW offered all the cop apologist justifications, we don’t know what happened, we’ve got to wait for the investigation, etc… Of course, sometimes cops do have to use force, to protect others and themselves, it’s the automatic deference to the cop, never initially given to the victim, despite video evidence, that reveals the instinctive sympathies of the cop apologist.
Still, you’re correct, the job of an AGW is intrinsically immoral. How they get their money is less important to me than what they do, which is to enforce the will of the political class. The job, regardless of how it’s funded, requires the violation of other people’s rights. I can’t bring myself to object to public librarians, even though their paycheck is extracted through force.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy, it’s not ALL for politicians. A great deal of it is for their psychotic ego. “I have rights you don’t and I’m going to teach you all about them”.
My mother asked me when I was about 10 what I planned to do in life. I had no one thing I was bent on, common when you’re 10….or 20.
We’d just had a family friend get kicked out of prison(he was framed by his employers for embezzlement)and he had not only 3 kids and a wife to feed(and they hadn’t been eating good but had the church to keep them alive and clothed). He didn’t have two nickels to rub together but he scrounged up 2 dollars and got his “Babdiss” preachers license, about the only choice he had being a felon.
I told her if I couldn’t do anything else I’d become a Babdiss preacher, a cop or a taxi driver. She was aghast and I’d later come to regret throwing taxi drivers in there but back in the day, they were all, where I lived(none exactly where I lived but 60 miles away)pretty much totally bereft of ability to do anything else.
I still stick with the first two but had much rather be a Babdiss preacher than a cop, the lowest of the low.
Some might believe there’s a chance that you’ll become. I think it unlikely. Even tho a lucky head injury could do the trick, you were prolly never lucky enough to be the type to be anywhere near even the possibility of such an event.
That’s not how motocrossers tight turn. Downshift, dump clutch, wfo throttle, throw the bike over\down, extend the leg like a jousting lance – all in as seamless & fluid a sequence as can — bounce off the terrain (where someone like you comes into play), or throttle-english-slide the corner. It’s a lotta’ fun.
I can see you with your leg over your neck forever. LOL A marionette. But with no strings attached to keep you attached. Free..to do whatever you want…But never to be able to get that leg from around your neck. Maybe pull some strings, but who is holding those strings? You are, so go hang yourself some more. I hope that it’s over soon. The pain that you must go through. Cramps and all. Maybe some Midol will help. Good luck.
Hi LW,
I’ve had to “Clover” you for repeated personal attacks and fact-free posts. If you can debate with civility – and with facts – we welcome it. But the rest is even more juvenile than doing a burnout – and with the added sourness of intent to be mean. The kids doing the burnout were just trying to have fun. Which – again – I am not necessarily condoning but the point remains. No harm meant – or caused.
Eric,
Would this article have ever been written if the blockade of the road had caused an accident?
Here in Australia the governments like to plant gum trees on hillsides close to the roads. Gum trees are known for dropping limbs without warning. Since 2000, 14 Americans have been killed by camping under gum trees. Do the governments make any attempt to keep the trees from dropping onto cars? No way. Every year at least 6 motorists in Victoria lose their lives due to gum tree limbs dropping onto cars and crushing the cars and drivers.
I think that I would like to save the planet by planting gum trees in DC. Hummm, but how to get them under the gum trees? Maybe by planting lobbyists up to their necks under the trees? Or by telling them that they can get free gum? Or maybe genetically modifying a gum tree to it would grow so huge that there was no escaping it? Yeah, but it would all be too late. Things are gummed up beyond repair. So what other kind of trees do you have down there? Maybe the kind from the Old West here?
I think that my social credit score just got lowered for some reason.
Also have eucalyptus trees, the kind they planted in Commiefornia back in the 20s, imported from Australia. Both eucals and gums have oil soaking their leaves and trunks, so they are quite flammable, esp. if not burned out every 7 years like the abos used to do. But the greens love to see all this detritus lay on the floor of the forest, so it can generate heat enough to start a fire.
Wow, no wonder koala bears don’t light their farts on fire. lol
I have an Ohio Buckeye tree in front of my house. When I tell people that I have an Ohio Buckeye in front of my house they think that I have a college football player from Ohio in front of my house. These trees grow big nuts. And there’s at least two in each pod. Imagine that. But sometimes three. I guess those with three nuts shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce. Squirrels love these trees in late summer. They like big nuts.
My neighbor had two in front of his house. He killed them both. He hates squirrels too. I think that he thinks they are watching him all the time or something.
Trees are cool. People are sometimes strange. Oh yeah, my other neighbor killed his whatever tree too. Only to have the same kind planted but smaller.
Do you think that there is a pattern here? People that don’t understand trees like to killl them.
Nevermind, maybe I should get into mushrooms like ozymandias above. Yeah, saving a tree sounds good to me. Now back to having those gum branches falling on the right people. Ain’t gonna happen right.
Burnouts were a rite of passage 40 years ago when I was in High School. I got pulled over one day after a massive burnout in my small town, and the officer told me I should go outside of town to do such things. No ticket involved and he was probably laughing about it when he turned on the cherries. Another time I did a power brake burnout in front of a close neighbors house to impress their daughter and her brothers, and shortly after I got home they came over laughing with a molten ball of rubber they peeled off the street.
Back then it was considered good clean on the edge fun, with the only harm done to the drivers wallet for tires and repairs. I really miss those days……
Well I guess it’s better that they came over with a molten ball of rubber than with a shotgun and a rubber with a hole in it.
Just kidding, but I do remember burning rubber too. Just not enough of it because I didn’t have a car that could do it right.
Where I grew up in the city the street behind was fairly straight and with only the backs of the homes on it. I can’t tell you how many burnouts I saw there as a kid. The older guys used to come there to do there burnouts. It was there that I saw a street legal car, I think it was a Plymouth, that actually got the one front wheel off of the ground. I can still see it. It was amazing to me as a kid. That car was twisted.
……………and the stupid Police continually wonder why “they” are targeted constantly…………..
Might have something to do with being professional targets by virtue of their employment.
Taxeaters aren’t employed. Neither are their apologists.
If the cops had to charge these guys with anything, why couldn’t it be obstructing traffic? There are laws against holding up traffic by driving too slowly (rarely enforced, I know). Why couldn’t these guys be hit with something minor, then let it be? They didn’t hurt anyone, other than making them late.
Yet the popo frequently allow protesters to block traffic even in DC.. for seemingly more ridiculous reasons all the time..like Globall Waaaarrrarming or homosexual “rights” or some such shyte. If a semi had rear-ended a car or bus and caused a uuge crash, I wonder what the adjective wud be???..”harmless” does NOT come to mind
Obviously because it would have been the enforcement of the law that was being obstructed, not traffic, since there wasn’t any.
Pigs love ‘donuts’ – it was cruel to mention donuts, these heroic heroes of the failed republic were triggered. Many innocents will die thanks to this outrage, the fury of their rage must be unleashed somewhere – like a ‘sexual emergency’ by a “new European” on a European child in a public pool in the Sorosed Europe of today!
I do wonder if the five star general isn’t even more outraged that obviously these evil doers were of the ‘crackah’ persuasion and not the nice ‘teens’ that typically car jack, shoplift, riot and shut down entire roadways to beat the crackah drivers in the name of Black Lives Matter™ without any overt concern from the police who give them room to burn stuff as they did in Baltimore. Ahh… such wonders of the failed republic.
It is almost worthy of a Dukes of Hazzard episode or a Smokey and the Bandit sequel that a corrupt sheriff shakes his fist in anger while vowing to “get those Duke boys” and take their car.
“They are not professional race car drivers,” the Herr General scolds.“Imagine blocking a freeway and engaging in this 360 burnout sideshow and the car loses control, flips the median and goes into oncoming traffic,” Craig said. “It could happen. You put people’s lives at risks (sic).”
If “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas.
And how can the AGW know that he wasn’t a professional “race car” driver? He doesn’t know who was behind the wheel. And short track racing is still a reasonably affordable sport, serving as a farm league for NASCAR et al. At least once you get out of the city.
It wouldn’t matter if he were a professional race car driver, he’d still have been acting criminally by vandalizing public property, which hasn’t been mentioned.
Then the government should start charging drivers in car accidents with vandalizing public property. And pedestrians for causing drivers to swerve when they step out onto the street outside a crosswalk without looking or engaged with their phone. Is that the correct way to interpret what you state, Vonu?
No, because you are ignorant of the intent inherent in all crimes, which is usually absent from accidents. Slicks left because of braking to avoid an accident are different from slicks made for the joy of making one.
Detroit- another great, beautiful city turned into a hellhole by Bolsheviks using negros as their wrecking ball. There is a pattern here: A city becomes wealthy by industrialists making valuable things people want. Then the Frankfurt School Bolsheviks move in like a grey seeping cancer seeking a way to deconstruct what others have built. Sometimes it’s to steal it, other times it’s just for the perverse joy of wrecking something beautiful and making as many people miserable as possible. They almost always use easily manipulated people as the discontented mob yearning for “equality” at, of course, the expense of the producer. First it was manipulating relatively innocent blacks, then women, now any non-anglo will do- and the homosexual, pedo, gender benders and the mentally ill work well too. Using the media, they control men of good will to “feel bad” for the wrecking-balls-of-choice against the good people who esteem fair play. The targets are conned into giving up something of value over and over to first help, then appease the plaintiff. Of course the plaintiff is never appeased. Human nature being what it is the one getting the frees shit demands more and grows to hate the giver. This hate grows into what we see today- burned out gutted cities, homes, lives. then the Bolsheviks leave for greener pastures to do it all again.
There is a solution: If you get an entitlement from the giverment- good for you but NO VOTE!! In about 20 years the ones who pay the bills will have installed politicians friendly to the producing class and this bullshit will end.
The failure of Ayn Rand to self-edit has basically doomed us to enduring the real-life version of Atlas Shrugged. 1984 and Brave New World were quite readable by high school students (heck, both were assigned reading back in the day). AS was just horrible to plow though but the future it described was much more horrific because it was all about the decline, not the end result.
In what way has Ayn Rand’s novel caused any real-life version?
Galt’s Gulch would be over-populated if it existed.
How do you know? There are enclaves of rich people all over the world now. Puerto Rico is the newest, from what I understand.
Hi Auric,
I’m with you on taking the franchise away from those who are tax eaters rather than tax payers. I’d rather no taxes at all, of course – as a question of moral principle. But I understand the importance of not rejecting the good for the sake of the nonexistent perfect.
I’d like a Libertarian system. But I’ll take – and support- measures that trend in that direction. Once such is just what you’ve prescribed. It is outrageous – and dangerous – to allow people who don’t pay taxes to vote themselves taxpayer-financed goodies.
If the franchise were restricted to those who pay, we’d pay less. And the parasitism would be less. Both at the end-receiver level (the actual parasite) and the “facilitator” level… i.e., the scumbag politician who gets elected by promising to hand over other people’s money to the parasites.
The fall of Detroit had nothing to do with “bolsheviks” or “negros”. For pinheads who see everything in racial terms, what happened is that the inferior white race was unable to compete with superior orientals who cleaned the clock of the domestic automotive industry that Detroit was economically dependent on. (Similarly, the inferior white race was unable to hold onto other important industries that cities were dependent on such as electronics and clothing. The orientals, being far superior to whites, took those over as well.)
By the way, there is a reason there are so many negros in the United States. Can you guess what that is? (Hint: it has nothing to do with current immigration policies.)
Having said all this you may be surprised to find that I agree with your assessment that tax feeders should not be permitted to vote due to conflict of interest.
Hope y’all are having a great Kwanzaa!
Jason
That’s a pretty simple explanation. I’m sure that because of affirmative action and a union to protect you that you will be able to continue to be a simple as you are and also keep your job.
When these “orientals” look build a factory in the US they don’t look to build in a city like Detroit. They go down South and look for a town whose furniture making factory, or other manufacturing business that has closed, and have inherited a competent workforce that will be willing to build those cars with the skills that they have acquired, pay living wages, and without restraints of a union to protect the slugs who need to be removed to keep the workforce loyal and productive.
It’s complicated. I know that hard for you to understand.
The “orientals” did nothing. It was the American corporations led by mostly Whites that moved the production from the US to the Orient for wage arbitration with the governments assistance. Slow but sure the Oriental skills increased with time and the American skills disappeared as they were no longer used or needed.
China was NOT a miracle. It is not a miracle when a industrialized nation deindustrializes and sends it industry to another nation. It is a fraud. One should call it greedy and very stupid! Now the US is going slowly into the night and nothing will stop it because Americans refuse to stop buying the products. The F150 Ford for example. Made in Mexico. Many others as well along with the parts companies.
The US government still assists the corporations leaving… more have recently left. Even Trumps offspring have foreign factories and what cannot leave illegals are imported to lower wages.
This cannot be corrected as many of today’s Americans can barely afford the cheap imported stuff much less products made in the US at US wage levels. Other than Military and weapons systems the US can never be a major producer again without a major reset in the economy.
Also our plummeting math and science scores. But anal sex teaching for 8 year olds. top of the world in that. Math is rayciss
The deindustrialization of America was side effect of the pursuit of a lower labor input in manufacturing. If America’s unions hadn’t driven their memberships up to the highest levels in the industrialized world, there would have been no reason for manufacturers to go offshore to find lower labor costs. Are you telling that you always shop for the highest domestic price you can find?
There is local gas station that is selling regular for $2.399 on one side of the building and for $3.019 on the other. They are selling Chevron on the front and unbranded on the back. They had the lowest price in Arizona before they raised it a dime. Since they are a half mile from California, most of their customers come from there.
Searching for the lowest price for a comparable or better product has always been one of the major motivations of customers in free markets.
Actually, the Japanese cars didn’t have to jump through the same hoops as American cars and the main point was Japan devaluing their money to the US dollar to the point of, Union labor or not, America couldn’t compete. It was a crime according to many economists at the time but govt. and the Fed saw it as a boon. It was the very thing that made all the pols jump on the NAFTA bandwagon years later.
Had Mexico or any other country had the sense to build cars and use their much cheaper labor to do so, it would have been the same thing. The only thing it took to do this was an industrialized economy that wasn’t part of the US, British, Euro bs. It was just a matter of cost and no tax on imports. Plus the fact that the Japanese vehicles were lightweight, cheap POS that wouldn’t carry an American family. Oh, they’d do fine with a person or two but not carrying the entire family and pulling the cattle trailer to the sale. It was an apples and oranges thing.
Yeah but that was some years after they’d been bombed to hooplessness, “lent” hoop rebuilding greenbacks for to buy connected contractors self-services, eventuating in the selling back – paying forward? – to the hoopleheads what barreled & shot all their fish those few years back.
What goes, comes. One hand wipes the magic words & the other wipes the ass, & boy do those hands get confused, swap roles, shite where they eat, mistake shite for eats, etc.
But now I got a 20 year old Toyota that’ll still be doin’ fine after I’m dead & gone. Even in the 70’s, riceburnin’ 2-strokes in the beds of datsun p\u’s were both strong.
You make an excellent point.
Almost everyone decries the lack of American auto manufacturers presence in Japan. Yes, the roads are narrower, parking spaces are limited, and the market is limited for larger American cars, BUT the point that everyone misses is that Japan’s protectionist policies are largely responsible for the difficulty of importing almost any product into Japan.
You see, when it comes to cars, the Japanese government (at the behest of its domestic auto industry) requires inspection of EVERY SINGLE IMPORTED CAR that gets offloaded into Japan. Contrast that with the USA and just about every other country. In the USA and elsewhere, auto manufacturers are required to submit “samples” of vehicles for emission and safety testing. Once testing is complete, permission is given to import as many cars as they want without additional inspections.
A while back there was a “pissing match” between Japan and Canada regarding cars. The Canadian government held the cars at the docks, also insisting on individual inspections, the same as is required of American cars entering Japan.
Another example of Japanese protectionism is that of a small electric hot plate that was popular with Japanese households, imported into Japan. When the government got a hold of it, they banned importation, stating that the temperature control did not go “low enough” thereby protecting its domestic manufacturers of hot plates.
Wow, so I guess that you do have multiple personalities. You fit right in. It’s very common here. Or hear, Jose can you here, or there, ha roe, or yah, it’s all the same hear, or there. Hot plates, cold plates, license plates, it’s all the same. It’s about control. Cool, hot, small or large, boiler plates, tariffs, sheriffs to enforce tariffs, badges, we don’t need no stinkin’ badges, Eric, earache, what’s the difference. Narrow roads, wide roads, toll roads, small toads. It’s all like scratching your balls or your head, if they itch, don’t be a snitch. Get it…..nevermind.
One personality wave (Dardik) here, containing multitudes (Whitman). Same as you.
Just not as Hollywood soundstage tank wave (or cgi) as you. More renaissance, less rainman.
(“You will respect buying my underwear at the one, true, K-Mart!” )
Gotta’ say tho you can be somewhat more amusing with words than I thought before seeing you string this together.
But is it just a lucky n of 1? Or a rogue insanity spike that overtops you into more chuckle, less spittle, that comes & goes?
Is that why you’re dropped in here to see what condition your looking to be abused – & to abuse — condition’s still in?
“You will respect me!” said the cop who “became” a cop to “get” the respect he didn’t have for himself.
Winston…was a windmill tilt’r that got a rat caged to his face & ratted out his one true “love” so as to… Smith…a continued existence not worth continuing…but value is subjective all along the objective autonomic wave watchtower. How else, for example, to explain people who live, continue to live, in Chicago?
No reason to get excited, tho, even if Chicagd’oh!’s “sweet home.” Butler Shaffer found the way out of here, yesterday. And so will you.
As for protectionism – incl that on “offer” by thin blue line bluelight special k-cops — it’s taxation with representation of those who bought & paid for the color of law rite to tax the gobblers they “sell” to.
Tax eaters don’t sell– they enslave. Too, slavers are slaves.
What it ain’t, despite how it gets sold to gullible rubes & other greedheads – including greed for suburban “security,” unionized or otherwise — is a perpetual motion machine.
“Closed” systems is autoerotic asphyxiation, Carradine style.
Too bad more don’t decry that. Too bad decrying that ain’t, doesn’t conform to, Moore’s Law description: going, faster, going, *faster*, gone.
Where can I get a freakishly huge Samoan-African to take out the trash? Only in the movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDBeFAlgjio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li-enHIosJM
stuff enclosed in left & right lesser than greater than symbols does not print.
after multitudes: of wavelets
after K-Mart!: underwear flung out into the middle of the road – & not just in w-texas, either
after respect he didn’t get for himself: all k-marts, & bluelight special keystone kops, are just the same where their skidmarked underwear meets the road
after only in the movies: tune’s a decoder rune. but encodes “know” the code – the 3 omertà monkeys see no, hear no, speak no – got no use\ability to decode. so this tune’s for you that ain’t om…onkeys…but, as always, fuþark ain’t nearly so common as fubar is