I'm Seeing Green

The Stupid Trope of a "Few Bad Apples"

Let us examine the oft-rendered excuse for cops acting badly (a poor euphemism for killing, brutalizing, insulting, being aggressive towards.) Every time there's an incident, there's never just one cop there. Two at a minimum, twenty or forty in the current unrest. The mayhem may be instigated by one (ooh...bad apple...) but it's condoned, excused, ignored and abetted by the others. So it's just "bad apples flock together?"...the "vast majority" of the rest of these souls are peaceably controlling demonstrators, taking a symbolic (sham?) knee, marching in a symbolic (sham?) walk?

As Chris Rock so succintly puts it, "Some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like … pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be like, 'Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.'"

Let's extend that. Some doctors are bad apples. You may die on the operating table; but that's OK...the vast majority of doctors are...

Some EMTs are bad apples, they may kill you by neglect when called on an emergency; but that's OK...the vast majority of EMTs are ...

Some babysitters are insane, and may throw your baby into the bathwater; but that's OK...the vast majority of babysitters are ...

Some plumbers are bad apples. They may hook up the sewer line to your kitchen faucet; but that's OK...the vast majority of plumbers. are ...

DO YOU SEE HOW FUCKING CRAZY THIS IS? There are some professions and avocations which demand total respect for the genre, total commitment to the job, total  requirement to never fucking up.In EVERY other case, the "bad apples" are treated with horror, as criminals.

And policing is one of them.

And, can you imagine your babysitter, who's just killed your child, being "investigated" for months while the DA decides whether or not to bring a case? Can you imagine that, if you shoot a terminally ill person, you could get off on the grounds that your action didn't kill the person, they died of their pre-existing condition (the possible defense in the Floyd case.)

Rock: https://www.sbs.com.au/topics/voices/culture/article/2020/06/01/clip-chris-rock-about-police-brutality-going-viral

Gᴇᴛ Aɴɢʀʏ --- Bᴇ Sᴀꜰᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ Cᴏʀᴏɴᴀ Vɪʀᴜs

The Inner Cambridge Social Sciences Institute has published an interesting study on the effects of anger on susceptibility to the novel corona-virus. In the report, recently out in the Journal of Epidemiologic Research, there appears to be a positive correlation between the state of anger or irascibility (not defined,) and reduced chance of being infected with the virus.

 

“We think the correlation is a variation on the ‘fight or flight’ syndrome, which causes the body to produce adrenaline, among other changes. A constant state of anger or irascibility causes hormonal changes, which seem to boost the immune system and help ward off the corona-virus,” said Dr. Pradeep Mithraleya, chief author, in an interview with NPR, “We have not studied whether this phenomenon affects the susceptibility towards other viruses or diseases.”

 

The takeaway from this may explain why the Red states, particularly those with strong support for President Trump, are seeing much lower incidence of corona-virus infections (in an unattributed comment, Dr. Mithraleya also mentioned lower cases in India, where a nascent level of anger towards the government is, pardon the pun, endemic, as supporting his thesis.) While the study initially mentioned this conclusion in the study, the journal requested it be deleted from the published version on the grounds that it was a political statement.

 

So…get your ire up!

Study at : http://cambridge.ssi.org/studies/04888-9993-w

Defunding the Police

On the surface, this might seem a ridiculous idea...who do we call in an emergency? But the idea behind this trope is that police are over-funded, over-militarized, and (paraphrasing the famous quote from WW-II Brits,) over here.

LA mayor has proposed a $100 million reduction in police funding, to go towards grass-roots community policing efforts. That's the kind of tiny reform we need, a small step. Another big one would be to unilaterally cancel all police union contracts on expiration and start from scratch (did you know that many contracts specify that a rogue officer's disciplinary record is expunged after 6 months?!)

An excellent article on how to curb police is in Forbes (!) : https://www.businessinsider.com/research-based-methods-of-reducing-police-violence-2020-6

Two things that don't work, according to research, are body cameras and "sensitivity" training. AUthors suggest more accountability and tracking of , restrictions on use of force, community policing, federal oversight (yeah, well, good luck on that.)

Even the right-wing Reason Institute weighs in: 'An important first step would be to get rid of the legal doctrine of "qualified immunity," under which law enforcement officers are immune from suits for violating citizens' constitutional rights unless the officers' actions violate "clearly established" law.'

From the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/04/defund-the-police-us-george-floyd-budgets

"The movement to defund the police is gaining significant support across America, including from elected leaders, as protests over the killing of George Floyd sweep the nation."

“To see legislators who aren’t even necessarily on the left supporting at least a significant decrease in New York police department [NYPD] funding is really very encouraging,” Julia Salazar, a New York state senator and Democratic socialist, told the Guardian on Tuesday. “It feels a little bit surreal.” 

Tʜᴇ Uɴʙᴇʟɪᴇᴠᴀʙʟᴇ Nᴇᴠᴇʀ Eɴᴅs

Trump used a military helicopter to harass protesters in DC, a tactic used in warzones to "disperse insurgents." Bad enough, but —"𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙮 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙘𝙤𝙥𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙝𝙖𝙙 𝙍𝙚𝙙 𝘾𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨. Conducting an offensive operation with equipment identified with the symbol is a violation of the Geneva Conventions." It was "an inherently dangerous maneuver for even an experienced pilot—clipping a building or an unseen power line could cause the helicopter to crash into the crowd below."

.

Like anyone cares about global norms.

Pᴀᴜʟ Bᴜᴛʟᴇʀ ᴡʀᴏᴛᴇ "CʜᴏᴋᴇHᴏʟᴅ - Pᴏʟɪᴄɪɴɢ Bʟᴀᴄᴋ Mᴇn"

“𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘚𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘑𝘪𝘮 𝘊𝘳𝘰𝘸; 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘑𝘪𝘮 𝘊𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘑𝘪𝘮 𝘊𝘳𝘰𝘸. 𝘐𝘯 𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘺𝘤𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮- 𝘸𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘳𝘶𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘦𝘸.”

 

From an interview with Butler:

https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/6/2/21276799/george-floyd-protest-criminal-justice-paul-butler

In Chokehold, I argue that people tend to see the problems between black people and police in four different ways. So really quickly, the first way is that the problem is black men. It’s the way that we perform masculinity. If we would just pull up our pants, we wouldn’t have to worry about being stopped and frisked. There are quite a lot of people who think that.

 

The second framing is that the problem is under-enforcement of law, not over-enforcement. That what the black community needs even more than other communities is law and order. So when police selectively enforce the law in those communities, it’s actually a kind of reparations, it’s a payback for the time when 911 was a joke. And my friends who are prosecutors and police officers of color, that’s what they say. They say, “Hell yeah, I’m tougher in the hood than I am in the suburbs, because that’s my community.” That’s how they think.

 

Then there’s what I’d call a more liberal framing, which focuses on the relationship between black people and cops, like the problem is that they’re in a bad marriage and they just need to understand each other. This was very much the approach of the Obama administration, emphasizing the need to bring people together alongside tangible reforms like more body cameras and better training.

 

The fourth way of thinking about the problem is the focus on white supremacy. This is the new Jim Crow idea. Here, what people suggest is that if you only work on the police, that’s treating the symptom. But the disease will metastasize. So in this telling, it started with slavery, went to the old Jim Crow, and now it’s the new Jim Crow, enforced via a racially biased criminal justice system. And so the only way things will truly get better is to crush white supremacy.

 

 

 

Republicans Know No Bounds

"Mitt Romney leveled his harshest criticism of President Obama's reelection campaign to date in Ohio Tuesday, declaring that Obama should 'take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago.' "

The arrogance and the hyprocisy of the Republicans know no limits. For anyone on that side of the aisle to level a criticism like this is to believe in the string theory of multiple universes, one of which they reside in, but us normal people don't.

This is from the party that has its major sages say things like the following; OK, you may say that Romney is not responsible for these statements, but ... he has never repudiated any of it:

"Obama is a communist."

"Obama has a colonial mentality influenced by his Kenyan father." (hence he ain't one of us normal folk in these Yew Nited States of Um-erica.)

"Obama is bringing out country to its knees."

"Obama is a racist."  (now if you could explain that, I'd be grateful.)

And, of course, the not-born-in-America bs.

Romney's lie about Medicare from his latest salvo is breathtaking...to the effect that Obama[care] is taking $700 billion away from it. What's not to realize that Obamacare is dedicated to maintaining all Medicare services, the 700b. is projected savings by controlling future costs?" It's as if I promised to pay for your food costs in the future, and I mentioned that I was looking to save some money by buying local produce. Your food is the same, my cost is less. 

But how difficult may that be to convey to these great masses of people who vote R. and listen to Fox sound bites? That's what Romney is counting on, the short attention span of the American voters of whom a vast majority have not heard of Paul Ryan and have no opinion on him? Guess being Chair of the House Budget Committee is no claim to fame.

Faced with this level of ignorance, what should be the Democratic strategy? They're doing sort-of the right thing, taking the battle right into the enemy camp...disinformation, marignal truths and spin. Do they have a choice? No, I say good fo them. It's time to let the negativity hang out.

Mitt, you're a fool and a charlatan. Obama is indeed lowering himself to near, but not quite, your level (but, as Axelrod said, the Obama campaign will be glad to meet the Romney when they come to the "our high ground.")

Buy the O. bumper sticker: "Save Medicare, Vote Democrat". I'd go for one that says "Vote Republican, KILL Medicare" myself.

 

 

 

Romney and Rand, er, Ryan, Roust the Republicans

So should the celebrations start early? Would hailing Obama's II term cause the Mormon-Catholic Gods to frown mightily and load the dice in favor of the Republicans? Do I believe in magical thinking as I knock wood and drink a toast to Mitt?

On the one hand, Mitt-the-Twit's craven pick of Ryan as his mate, his below-the-limbo-champs bow to the ultra-conservatives, his raising of the class war to tactical-nuclear level, cannot be described as 'brave'. Desperate, maybe, game-altering, possibly, wonderfully expedient, certainly, but not indicative of any newfound steel in the spine.  On the other, it might get enough of us sluggish Democrats to hand the election to Obama.

But enough of Romney. We are all aware of his flip-flops. his exaggerations (I won't use the L-word,) and his total inability to act, even hypocritically, as if he cares about the average American (or anyone who makes less than his millions.)

Let us examine his VP pick. Incidentally, I won't use here the cliché about heartbeats and distance you are no doubt being inundated with. Let's just say it's scary enough that Ryan may be in shouting distance of the President if they win.

A very rich white man. What a surprise. Birds-of-a-feather and all that, Mitt's most comfortable with his own kind.

A lover of Ayn Rand. To anyone left of Attila the Hun, this should be disqualification enough. Rand's evil philosophy is reportedly Ryan's "reason for entering public service," which speaks volumes. Rand, in case you did not go through a (hopefully and mercifully) short period in your late teens when you thought she was the embodiment of coolth, is the force behind Objectivism, a super-libertarian, super-selfish individualism. This is the person whose work, Whittaker Chambers once reviewed, "I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained." and "[in which there's the constant refrain of] to the gas chambers, go."

A man voted by his teenage peers as the 'biggest brownnoser.' Unfair to mention? No, surely all's fair in love and politics.

A man with a radical agenda to demolish social structures gained over the last fifty years. If Romney-Ryan are elected, and the Ryan budget is implemented, we'll see:

- Social Security privatized.
- Medicare replaced with a voucher system (we know how well that works for its baby cousin, Medicare part D vouchers.)
- Senior assistance, heating help and childhood hunger programs cut.
- Major federal departments such as Education and Justice decimated.
- Taxes on the rich and super-rich cut drastically, the revenue made up by the middle class paying more (surprise!) by eliminating popular deductions.
- Defense, however, sanctified and untouched.

In case you think I exaggerate, please note that a Tax Policy Center study supports much of this.

And, of course he's virulently anti-gay-marriage and anti-abortion. This from Obama's tweet: "Paul Ryan supports banning all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest."

Best quotes on the subject so far:
Paul Begala, "And so Romney Hood has his Friar Tuck."
Unknown blog poster: "Two R's make a Wrong"

Image credit: http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/

Lost - Requiescat In Pace

Many moons ago my son D & I happened on Lost, that TV pheomenon beloved by so many. We became sort-of-fans, watching seasons II & III (and eventually some of I). When the time travel intruded, the violence escalated and the obfuscations became intolerable, we dropped out.

Yesterday at a lunch with my charming friend DCV, I was reminded that the finale was on at 9pm. I should have ignored this, but I watched it anyway. I wrote my black-hearted friend thus:

"OK kiddo you owe me big time. As in two bloody precious hours of my life (ie 2-1/2 less commercials which I skipped) which, if you had not reminded me of the finale of Lost, I would not have WASTED. I hope you saw it too so at the least we can bitch about it together, that would be misery loving company indeed.

TERMINALLY F%%%ING PRETENTIOUS. Not to say utterly incomprehensible (even allowing for my not having seen this entire season.) Lots of portentous music, not even the interesting stuff that a show like Battlestar Galactica could pull off...they at least had a name-brand composer. Lots of half sentences, trailing off into nothingness  as we hang on breathlessly....say whaaa??  who?? why?? 

Guns, knives, sundry mayhem (where do they get those damn bullets anyway?...at least BSG had a whole spaceship devoted to heavy manufacturing.)  Everyone dies. Except they don't. John get brutally shot, knifed, and kicked over a cliff. This may indicate some animus on the part of his attackers (Jack, Kate and Sawyer) but he's there with them in friendly avuncular mode at the end.

Lots of flashes, shaky-cam and falling things, mostly unrecognizable. The requisite sci-fi shot with a pool of glowing light which gets slowly brighter and brighter until the screen turns stark white. Did I mention cliches? This last apparently was to show the island was not (yes, not) destroyed. I may have this wrong.
 
One saving grace (at least from a male viewpoint): Kate in 5" heels and a super tight short black cocktail dress, all too briefly, (mouthing aforementioned pretentious half sentences to poor Jack, who's dead, I think or maybe not) and Juliet (she's also the ditzy FBI agent in V) in a push-up bra showing serious cleavage (who knew?)  inexplicably as a doctor in a hospital doing an ultrasound on Jin (or is that the husband...you know, the Korean woman.) I may have gotten this part mixed up. That's easy when you're retching.
 
Cuteness supplied by several babies, two birthing scenes (Clare, Jin, etc.) and a bushy-tailed puppy dog who licks blood off of Jack's face as he dies (except he doesn't).
 
Sawyer does not remove his shirt though he gets wet.
 
Hugo does not reveal the secret of his magic ever-present numbers.

Jin (or is it the other one) speaks English again.

Sayid has not succeeded in his quest for a hair brush.

Jack's father comes back from the dead (empty coffin cliche); sample dialog (note: may have been altered to protect the writers from ridicule):

Jack: Father? [accompanied by his underwhelming look of surprise] What are you doing here?
Father: Where is here?
 
Male chauvinism seems to have taken over. I didn't remember so many more male characters than women; in any event the females collectively had about 12 lines in these two hours. Maybe this is actually a GOOD THING as it may indicate a sensibility on the part of the writers that women are less likely to be TERMINALLY PRETENTIOUS (except Kate, whom I forgive for that gorgeous profile ... I wonder if she's had a nose job, it's just too perfect sideways.)
 
Comic relief: none. Unless you count the fact that the whole thing was so ludicrous that snide laughter was the only was to deal with it.

Everyone, babies and all, meet in an interminable silent final scene in a church. Much hugging and pairing off. Oddly, not Jack and Kate (who has sadly changed out of her black mini, no doubt in the church vestibule.) All smile. Someone walks out of church doors into painfully bright white light and vanishes. Blackout.

After being endlessly lost for two more hours: Lost: R. I. P."

An Explosive War Film

What makes the Hurt Locker one of the most magnificent war films made recently? Perhaps it's because it's directed by a woman…a friend said to me that only a woman could've brought out the nuances shown so powerfully in this film. 

 [image:Summit Entertainment]

Directed by Katherine Bigelow (Mission Zero, Point Break,) a rare non-chick-movie woman director, whose previous efforts don’t even hint at the intensity and acting power she's brought out in this film, it is set in Iraq in 2004…before you decide it's yet another gung ho propaganda-effort-masked-as-movie, read on.

 

The opening scene of this movie (it starts abruptly without credits, or, for that matter, any real "opening" trope,) shows the efforts of the Delta Company bomb squad to defuse a roadside bomb in Iraq. Tense from the start, it stays that way relentlessly though most of its 130 minute running time. There's a sameness, almost ordinariness about it; except it's the sameess of war, with its attendant tension, horror and imminent death. The bomb squad is led by Sergeant Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty); when their defusing expert is killed in the opening sequence, he's replaced by maverick William James (Jeremy Renner in a bravura performance,) who's not exactly a by-the-rule type of guy, but who has defused 873 bombs (give or take a few;)  he also seems to having a wonderful time while being barely in control. The classic male wartime ego conflict…rule-breaker vs. the chief who cannot control him. And Eldridge is a nervous never-quite-there-for-you personality who you sense is a disaster waiting to happen.

 

Except, not quite. The devil is in the details, and the details are superb. James tossing off his bomb suit because it would make no difference at that point, he's dead if the bomb explodes and he'd rather be comfortable; fearless James ignoring Sanborne's pleas to pull out as he desperately searches for the  bomb trigger in a partially burned car; James (he does get all the good scenes,) finding the body of the boy he tried to befriend  days after his last contact with hum (and why is that body so obviously staged in an abandoned warehouse?); the semi-obligatory punch-fest between James and Sandborne, with an awesome funny ending…all perfectly staged.

 

How you feel about this movie depends on how much you can take its intensity, its brutality, its relentless downbeat-ness…as just a movie…in which case it is an absolute must-see, a rare combination of acting, directing and writing (by Mark Boal, from real-life experiences) perfection. Regard it as a commentary on the horror of war, its mindless destruction, its visceral danger, its soldiers retching at the sight of a bloody body, its dissonance between an occupying force's necessary hair trigger paranoia and  the routine-ness of kids watching the scene waiting for another explosive (in all senses of the term) denouement, and it is to weep; and yet to laugh in relief from time to time. Black humor was never so edgy.

 

No clichés here, thankfully, or at least not any that are remarkable. A late scene between James and his wife (a small but pleasant cameo role for beauteous Evangeline Lilly, Kate of Lost,) is heartbreaking in its banality; them shopping in the typically over-choiced suburban supermarket, her pointedly ignoring his tentative comment about the scariness of his job…what could she say? and yet why say nothing?...but it underscores his loneliness and his total commitment to the job.

  

The excellent cinematography (filmed on location in Jordan) by Barry Ackroyd and the spare and effective music by Marco Beltrami add immeasurably to the experience.

 

Playing at the Beekman in Manhattan

 

Online Community Goes Live

I'm a very regular reader of the Brooklyn real-estate blog, brownstoner.com. Its older self-description was 'an obsessive interest in brownstone Brooklyn,' though now its slogan is 'Brooklyn inside and out,' as befits its broader perspective. It's a prolific site, with all kinds of news about real-estate and current events broadly connected to the state of life and the built environment in Brooklyn (and New York). The Forum section deals with advice about everything from the minutiae of sealing marble counters, to how sleazy real-estate brokers are, to how to deal with the odd stoop-pooper.

One of the regular posters decided it would be a good thing to organize a get-together of 'brownstoners' in the flesh; the first one was back last October and the second was yesterday, both in bars with boccie courts, oddly enough, though none of the attendees actually played it...too much of interest otherwise.

I approached the first one with considerable curiosity. Being a regular ranter on the blog myself, and having been called many names due to my over-solicitousness to tenants' predicament and my over-willingness to suggest raising taxes on everyone making more money than me (that's my detractors speaking,) I wondered how it would be to meet in person the anonymous people I had been having many conversations with. Not the least of the curiosity was the unmasking of the body behind the login name, so to speak...since the names may not reflect the persons behind them at all, though over the months the sex (I was trained to use 'sex', not 'gender' as I keep telling my son, who's at the age that any use of that three-letter word is hilarious) of many had been revealed through their writings.

It was a very pleasant surprise. Rabid ranters seemed normal in person and I actually wondered whether it would be harder to make fun of/ridicule/dismiss as idiotic the writings of those whom I'd met (actually, the answer is yes and no, but that's another story.)

Last night was the second meeting. Though I'd forgotten many (the name tags were usually the on-line names, not the real ones,) it was like meeting  slightly eccentric family members at the next major holiday.

The blog/response scenario is of course such a recent phenomenon that practically anything could have been anticipated. The anonymity granted by posting on blogs under a pseudonym is quite cherished and unique...almost like writing anonymous letters in another era. But that action was considered anti-social and usually confined to the 'poison-pen' world. Nowadays the anonymity, while still used as a cloak for all kinds of excess, is self-protective as well...who wants the many internet trolls to identify you (I wondered if protectiveness  was operative in the ratio of men to women in the group yesterday, which was high, or whether there are many more men posting on brownstoner than women)?

Which is why this second meeting, with its glimmerings of an actual community developing, is so interesting. If you didn't know it, you might have thought that this was a group who worked together having an after-work social session. Lots of conversation and drinking. This may become a regularly scheduled event, and maybe real-life friendships will develop. But then would you have to control your posting language? I wondered perhaps if that was why many regulars were not present.