On the threat to arrest jaywalkers videos, several of which are on the web, I just want to note that’s the result of poor training. Somehow, police have gotten the idea that because they have to follow orders, they are entitled to order civilians around. Their superiors have failed to impress on them that they are public servants and that their demeanor should express respect for the public they serve.
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Category Archives: Hannah’s views
Wherefore the assaults on bicyclists and pedestrians?
An hypothesis:
Car culture is an adjunct of the culture of obedience. The people of the U.S. have bought into the notion that being confined in a cage with wheels is freedom. Some resent being shown that other means of locomotion (feet, bicycle, skate board) are possible. Laws that make walking along a highway or across a street or using a skateboard outside a segregated venue illegal serve to reinforce that people with cars are special.
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Cate Street Posies
Where Car Culture Comes to Die
Let’s hope!
Some people get agitated about “paving paradise,” but the promoters of industry see this sea of vehicles in the Marshes of Glynn as the salvation of a county, 40% of whose children live below the poverty level. The cars come in and the cars go out, just like the ocean’s waves and, we are told, deposit wealth on our shores. More likely, if we’re lucky, dead cars don’t shed as many toxins as the ones that clog our highways and commercial sites.
Thoughts on the latest Trump reversal in court.
What our secular royalists refuse to understand is that the Constitution is addressed to agents of government and outlines their duties and obligations for the purpose of insuring they do what they are told. The people govern. It almost looks like an accident how that phrase is inserted and the reference to “powers” is somewhat misleading because, like “rights,” the real object is to spell out obligations. Civil rights are, after all, the obligations of citizenship: to vote, to serve on juries, to hold public office, to petition for laws, to provide support and to enforce the laws. What makes them different from the obligations of public officials is that the citizen’s obligations are optional when it comes to performance. The public servants’ duties are not optional because he takes an oath to do what the Constitution says and because s/he surrenders self-interest in exchange for getting paid.
Our public servants are not supposed to distributed public assets in order to promote their retention in office or enhance their worth after they leave. Limiting their term of service does not justify acting like the unjust steward in the Bible. It does not eliminate it either. Like the poor, we will undoubtedly always have unjust stewards among us. Indeed, the former may well be the consequence of the latter. When we let predators into the larder, they are likely to eat us out of house and home.
Groupists by design
It has just occurred to me that some people need to be part of a group with which they can identify to have a sense of themselves. So, for example, there’s even pride in being classified as a homeless person. Any kind of status is better than none. Individualism is not perceived as a boon.
How are the groups defined? By visual attributes, be ethnic affiliation, by religion. It’s not inherently antagonistic.
Blaming the Russians
So, that’s the latest. The Russians are now being accused of corrupting the entire Republican party, whose support the Dude arrogated onto himself with a promise of reviving faded glories. That’s bunk, albeit consistent with the penchant for blaming some other entity for whatever goes wrong.
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Sadism, masochism and ? Commiseration?
The sadist and the masochist inflict misery. But, for what purpose? Are these actions whose production of pleasure is self-contained, in the act, so to speak? Or is there an ulterior motive?
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Culture of Obedience.
The culture of obedience relies on death and commiseration to sustain itself without generating the resentment that should cut it off. We exist in a grand web of illusion not of our own choosing. The deception is perpetrated by those who would exploit their own kind.
Are they the descendants of Cain? That would explain why those who are descended from someone else do not recognize their flaws.
Jealousy
Deception
Power lust
What is commiseration? A more sophisticated kind of leper licking. But, boy is it popular!
Professional = Paid
It’s as simple as that. Professionals are paid; amateurs do it out of love. So, whom should we respect more?
Why is the paid person respected? Because the payment represents an element of control. The amateur exercises autonomy.
On some level, the Dude recognized that. Which is why he insisted he was going to reject the Presidential pay. Of course, that’s not how the system works. We pay public servants exactly because we, the people, expect to be obeyed and exercise control.