The shouting back and forth about those two stupids who challenged armed federal law enforcement, imposing themselves as something between an irritant and a threat, has diminished lately to a dull roar. Before the issue drops off the radar entirely, I’d like to make one more observation. Someone should. This never was an honest discussion. It often appeared to be what it really was, but it never presented itself that way.
Those intent on making enough noise that their numbers seem to be greater than they really are, insist the authorities who discharged the rounds, and/or their employing agencies, should be up for some kind of punishment. Others don’t think that. This inspires a furious exchange of ideas, not unlike an exchange of gestures between two wild badgers tied up in a bag. Beneath this exchange there is a layer, hidden from view, in which other ideas are exchanged with the same force and fury; the difference of opinion, here, is about what we take into account when bad things happen to you. There’s a “daddy faction” placing importance on the dumb stupid thing you did right before the bad thing happened, and a “mommy faction” that wants to ignore this entirely. The latter of which insists, in so many words, that bad things should never happen. It doesn’t matter how stupid you were. There should be some kind of guarantee, and the guarantee should be in place, inviolable, every minute womb to tomb.
Well…not womb to tomb. Cord-cutting doctor-spanking first-cry to tomb. Or, to euthanasia treatment. But those are wholly different issues.
This is a significant observation, if I dare say so myself. We’re eardrums-deep in these cries of “Watch the video!” or “I saw the video!” or “Did you see the video??” But it’s not about angle of car tires or what model of 9mm pistol or any of that. It’s about whether you should expect bad things to happen to you when you do dumb stupid things. Some of us say yes and some of us say no, the latter being more militant about it, insisting on absolutes, iron-clad guarantees and never-never-never.
I notice “When you pee up a rope, piss lands on you” is a sort of a standard. There are consequences for flouting the standard. I also notice, observing human behavior, that in the absence of standards performance sinks…and sinks…and sinks. It’s how we’re built. There is no bottom. More time allocated means slower completion of tasks. More physical space granted means sloppy sprawling. A lower expectation of cleanliness means a bigger mess.
The mommy-faction is not thinking logically. Or, not taking human behavior into account. They want to abolish all standards with their hue and cry of “No matter what s/he did, s/he didn’t deserve that!” They need to watch Unforgiven. It’s got nuthin’ to do with deserve. It’s about consequences. And that doesn’t mean the daddy faction wants these two dipshits dead. If you actually talk to the people in the daddy faction, you’ll pick up a strong preference that the two dipshits should still be alive. Coupled with an understanding that people in the daddy faction don’t get to decide what other people do. So that’s why the dipshits are dead.
But the mommy faction people don’t talk to the people in the daddy faction. They just upload prose and poetry about “s/he didn’t deserve that” onto Facebook.
I notice something else. Now that we’ve established the mommy faction is not thinking logically and not taking human behavior into account, and not coherently discussing the issue with their opposition, we should not be surprised to see what’s next: Stridently insisting on punishment for the armed officers and/or their employing agencies, they’re not in any way united or settled on what this punishment might be. Oh they’re great for tossing around ideas: Murder conviction, civil penalties, reform of the agency, abolish the agency. A lot of them are in favor of abolishing the agencies. It’s already been explained to them, multiple times, by myself and others, that the agencies exist to enforce laws on the books, namely that you can’t just waltz across our border and start living here in the shadows, unauthorized. If you don’t like that law, you have a variety of tools at your disposal you can use to reform the law or get rid of it. How come you not doing that?
But — did I mean to imply that the mommy and daddy factions are still married and living in the same house? I should not have done that, for marriage is an institution that works when it joins together two fully functional adults. That’s not what we have going on here. The mommy faction, having already expurgated the notion of meeting standards, living under a system of laws, or performing to someone else’s expectations, is made up of box-wine cat-lady mommies. That’s why we’re having this debate about consequences for doing dumb things. Funny how that happens: An insistence on impunity following any dumb stupid thing, morphs into a push for more dumb stupid things. The elimination of “Find Out” after the “Fuck Around” shrivels up, like a banana on a window sill, into an elimination of responsibility or obligation, and a push for more dumb silly individualistic behavior, more fucking around. Bushels of I-get-to without so much as a teaspoon of I-have-to or I’m-obliged-to.
It’s a good conversation for the nation to have, especially in a midterm election year.
But, let’s just keep in mind what we’re really discussing.
Donald Trump is not at the center of it all. Neither are our immigration control agencies. These are merely manifestations, shadows of our real conflict between the serious and creative, versus the absurd and (self-) destructive.
