A man once revered and respected who fell from grace. Now he's making his way back, and showing that he has developed grit and a sense of perspective with maturity. To that end, he calls out the obvious. The killing of George Floyd was horrific. Police, of course, are generally great individuals who we look to for help. Except for a few radical libertarians I unfriended who were into the whole 'all authority is Hitler' shtick.
Anyhoo, he calls for the better way, the way of goodness and light. As does, in his own strange way, Dennis Rodman. Go figure.
In addition, our local Catholic priest also called out the evils surrounding George Floyd's death. He specifically, however, said it was not about racism. It's about the evil of our hearts. And likewise, the reactions that have erupted, the worst of them, have also been the result of the evil of our hearts. Basically it's a spiritual problem, an evil in our hearts, our broken relationship to God. Rodman and Tiger both get the goodness and evil part. Our priest - straight in from Africa - gets the evil and spiritual connection to God part.
Would that more of our courageous religious and national leaders hear this, and not piddle in their pants and embrace all manner of anti-American, racist, bigoted, ignorant and false narratives just to keep their jobs. When a priest from Africa, a golfer and a dyed hair, tattoo emblazoned basketball star say it better than our political and religious leaders, we've got some serious praying to do.
Some comfort in seeing some common sense out there.
ReplyDeleteWas listening to Joe Rogan the other day talking about this, and he said something along the lines of "it's a rare person who can be trusted to have authority over another."
I mean, he's right to an extent, but what nobody wants to admit is that if we limit our cop selection to the best of the best - the absolute cream of the crop of society in mind, body, and morals. You're going to limit the number of cops available. It's just basic math.
Well even supercops have only 24 hrs in a day. There are only so many tasks they'll be able to accomplish in a day. Again - basic reality that if a cop is arresting Bob on main street, he's not available to go arrest Joe over on veteran's boulevard. So the obvious conclusion is that if you limit the number of cops available, you're going to reduce the tasks they can accomplish.
Therefore, if there is a maximum limit of what law can even be done and enforced, then people have to make a choice. Either the law has to be reduced (not just drugs, but even more may have to be legalized), or citizens will have to pick up more of the slack and take more responsibility.
Those are your only options. Otherwise you'll have to increase the number of cops, and to do that you'll have to start lowering your standards.
That seems to be infinitely more complex than anyone is willing to consider. For me, I'm still wondering about the stats behind this all. Do the stats prove that this is a problem?
DeleteThe stats... We'll you can have fun with stats. (Last I heard, cops killed both more whites and at a higher rate - but maybe that's changed by now.)
DeleteAnd it can always get more complicated.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/obamas-blindspot-on-police-unions-and-police-abuse/
Yes, as they say about stats. But I think even a brief overview of more than the two or three stats they keep repeating suggests the dominant media narrative is far from accurate.
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