All in the Family featured the curmudgeonly Archie Bunker. Archie was television’s most famous grouch, blunt, blustering, straightforward and untouched by the PC crowd. He was the archetype of the conservative male. Michael desprately tried to reeducate him, but he persisted in his breviloquence.



Looking back at the last 40 years, we realize: ARCHIE WAS RIGHT!

12/10/2013

Cops Shoot Man

Read the title again.

Ok.  Now read it one more time.

What was your first reaction?

Was it, "so what"?

Was it, "again"?

Perhaps it was "so what's new?".

I've never been anti-cop.  When it first came out, I thought NWA's "Fuk da Police" was the lashing out of hood rats who didn't want to assimilate into western civilization.   Look at the some of the lyrics:

Punk police are afraid of me, huh
A young nigga on the warpath
And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops, dying in L.A
 
Smoke any motherfucker that sweats me
Or any asshole that threatens me
I'm a sniper with a hell of a scope
Taking out a cop or two, they can't cope with me
 
 
When the hook of the song is "fuck the police" repeated over and over, its not hard to see why cops would take the song's message personally.  If I was a cop in Compton and NWA was blaring from a car's radio, I'd approach with extreme caution and be ready for the worst. 
 
That's the way it was in the 90's in urban America.  20 years latter we live in a nation that enjoys the reality of a police culture that places "officer safety" at a premium and views "civil rights" as a quaint idea past it's time.  It's not just cops messing with hood rats, now.  Middle aged white guys get pulled over and have the drug dogs run through their truck on their way to Sunday school.  Vets get gunned down outside of Costco.  Texas man gets arrested for "rudely displaying a weapon".  New York cops shoot two bystanders, then arrest a man and charge him with the assault of the people they shot.
 
Then there is this story from The Guardian, Iceland's armed police make first ever fatal shooting. 
A man who was firing a shotgun in his home has been killed in Iceland in what is believed to be the first time that a person has been shot dead by armed police in the country's history.
Iceland has had a armed police force for about 300 years.  About 1/3 of the population owns firearms.  Yet gun related violence and violent crime in general is rare.  The difference between this story and most of the cop shootings in the US is that the guy in Iceland really had to earn his bullet.  The 59-year-old Reykjavik man shot two cops before the police made the decision to take lethal action.   The cops in Reykjavik only came out to arrest him after he was randomly shooting a gun out his window and threatening his neighbors.  In other words, he wasn't doing something drastic like shopping or working on his sons boy scout merit badge.

The two police officers in Reykjavik that were shot in the incident are OK.  The first officer was hit in his protective helmet and the second shot was blocked by a bullet proof riot shield.  This is of course good news.  No one wants to see unnecessary bloodshed, cop or civilian.   In this case the bad guy got what he deserved and the good guys went home safe.  It's as close to a win-win situation as the circumstances would permit. 

From the news stories I've read, there is no hand wringing going on in Iceland over this event.  Yes there is an investigation into it.  The police chief didn't dodge reporters and newsmen, instead he issued a sincere, un-accusing and un-excusing statement that himself and his department are "deeply saddened" and "extend their condolences to the family".  His statement is a mature and thoughtful way to handle a bad situation. 

Back in the USA, "mature" and "thoughtful" aren't words you will hear used very frequently when describing police reaction to any form of scrutiny.  On one hand we have an out of control thug culture that represents a very real threat to officer safety (and the safety of everyone else, they're called criminals for a reason).  On the other hand we have an increasingly out of control police force that see anyone not in blue as their enemy.   These cops see themselves as free to harass, humiliate and harm anyone they please at any time, without provocation. 

The USA has been decreasing morally since 1956.  As a result the underclass has grown and with it the criminal class.  Cops have responded in kind and its becoming increasingly difficult to tell the two apart.  Now when a middle aged white guy gets pulled over his first thought isn't "I guess its time to get a new light bulb for that tail light".  Cops no longer restrain their violence to "that part of town" but feel free to abuse and kill citizens whenever it amuses them to do so.  As our society fractures more morally, racially and economically, things will only get worse.

The solution needs to embrace several areas that are politically unpopular and ultimately unworkable.  Criminals need to be de-incentivized.  This means decriminalizing at a federal level, and regulating at a state level recreational substances.  Cops need to be de-escalated and demilitarized.  Laws protecting them form prosecution for misconduct need to be rewritten so that bad cops are held accountable for being bad cops.  Thirdly the public school system needs to embrace and began teaching Judeo-Christian religious and moral philosophy again.  Abington v. Schempp was a mistake and the repercussions have been detrimental to our society as a whole.  Besides, they are teaching Islam in the schools now, so equal time for a proven philosophy should be promoted as well.

I don't know how much this would help in the northern states but Denmark has an interesting way of supplementing its law enforcement. Here is a link (NSFW) to an interesting program.  Granted some of the guns in the program are bigger than others, but I think we can agree that they are being deployed in a responsible manner.


10 comments:

  1. Giraffe8:43 AM

    Thirdly the public school system needs to embrace and began teaching Judeo-Christian religious and moral philosophy again.

    Maybe they should do it, but they won't. And even if they did, they'd screw it up. They can't even teach math. Why would we trust them with something that important?

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  2. WaterBoy11:36 AM

    Giraffe: "And even if they did, they'd screw it up. They can't even teach math. Why would we trust them with something that important?"

    Good point. That's something better left to parochial schools, IMO.

    Though they do try to teach morality, they just don't credit its roots...and they screw it up, anyway.

    Besides, what would they teach? Catholic or Protestant? Calvinism or Arminianism? Classic theism or open theism? Hallowe'en as pagan or Hallowe'en as sacred? It's easy to picture school boards fighting over these issues just as readily as they fight over evolution vs ID.

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  3. Prior to 1956 the public schools taught the golden rule, the lords prayer, the 10 commandments. All they did was very basic, they stayed away from doctrinal stuff, it was basically be a good person, god is watching you and expects you to behave, type teaching. They also gave spankings, which of course they still did into the 80's but less frequently.

    I agree that the current crop of teachers probably won't be very good at doing these things, but stopping what we are doing and going in a different direction is what is needed. We know how past generations turned out with these kinds of teachings and with school administered discipline. Why not go back to what we know works?

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  4. Giraffe1:42 PM

    Because it didn't work. It's how we got where we are.

    If we did it right, maybe it would work. The devil's got his hooks in the universities and he owns the teachers unions.

    My hope for the future is the fact that many in my generation are homeschooling. Most of these kids will have their heads on straight and will homeschool their own kids. I think the best way to kill the secular beast is to starve it to death by not feeding our children to it.

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  5. "the best way to kill the secular beast is to starve it to death by not feeding our children to it."

    I agree. What do you do with the intentionally ignorant masses? They need a better system than the one they have now.

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  6. I'm kinda surprised none of you are on board with the Denmark solution.

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  7. WaterBoy4:36 PM

    NSFW. Waiting for a chance to review the link at home.

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  8. Giraffe8:04 PM

    yeah I was too, I'm on board, now I hope Mrs. G doesn't check the browser history.

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  9. WaterBoy1:31 PM

    I read about that some time ago, and couldn't help but think that they were probably causing more accidents than they were preventing.

    The flip side, of course, is...what if they hire Roseanne Barr lookalikes?

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  10. "what if they hire Roseanne Barr lookalikes?"

    People would still look, for the same reason we slow down and stair at a train wreck.

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