Horses and Apples

One bad apple doesn’t spoil the bunch. This is an idiom. In that a bad apple as “someone who creates problems or causes trouble for others; specifically, a member of a group whose behavior negatively affects the remainder of the group.” And it comes from the proverb that actually states, “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.” And that misuse has been applied repeatedly when in cones to Police. So now we have cleared that up, it shows that in fact that the acts of one affect many. Cannot say that one enough as we have repeatedly again seen Police Officers kill and abuse those in custody and those not yet placed in as such. The SCORPION unit that was comprised of many Police Officers in Memphis and were not just the 5 who killed him nor the one who stopped him and has since been fired, it was an entire unit, a Goon Squad. The unit was devised to be a largely traffic force that looked for minor violations including seat belts, running lights, speeding and the like as a deterrent. In other words, “stop and frisk” and the concept of broken windows. And we know already that most of these arbitrary stops enable Police to search the vehicle, seize the vehicle and in turn fine the Driver excessive fees as well as Jail them. Sandra Bland was an example of such. and with that we also know they are highly fraught exchanges. I keep thinking of the band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy when it comes to these squads. The band great, the thugs of Officers not so great. This is from the NY Times today on said SCORPION unit which has now been disbanded. Don’t worry it will be back with no less a dickwad acronym that is all about the men who use tasers and guns as extensions of their manhood.

The idea that there are good Cops is in fact the EXCEPTION not the rule. Sorry, not sorry. But there is something that needs to be understood that in the case of Memphis that despite the fact that the Police and the Victim were/are Black it is less about the color of skin and more the color of the uniform. The Military has similar dogmas and the reality is that many who try to join exclusive units in their respective branch have found themselves abused and often end up dead or seriously disabled in some type of hazing process that has gone on for decades. If they complain or are not able to complete the course, they are assigned dead end jobs. The sexual abuse includes not just Women of the Military but Men. And even the ROTC units in the public schools have come under fire as they too are using their authority and inference of power to assault and victimize many potential recruits. The reality is that we have a Badge obsession like we do a gun one and they have both. And the badge of honor is to keep one’s mouth shut.

When you think of these organizations of defense you think very much a tribal mentality that permeates the core and you become like them rather that try to go against them. Those that have have faced serious repercussions and their careers have been ended as a result. And we all are members of one tribe or another. We use that membership to declare moral superiority, intellect, a coolness or whatever other adjective or moniker you wish in order to add to your identity. The hyphenate world in which we live places us in the need for more apparently. He/She/Her/Him/Mx/Ms and so forth. Fuck it I don’t care anymore frankly as it just again lends to the divisions and more ire than it is worth. And with that I found this editorial today and I share it to see why I am a loner. I cannot handle the endless need to validate or prove worth. I find each conversation fraught with challenges that are exhausting and I spend my days already exhausted from sitting and doing nothing and watching children do nothing. It is not how I saw my life pan out in the least. And again it is why I write, words that no one reads or maybe they do but they don’t care as they are seize on one word, one thought, remove it from context and decide if the rest is worth reading or not. It is all judgement and assessment and none of it productive or good for anyone.

The most salient point the Author makes is the endless cycle of Good vs Bad and the tales of who has it better/worse and does largely the same to defend and support their beliefs. It is called the Horseshoe Effect. Just that theory alone sets off alarm bells. And if this does not resonate with anyone, think book banning. The right are running amok with books about Slavery, Sexuality and other issues of culture. The Left too is doing the same, removing books like To Kill and Mockingbird for Atticus as a White Savior or Huckleberry Finn and other books like Mice and Men that were written in the 1920s and used the word “Nigger” in the text. Even me writing the word is highly fraught as it should not be spoken or written. I am to use the phrase the “N word” Really? I am not using to level a name or affix a negative abusive moniker and am discussing the word in a literary critical context. Nope can’t do that. Then please only Women can use the word, “Bitch.” Gays I am talking to you here!

But here is the NAACP position and they feel that it should NEVER be used ever, under any circumstance. And once again I refer to John McWhorter and his thoughts on the issue. And he concludes with this:

The N-word euphemism was an organic outcome, as was an increasing consensus that “nigger” itself is forbidden not only in use as a slur but even when referred to. Our spontaneous sense is that profanity consists of the classic four-letter words, while slurs are something separate. However, anthropological reality is that today, slurs have become our profanity: repellent to our senses, rendering even words that sound like them suspicious and eliciting not only censure but also punishment.

For a person who uses the word Fuck all the time I have had my moments where I was scolded and reprimanded usually by white men who are obviously deeply offended by my lack of lady like speech. To that I say, “Fuck yeah Asshole.” I don’t care anymore but in context of a discussion we should be able to use words, even those most repellent to bring about discussion. It is critical in all kinds of theory, race included. We must use words powerfully and we do so in ways to do harm and do well. Again the use of “Bro” or “Boy” or even “Man” taken out of context and broken apart to see evil where there is none is again a part of the process of moral superiority. I was talking about “lunch ladies” regarding School Cafeteria workers which is an old nickname, harmless and I was informed that there are Men now in the kitchens. Really there are? When were you last in a public school lunchroom? There are none and of course the good Liberal scold continued as they cannot be wrong; “Thanks for the reminder that gender enforcement and stereotyping are critical functions of education.” And my response: “Hey it is what I live for.” We are talking about Lunchroom workers and that the term is not pejorative in the least but this is where we are nitpicking, bullying and fighting over words and terms. It will not get better. Why? Its all we have. We have no interests, no hobbies, no work that is meaningful. So we misdirect and channel our anger and frustrations to those on the interwebs. Social media is anything but social nor is it media.

‘Bad Apples’ or Systemic Issues?

By David French Opinion Columnist The New York Times Feb 5, 2023

On Wednesday, the city of Memphis remembered the life of Tyre Nichols, a young man who was beaten by at least five Memphis police officers and died three days later. Stories like this are terrible, they’re relentless, and they renew one of the most contentious debates in the nation: Are there deep and systemic problems with the American police?

How we answer that question isn’t based solely on personal experience or even available data. It often reflects a massive partisan divide, one that reveals how we understand our relationships with the institutions we prize the most — and the least.

Every year Gallup releases a survey that measures public confidence in a variety of American institutions, including the police. In 2022, no institution (aside from the presidency) reflected a greater partisan trust gap than the police. A full 67 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the police, versus only 28 percent of Democrats.

Why is that gap so large? While I try to avoid simple explanations for complex social phenomena, there is one part of the answer that I believe receives insufficient attention: Our partisanship tends to affect our reasoning, influencing our assessments of institutions regardless of the specifics of any particular case.

Here’s what I mean. The instant that a person or an institution becomes closely identified with one political “tribe,” members of that tribe become reflexively protective and are inclined to write off scandals as “isolated” or the work of “a few bad apples.”

Conversely, the instant an institution is perceived as part of an opposing political tribe, the opposite instinct kicks in: We’re far more likely to see each individual scandal as evidence of systemic malice or corruption, further proof that the other side is just as bad as we already believed.

Before I go further, let me put my own partisan cards on the table. I’m a conservative independent. I left the Republican Party in 2016, not because I abandoned my conservatism but rather because I applied it. A party helmed by Donald Trump no longer reflected either the character or the ideology of the conservatism I believed in, and when push came to shove, I was more conservative than I was Republican.

But my declaration of independence wasn’t just about Trump. In 2007 I deployed, relatively late in life, to Iraq as a U.S. Army judge advocate general, or JAG. Ever since I returned from my deployment, I’ve been gradually shedding my partisanship.

The savagery of the sectarian infighting I saw in Iraq shocked me. I witnessed where mutual hatred leads, and when I came home I saw that the seeds of political violence were being planted here at home — seeds that started to sprout in the riots of summer 2020 and in the Trump insurrection of 2021.

As American polarization deepens, I’ve noticed unmistakable ways in which committed partisans mirror one another, especially at the far edges. There’s even a term for the phenomenon: horseshoe theory, the idea that as left and right grow more extreme they grow more alike. When it comes to the partisan reflex — the defense of “my people” and “my institutions” — extreme partisans behave very much like their polar opposites.

And make no mistake, respect for police officers has long been vital to the very identity of conservative Americans. Men and women in uniform are ours. They’re part of our community, and — as the Blue Lives Matter flags in my suburban Nashville neighborhood demonstrate — we’ve got their backs. (Mostly, anyway. Lately, the Capitol Police and the F.B.I. do not feel that same support.)

There are good reasons for respecting and admiring police officers. A functioning police force is an indispensable element of civil society. Crime can deprive citizens of property, hope and even life. It is necessary to protect people from predation, and a lack of policing creates its own forms of injustice.

But our admiration has darker elements. It causes too many of us — again, particularly in my tribe — to reflexively question, for example, the testimony of our Black friends and neighbors who can tell very different stories about their encounters with police officers. Sometimes citizens don’t really care if other communities routinely experience no-knock raids and other manifestations of aggression as long as they consider their own communities to be safe.

At this point you might be asking: When is the left reflexively defensive? What institutions does it guard as jealously as conservatives guard the police?

Consider academia. Just as there is a massive partisan gap in views of the police, there is a similar gap in views of higher education. According to a 2022 New America Survey, 73 percent of Democrats believe universities have a “positive effect” on the country, while only 37 percent of Republicans have the same view.

Yes, this is in part a consequence of anti-intellectual strains on the right and among right-wing media. And this conservative mistrust of higher education (and secondary education) is causing it to turn its back on free speech and instead resort to punitive legislation, such as Florida’s recently passed “Stop Woke Act,” which a federal court called “positively dystopian” and unconstitutionally “bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints.”

But that’s not the whole story. The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — of which, full disclosure, I was once president — has tracked over 900 incidents since 2001 where scholars were targeted for termination or other penalties for speech that was protected by the First Amendment or by conventional principles of academic freedom. In 2021 alone there were 111 attempts to penalize professors for their speech, and almost 70 percent of those attacks came from the left.

I spent years litigating campus free speech in court. It was frustrating to file successful case after successful case — often challenging policies that existed in campuses across the country — only to be told time and again that there was no systemic problem with free expression on campus, that these were merely isolated incidents or a product of youthful overenthusiasm, of kids being kids.

No one should pretend for a moment that there is any kind of moral equivalence between university censorship and fatal police violence. The stakes on the streets are infinitely higher than the stakes in the classroom. But there is still a common problem: Our repeated assumptions that those on our team might make mistakes or overstep, but those on the other team are deliberately malevolent.

I should know. I used to fit that partisan mold. As a conservative, I could clearly see the problems in American universities. After all, it was my tribe that disproportionately faced penalties and discipline. When it came to the police, however, I was skeptical. I knew there were some bad apples. But was there a systemic problem? I was doubtful.

I have since changed my mind, but it took shedding my partisanship and applying my principles to allow me to see more clearly. Fundamental to my worldview is the belief that human beings possess incalculable worth, but that we are also deeply flawed. No person or institution can be completely trusted.

Thus powerful people and powerful institutions must be held accountable. If you combine authority with impunity, then corruption and injustice will be the inevitable result. If I could see this reality clearly in institutions on the left, why couldn’t I see it on the right?

The police, after all, possess immense power in American streets, often wielded at the point of a gun. Yet the law systematically shields them from accountability. Collective bargaining agreements and state statutes provide police officers with greater protections from discipline than almost any other class of civil servant — despite the fact that the consequences of misconduct can be unimaginably worse. A judge-made doctrine called qualified immunity provides powerful protections against liability, even when officers violate citizens’ civil rights. Systemic police corruption and systemic abuse should not have been a surprise.

How do we fight past our partisanship to become truly curious about the truth? For me, the answer started with the first principle of my conservatism: Human beings possess incalculable worth. If that is true, and my neighbors and fellow citizens are crying out about injustice, I should hear their voices and carefully consider their claims.

My initial inability to see the truth is related to the second principle, that human beings are deeply flawed. I had no trouble applying that principle to my opponents. But it also applies to those I generally admire. It applies to police officers. It applies to me.

The lesson I’ve taken has been clear: Any time my tribe or my allies are under fire, before I yield to the temptation of a reflexive defense, I should apply my principles and carefully consider the most uncomfortable of thoughts: My opponents might be right, my allies might be wrong and justice may require that I change my mind. And it may, in all likelihood, require that I do this again and again.