The terror of stupidity
People not thinking leads to a culture of people unable to think. By thinking I don't mean having thoughts and the will to express them. By thinking I mean the commitment made to sorting things out carefully, seeing them in as much context as possible from one's vantage point, and then weighing whatever needs to be weighed against whatever it needs to be weighed against and arriving at a rational conclusion. This precludes laziness, as it precludes believing that whatever happens to pop into one's mind is worth expressing.
This piece by Paul Jacob made me think of politics, and the name Rudolph Giuliani came to mind. Jacob's piece is about cops and the fact that "a dominant strain of contemporary police culture wants citizens to limit their involvement in their own protection." When Giuliani ran for Mayor of New York City he made a huge compromise, typical of the compromises that New York City mayors make that essentially make the job a political dead end. In New York City abortion is a sacred practice, central to the well-being of everyone, especially men, who don't want the vicissitudes of women's bodies controlling a man's life.
Giuliani is a Catholic who did a turn in the Reagan-era U.S. Justice Department, including a somewhat celebrated stint as a U.S. Attorney. When he ran for mayor of New York City, he examined his conscience and discovered that he could not get elected mayor without changing his position on abortion. So he moved from the pro-life position to the pro-death position and was thereby made acceptable, minimally, to the local priest- and priestesshood. For his late adaptation to the pro-death position, Giuliani and all New Yorkers were penalized by him losing his first bid for mayor to David Dinkins, about whom the kindest thing that can be said is that he looked good in a strong aftershave lotion.
But if statecraft is soulcraft, as George Will once contended, Giuliani had made a trade on the level of soulcraft that allowed him to be elected mayor of New York City, where he actually succeeded at a job that no one succeeds at, which would make his success extraordinary in the highest sense of the word.
After he was elected but I think before he was actually sworn in Giuliani expressed another view that was more than a little offensive to the local priestcraft: he thought that it ought to be made easier for citizens to own and carry guns in New York. So out of tempo was this sentiment that it got stepped on by none other than Giuliani's brilliant, but subordinate to him, police commissioner, William Bratton. Bratton simply said something like "no, that would endanger cops," etc., and Giuliani never said another word about making it easier for citizens to have guns.
But, Giuliani and Bratton, both brilliant men, did go on to make the need for citizens having guns in New York City less immediate. They did what they said they were going to do, which was cut the crime rate in the city dramatically. And that reduction has lasted, long enough that some people, mostly transplanted out-of-towners and people in their 20s and younger, probably don't remember how bad it had been, and how it looked like it was only going to get worse.
Then again, Giuliani had made a second compromise, this time trading the personal security of every New Yorker, including those who would reflexively refuse to exercise their right to defend themselves, in order to stay on the good side of "a dominant strain of contemporary police culture." Giuliani needed cops on his side to do what he wanted to do in New York, and thus he contributed to a growing everyday culture where only the cops and the criminals have guns. That formula works something like this: Criminal A shoots Citizen B, after which Cop C arrives and says: "a shooting has taken place, let us analyze the bullet."
Thus any woman working the evening shift in Manhattan can arrive by subway train after midnight back in her Brooklyn or Bronx neighborhood safe in the knowledge that any bullets found in her body will be carefully scrutinized by trained experts in criminology.
Now, every once in a while someone will be working somewhere in the city late at night and someone with a gun will try to rob him and the working stiff will pull out an illegal, unregistered, unsavory handgun and shoot the filthy robber right dead, or maybe just wing him good. The working stiff is invariably placed under arrest for the illegal handgun, put through the usual legal ringer, and only after his heart has been made to skip many beats will he be verbally chastised and "let off" for protecting himself. In the future, however, We may not be so lenient.
This piece by Paul Jacob made me think of politics, and the name Rudolph Giuliani came to mind. Jacob's piece is about cops and the fact that "a dominant strain of contemporary police culture wants citizens to limit their involvement in their own protection." When Giuliani ran for Mayor of New York City he made a huge compromise, typical of the compromises that New York City mayors make that essentially make the job a political dead end. In New York City abortion is a sacred practice, central to the well-being of everyone, especially men, who don't want the vicissitudes of women's bodies controlling a man's life.
Giuliani is a Catholic who did a turn in the Reagan-era U.S. Justice Department, including a somewhat celebrated stint as a U.S. Attorney. When he ran for mayor of New York City, he examined his conscience and discovered that he could not get elected mayor without changing his position on abortion. So he moved from the pro-life position to the pro-death position and was thereby made acceptable, minimally, to the local priest- and priestesshood. For his late adaptation to the pro-death position, Giuliani and all New Yorkers were penalized by him losing his first bid for mayor to David Dinkins, about whom the kindest thing that can be said is that he looked good in a strong aftershave lotion.
But if statecraft is soulcraft, as George Will once contended, Giuliani had made a trade on the level of soulcraft that allowed him to be elected mayor of New York City, where he actually succeeded at a job that no one succeeds at, which would make his success extraordinary in the highest sense of the word.
After he was elected but I think before he was actually sworn in Giuliani expressed another view that was more than a little offensive to the local priestcraft: he thought that it ought to be made easier for citizens to own and carry guns in New York. So out of tempo was this sentiment that it got stepped on by none other than Giuliani's brilliant, but subordinate to him, police commissioner, William Bratton. Bratton simply said something like "no, that would endanger cops," etc., and Giuliani never said another word about making it easier for citizens to have guns.
But, Giuliani and Bratton, both brilliant men, did go on to make the need for citizens having guns in New York City less immediate. They did what they said they were going to do, which was cut the crime rate in the city dramatically. And that reduction has lasted, long enough that some people, mostly transplanted out-of-towners and people in their 20s and younger, probably don't remember how bad it had been, and how it looked like it was only going to get worse.
Then again, Giuliani had made a second compromise, this time trading the personal security of every New Yorker, including those who would reflexively refuse to exercise their right to defend themselves, in order to stay on the good side of "a dominant strain of contemporary police culture." Giuliani needed cops on his side to do what he wanted to do in New York, and thus he contributed to a growing everyday culture where only the cops and the criminals have guns. That formula works something like this: Criminal A shoots Citizen B, after which Cop C arrives and says: "a shooting has taken place, let us analyze the bullet."
Thus any woman working the evening shift in Manhattan can arrive by subway train after midnight back in her Brooklyn or Bronx neighborhood safe in the knowledge that any bullets found in her body will be carefully scrutinized by trained experts in criminology.
Now, every once in a while someone will be working somewhere in the city late at night and someone with a gun will try to rob him and the working stiff will pull out an illegal, unregistered, unsavory handgun and shoot the filthy robber right dead, or maybe just wing him good. The working stiff is invariably placed under arrest for the illegal handgun, put through the usual legal ringer, and only after his heart has been made to skip many beats will he be verbally chastised and "let off" for protecting himself. In the future, however, We may not be so lenient.
Comments
"a shooting has taken place, let us analyze the bullet."
A good complaint, but interesting in light of the complaints on the sites of a few of you linkers this morning about arresting people for falling asleep drunk at the wheel, instead of waiting for an actual crime to occur.
Aren't both dealing with preventing the problem?
That's not the sort of thing that can be discovered in one's conscience. He must have been looking somewhere else.
That's really sloppy.
He's not arguing that cops should arrest anyone who falls asleep in a room with a gun. Is he.
The jerks don't have to do anything, but let people protect themselves.
The sentence that responds to employs irony, to get a laugh.
Trading away what others are entitled to is not compromise. It's a moral crime.