why do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves his porch light on
So um. Sure, I have opinions on the two hot topics of the day: I think guns should be regulated at LEAST the way we regulate cars (mandatory training, licensing, and registration, mandatory liability insurance, license suspension/revocation for things like operating while intoxicated etc.) and I think it's a damned crime that access to decent mental health treatment in this country is so thoroughly confined to those who don't need it so much. Basically, you can take those as read.
But here's what I really want to talk about. A thing that nobody ever seems to bring up when one of those Wild West violence nightmares hits our supposedly civilized land. It's a li'l quote from Albert Einstein, way back in 1921:
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in the United States is closely connected with this."
Way I see it, based on my reading of the book of Genesis and the Iliad and other early-civilization texts, government was probably invented in the first place around one overriding purpose:
Proxy vendetta.
See, if we trust our gang or our god or our government to wield actual justice on our behalf, that means we don't have to take matters into our own hands. We don't have to keep a gun under the pillow, an electrified fence around our plantation, or a bullpen of lawyers on retainer. If we trust our sociopolitical system to keep our neighbors civil, we can sleep at night without someone or something standing watch against marauders.
If we believe in our country, we don't feel like we have to pull a gun when we're scared.
So what does Einstein's opinion of Prohibition have to do with the increasingly "Red Dawn Mad Max Zombie Apocalypse" mentality on display lately? Ya mean you haven't noticed how we're the industrialized nation with BOTH the highest incarceration rate AND the highest murder rate? I mean, how the hell do we jail so many folks and yet somehow let all these soon-to-be-murderers go unnoticed? It's a puzzlement.
Unless maybe one has something to do with the other?
Maybe our laws often turn decent people into criminals for stupid reasons, or something? Hey, maybe our laws even enshrine exploiters and pirates as some sort of aristocracy who's more important, pound for pound, than anybody you know? Maybe (just offhand) our tax code and our government-sanctioned civil arbitration network and our medical establishment and our political-class rhetoric machine are all trumpeting the theme, over and over, that FOUR-FIFTHS OF AMERICANS ARE FAILURES?
Maybe our national narrative has become so pessimistic, so cruel and zero-sum, that most of us are left with a Hobson's choice of either believing that we ourselves are crap, or that we are the oppressed with our personal arsenals our only salvation?
Or do we go on playing the stupid lieutenant on the cop show, y'know, the one who just assumes the murderer was "some random lunatic?"
But here's what I really want to talk about. A thing that nobody ever seems to bring up when one of those Wild West violence nightmares hits our supposedly civilized land. It's a li'l quote from Albert Einstein, way back in 1921:
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in the United States is closely connected with this."
Way I see it, based on my reading of the book of Genesis and the Iliad and other early-civilization texts, government was probably invented in the first place around one overriding purpose:
Proxy vendetta.
See, if we trust our gang or our god or our government to wield actual justice on our behalf, that means we don't have to take matters into our own hands. We don't have to keep a gun under the pillow, an electrified fence around our plantation, or a bullpen of lawyers on retainer. If we trust our sociopolitical system to keep our neighbors civil, we can sleep at night without someone or something standing watch against marauders.
If we believe in our country, we don't feel like we have to pull a gun when we're scared.
So what does Einstein's opinion of Prohibition have to do with the increasingly "Red Dawn Mad Max Zombie Apocalypse" mentality on display lately? Ya mean you haven't noticed how we're the industrialized nation with BOTH the highest incarceration rate AND the highest murder rate? I mean, how the hell do we jail so many folks and yet somehow let all these soon-to-be-murderers go unnoticed? It's a puzzlement.
Unless maybe one has something to do with the other?
Maybe our laws often turn decent people into criminals for stupid reasons, or something? Hey, maybe our laws even enshrine exploiters and pirates as some sort of aristocracy who's more important, pound for pound, than anybody you know? Maybe (just offhand) our tax code and our government-sanctioned civil arbitration network and our medical establishment and our political-class rhetoric machine are all trumpeting the theme, over and over, that FOUR-FIFTHS OF AMERICANS ARE FAILURES?
Maybe our national narrative has become so pessimistic, so cruel and zero-sum, that most of us are left with a Hobson's choice of either believing that we ourselves are crap, or that we are the oppressed with our personal arsenals our only salvation?
Or do we go on playing the stupid lieutenant on the cop show, y'know, the one who just assumes the murderer was "some random lunatic?"