A Thought Experiment

 

noun

noun: influencer; plural noun: influencers

1. a person or thing that influences another.

   "he was a champion of the arts and a huge influencer of taste"

   • Marketing

     a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.

     "influencers can add serious credibility to your brand"

      
     

   We've had a week.

    

   

   
   In light of that, or maybe in spite of it, I thought I'd do a little experiment. Apparently, in the realm of marketing a product (novels, for example) it helps to be an "influencer." So, I'm going to try my hand.

    

   Apparently, that word is new enough that even Google, in its omnipresence and omnipotence, hasn't loaded it onto the spellcheck for Blogger. And, as a writer, it is important for me to stay ahead of the game, so to speak.

    

   I always wanted to have one of those Hollywood names. You know - Writer, novelist, influencer, gadfly, blogger, one-eyed cyclist, former professional hero James Greer... Okay, the professional hero thing is a little over the top, although at Roosters Grooming Center if you are a first responder the haircut you can request is the "Professional Hero" haircut, which provides their usual cut at a discount. Although, it sounds more like a sub you might order at the Firehouse Sandwich Shop. Welcome to Fiiiirrrehouse...
   

    

   So I'm going to try my hand at influencing. I'm going to recommend an item. We'll see who I influence.

    

   I am partial to a certain kind of breakfast, one for the lame and lazy... No, that won't do. It is a breakfast for the active and engaged, for those who are clearly on their way to interesting places to accomplish meaningful things (life is about adjectives, a writing class taught). It is portable, self-contained and does not require utensils beyond the construction phase.

    

   The first step is to scorch some bread. "Make toast" seems overly general, as toast can be those little Melba things, or the tiny teeth breakers they make at the grocery store out of day old baguettes. Scorching without burning is essential - the smoke alarm scares the dogs, and ruins the taste. So, a mild scorch. Also, if you've ever tried this dish non-scorched, you know the mess you make when the bread tears.

    

   Next is butter, not margarine.  One of my favorite authors, known for his thick and often impenetrable writing (The Black Swan, Skin in the Game), asserts that human beings have spent thousands of years assimilating butter into their digestive systems, but mere decades with margarine. Which is healthier and easier on the body, he asks. Butter tastes better, and if it is calories you're worried about then a workout ("Doing It Portie") is in order. Nassim might be a total asshole, but I think he's right on this point.

    

   The next layer reflects personal preference. Peanut Butter seems to have three varieties - smooth, chunky and "a big piece of the peanut." Almond butter is also acceptable or, for the Whole Foods crowd, cashew butter. Almond butter can get a little dry once it has sat on the counter for a while, though. Be lavish, be aggressive. Just be careful about feeding it to the dogs because, no, it isn't funny when it gets stuck to the roof of their mouths and they run around wiping their muzzle against the furniture.

    

   There you have it. Enjoy.
   

    

   If you have just thought "I could use some peanut butter toast this morning" I've reached a new milestone in my writing career.

    

   Now, how about a good book to read while munching on your breakfast? The hot links are to your right on the screen. 
   

    

    
   

When Shit Gets Real

 You can take this to the bank - no police officer begins their shift hoping it is the day they get to take a life. Me, forty-two years after my first duty day, with thirty-five years of service.

An incident of immense tragedy took place in the US Capitol Building on January 6th. A woman from California, present in DC to support Donald Trump's demand for justice, was fatally shot by a US Capitol Police officer. Her death is an immense loss to her friends, her family, and our country.

A video of the incident exists, lasting about thirty seconds. It is available on Rumble, if you care to find it. It is graphic, heartbreaking, compelling. I have watched it ten times.

The video begins at a doorway well inside the Capitol Building, which leads to a hallway and some offices. The thick wire-reinforced glass has been broken, but still covers the window opening. Furniture - chairs, perhaps, are stacked against the doors on the opposite side. Several plain-clothed officers are visible, including one who is mere feet away. He has his pistol drawn, and is pointing it at something, or someone, to his left. 

The officer appears to be giving commands, but they are not audible over the din of other voices shouting from the videographer's side of the door. It is typical of a mob scene, full of noise and emotions and anger. The Capitol police officer takes a step forward, then another. He fires a shot.

The camera immediately pans to the recorder's right, and a form that appears to have been in the window of the adjacent door falls backward onto the floor. It is apparent that the person - later identified as Ashli Babbitt - is grievously injured and she knows it.

At about the time Ms. Babbitt has fallen, a number of armed and uniformed officers appear, ascending a staircase emptying onto the same landing upon which Ms. Babbitt now lays. They signal to the officers on the other side of the door that they have control.

Much has been made on social media today, to the effect that an unarmed woman was murdered by a US Capitol police officer. Nearly everyone stating this has drawn their conclusion based on a thirty second video.

No one who is a professional, who has been in an officer-involved shooting; has witnessed an officer-involved shooting; or has assisted in the aftermath of an officer involved shooting would, upon merely viewing the video, reach any other conclusion beside that it was a horrible tragedy.

The investigation of a police shooting is a painstaking, detail-oriented, heartbreaking experience. The initial collection of evidence - statements, video, weapons, photography - can take 24 or more hours. Collating what is collected can take days, or weeks. Investigators make polished, lengthy presentations to prosecutors, to command staff and eventually a determination is made whether the use of force comported with the law, and the policies of the officer's agency.

An officer is permitted to use deadly physical force in a restricted number of cases. One of them is if the officer reasonably believes that they or an innocent third person is in imminent danger of suffering serious bodily injury, or death.

When you watch the video, ask yourself what facts you lack in making that determination. Because the absence, or presence, of a single material fact can change the entire outcome, do you know enough to reach a conclusion?

I have been present at several police shootings, when shit got real. I've assisted in the aftermath of several others, including one where two of my friends were also shot. I'm waiting for the investigation in DC to unfold before I reach an opinion.

You should, too.

A Wake Up Call

 That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  The Declaration of Independence, 1776.

America has always been a place for the disenfranchised to find answers. It was settled and organized by the disenfranchised. People who believed they lacked a voice wrote and ratified documents declaring American independence. They fought, they died, and they eventually triumphed in the face of nearly impossible odds demanding a voice.

America fought a war to right an abominable wrong, to free men and women disenfranchised on account of the color of their skin, and their involuntary servitude. She fought a different kind of war for the economically disenfranchised, to provide them a New Deal. The best of one of her best generations are buried, in elaborate graves or shallow trenches, all over the world that those enslaved by the world's bullies be free.

In small towns and big cities, in courtrooms, in jail cells and on obscure roads where marchers numbered in the tens of thousands, the battle for the disenfranchised swept America. It is a battle we still wage.

We at Bikecopblog know these truths to be self-evident:

It is always wrong to attack police officers performing their lawful duties.

It is always wrong to damage or destroy public property, no matter its character or location.

It is always wrong to trespass into areas of a public building, disrupt the lawful operation of government entities and threaten elected officials.

It is always wrong to deprive the disenfranchised of their day in court, of their right to present their case and be heard by a fair and objective tribunal, and to have their concerns adjudicated on the merits of their grievances.

The events in Washington, DC have left us with so many questions, and so few answers. Perhaps, as Americans, it is time for us to commit to a rebirth of freedom, to seek the answers together. 

 

  

The Horns of a Dilemma

 "Does a writer ever actually retire?" Just about every writer.

Get up in the morning, make so coffee, scan the news and the social media... Whuuuut?

Writers write so readers can read. So said fictional novelist William Forrester. The only problem with that statement for a small-market writer - that's me - is that readers won't read something if they don't know it's available. In a very real sense, writers write so they can pester people into reading. You can quote me on that.

Social media is an appropriate, if not fabulous, place to alert people that you are selling something. Appropriate because a lot of people visit social media. Not fabulous, because: first, a site may not contain enough, if any, of the demographic toward which your writing is directed and; second, there is a lot of stupid with internet access. A wise and intelligent psychologist warned me about that. But, I already knew.

Nevertheless, I will hardly turn down an opportunity to write, even when the audience is not entirely receptive. Even then...

Do you know - I'm just asking a question derived from a web site discussion involving normally intelligent people - that most public servants, including police officers, are thuggish morons (or moronic thugs, when the writer runs out of descriptive gas) unfit for any other work? Their jobs are cushy, their paychecks fat. They should stop depriving their fellow citizens of their constitutional rights, no matter what they are ordered to do. None of them are educated enough anyway for work in the private sector. It's a fact. I am confused, and need guidance.

To paraphrase fellow cancer patient and former NYPD cop and Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino, readers of Bikecopblog have figured out what is about to happen.

Are police officers just a bunch of dumb, uneducated thugs who can't find a real job, or constitutional scholars empowered to act independently of the legal system into which they fit? I'm just asking, so I know. I'm an old retired guy, and I'm trying to blend.

Where did all of this start? Apparently, there was a health inspector who arrived at a restaurant in California, on a mission. One of the shops on his route was serving take-out (because COVID) but, and this is the rub, the customers were not going immediately home like good little girls and boys and eating where the 'Rona can't get them. They broke open their food and ate in public.

I know, right? But, the health inspector has no jurisdiction over people sitting on a park bench eating take-out. So, he chose the next best venue - he threatened to close the restaurant unless the owner reigned in his customers.

Don't get bogged down in the details (like, really, that's the ditch you want to die in, Mr. Health Inspector?), because this is where the fun starts. The business owner is incensed, and parks his monster truck behind the inspector's car so he can't leave. "I can't work, you can't work" is approximately what was expressed. Well, guess who ends up getting invited to this little party?

Police officers circa 2020 are trained to handle this kind of situation, which essentially is "Don't take sides, keep them from killing each other. Enforce the law, when appropriate." It isn't like 1979, when I started. Then, I got three weeks of field training, worked on my own for a couple months and then went to a police academy. Now, officers get average 24 weeks of academy training and 16 weeks of field training before anyone would think to put them on the street alone. 

The men and women who showed up to this call deescalated the situation. They talked sense to the guy. They suggested some reasonable alternatives for him to follow, including the restaurant guy asking the inspector's boss WTF? (Only, the boss apparently had ordered this.)

"Nope. Not listening. Too angry, too frustrated. End of my rope, etc."

This is where the social media experts, setting aside their primary jobs as immunologists and epidemiologists, dusted off their roles as constitutional scholars and went after the cops. And, where I asked my entirely reasonable question.

As we've discussed previously, while police officers are invested with considerable discretion, one of the things they are obligated to do is follow the lawful orders of their superiors. Just about every police department and sheriff's office has that in their manual. Failure to do so is called "insubordination" and is grounds for termination.

Are you with me so far? My friends on social media suggest that officers are thugs, brutes and morons because they are enforcing the rules set down by their state. Those laws are unconstitutional, they argue, and the police officers are too stupid, too comfortable in their mundane public sector jobs and too happy to lord it over their fellow citizens to recognize that they are one step away from loading people onto railroad cars.

This is something we've discussed, Jacobson, police powers and all of that. Remember the dude with his hat on backward, the guy telling other cops to refuse lawful orders?

Some of you are saying "But, the governor of Cali has no problem going to $300 an entree restaurants to celebrate his birthday. What the actual frick? Isn't this whole thing an invention of Dr. Fauci so he could get on TV?" I get that. It isn't about whether the governor is a dick, or if The Good Doctor is a showboat. It's about whether the law enables the governor to issue public health orders, and makes people respect them.

So, here is my question. Do people expect their cops - when they are not neutralizing active shooters and evacuating people in the presence of an RV bomb and almost getting killed in the process - to also be constitutional scholars able to make fine distinctions Johnnie Roberts and his eight goofballs can't agree on, when half the people you serve think you're an idiot, and the other half applaud you for enforcing rules many citizens think are not nearly strict enough?

Just about every officer I served with, or met along the way of my 40 years in the justice system, is a fabulous person trying to do a damn difficult job. If there is a solution to my quandary - let's hear it!   

 

The Right Stuff

 Mourning the passing of Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager, USAF (ret).

"So Yeager takes [Project Engineer Jack] Ridley off to the side in the tin hanger and says: Jack, I got me a little ol' problem, here. Over at Pancho's the other night I sorta...dinged my goddamn ribs. Ridley says, Whattya mean...dinged? Yeager says, Well, I guess you might say I damned near like to...broke a couple of the sonsabitches." Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, (1979).

In fact, a few days prior to attempting the first official supersonic flight, Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager had been thrown from a horse and broken two ribs. Rather than see the base doctor (which might result in his grounding) he rode an old motorcycle his friend Pancho Barnes (herself a pilot and owner of Pancho Barnes Happy Bottom Riding Club - a dude ranch and bar) and had them treated on the sly. So far, so good.

However, it meant that he could not shut the entryway door from inside the cockpit of the tiny, temperamental X-1. Jack Ridely, an accomplished test engineer and pilot, fashioned a solution using a length of broomstick handle. The rest, on October 14, 1947, is history.

Chuck Yeager grew up in West Virginia, and entered the US Army Air Forces as a private. He became an aircraft mechanic, then a non-commissioned pilot. He was shot down once, evading capture and assisting local partisans until he could be return to Allied lines. He resumed flying duties - why wouldn't he - and shot down several more aircraft, including one of the new jets deployed by Germany.

Yeager returned to the US after the war, and became a test pilot. This is where he steps onto the front page of aviation legend.

Aeronautical engineers once believed that the "Sound Barrier" actually represented something finite, an absolute wall. Hear again Tom Wolfe:

This led engineers to speculate that the g-forces became infinite at Mach 1 [the speed of sound], causing the aircraft to implode. They started talking about "the sonic wall" and "the sound barrier."

Not being an engineer, Yeager didn't believe the "barrier" existed.

How pervasive was, or is, the Yeager Legend? How deeply did his influence go in the aviation world? Wolfe:

Anyone who travels very much by airlines in the United States soon gets to know the voice of the airline pilot...

It was the [Appalachian] drawl of the most righteous of all the possessors of the right stuff: Chuck Yeager.

 There are no old, bold pilots. Somehow, a man who made a profession of testing cutting edge aircraft, who served in three wars (including combat missions in Vietnam) made it to ninety-seven.

With thanks, from a grateful nation.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker

 "It's not that I'm smart. It's that I stay with the questions much longer." Albert Einstein.

What memories do you have of your father?

My father was no ordinary man. He grew up in the city, but loved the country. He was small in stature, but backed down to no one. In 1943 he and a friend patted the side of the Liberty Bell in his home town of Philadelphia and then enlisted in the Marine Corps. He survived a battle in a place called "The Meat Grinder," among the many other places he fought. He came home from the war to work in the US Space Program, raise a family and retire.

He was Irish, the grandson of a man who moved his family from Donegal.  Consequently, he had something of the poet in him. He had committed to memory countless verses, which he could recite seemingly at will.

Lest one think they were some of the better known of Yeats, or Joyce... Usually, they were ribald limericks about a man from Nantucket, or a hermit named Dave. He had a sufficient repertoire that, while on guard duty after Japan surrendered, he would write them on the outsides of the vehicles he was supposed to be guarding without being repetitious. The company commander was unamused.

And then, there was the free verse poem about a legislator from Arkansas who took offense at how the name of his state was being pronounced. My dad would burst forth: "Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker you bald-headed old son of a bitch. I've been trying to get your goddamned attention for the last half hour..."

My mother, who grew up in a more refined part of Philly, was openly horrified at the things my father could recite. One, a Christmas poem based in a penitentiary, made her swear.

Out of curiosity, over many years, I tried to locate the source of my father's Arkansas poem. Even in the internet age, it eluded me. Then...

I purchased a book on Kindle recently, On the Warpath in the Pacific, the life story of Admiral Joseph James "Jocko" Clark. Born in Cherokee Nation in pre-statehood Oklahoma, Admiral Clark was the first Native American to graduate the US Naval Academy, in 1918. Navy was a bit rough around the edges, something the blue blood regular Navy officers tried to remedy. Jocko found himself caught up in a hazing scandal in which plebes were made to memorize and recite a poem called "Change the Name of Arkansas."

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Goddamn your ornery soul all to hell.

No wonder I could never find it. That is the most marginally re-printable sentence. That, and one suggesting that comparisons between Kansas and Arkansas is like comparing the "gentle oscillations of a little June bride to the frantic clutches of a Klondike whore."

I can hear the echoes of my mom... "Daaaaavvvve."

According to legend, and owing to the significant passage of time, the version recited by Naval Academy plebes was but one version, my father having access to a varient, perhaps one embraced solely in the Marine Corps. Whatever, over the course of fifty-six years knowing the man, his memory of the poem never wavered.

I miss the old guy, for no other reason than he could be obnoxious, he could be irritable, he could get under a person's skin. But, he was never dull. As we approach the tenth anniversary of his passing, I can only say that he was one of a kind. 

 

Happy Turkey Day

 Consider a turkey who is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird's belief that it is the general rule to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race "looking out for its best interests" as a politician would say. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving something unexpected will happen to the turkey. (On the problems of inductive reasoning), The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,(2010), Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In 2020, is WuFlu the Black Swan moment? Or, is the election?

Imagine you're some guy who is a politically engaged resident of a so-called Red State. You walked the soles off of several pairs of shoes, banging on doors. Spent hours on the phone, wore your hands raw pushing in lawn signs. You got your boat out for the parades, fired up the F250 on the weekends for the socially-distanced meets. Your wife made sandwiches, your kids pulled wagons full of pamphlets. Maybe you made the sandwiches and your wife banged on the door. Maybe your husband watched the kids. Whatever it was, you played your part, and cast your ballot.

Around you, something like 65% of your neighbors agreed with you. Upwards of 100% of your neighbors understand that, in a Constitutional Republic, the only way for the people to steer the Ship of State is for the ballot count to be fair. Your candidate wins because they got more votes. They lose because the other person did better. You sleep soundly.

You wake up the next day only to hear that "the other guy" is being dragged across the finish line because individuals in other states aren't nearly as principled as you. There are wild, unexplained swings involving hundreds of thousands of votes - almost all (99%?) in favor of "the other guy." The national press seems eager to play along, and social media blocks any attempt to call bullshit on what may be, or may not be, fraud.

There are real issues at stake in this election, fundamental to how you think America should work. You did your thing in Iraq, helped load a couple of your friends into plastic bags. Got a lot of their blood on you in the process. Maybe you were there when it happened, to hear them plead with God to let them live. And, here you are. Some asshole in some other state tipped the scales with a box of fake ballots and you're left asking yourself if your buddies died for all of this.

There are a very few Americans left who know what an existential threat to America feels like. We think it is our birthright to be fed by friendly politicians who are "looking out for our best interests." Candidate A wins, or Candidate B wins. We're all Americans, right?

If you say so, brother. I just wonder about that guy, his candidate's flags hanging from his porch. At what point does he drop "The Deuce" and start to seriously ask if it's time to cut ties with people who will lie, cheat, steal, murder, burn... Maybe he goes in to work in the morning and just figures "Fuck it, I'm okay."

What if he, and a lot of guys like him, don't? What happens when they get tired of playing the game straight, only to get fucked over without anyone giving a good goddamn? Countries have come and gone through history. Eventually, that guy gets pushed too far.

  That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

If you don't know where that paragraph comes from, you don't read enough.

I am advocating nothing. Just a cautionary tale - civilizations rely on one of two things to succeed. Force, or an unshakable belief among most of the citizenry that the system is equitable. You will win some, and lose some. The playing field is level, at least as level as humanly possible. In the absence of equity, the question becomes how much force leaders are willing to exert to stay in power. If you're interested, I wrote an excellent book about just how awful governmental violence looks, close up.

Happy Thanksgiving.