Say you know of a unit preparing a suicide bombing. You put some drugs that change their mindset into their air/water/food supply and watch them become pacifists.
Of course, if it fails for some reason, you'll have to resolve and go back to the conventional violent methods of security.-- pashute, Dec 08 2020 iBad https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sZlGyaypzN0Garish. Still useless. [8th of 7, Dec 12 2020] Ban Questions http://www.thejoycamp.com/ban-questions/For [wjt] [spidermother, Dec 15 2020] I seem to remember posting a similar idea about ritalin to the enemy which perhaps I deleted following the very harsh response I received.-- pashute, Dec 08 2020 How do you get the dose right ?
What if your bad actor has a water purifier, or drinks bottled water ?
What if someone else is already on meds which might react with whatever you're using ?
Truly halfbaked ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 08 2020 worth the bones for the Operation Delirium link. Thanks kdf! (what's it stand for?)-- pashute, Dec 08 2020 "Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect, antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable." - Ted K. [-]-- sninctown, Dec 08 2020 1: Are there even drugs that can work that precisely? 2: Always assume your enemy has the same arsenal you have; if not better. 3: Also (from "Serenity") "The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating." Careful what you wish for...-- neutrinos_shadow, Dec 08 2020 Not even warmed up to room temperature[-]-- Voice, Dec 10 2020 But the idea is to use it STOP war so you dupe BOTH sides. There is no one side that fights. Both agree to live happily ever after.-- pashute, Dec 10 2020 // It is already happening ...society gives them antidepressant drugs// Highly expensive, brightly coloured tablets.-- wjt, Dec 12 2020 ... that don't perform particularly well.
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Better off with an Android device.-- 8th of 7, Dec 12 2020 Well, I'll test the drugs first to see if they work. Drugs and I have a love/hate relationship from way back. Drop some in my bev and I'll report back to ya.-- blissmiss, Dec 12 2020 Actually, dropping an iphoney or an ibad in a mug of hot coffee would admittedly ruin the coffee, but improve the functionality of the device considerably ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 12 2020 Half the problem is pinpointing the people so a blanket approach is not needed.
How about the yearning to belong? A mass of AI built deep fake sites that sort is a honey trap. Reach any of the centres you get a nice label and possiblely a visit, depending on the centre reached.-- wjt, Dec 12 2020 It's not hard to pinpoint them around here. Posters of the ringleaders are stuck up from time to time, and the more directly violent ones openly carry firearms. Besides, the uniforms and badges are a dead giveaway.-- spidermother, Dec 12 2020 <Obligatory "Hwe doan' need no steenking badges" quote/>-- 8th of 7, Dec 12 2020 Indeed. In fact, the ones without badges are the biggest threat, because of their ability to blend in with the non-terrorists. A keen observer can usually spot them by their tendency to engage in petty acts of social terrorism 'on their own time', as it were, by sticking their noses into everone elses business, and insisting that they are 'helping', no matter how much damage they do, and no matter how many times they are asked to stop.
They only gather in their masses every four years or so to bicker over who will be the new ringleaders, and bitch about the old ones.-- spidermother, Dec 12 2020 Just as there will be a small percentage of criminal takers, there will be a small group of the overly questioning that diverge from the practical and pragmatic compromise for any system.
Would the road rules work if the system dependended on local evolution? Probably, but not very uniform-- wjt, Dec 12 2020 Aw, come on. You North Americans used to be into small groups of the overly questioning. What was it that one guy said? "Give me liberty, or give me uniformity of road rules!" Something like that.-- spidermother, Dec 13 2020 "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt (the Younger), Speech in the House of Commons, November 18, 1783
"And work with all my heart with the confidence of the whole people to win the confidence of all you and for that is what America I believe is about." - Joe Biden, Acceptance Speech, November 8, 2020
"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state" - Mussolini
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" - Adolph Hitler
"Just as there will be a small percentage of criminal takers, there will be a small group of the overly questioning that diverge from the practical and pragmatic compromise for any system. Would the road rules work if the system dependended on local evolution? Probably, but not very uniform" — wjt, Dec 12 2020
Any questions?-- spidermother, Dec 13 2020 What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow ?-- 8th of 7, Dec 13 2020 When you threaten to kill or imprison people to bring about political goals, is it:
a) Not extremism and terrorism if it might make the road rules more uniform;
b) Still extremism and terrorism, but acceptable if it might make the road rules more uniform;
c) Something else.-- spidermother, Dec 13 2020 As the population increases, it is inevitable that the some of freedoms that were enjoyed by a small population will not be available or even possible for a large population. 3 people on the earth? Do whatever you want. You’ll never exhaust anything. 18 billion people? Please wait here and apply for your license to consume more than your daily allotment of air.
Freedom is mostly on a sliding scale function of your abilities and means. Comatose people have no freedom. Poor people have very little freedom, regardless of their political system.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 13 2020 Yes, but who cares about poor people with no power or influence ?-- 8th of 7, Dec 13 2020 [RayfordSteele] Isn't that just evading the question by making an argument from consequences? What I'm trying to point at is the apparent double standard of describing the actions of one group as extremist, but not even considering the possibility that the same acts by a group that seems to be in a somewhat dominant position ('the government') deserve the same label. It seems like cowardice to me.-- spidermother, Dec 13 2020 "I'm a freedom fighter, you're a dissident, he's a terrorist ..."-- 8th of 7, Dec 13 2020 Let me be even more blunt. Different people have different degrees of sexual freedom; but rape is still rape, even if some of the victims can't effectively resist, and even if the rapists form a gang.
The 'might is right' position is rather ugly, but can at least makes a kind of internal sense. But violence is violence, even if you argue that it's necessary (I don't agree that it is) or inevitable (again, I don't agree that it is).
Again, are you saying that it's not taking away freedom because some people had less freedom to begin with, or that it's acceptable to take away freedom because some people had less freedom to begin with? The second is psychopathic; the first is nonsense.-- spidermother, Dec 13 2020 I'm simply saying that the government rules at the collective request of the people, at least in our case. I don't consider their rule as that of violence. The police have their moments but it's not living under a Gestapo.
I'm also saying that freedom is both a relative and naturally-diminishing concept. I know of far, far too many penniless redneck patriots who cheer for "freedumb" when they lack any means to enjoy it and would have much more of it if they actually had a safety net that held weight.
<Pulls up soapbox>Back when Walt Disney started Disneyland, every worker there had a living wage. Today every single one of them, even before COVID hit, are on foodstamps. Back then, CEOs and shareholders weren't paid outrageous amounts. It just wasn't done until Milton Friedman came along. Yet America wasn't socialist then. People cowed to shame for offering such meager benefits and wages.
In the highly populated world, the consequences are much more the issue.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 13 2020 Could be argued that the natural state of a free human, is dead. Requires social groupings and collaboration to survive. Freeloaders will always work out ways to exploit such groupings. Therefore either freeloaders are accepted and tolerated, or some degree of restraint on individual freedom is necessary. Therefore Gestapo boot on face and Hitler.-- pocmloc, Dec 15 2020 Where I am (Australia), there is no doubt in my mind that we are living under a totalitarian police state which, if anything, is even worse than that experienced in Nazi Germany with their Gestapo; worse because the propaganda is more refined; less 'camp', for want of a better word, than all that 'seig heil' stuff.
Can we please agree on one thing? Please? Freedom actually matters. A lot. More than just about anything else.
And I'm willing to beg you, if that's what it takes. You Americans, PLEASE try to be that torch of freedom, or however you want to express it. Please hang onto your guns, and your rebellious spirit, regardless of constitutions or orange Fuhrers or baby-sniffing creeps. Nearly (but not quite) everyone here folded when a bloke called John Howard (a lawyer, by the way) declared ALL guns - including air rifles - 'illegal', via usual lawyerly sleight-of-hand involving a piece of toilet paper titled 'The Australia Act' - which, if taken seriously, would remove much of the supposed 'balance of power' that guarded against tyranny ... That's a whole topic in itself, and there are people with more expertise than I have, so I won't go on, except to say that (like essentially all lawyers) he was totally full of shit.
It seems I've been outed as a member of the //small group of the overly questioning//. As the best I could come up with was 'Wait, is it even possible to be overly questioning?' I guess the cap fits. I should also come out of the closet as someone who no longer believes in any legitimate government at all, except for ordinary social pressures and such particular instances as parenting and its natural extentions. I see what is called 'the state' as an appalling abomination, which will inevitably grind itself into the dust like any concepts that are not based in logic or reality, but sadly, only after doing a lot of damage.
And I hope I can make one point REALLY clear. I may well be a radical - even an extremist - but I have no pretentions that it is any of my business to impose my ideas on anyone else. Can people who vote, and support a political system, make the same claim?-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 // highly populated world //
Ah yes, there's your problem, right there ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 15 2020 Let's see whether you pine more for your guns or your kids once your nation has experienced an average of 18 mass school shootings per year, every year, for a decade. We're a bit done with that around here.
Nazis literally dragged people out into the street and hauled them off to gas camps en masse. Perspective is the first sacrifice of extremists.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 15 2020 Of course freedom matters - but how do you deal with the practical problem of how freedoms impinge on others?
If your neighbour builds a toxic chemical processing plant on the border of your village as is their freedom to do, how do you respond? Yes, you can exert your freedom (assuming a hypothetical free state here) to pick up a gun - but then isn't that a case of might-is-right? If they want to protect themselves from your armed retribution, wouldn't it be in their interest to preemptively exert their freedom to off you in your sleep?
When that plant gives off toxic gas and kills 3000 people leaving another 500,000 medically affected, where they free to do that without sanction?
The freedom to carry arms is offset by people's freedom not to get shot whilst going about their business. I see a *functioning* state as one that builds frameworks and systems that ideally should try to *maximise* the freedom of all the citizens that live within its borders (and without where possible).
If that means curtailing access to rocket launchers and military jets, then that seems fair enough. There is a sweet spot somewhere that gives the maximum number of people the maximum amount of freedom - If people is the x-axis and freedom is the y-axis, then there ought to be some optimal point where the area under the rectangle x times y is maximised . When there are more people, contesting more resources and more likely to infringe on one another's freedoms, then the chances are, more restrictive mores are appropriate, to avoid for example another Bhopal disaster, or Beirut explosion, or mass shooting. Where people are more spread out, like in say, Alaska - you can pretty much go wild without curtailing anyone's freedom, so it makes sense to be a little more lax. That's just science - how you effectively arrive at and communicate that sweet spot is a much harder thing to do - and it's probably always going to be a little off - but as Rayford (fairly sensibly it seems to me) suggests, managing the resolution of conflicting freedoms is what any state is obliged to help mitigate.
If you want to be more free, you've got choices, you can try and argue for that line to be drawn more liberally through democratic process (yeah, right I know, me neither), or move to a quieter part of the country. The USA is only a beacon of freedom because it is (or at least used to be) a massive sprawling expanse of wilderness (if you ignore the indigenous population who might argue that their particular freedoms haven't been particularly well represented) - in which guns, liquor and getting up to whatever business you see fit is largely something you can do without anyone getting upset and stopping you. From here in the UK, I'd always perceived Australia's more wild areas to be equally liberal in their approach to firearms and low-level policing - if not in law, then in practice.
But your final point is quite right - participation in democracy does (assuming you get what you vote for) mean imposing your views on the minority who didn't agree with you. But the only way to escape that is to live on an island, or somewhere completely isolate - because whatever you do, unless you're very, very careful, has the potential of imposing your views on your neighbours whether they like it or not. That's community.-- zen_tom, Dec 15 2020 Yes, a highly populated world is a Wicked Problem (c.f.) I'm a fan of James Corbett, but I think this is one thing that he has wrong - he's virtually a Potential Population Catstrophe Denier.
But even given the potential for a Soylent Green - things-are- so-bad-that-boot- stomping-on-human- face- for- all-of-eternity- totalitarianism-is- less-bad-than- the-alternative scenario, I'm still going to be ornery enough to abstain from saying-the-thing-that-is-not. And the absurd idea that people CHOOSE to be governed is saying-the-thing-that-is-not.-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 Can I get a "[Zen Tom] Explains X" app on my phone? I'd like to download your ability to put what I'm thinking into comprehensible paragraphs. Have you looked into helping people write their theses for a fee?
//James Corbett//
The football sportscaster or the boxer? If you're referring to the conspiracy theorist, then you're the mark.
Conspiracy theories are for lazy intellects.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 15 2020 [zen_tom] //But the only way to escape that is to live on an island, or somewhere completely isolate - because whatever you do, unless you're very, very careful, has the potential of imposing your views on your neighbours whether they like it or not.//
Well, 'I prefer to speak for myself' is my personal motto, so I'll try to stick to it; my solution is not to move to an island (although that might be fun), but precisely to be very, very careful not to impose my views on my neighbours except in the very specific instance of defending myself against my neighbours' attempts to impose their views on me, and even then, I go to extraordinary lengths to 'turn the other cheek' and 'live and let live'.
Specifically, I had some neighbours who ratted me out REPEATEDLY for storing building materials (which affected no-one) and for having 'certain plants'. Regardless of what anyone else may think, I see them as being in the same category as Nazi or Stazi era brownshirts. If they could see what I fantasized about doing to them, they probably would have had nightmares and kept their slimy mouths shut out of pure self preservation. What I actually did about it is suck it up. But again, that's just me.-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 But I'll bet you live by a road and get electricity and type on things that involve semiconductors and enjoy microwave ovens and speak a learned, common language that was imposed upon you by someone else, and eat food that passes quality standards without much suspicion on your part that it's actually just sawdust from Mongolia, despite the desire of a freedom-loving Mongolian to really want to engage in the sawdust-as-food market and why shouldn't he have the right to do so, buyer-be-ware and all that?
Now home-owners' associations, on the other hand, are clearly wearing arm bands on their sleeves.
I presume you signed some sort of contract notifying you of the rules of the particular neighborhood, or that they were available to view before you signed up.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 15 2020 [Rayford] <blush> thanks - it's nice to have an opportunity to write like this as it helps me organise my thoughts - before doing that, I think I often held a viewpoint, but only instinctively - getting it down where it can be challenged is a chance to test out how cogent any idea is.
And [spider] I hear you, given the chance (and to get the chance, I'm going to need the money) I'd move out into the country and build greenhouses, shoot rabbit, live off the land trying - as far as possible - not to impinge on anyone else's freedoms. And here's the thing - arseholes, like the ones you ratted on your ethnobotanicals, exist. I agree with the principle that you should not impose your ideas/actions on others. But would I feel confident that without a framework of law to guide their actions, these arseholes would hold themselves to the same principles?
Probably not.
It sucks that this gives people like that the means to wield the power of the state, but it's less of a worry (at least in my mind) than people like that roaming around without any limits on what they can do - otherwise, I'd move to Mogadishu.-- zen_tom, Dec 15 2020 Let me turn that on it's ear. Given that everyone has a little bit of an asshole in them, why should we be free to simply run around and shit on everything?-- RayfordSteele, Dec 15 2020 And let me turn that on its ear. Why should we imagine that a small number of them have a right to tell everyone else what to do? Why should that small number get to go around shitting on everyone else?
// If you're referring to the conspiracy theorist, then you're the mark.// Now that's just name-calling. Twice. Do you really think it's helpful to paint with such a broad brush? Did you come to the conclusion that he is a conspiracy theorist based on his content, or based on what someone else said? And where did you get the idea that being a conspiracy theorist is a negative thing, or that being a fan of one makes me a mark?
//Conspiracy theories are for lazy intellects.// Really? Where did you get that idea? Jumping to the conclusion that there are - or are not - particular conspiricies without carefully examining the evidence might be intellectually lazy. If you are claiming that there are no conspiracies, then I don't know what to say except that you are obviously wrong.-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 //It sucks that this gives people like that the means to wield the power of the state, but it's less of a worry (at least in my mind) than people like that roaming around without any limits on what they can do - otherwise, I'd move to Mogadishu.//
I think of people like them as meta-bullies; they're harmless cowards on their own, but will cheerfully cosy up to anyone they see as powerful and use them to inflict havoc. Often the state isn't a limit, so much as an enabler of the worst kind of behaviour.-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 After more than a decade of social media and nearly 2 of blogs, I treat most conspiracy theorists the same. Life's too short. There's a pattern; they get paid by the follows, likes, clicks, and ads, and don't really have a job other than self-promotion of their "<insert last name here> Report." The further you step outside of it, the more you see it for what it is. They'll have self-created titles like 'media influencer' or 'Fox News Contributor' or 'Founder of Patriot Radio' whatever. 'Doctor' Sebastian Gorka, who holds no such doctorate. My favorite bullshit title at the moment is 'Jenna Ellis, Esquire.' Now that Rush is on his last legs there's no shortage of conspiracy peddlers wanting to take over his braindead fans.
//Why should we imagine that a small number of them have a right to tell everyone else what to do? Why should that small number get to go around shitting on everyone else?//
Because that's how delegated authority works?-- RayfordSteele, Dec 15 2020 Prove it. Seriously, Prove the existence of this thing called 'delegated authority'. I dare you,-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 [RayfordSteele] You seem very quick to label people, and then to draw conclusions based on those labels as to why someone shouldn't be taken seriously. Do you appreciate it when that's done to you? Let's give it a try ... who was notorious for labelling people and then treating them as worthless? Ah yes...
Are you talking about the Nazi [RayfordSteele]? If so, you're the mark. Nazism is intellectually lazy.
Look, the thing about all these Nazis, like [RayfordSteele] - Himmler was another one - is that they are just about making any excuse imaginable for authoritarianism. The more you disconnect from them, the more obvious it becomes.
See how that works?-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 Oh, and once you've proven the existence of this //delegated authority// of which you speak, please feel free to tell me how it works. Explain it to me like I'm five. I'm all ears.
If you don't, I will have no choice but to reverse-engineer your answer, like this:
Q. How does delegated authority work?
A. We imagine that a small number of them have a right to tell everyone else what to do, and that small number get to go around shitting on everyone else.
Do you see how infantile that sounds? Would you like to see that upvoted to best answer on Quora?-- spidermother, Dec 15 2020 //Where I am (Australia), there is no doubt in my mind that we are living under a totalitarian police state which, if anything, is even worse than that experienced in Nazi Germany with their Gestapo;//
I, too, live in Australia, and I have criticized government policy to the extent of emailing members of the state legislature to demand change. The fact that this did not lead to my being fired, beaten up or dragged off to a camp suggests to me that the regime is appreciably less bad than that of Nazi Germany.
Is there something I'm overlooking here?-- pertinax, Dec 15 2020 Most people within Nazi Germany weren't fired, beaten up, or dragged off to camps either; I think the expression 'tyranny is visible only to those who resist it' comes into play. To be fair though, some people were executed just for being critical.
But it is happening here. I think it's partly a matter of perspective; when people are detained, questioned, identified, and searched by police I see that as precisely Gestappo-like. It's a well established principal that police have no additional powers of arrest than ordinary people (did you know that?) but they frequently detain-and-question without even any suspicion of wrongdoing.
I was an innocent bystander (and slight victim) of an incident involving a somewhat out of control man in a park; when someone called the police, the man ran off. I stuck around; the two policemen came up to me and asked me my name. I said I would prefer not to identify myself. They immediately started escalating; said they wanted a name to put in their report, and said there 'might' be a warrant out for me. They straight out threatened to arrest me if I didn't identify myself, so I did. Afterwards, one of them actually said 'It's a good thing we didn't have to arrest you, particularly because you didn't do anything wrong'
I think you either see the problem with that or you don't. What they did is clearly assault, aggravated on two counts (done in company, and while carrying deadly weapons). And the answer 'Yes, but they're the police, they're allowed to do that' doesn't help; it's incorrect (it's well-established law that it's illegal to arrest someone simply to ascertain their identity), and it just reinforces the double standard.
That is a very mild example (although pretty unpleasant; kind of rapey, in fact). I've been through worse, and people I know have been through much worse.
Do I have to point to extraordinary renditions, telephone-directory beatings, edited interview tapes, 'police verbals' ('testilying' for USAians), non-violent people in jail (I would call them political prisoners), witnesses paid and prepped by police to lie in court (and given special leniency for their crimes in return), innocent people dragged through the court system (as they say, you can beat the rap but not the ride), forced DNA samples from people who haven't even been convicted or even formally charged - just accused by a cop, military invasions with the stated goal of bring about political change (I don't know what else to call that if not terrorist and extremist; particularly with such nice names as 'operation shock and awe')?
Again, perhaps it's a matter of perspective. I see these things as extremest (what could be more extreme than subjecting everyone in a given area to a particular political system?), and precisely analogous to conditions in 20th century Germany (Ihre Papiere bitte).
There's a straightforward principle that's being violated here - Leave innocent people alone.
And there's something else that could almost qualify as a law (in the non-political sense) - You can't help people by limiting their options. (Exceptions such as preventing a child from running into danger notwithstanding.)
I have two questions for you, [Pertinax] (or anyone else).
1. Can you think of a (political) law that has been enforced, and that you consider to be wrong?
2. Under what circumstances would you consider it morally justifiable to disobey such a law, rather than (say) campaign for it to be changed, but obey in the mean time?-- spidermother, Dec 16 2020 Your (latest...) anecdote says one thing: "government" (as a broad concept) isn't a problem; the "government (& police force etc) where YOU live" is a problem. One bad government doesn't make them all bad. As an analogy, try saying "all men are rapists" and see where that gets you.-- neutrinos_shadow, Dec 16 2020 //knd of rapey, in fact//
No, it wasn't.
I have had an unpleasant, intimidating encounter with police (which I described in another thread) and, separately, I have been in a situation where I believed I was at imminent risk of rape. The two experiences are not remotely comparable.
Much as a democracy with police is not remotely comparable to Nazism.-- pertinax, Dec 16 2020 //No, it wasn't.// Subjectively, to me, it was. And I did say 'kind of'. I won't judge your subjective experiences; please don't judge mine.
//Much as a democracy with police is not remotely comparable to Nazism.// Well then I will respectfully disagree. Partly because I don't necessarily agree that we have a democracy, and partly because I think that conditions within Nazi Germany for the majority were not as bad as most people assume - except in the end stages, as the war ground on, and partly because comparing democracy with Nazism is too hand-wavey by far. I wasn't attempting to do that.
I will admit that when I made that comment, I had just heard about a police raid here in Australia, in which the occupant was in the shower when they knocked, so the cops smashed the door open and barged in. I was feeling a little rattled by that. And that, by the way, was for advocating civil disobedience. I probably went a bit overboard; I'm pretty sure it eventually did get worse in Germany than it currently is here. I wasn't there, so I can't really say.
But again, when the police routinely behave in ways that clearly violate the laws that they are supposedly upholding, I don't know what else to call it but a police state.
It's not always wise to make assumptions about others. If you were Mamdouh Habib, or Shapelle Corby, or one of many others that we never get to hear about, you might not be so ready to praise the state.
I met an Italian man a few years ago who was old enough to remember Mussolini. His eyes lit up talking about him - 'Mussolini was a great man! He had a big heart; he loved his people! He did wonderful things for the country!'
The point is not that fascism is a good thing. It's that stereotypes and assumptions can be challenged.
The implied question is, How can you possibly compare Australia now with Nazi Germany? And the obvious answer is to strip away the political labels, and just go ahead and compare them. If you and I come up with different results, fine. I'm going to think about these things regardless.-- spidermother, Dec 16 2020 Freedom is very important but no man is an island. If they are then their a dead breeding line.
But true most people have have the freedom to control themselves, but I do want the police to try and catch that totally free drunk driver that might kill me on a blind corner when I exercise my controlled freedom of driving where I want to get to.
I may be thinking a bit micro rather than big picture so I would not know what to do if I felt a policing action was not in the best interest of my society. Remember, police are people too, with all the pressures, decisions, problems and freedoms a bag of humanity carries.-- wjt, Dec 16 2020 Honestly [spidermother], sorry if I come across a bit short and judgmental, but I've been worn a bit threadbare by anarchists, libertarians, Trumpists, and just about everyone with an axe to grind against imperfect people and imperfect systems, and all out of give-a-fucks for the rest of the year. But seriously, there's no shortage of attention- seeking two-bit conspiracy bloggers, from Scott Adams on down to Alex Jones, and so I find painting with a roller helps to keep my time focused on what's worth it.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 16 2020 random, halfbakery