DISBANDING POLICE DEPARTMENTS: NEWS FOR SIMPLETONS

Some say the Minneapolis City Council didn’t think this through. Partially true. Either they don’t possess the intellectual equipment to navigate the process, or they accumulated their shoddy knowledge of history and civics from liberal institutions of higher learning. It’s time someone gave them an elementary course in how law enforcement works, an undertaking which will cause their eyes to drop out of their sockets and bugs to fly into their wide-open mouths. I’m hardly the one to do the job, but, hey, I’ve gotta be better than nothing. Council member, here’s what you’re looking at:

No police department will severely hamper or stop basic court proceedings. Judges, clerks, prosecutors, defense attorneys will have little or no work to do. Without the power to arrest, detain, charge, prosecute, fine, imprison or otherwise manage lawbreakers, the court system has no functional use.

No police department will eliminate convening grand juries. Police officers provide the main testimonies for grand juries to decide to indict.

No police department will hamstring security details, prison guards, sheriff’s departments and anyone who wears a badge. In the public’s eye, they will all be lumped together as bad apples.

No police department will allow drunk drivers on the open streets and road. Who will stop them?

No police department will extremely complicate reporting car crashes, responsibility for injuries, and reimbursement for cleanup, tow truck charges, etc.

No police department will permit domestic disputes to occur without restraint. Social workers can try, but they have no ability to stop violence.

No police department means that children in unsafe homes cannot be secured or removed to a safe place. Social workers are inadequately trained or will not be capable of handling those who resist them.

No police department will mean that divorce papers, restraining orders, eviction notices, etc. cannot be served.

No police department means that the repossession business will have a more difficult time reclaiming property that has not been paid for.

No police department means peeping toms, pedophiles, stalkers, harassers, and rapists can roam freely.

No police department will negate enforcement of existing or new laws. There will be no need for city council members or legislators at any level if the laws they pass can be freely ignored.

No police department will mean that no one will answer alarms, breaches of security signals, or breaking and entering crimes. Theft, looting, vandalism, grand larceny, arson, and other crimes against property (not that they care about those things anyway, unless it’s their own personal property) can go down without so much as a protest.

No police department means that insurance companies will hesitate or deny providing coverage of homes, cars, boats, trailers, motorcycles, or other kinds of property. They will either charge exorbitantly high rates, or they will place unacceptable demands on insured objects.

No police department will make public gatherings, parades, official meetings impossible. If the city hires mercenaries, can they ensure that those providing security will have the training and authority to carry out all the responsibilities that fall to them?

In short, no police department will cause the operation of a municipality to cease performing all practical tasks. A city simply cannot function without a police department. (And I’m sure I left out a lot more jobs that exist.)

I have only one solution. Defund the city council and vote in adults to take its place.

NAKED CAME I

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there.” Job 1:21 (NKJV) 

I am a white male by birth.  Stop reading here if this has no meaning or is not relevant to you.  Keep reading if you are interested in my perspective.  I hope you will.

I did not choose my mother or father.  I did not choose my race.  I did not choose my gender, my country, my history, the economic status of my parents, my DNA, my relatives, my rearing, or my innate abilities.  I adamantly and unequivocally disavow any responsibility for my inherited status in life.

So it is with you.  Whether you are black, brown, red, yellow or any other skin pigmentation or combination thereof, you can say precisely the same thing.  It is an incontrovertible fact.  You are one hundred percent free from any responsibility for the terms, conditions, or characteristics of your conception.  You and I both know that this is true, but we also know that this isn’t how the world works.  Some people say that my whiteness is a problem.  Other people say that your different toned skin is the problem.  Neither statement is logically or empirically true, but both statements are sociologically and politically true.  Thus, we have a quandary. 

Let me put this dilemma in a hypothetical context.  Suppose I am accused of a racist act and put on trial.  Everyone agrees that I did not personally commit the crime.  I was not at the scene of the crime, nor was I associated with anyone else who was charged.  The prosecutor charges me anyway.  His evidence is that I belong to a group that is known for racism.  He proves that the race to which I belong has committed many heinous racist acts against people of color.  The jury agrees with the prosecutor and the judge sentences me to years in prison.

Was justice done?  Some people say yes, even though I was not personally guilty.  Since my race was guilty, they believe that the aggrieved race must be avenged, and unfortunately for me, I must bear the punishment for sins I didn’t commit.  Personal guilt is not the issue.  My race is the issue.  Remember, we discussed earlier that I had no control over the circumstances of my birth.  Had I known that I would be blamed for my forebears’ sins, I would have entered the world through another set of parents.  If you think that is an absurd thought, then you are beginning to get my point.  There was a gross miscarriage of justice.  Guilt by association, a legally viable term, may be justified if the association in question was the result of conscious choice.  If I chose to drive the getaway car, for example, then I am as guilty as those who robbed the jewelry story and shot the owner.  That is a matter of personal responsibility and it bears a penalty of personal consequence. 

If you are an African-American male, you most likely can identify with the scenario I just described.  Many of you who answer to this description have been stopped, frisked, questioned, cuffed, and often stuffed into a cruiser and taken downtown.  You committed no crime nor were you associated with any crime that just went down.  The police accosted you because you were a member of a black race.  They made assumptions about you based on their biases, suspicions, and beliefs alone.  Patently preposterous.  The only difference—and it is huge—between the two accounts is that mine is hypothetical but yours is real.  Other than that, the legal ramifications match point for point. 

This brings us to the broad concept of sociology and social justice.  It represents a radical reversal of traditional justice, delivering a shock to the Judeo/Christian ethical system, and administers a brand of justice by a calculus, as it were, from another planet.  Personal responsibility has no standing and is given no consideration in this conceptual framework.  Group behavior, class privilege, systemic racism, stereotyping, racial profiling, and other similar terms, credible in specifically designed constructs but foreign to individual cases, set the protocols for justice.   Thomas Sowell poses this question: “Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?”

The answer to Mr. Sowell’s question is yes, we have.  This new, convoluted system is called social justice.  Its proponents would never couch the concept in such crass and ludicrous terms as I have suggested. They speak of lofty goals like egalitarianism, income inequality, and equal distribution of wealth. In fact, most social justice manifestoes incorporate the concept articulated by the United Nations.   “Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth.”  Economic equality seems to provide the genesis for the entire field.  Mysteriously, however, everything else finds its way into the mix.  Policing, low income housing, voter registration, LGBTQ issues, health insurance, access to public services, correctional institutions, the judicial system—you name it—all become planks of the same platform. 

Now, to the disturbing conclusion of this development.  With the rapid demise of individualism and the meteoric rise of socialism, we are on the cusp of losing the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, private ownership, and our economic system of capitalism.  Rugged individualism, personal resourcefulness, and self-determination will become passé.  Whether you and I have white or black skin, European or African heritage, our treatment as individuals in the new world order will no longer factor into our worth.  Our significance will only matter as our usefulness to society manifests itself. 

This new philosophy makes perfect sense to social justice warriors.  Defenders of the status quo, however, see it as the ultimate emasculation of personal growth and meaning.  You can dream, but not about personal success.  You can plan, but only about advancing the plight of society.  You can create, invent, generate, produce, and develop, but it must not be seen as personal aggrandizement.  Entrepreneurialism will reach a dead end.  The army slogan “be the best you can be” will evolve into “be the best everyone else wants you to be.” 

Finally, for the ultimate insight, guess who the new capitalists, the new dreamers, the new entrepreneurs will be?  The people who run the system.  After all, you don’t need to own it if you can control it. 

You and I entered this world naked.  We will leave the same way.  Did we make full use of the giftings we had?  That cannot happen if someone else lives vicariously through us.  We cannot impose our own dreams on each other.  You and I must have the freedom to live our own lives, dream our own dreams, and achieve our own destinies.  You must have the freedom to do that, and so must I. 

THE MOST FRUSTRATING VERSE IN THE BIBLE

“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Philippians 2:12 (NKJV)

“You can’t work for a gift.  You can’t pay for a free item.  You can do nothing to earn the grace of God.  Just accept it.  Take it.  It’s yours.”  I cannot tell you how often I have heard these principles of theology and soteriology expounded in every way possible—preaching, teaching, singing, reading, quoting, counseling, meditating, and praying.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”  John 3:16 (NKJV).  That, in a nutshell, comprises the whole of the gospel message. 

And then this muscle-bound scripture runs in from the sidelines and slams me to the mat: “Work out your own salvation,” accompanied by this alarming warning, “with fear and trembling!” <choke> Now, I have been taught that one verse must not contradict a slew of other mitigating verses—sound exegetical strategy, generally speaking.  But in this instance, I’m having an extremely tough time making sense of it.  How can I work out something that needs no work?  What is there for me to do with a principle that forbids me to do anything with it?  How can I touch the untouchable?  How can I tweak perfection?  Even worse, I risk invoking fear and trembling unless I do what I’m not supposed to do.  And then this double whammy: I have been taught that if I dare add human work to God’s salvation, I invalidate the very thing I want!  Talk about frustrating! 

Time for some overdue analysis.  My rudimentary knowledge of the Greek language permits me to check out some various definitions of the term “work out” or, katergazomai.  It can mean to work fully, to accomplish, to finish or fashion or to perform.  That range of definitions poses no real problem if the Apostle refers to “daily problems,” as suggested by some commentators.  Instead of “work out,” the critical question then revolves around the second term, “salvation,” or soteria.  It can mean “health,” “safety,” “rescue,” or “deliver,” in a non-soteriological sense.  However, soteria can actually mean “salvation,” which it is so defined in forty out of forty-five times the word appears in the New Testament.  (Besides, if it only refers to our daily problems, what is the point of the “fear and trembling” qualifying phrase?)  Words with eternal consequences warrant fear and trembling; words referring to daily problems much less so. 

At the risk of boring you further, I do need to bore your further.  If we are indeed dealing with eternal salvation, it would behoove us to get this right, right?  I, therefore, take you to my number one source for Biblical language authority, Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.  I quote: 

“Since sozo, and soteria refer to the Last Judgment in these passages [including Philippians 2:12], both words can be used as comprehensive terms for salvation.” (Vol. VII, Pg. 992, paragraph 2.)  

Kittel further reinforces his conclusion, saying (in reference to Philippians 2:12) “ … where the antonym thanatos (death) brings out plainly the comprehensive sense of soteria.”  It seems abundantly clear to me, then, that “work out your own salvation” involves eternal life and death, the Last Judgment, and fully appropriating the work of Jesus Christ on Calvary for our own souls.  For many, this summation borders on heresy.  Thus, I need to explain. 

Before going and further, I assure you that no one can do anything to earn salvation.  The Blood of Jesus Christ alone—nothing else—purchased our salvation.  We are saved by grace, period.  At the same time, no Bible believer would say that nothing is required by the recipient of grace.  Faith is salvation’s most necessary first step.  Even those who most adamantly declare that grace alone saves us teach that each person who wants to be saved must ask for salvation in prayer.  Is not this elementary requirement an imposition on grace?  Does grace mean that a person who doesn’t want it, doesn’t ask for it, and doesn’t believe it can still have salvation?  Impossible.  “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:8-10 (KJV) 

Life is full of requirements, even in circumstances of grace.  If a rich uncle dies and leaves you a mansion in an adjoining state, you must move there to receive it.  If your father fully funds your tuition for a college education, you still must go to school for your diploma.  If you are a cancer patient who gets word that a new treatment is available for you at no charge, you still must go to the treatment center to avail yourself of the generous grant. How does this apply to you and me in terms of salvation?  Simply this.  If you want salvation, you must come and get it.  Obedience is required.  “Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith—to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.” Romans 16:25-27 (NKJV) 

“Then Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.’” Acts 2:38-39 (NKJV)

Salvation is free.  Come and get it!

MY HIGH WINDOW

Sprawling,

Sunken into a satin cushion

One barefoot heel propped up on the ottoman

The other rubbing on the carpet

I sip my coffee.

Forenoon light shines through a high window.

June’s cotton snow drifts by.

Squirrel traffic jams a roadmap of branches

High up on the trees

Amusing me.

Life is good through a high window.

I need a high window to spare me from things,

Things I don’t want to see below.

Dirty kids, barefoot heels callused, stained, bruised.

Glinting Glocks, corpses in ditches,

Slumped forms sprawling in doorways,

Scared girls.

Ripped cotton jeans.

Illicit traffic jamming alleys.

The muffled noise is enough.

I don’t need to see

Things that sadden me.

Warm up my coffee.  Please.

Life is good through a high window.

DERANGEMENT OR INSANITY?

Ten days ago, I wrote an open letter to Donald Trump and posted it on Facebook. It was (in my opinion) an even-handed letter that contained both earned praise and mild criticism of his performance as president. Readers have shared it 2.3K times so far, and it is still going on. But not everybody liked it. I got blasted, cursed, scorned, and mocked mercilessly by a percentage of readers (less than 3%) which let me know that Trump still evokes outrage by a maniacal contingent.

If the number of detractors didn’t bother me, the acid tone of their posts did. They put up obscene memes and gross pictures, they conjured up hypothetical analogies, they used the most degrading words listed in the urban dictionary and they accused me of idiocy and cultic behavior. Their pure vitriol immediately served me notice that they had no interest in reasoned argumentation or respectful discourse. I was not a fellow citizen to disagree with; I was a dastardly enemy to be shamed, vilified and destroyed.

I tried to engage several of these dissenters in light debate. Bad idea. Every point I made elicited insults, defamation of my character (I knew none of them personally) and instructions on what scary things I could do with my viewpoints. If I didn’t agree with them on the worthless and bottom-feeder imposter of a president that Donald Trump was, my voice didn’t deserve the time of day. Derangement doesn’t fully capture the mental and emotional state of these haters because that word indicates confusion, instability or madness. The more accurate term is insanity. If it is possible to become so obsessed with an opponent that one becomes irrational and loses all sense of reason, then many Trump haters have fallen into the pitiless pit of insanity.

Let me also set the record straight by saying that the vast majority of us do not have Trump on a pedestal. We have never regarded him with adulation, worship or perfection. He is not seen as a spiritual icon or as a role model as though he serves as our pastor, priest or rabbi. In fact, that’s not why any president is elected. We do like his policies and we believe he has led the country in a pragmatic positive direction economically, patriotically, and militarily. Of course, we’re talking politics here and people can argue ad infinitum ad nauseum on the details.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that the Trump nemeses are not insane. They’re just guilty of some simple debate fallacies. A listing of common fallacies may prove to understand them. Here are some of them with my explanation of how they apply to Donald Trump.

1. Ad Hominem Fallacy. (Trump is wicked, gross, imbecilic, and stupid.)
2. Strawman Argument. (Many people do not like Trump; he is a white, septuagenarian male; therefore he is a bad president.)
3. Appeal to Ignorance. (Trump is a racist, a Russian agent, and he advocated drinking bleach.)
4. False Dilemma. (Trump destroyed the economy through the Coronavirus.)
5. Slippery Slope Fallacy. (If Trump mismanaged the pandemic, what worse things is he capable of doing?)
6. Circular Argument. (Trump caused unemployment by letting the virus spread which caused people to lose their jobs and ruin the economy.)
7. Hasty Generalization. (Trump caused criminals to commit crimes.)
8. Red Herring Fallacy (ignoratio elenchi) (Trump called the investigations a hoax just to draw attention away from his failed tariff policies and other missteps.)
9. Tu Quoque Fallacy. (Trump attacks the press instead of answering their questions.)
10. Causal Fallacy. (Trump’s rhetoric foments racial strife.)

“Logical fallacies are like landmines; easy to overlook until you find them the hard way. One of the most important components of learning in college is academic discourse, which requires argumentation and debate. Argumentation and debate inevitably lend themselves to flawed reasoning and rhetorical errors. Many of these errors are considered logical fallacies. Logical fallacies are commonplace in the classroom, in formal televised debates, and perhaps most rampantly, on any number of internet forums. But what is a logical fallacy? And just as important, how can you avoid making logical fallacies yourself? Whether you’re in college or preparing to go to college; whether you’re on campus or in an online bachelor’s degree program, it pays to know your logical fallacies.” www.thebestschools.org

My unsolicited, unwanted, and most likely ignored advice to Trump haters is this: Your vicious, excessive, and crude attacks against President Trump have no merit or no effect on his fans. Your sarcastic memes, lewd pictures and four-letter words ring desperate and hollow. You would much more effectively spend your time and effort if you marched out reasoned arguments with credible documentation and proof texts accompanied with plausible and workable alternative strategies.

That may be asking too much for the insane or even deranged, but it may be extremely helpful in persuading Trump supporters to switch sides. Eh. I don’t know. I guess the problem is that this may be mission impossible. But you certainly are welcome to go ahead and try. I do thank the 97% who liked my letter. I hope all 100% at least will pray for our president.

The Widening Gyre

THE WIDENING GYRE

Surely I’m not the only one in this pandemic rocked by the remembrance of Yeats poem.  It seems way too prescient to be discounted as the musings of a deranged wordsmith.  Read it again for yourself and draw your own comparisons.  Every word and every phrase portend an ominous meaning for 2020 global society.  Unsettling, to say the least.

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

The widening gyre suggests that man’s ingenuity, the accumulation and expansion of knowledge, can reach a point where it becomes uncontrollable.  The science fiction scenes in which organic machines break from their human creators and chart their own independent course looks more and more like our present reality.  Can we create a virus that cannot be corralled?  Can we unleash a force so insidious that it laughs at our attempts to kill it? Can machines determine their own fate?

Admittedly, these are strange questions.  And yet, they seem appropriate.  Many in the scientific community have mulled over these same scenarios, but even with their misgivings, no one has slowed down the apparently inexorable march into the unknown.  Ahh, the bold and daring venture to the frontiers of possibilities!  So now, with this pandemic, are we experiencing the fears that some have reserved in the dark shadows of their minds? Surely some revelation is at hand.

Equally strange are the reactions of the very theorists who mapped out the progress of enlightened scientists and their expertise.  Evolutionists may be about to jump into the arena of their own ideas.  Indeed, isn’t one of the postulates of evolution “survival of the fittest?”  The weak, the ill-equipped, the slow, the unevolved specimens fall prey to predators, to hostile conditions, to—as it were—pandemics.  The robust survive, representing a breakthrough in the evolutionary journey. The less able generation fades, the more advanced generation thrives.  In the Covid-19 case, however, the less fit are not going quietly.  They want to observe evolution through a safe, theoretical window, preferably separated by a few million years of time.  But they don’t want to actually be a part of it.  Indignant desert birds.

So, pandemics happen.  They come not as a moral constraint, but as a necessary physical tool of evolutionary progression.  Of course, the “pandemic” does not have to be a virus or disease.  It could be an ice age, volcanic action, a tectonic shift, a radical increase in temperature, a famine or the appearance of a more dangerous natural enemy that wipes out a certain population.  Survivors manage to live through the widespread catastrophe because their DNA turned out to be a superior strain.  This being the case, however, why wouldn’t scientists be delighted to participate in the change?

The creationist view holds that this is God’s creation.  The calamitous voyage in which humanity now finds itself may be attributed to, in the words of Yeats, “anarchy being loosed upon the world.”  Original sin has wound up in the hands of free moral agents.  The Book of Revelation will wend its way to a cataclysmic end, and a pandemic—whether or not it is Covid-19 is not clear—will share in causing the disaster.  Thankfully, our survival is not tied to our personal fitness or righteousness. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, by grace are you saved.” Ephesians 2:8 (NKJV) Science may have gotten us into this mess, but it cannot get us out.  

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly trust in Jesus’ Name.

On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand

Dear Mr. President,

First, let me say that you are a winner.  You proved it in your business career, you proved it in the way your children turned out, and you proved it in winning the presidency against all odds.  Your fortitude, your indefatigable energy, your quick-wittedness and your genuine love for the country has endeared you to millions of Americans.

You do have a few traits that make some people feel uncomfortable.  You tend to think out loud in public settings, you sometimes let your flare for sarcasm get out of hand, you fight back at people and comments when you would be better served to let it go.  I think you dignify some questions and statements by responding to them unnecessarily.  Most of us, however, give you a pass in these areas because it is simply your style.  If we cannot overlook your idiosyncrasies, then we can’t be forgiven our own. 

More than any president in my lifetime (I have been around for twelve of them), you have been treated with hostility, vitriol and lack of basic respect, much of which goes beyond the pale.  We have caught our collective breath at times because of the sheer vulgarity exhibited by the media on a daily basis.  It has often been said that if you cured cancer, the media would accuse you of putting doctors out of work.  You have stood up to your chronic critics with more chutzpah that anyone would have dreamed.  Your performance has been nothing short of amazing, especially against the headwind of hatred. And, all the while, you have been taking care of business like winning the tariff war, cutting regulations, bringing down unemployment, etc., etc.  Your record speaks for itself.

Now, to my real point.  I am getting worried about you.  Recently, it seems that you are getting tired of keeping up the daily grind.  I can see it in your face.  I can hear it in your voice.  I cannot imagine the unrelenting pressure you feel every time you step to the podium.  I get it.  Most people can only take so much frustration and blatant opposition before they run out of patience and say forget it.  But, Mr. President, please don’t stop doing what you are doing.  You must hang in there and fight for the American people.  There is a scripture in the Bible that goes, “And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” Galatians 6:9 (NKJV).  I encourage you not to lose heart.  There is no one else who can do what you are doing at this time in our history.  Be strong.  Be courageous.  Be determined.  Be resilient.  Millions are praying for you.  Thank you.

A Concerned American

Survival

Zoom, I presume—-

(Although dangerous to assume)

Has begun to bloom

(Or, should I say boom?)

As the way to resume

Life in the boardroom

To avoid the doom

Of a premature tomb.

No? Then take the perfume,

And hand me the broom

And the custodian’s costume

Plug in the vacuum

How’s life in Huang Chung?