Systemic Government

Simply to cut to the chase on this issue, I'm not half so worried about climate change as I am what ours and many other governments might do under its banner. I know that a bright red flag is being waived; we gotta do something now!

The hell we do, quite frankly, especially in light of the fact that virtually everything which comes out of the government and the media are crises. This has nearly always been the case: globalcoolingwarmingclimate panics have been around for decades now. And this is only one example. The entire COVID debacle is another: a crisis was created and then spectacularly mishandled. We're supposed to trust government after that?

Why should we believe for a New York minute that a government (and, I stress, a media) which causes so many problems will magically be the solution this time around? It's hubris, friends, a supreme and self inflating arrogance to think as much. I mean, if we are to believe (I do not, but for the sake of argument) in such a thing as systemic racism, from whence does it come? Government, plain and simple. So the supposed system which oppresses you currently (again, only for argument sake) will not oppress you further if given tyrannically greater power? 

The argument answers itself. But will it, can it in some quarters, be heard?

The trouble with justice

I sure opened a can of worms yesterday with my Facebook post. I simply remarked that no sports were cancelled for Cannon Hinnant, a wholly innocent five year old boy murdered in cold blood. The implication (if it isn't obvious enough) is that athletes are stopping play to protest guys who got in trouble with the cops without regard for circumstances over which the trouble began. I find that repugnant, quite honestly. Say what you want about George Floyd or Jacob Blake, and I believe myself that there's evidence enough with each incident that the police might have done wrong, they brought it on themselves to a degree. Yet we're okay destroying property and walking off our jobs for that. I can't be the only one who sees something wrong with that picture.

The thing is, the thing we need to remember when we're talking about doing the right thing, is that justice at the end of the day is individual. If George Floyd was wronged, he was wronged, and it was the Minneapolis police who wronged him. If Jacob Blake was wronged it was the Kenosha police who wronged him. Neither can or should be taken as pro forma evidence of systemic racism. I fear we are superimposing an idea on top of essentially individual circumstances when we do that. 

That's not justice. For anyone.