Judging the Police

Let's see...where to start with the uninformed opinions and claims.

* Cops do not have the right to murder. They can be called upon to use force in the line of duty and that force is supposed to be calibrated to the situation at hand.

* Cops are not allowed to use "excessive force". They are only allowed (and trained) to use the force necessary to deal with the threat.

* When pointed out by a witness as being the suspect, running *will* get you chased. If it's a violent crime and you aren't found laying on the ground around the next corner with your hands ready to be handcuffed behind your back, you *will* be taken down. Sometimes that takedown will be gentler than others. It all depends on the situation.

* I have never met a cop that got into police work so they can kill people.

* Yes some cops lie. Cops are human after all (we ask humans to do a job we can't or won't do). If we catch them in a lie, we should end their careers -- period.

* Cops can and do make mistakes, but most of the posts I see here criticizing police actions spew from the mouth of an uninformed (sometimes deliberately so) person who isn't interested in becoming informed. If a cop makes a mistake we train them to remove that mistake. If they continue to make the same mistake (especially if it is a serious one), we should end their careers -- period.

and finally...

*) Who do you expect to chase a possibly violent stabbing suspect...you? You wife? How about your grandma? When you call 911 who do you want to respond? If you didn't have 911, what would *you* do?

The simple fact is, we ask them to do a dangerous job that we (as citizens) can not, or are unwilling to do. We train them, give them weapons and ask them (as a society) to solve our problems for us. This way we don't have to look at the criminals, the druggies, the filthy whores, the pimps, the violated children, the dead bodies, any more than we have to.

I think the least we can do, as members of our society, is to try to understand the job we require of them.

After all, we ask them to do it.

On Dreams

Ever since I realized, really understood, that I was poly, that my heart was open enough to take in the entire world if desired, I had a fantasy. It’s was a crystal clear, bright, intense fantasy. It had always been in the back of my mind and it had influenced, in very positive ways, how I have interacted with the people in my life.

Here is what I saw when I thought of my loves and family.

There’s some property. I am but one of the owners. I live there. So do my loves and friends. Their loves and friends live there too. Some people share a Great House, with others living in little cottages and outbuildings scattered about. Sometimes people go out to eat, sometimes they eat alone in their cottages, but there is always a gathering of sorts around the diner table. There is always a great cook, happy to provide, feeling fulfilled making this many people happy. There are always happy children, squawking about their day. There are those that set up, or clean up, happy to be free of the responsibility of creating the meal. There are people, eating together, joining together, because they want to.

While people do have personal belongings and personal spaces, there is an air of sharing and support. There is but one ¾ ton pickup truck, one 28foot ladder, one wood chipper, one tractor, and one large well-stocked workshop, one of many things that a family needs – you get the idea.

There are children, some of them are mine and some are not. Some are grown and some are not. All the children are children of the great family, if not in legal terms, but in familial terms. There are grandparents to maybe great grandkids. Any child can go to any adult about anything. We are Family.

There are family gatherings and traditions with roots reaching deep into the bedrock of the lives of those involved in this Chosen Family. Thanksgiving takes on a whole new meaning and size, with days long festivities, and people returning home from across the globe. Hanukah is celebrated, along with Christmas and Yule and…it’s an insane and happy time of the year.

No one is ever alone unless by choice. No one is ever without love and assistance, except by choice. No one is ever unsupported, unless they ask to do something alone.

I have been described, more than once, by more than one, as a patriarch of a family, who gathers loved ones around a core to celebrate and support each other in a chosen and rather extended family. I don’t know if that description fits. When I hear the word I envision some old rich guy, gray of hair, slightly fat of physique, holding court on some daytime soap opera. It also speaks to me of some kind of “top dog” where I am number one, where others bow to my superior status or respect me more than others. I don’t like that image either.

However, maybe in bits and pieces, it’s not that far off in some ways, so I don’t reject it entirely. Maybe I’m here to be bedrock of sorts, building a family of sorts, a place where people can feel welcome, loved, and respected, regardless of any artificial status they may feel or that others attempt to impose upon them.

Hence my fantasy as described above, which I wrote about long a few years ago.

It’s not going to happen, though.

Upon first glance, this may seem like a defeat, a failure, or something to grasp desperately, or attempt to force the universe to create. It may seem like focusing on the goal of that dream would be key, but it would grasp at people, attempt to make them something that they cannot be (even if they wished it), and eventually drive them away. That would not only make no sense. It would be disastrous.

In the greater scheme of things, it honestly matters not that my particular dream come true in this particular form.

Here are some examples why.

My life is full of false starts, indecision, and failures on my part. I dreamed of becoming a professional photographer – my parents reneged on their promise to support me through college. I’m still a very good photographer. I wanted to be an architect – I believed the advisor when he said I’d only end up designing parking lots. I can still do innovative and good design. I wanted to be a professional pilot – I let family and money pressures convince me to quit at almost 200 hours and halfway through my Instrument Rating. While I’m not current, I could, at this moment, take off and land a Cessna 152/172 almost anywhere. I wanted to be a cop, a really good cop – I chose at the right time to leave in a situation in which I could not prevail. I’m still educated as a cop – still have the skills, still have the knowledge. For every non-starter there have been useful lessons.

While it is easy for people to blurt out platitudes like “you can be anything you want,” or, ”simply visualize and it will come true,” they ignore that there are things outside our control, and that we cannot create reality out of whole cloth. While I do live my life purposefully, that doesn’t mean one does so while blindfolded. It makes sense to reach for dreams, but it’s much less painful to reach for what is actually attainable, that which cannot be forced, that which makes sense to pursue.

My dream, as much as it makes me smile, as much as it fills me with love, can also be a trap. Each piece of my dream can be a brick, which I could mortar into a prison of my own making; the unappiness becoming bars, possessiveness the walls, and the floor a foundation of resentment and sorrow. If I were single-minded enough to focus on what I don’t have, instead of what I can create, here and now, in my life today, I’d simply create a miserable reality.

I can’t have my dream and that is OK. It’s not OK in a way where I am denied my wishes. It’s not OK because others tell me that is how things must be. It’s OK like being OK with living, having to eat, needing water, needing love, and having an end to life.

It’s OK because it is.

It just is.

Instead, I create and foster a reality where I can encourage others to risk to love, even if they doubt they can. Also to understand and trust that I am actually free of fear that they love another. I can create a reality where it is clear I want someone in my life, that I want them happy, but if their happiness does not include me, then they should leave, with my blessing. Until then, as long as the relationship I have with a person is good for the both of us, I’d very much like it to continue until the end of my days, regardless of where they live, where they sleep, who helps raise their children and who they love.

Until the end of my days.

And as Kerry and I said in our wedding vows, "So long as love shall last."

Do Overs

Do I want a do over, a chance to get it right? What is right and what does it look like?

Given an opportunity, would I go back and change things in my life?

It's tempting to say I would ignore the counsel of a teacher at my junior college and pursue being an architect. I could be designing great things today if I had.

I could have worked to get a college degree instead of working for a living and trying to immediately survive being on my own.

It is a possibility that my foraging into mainstream christianity and my subsequent baptism in 1977 was a fluke and that I should have avoided that all together.

Then there was the dream of being a pilot that I never fulfilled. Should I have stuck that out? Could I be flying 747s between Seattle and India today?

And what about relationships? What about falling in love too easily, too deeply, too often? Should I change that if I could?

So, when I think about do overs, I find myself looking at a life that brought me here, to this place, this moment. All the trials and tribulations, the small triumphs, the pleasures and the pain; that path is what brought me here. For all my faults, all my gifts, it's what brought me here today.

And from here, I continue, living, being the product of the last 50 years. When it comes down to it, I don't want a do over.

I'm too busy living today.

Stop Being a Pawn

On the subject of the current economic crisis and the diversionary, shortsighted and often willfully ignorant Conservative call for tax protests under the guise of "Teabagging parties" (look that term up for a laugh), someone defends the "tax breaks for the corporations" solution as the answer with:

"The problem here is that there are a lot of people to blame, far too many to name. However, the answer is not a policy of spend, spend, spend. What needs to be done is to give tax breaks to corporations so that they can afford to pay their workforce."

The problem is, they don't do that. They take that profit and pocket it for short term gains and in huge (take a real look) benefits for the people at the top of the chain. There is no excuse, none, for the heads of corporations to make as much as they do in salaries and bonuses, while whittling away at the pay and benefits of the workers under their charge.

The simple fact is, until the Corruption of Capitalism ends, this will not change.

And moreover...

Until the dolts (and though insults are distasteful to me, I use that word with precision and on purpose) at the bottom of the educational and economic food chain stop buying the conservative BS spouted by the talking heads and representatives of the Royalty of this nation, they will finally realize a few things.

1) The Very Rich benefit from the tax cuts...not most of us.

2) The Very Rich need to pay a higher proportional amount of taxes than you and I do -- they gain more from the system rigged in their favor than me, the office manager down the street, the guys building the home across the street, or even the builder.

3) Inheritance taxes don't need to be protected by you and me (who really aren't affected by them) for the benefit of the Very Rich. In doing so, we are their Pawns. If this is truly a land of opportunity, why should anyone create a dynasty for their children, setting up yet another Royal Rich family to work the system. While I'm sure Bill Gates children will ever really want for much, they aren't getting his billions -- he's giving it away. The simple fact is, the Very Rich benefited from the society and the system -- they should give back. And we should stop whining about inheritance taxes that hit people with 5 mil in the bank. Why fight their battles for them.

4) Yes, this is indeed a land of opportunity, and we all should have a chance to get Very Rich some day. The fact is, most of us never will. But, we need to stop being shills and pawns of the Very Rich, listening to and fighting for them, by following their mouthpieces (Hannity, Lumbaugh, et al).

5) If any of us get Very Rich, we should do the right thing, the honest thing, and pay a good portion of that back in taxes to the society that helped us get that way, the infrastructure that we so benefit from, the political system rigged now in our favor. If we have 20 million and we pay half of that in taxes -- we still have 10 million. Is not that enough?

Look at the income distribution in this world (this is not a call for socialism) and see but one example of where it has gotten us; for profit health care corporations making CEOs and ponzi scheme type investors stinking filthy rich while we pay the highest health care costs in this nation and have some of the lowest level of care in the world. *They* have health care because money is no object. Do you?

Stop being shills and pawns for these people and open your damn eyes.

We need to END the artificial gulf in this country that separates the poor/middle class from the rich. We need to stop the destruction of the middle class by the Very Rich, many of them who have gotten that way playing the Ponzi schemes that got is into this economic mess to start with. Stop listening to the lies of Limbaugh et al and stop helping our very oppressors by buying into their pap. As long as we such at their teat of misinformation, we will always be under their yoke.

I'm not calling for socialism or revolution by any means. I'm calling for a wake up call to find a way to end the New Royalty in this country once and for all.

Once and for all.

Something new

I kept a journal on LJ for years. It captured much of what I wrote about life, opinions and events. This blog replaces LJ, with all it's quirks and foibles.

I'll start writing here.

All works are my own, unless otherwise noted.

All photos are my own, unless otherwise noted.

I own all content unless I expressly sign it away.