#and he was too short to fight in the vietnam war due to a medical condition

[plant-ago]

I want to live in a world where the legacy of Robert Reich, US Labor Secretary under the Clinton administration influential liberal thinker, is overshadowed by that of his son, Sam Reich Dropout, who went into comedy and created the only good streaming platform

#fun fact robert reich /dated hillary clinton/ #and he was too short to fight in the vietnam war due to a medical condition #he also like genuinely seems to have been a pretty decent politician #what with the trust busting and raising minimum wage and going toe to toe with Alan Greenspan about deficit spending #sam reich #dropout #dimension 20 #this has been : tonights wikipedia odyssey

[homosexual-having-tea]

Secrets

1513 words (fic below the cut)

Before shipping out overseas, recruits had been warned about land mines, camouflaged enemies, napalm, and three thousand other dangers that awaited them in Vietnam. Any man signing up for the Army could have figured that an obvious danger would be that of ambushes, but one thing no one could never have possibly predicted was the fact there were apparently vampires who attacked American troops who had the misfortune of stumbling into their traps. A warning of such really should have been included in training. Dave hadn’t even believed vampires existed until he was attacked by one in the midst of an unexpected violent fight. 

Another thing he’d wished the Army had informed him of before his deployment was the fact that a rough statistic of 8% of vampire attack victims themselves developed vampiristic characteristics due to the venom coating the monsters’ razor-sharp claws and teeth. 

Meaning he was one of the supposedly “lucky” percent who survived, though with unusually sharp teeth that showed themself when he was high on adrenaline, and the highly unusual ability to survive far more bullet wounds than any average human. Only his commanding officers were aware of his condition, though he’d come close to revealing his secret to several of his, to be discreet, close friends he’d met in service.

The day he’d met Klaus, he swore to keep his secret as long as he could. This was the first man he’d ever truly felt happy and safe with, and he’d be damned if he let his condition mess up their relationship. Everyone else had reacted with nothing short of terror and hostility, and Dave didn’t know if he could bear scaring Klaus off with the knowledge it would be himself to blame.

And so, he’d carried on. Secretly dating Klaus, and holding the secret of his identity within that secret. Too many big secrets. But, he’d told himself trying to feel better about lying to the man he loved, it was only to protect him. Nobody, not even sweet, caring Klaus, would want to be with someone who was so close to being a hellish monster. It was for his own good. Klaus seemed so happy with their relationship and nobody, least of all him, would hurt Klaus by telling him how horrible he truly was.

He’d been doing so well, with only a few close calls when he’d be scared enough in battle for him to accidentally trigger his fangs. At least, he had been doing well. As it so turns out, getting shot causes many involuntary reactions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shouts filled the air as the ground shook with the force of explosions. Acrid smoke filled his lungs and painfully dried his eyes. Klaus hated everything about war, but he would go through it a hundred times over to be with Dave. 

When he’d first arrived in the warzone, he’d kept the briefcase on him at all times, ready to flee at a moment’s notice. However, as time went on, he found himself sticking to Dave rather than the briefcase. It lay hidden in a hole under his bed, untouched for months. He knew rationally he’d have to go back to 2019 and help his siblings stop the end of the world but honestly... would they even miss him? His siblings had made it more than clear that they saw him as an idiot with less than worthless powers. What was a few years in Vietnam with the love of his life, who actually treated him like a person, in the long run? If he was being honest, he’d toyed with bringing Dave back with him to 2019 on multiple occasions. What would it be like for him, in a future where they didn’t have to be secretive about their every move together?

Only when a particularly loud explosion rocked the ground did he notice he’d zoned out for a moment. Gunfire cracked on the ground around him, sending dirt flying through the air. He shakily readjusted his helmet, crouching down further to the ground to avoid the bullets whizzing through the air. The enemy seemed to be getting closer as more and more bullets landed in the trench.

“Lock and load, Charlie’s away!” he shouted, peering over the edge of the trench with eyes squinted against the scorching smoke in the air. Loud orders rang out over the thunder of gunfire. 

“Christ on a cracker, that was a close one, huh, Dave?” Klaus grinned lightly at his boyfriend, his eyes still focused on the line of forest where the gunfire was coming from. His quip was met with an unusual silence. If nothing else, Dave would usually chuckle at Klaus’s strange expression. More frantic shouts filled the air. Klaus risked a glance away from the enemy.

“Dave?” he shook Dave’s shoulder. He moved limply from the force. Realization dawned on him as he rested his gun on the ground. A golden flash from a bomb lit up the field like a bolt of lightning.

Dave wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving. 

Klaus took hold of his boyfriend’s shoulders and flipped him to his back. A gaping, bloody hole in Dave’s chest made the breath freeze in Klaus’s chest. Dave’s head hung limply against the ground, wheezing as blood gurgled from his mouth. Klaus stared for a moment. The shock of seeing Dave bleeding and weak had all but paralyzed him. He broke out of his stupor to press a hand against Dave’s wound. He had to stop the bleeding. He couldn’t lose him.

He yelled for a medic but doubted the sound would carry far over the chaotic battlefield. He pressed his hands harder against Dave’s chest, blood seeping between his fingers.

“Hey, Dave, look at me. Look at me, okay,” Klaus panted. Quiet tears rolled down his cheeks. Dave coughed as he gazed at Klaus with distant, glazed eyes.

“Oh damn it,” Klaus muttered, whipping his head around as he searched for someone who could save Dave. He felt so helpless. He couldn’t watch Dave die in his arms. “Medic!”

Bombs whistled loudly overhead, lighting the heartbreaking scene with bright flashes of red and gold.

“It’s ok. You’re ok. Look at me. Hey, hey, look at me Dave,” Klaus gently ran a hand through Dave’s hair. With unfocused eyes, Dave gazed at Klaus. Coughs racked his body as more blood rose in his throat. Soft sobs shook Klaus’s body as he held Dave to his chest.

“Please, please, please stay with me, Dave,” a loud sob escaped his mouth as he hugged Dave close. “Stay with me.”

Klaus closed his eyes and rocked gently as he sobbed the word “no” over and over. Dave was dying. Dave was dying and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He yelled for a medic once again, his voice trailing off into sobs before he could finish. The noises of the fight faded away. All he could focus on was the shallow heaving of Dave’s chest against his. All that mattered was that Dave was alive and breathing right now. Nothing else was there. Nothing else mattered. 

Time flew by. Dave’s breath had stilled more. Klaus didn’t know how much time had lapsed. His brain was barely functioning, the only thought in his head was Dave.

...

Dave was breathing. The first thing Klaus had heard in who knew how long was a sudden gasping inhale against his ear. Klaus pulled back from Dave’s chest, tears half-dried on his cheeks burning from the sudden exposure to the smoky air. A faint blue light was dancing across his wound, closing the bullet hole until there was no evidence to support the blood coating Dave’s torso.

Klaus was awe-struck. His eyes flitted to Dave’s face. His eyes, too, were rapidly blinking away tears. A pair of bone-white fangs poked into his blood soaked lips. 

Shakily, Klaus stuttered out, “O-Oh god. You’re-” Dave cut him off, avoiding Klaus’s gaze.

“I’m a monster. I’m so sorry.”

“You’re alive!” he sobbed happily, grabbing Dave’s face and pressing a quick, joyful kiss to his lips. “Oh my god, you’re ok. You’re alive, Dave, oh my god!”

Dave pushed him away gently. “You’re not afraid of me?” Klaus laughed tearfully and shook his head.

“I don’t think I could ever possibly be scared of you,” he smiled lovingly at Dave, taking his hand gently as bombs showered the two misfit soldiers in bright light. Dave grinned back, tears falling soundlessly from his eyes.

“I should have told you…” he ran a bloody thumb over the back of Klaus’s hand.”I’m so sorry I kept this from you. I was just so scared of scaring you off…”

Klaus helped Dave sit up against the edge of the trench, bits of dirt crumbling down his torn shirt.

“I get it, I totally get it, honey. But if it makes you feel any better, fangs are totally sexy,” he joked, squeezing Dave’s hand.

“You’re so weird,” his boyfriend laughed softly. He sighed before squeezing Klaus’s hand back. “I love you.”

“Love you too. Let’s get you to a medic, huh?”

#millie writes things #klave #klave vampire au #klaus hargreeves #dave katz #tua #the umbrella academy #fanfiction #tua fanfic #tua fanfiction #vampire au #tua s1 #otp #hhhhhh pls gimme comments i crave attention-

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Should you wear a mask when you go out in public? Yes, according to revised guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But at one of President Trump’s daily press briefings, he said that “It’s only a recommendation,” adding, “I don’t think I am going to be doing it.” What about taking hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, to fight COVID-19? The Food and Drug Administration hasn’t approved it, but that hasn’t stopped Trump from encouraging its use despite inconclusive scientific evidence regarding its effectiveness.

When the president contradicts agency officials and medical experts (oftentimes from behind the very same podium), it can be difficult for Americans to keep the facts straight. That is why the media’s role as a watchdog is vital to democracy — its job is to hold government officials accountable and investigate the veracity of the administration’s claims, especially when they are in response to rapidly evolving events.

But the media has come up short in previous times of crisis, deferring too much to the administration to dictate the terms and frame the events, at the expense of including critical viewpoints. And the notion of a watchdog press has taken on a new meaning. In our fragmented media environment, viewers increasingly choose their news based on their politics and news outlets are incentivized to pick a side — tout the president’s message uncritically to cater to a conservative audience, or criticize the administration’s every move in order to appeal to a more liberal audience. This, in turn, creates a misinformed public. We see this play out with the coronavirus — Republicans and Democrats view the basic facts differently, and that threatens a functioning democracy.

Studies from political communication suggest that the press tends to be more deferential to the administration when the country faces a crisis, a byproduct of the “rally ’round the flag” effect, a phenomenon in which political differences are set aside during times of crisis while the public, politicians and media rally behind the government. It’s also a consequence of a norm of reporting, which is to rely on official governmental sources for interviews and as guests on news programs, because they are viewed as credible and reliable authorities.

But as a crisis unfolds and conflict appears, the press usually broadens its coverage, poking holes in the administration’s messaging. As Daniel Hallin, a communications professor at the University of California, San Diego, documents in his book “The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam,” the national media initially accepted the administration’s view that the conflict in Vietnam was part of a broader struggle against communism. But over time, Hallin writes, that narrative grew difficult for the administration to sustain, due in part to reporters’ access to soldiers, who had a different story to tell. Reporters viewed these soldiers as equally authoritative on the war, and thus included more of their perspective in their stories, even as it deviated from the administration’s own version of events.

Or take what happened after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Bush administration falsely claimed that there was a link between al-Qaida, the terrorist group responsible for 9/11, and Iraq President Saddam Hussein, and that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), which the administration then used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. These claims were then repeated by top government officials and amplified by the media to such a degree that, according to a CNN/Time poll conducted a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, 76 percent of Americans believed that Hussein was working with al-Qaida. And according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted the month of the invasion, almost 9 out of 10 believed that it was at least somewhat likely that the U.S. would find conclusive evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or the facilities to develop them.

It would take months of reporting before the media identified cracks in the administration’s story, such as disagreements between intelligence agencies and the U.S. Departments of State and Energy about Iraq’s nuclear capacity. But media coverage of the Iraq War also grew increasingly partisan over time, with outlets like Fox New remaining more sympathetic to the war effort than other networks, and featuring more Bush administration officials as sources.

The consequences of this difference were noteworthy. One study found that people who named Fox News as their primary news source were actually more likely to hold misinformed views. In other words, although studies have also found that those who pay less attention to the news are generally more misinformed, in this case more attention to Fox News also meant a higher level of misinformation.

A similar partisan misinformation gap might be developing around Democrats’ and Republicans’ understanding of the coronavirus, which may have to do with where they get their news. The initial differences between Democrats’ and Republicans’ attitudes on the coronavirus were quite large, and while there is some evidence these partisan differences are overblown or have shrunk, signs also point to a gap in knowledge of basic facts about the coronavirus. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 10-16, there are notable differences in Americans’ knowledge of the coronavirus among those who identified Fox News, MSNBC or CNN as their main source of political news. For instance, 78 percent of MSNBC and 57 percent of CNN viewers correctly answered that a vaccine will not be available within a year, compared with only 51 percent of Fox News viewers. And according to a Data for Progress poll conducted April 11, Fox News viewers are more likely to believe that hydroxychloroquine is a proven treatment for COVID-19 (25 percent) than CNN viewers (6 percent) and MSNBC (4 percent) viewers. Data for Progress also found Fox News viewers were more likely to say that the flu is more deadly than coronavirus (19 percent) than CNN (8 percent) and MSNBC (3 percent) viewers. These different views of the facts could spell trouble.

While there isn’t yet evidence of a partisan gap when it comes to support for social distancing measures (just 8 percent of Republican voters and 4 percent of Democratic voters said such measures were not effective), there are signs that Republicans are more eager for these measures to end and to get back to work. When asked if it would be safe to end social distancing measures before or by May 1, 30 percent of Republicans said yes, compared to just 4 percent of Democrats, according to a poll from The Economist/YouGov conducted April 12-14.

The partisan split doesn’t appear to extend to public opinion on medical institutions. A March 24-29 Pew poll found large majorities of Democrats and Republicans have a favorable opinion of the CDC, and a Quinnipiac poll conducted in the first week of April found 77 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats approve of how Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has handled the response.

However, public opinion could change if the timeline to “reopen” the economy becomes a big political fight in the coming weeks, especially if Trump renews calls to fire Fauci or questions his medical expertise. These signals from the president are crucial, too, because studies have found that conservatives have become increasingly distrustful of science, and that distrust is greatest amongst consumers of conservative media. The consequences of a growing misinformation gap might vary from the immediate, such as a shift in adherence to preventive behaviors like avoiding large gatherings, to the long term — such as a difference in who is believed to be responsible for the economic and public health fallout. And all this might hinge on editorial decisions by media outlets in how they choose to cover this ongoing crisis.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Meredith Conroy

[canyvman]

{ ⋁ } —- describe a muse you want to play, but haven’t yet.

Aaron Mathis 

Born: Lawrence, KansasAge: 39Profession- Mechanical Engineer (for now)

Aaron has had a rough life. He was born in Lawrence, Kansas and grew up with the kind of childhood that left him physically and emotionally scarred for life. His father was a Vietnam war veteran and his mother was a writer (also an abusive bipolar, chronic alcoholic) who worked for the local paper when she wasn’t too medicated (drunk)  to work. The family moved around a lot mainly due to lack of consistency in income so they lived everywhere from trailer parks and motels and once they lived out of his father’s Buick for a two-week stint. Larry eventually abandoned Aaron and his mother,  leaving Aaron to fend for himself as Tammy’s abuse and psychotic behavior became more frequent. Aaron helped out as much as he could, often missing school which put them on the radar of Child and Family Services.  Aaron’s intelligence surfaced at the age of ten when he started tinkering with an old broken Dell computer his father left behind, taking it apart and building it from scratch for fun. Despite everything that happened between himself and Tammy, things Aaron hasn’t spoken of and probably never will, his thirteen-year-old brain (the age he was when he was finally taken into the care of the state and placed in a foster home) still loves her in a way he can’t begin to explain. (Tammy currently has dementia and doesn’t remember anything that happened in Aaron’s youth, or so she claims. She lives in a nursing facility and Aaron visits her often)

As far as personality goes, Aaron can be described as intense, confident, loyal and stoic. This guy has marginal social skills but he can manage in short bursts of time, but don’t count on him to stay long in any one place, especially if the spotlight is on him. Despite being hardened by life he does have somewhat of a sense of humor, mostly sarcastic. In terms of morality, he likely rides both sides of the line, gray would be an understatement. He’s not above lying especially when it comes to protecting his heart and his feelings, although he likely wouldn’t admit to that either. To those who don’t know him Aaron might come across as having a cold exterior but he will warm up to anyone who has the patience to endure his bullshit.

Relationships: Has an ex-wife and a three-year-old she won’t allow him to see. He’s fighting that court ruling and I’m still clueless as to what happened here.

#okayyy who wants this ball of sunshine??? Buehler??? #tw: abuse #tw: alcohol #tw: suicide #tw: mental illness #rathleague #thanks boo #plot call #likey if you want to plot

[explain-usa-circus]

Prominent Republicans you should know about

I wanted to put in all the Republicans, although the list got too long. So I’ll put the people who have the three longest bios: John McCain, Ted Cruz, and Jeff Sessions

John McCain (senator from Arizona)

Even though he died in August 2018, I fee I should make him first, being that he has played such a large roll in American politics, even after his death. 

McCain was an American hero who fought in Vietnam. Shortly after he was captured, the US was negotiating prisoner swaps. Being that McCain’s father was a Prominent military vet, he was given the chance to leave early. Yet he stayed, saying it wouldn’t be fair to his follow soldiers who were captured along with him. Only after the war ended did he finally get released, along with everyone else. That’s the type of guy he was- never willing to leave people behind for special treatment. After the war, McCain went on the be a senator in Arizona for 30 years, and running for president twice.

Anyway, the first time Trump mentioned was in the summer of 2015, when most people thought he was still a joke candidate. He famously said “I like war vets who weren’t captured” when the topic of McCain was brought up. This of course, was coming from a guy who lied about his medical history to the government so he could dodge the draft. 

Even though the two were from the same party, McCain, unlike many other republicans, refused to cave to trump, putting country over party. The most famous example is in July of 2017 when he voted to save Obama care. The Republicans had created the bill in only one month, and now wanted to vote. This was unprecedented, given that a bill this size would take years to review. McCain may not have liked ObamaCare, however, he hated how his party was rushing a bill. After voting against it, he told congress there needed to be “regular order”

Fast forward to August of 2018. It was well known that McCain had been struggling with cancer for a while, and told reporters on August 24 that he would stop treatment. He died the next day.

There was a lot of debate on how to feel about his death. After all, he did vote for the Iraq war and tried to repeal Obama care multiple times, which would have taken away health care from millions of people. Yet even his harshest critics felt sympathy. Unlike so many other politicians, he admitted and apologized for his mistakes. This is in part why his passing shook the nation. He was unique in that you could disagree with him all you wanted, yet at the end of the day, you could still respect him. 

Many people consider his death the end of an era. With his passing, so did the last trace of Republican civility and bipartisanship. 

Anyway, right up to his death, Trump remained nasty to him. For example, shorty before his death, a White House staffer said “so what if we don’t get McCains vote? He’s going to die anyway”. Rather than firing them, Trump defended the staffer.

At his funeral, he has both Bush and Obama speak, which was powerful considering that they both beat him for the presidency in 2000 and 2008- the only two times he ran. He had a mix of Republicans and Democrats speak, showing a sign of unity even after death.

In the end, McCain got the last word. He literally banned Trump from attending his funeral. Normally, no matter how different their political views were, a president would speak at the funeral of a congressperson. This was his final middle finger to Trump. 

Ted Cruz (senator from Texas) 

He’s the guy that no one from either party likes, yet puts up with. For example, Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, said back in 2016 "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." 

Anyway, Cruz is by far the farthest right ideologically within the Republican party, which is saying something. He ran in the 2016 presidential election, and was one of the last standing against Trump before Trump won enough delegates to take the nomination. Just to note, the whole delegate thing only happens with presidential races, not with the legislative branch elections. (Come back later when you have a moment and watch this video which explains who delegates work.)

The fight between them got really nasty, attacking each others family members, something that used to be of limits prior to 2016. A super PAC in March 2016 that was for Cruz, although not officially part of his campaign, showed a photo of Melania (Trumps wife) in an ad, essentially slut shamming her from once being a nude model. Trump then retaliated, saying on twitter that he would “spill the beans” on Cruz’s wife. Cruz went onto twitter to respond to the issue, saying “Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought.” It didn’t stop with Heidi Cruz, Trump went on to create conspiracy theories, saying that Cruz was the Zodiac killer, and Cruz’z father killed JFK, not Oswald. 

Then came the Republican National Convention a few months later in July. Both parties have this convention, where the nominee becomes official. It’s generally about three to four days long, with countless speaks up on stage talking about their personal experience with the candidate. This is also a time in which nominees that lost emphasis that even though it was a tough race, they will support the nominee in attempts to heal and unite the party. When Cruz spoke, he didn’t directly support Trump, rather saying that people need to “vote with their concise.” However, two months later in September, Cruz ended up endorsing Trump. Since Trumps election, Cruz has caved to Trump, showing the world that he would go to any length to protect the party, even putting up with attacks on his family. 

Fast forward to the senate elections week. Democratic candidate Beto O'rourke came close to winning, losing by only 219,000 votes. That was actually incredible, considering that Texas was considered such a Republican state that it was hopeless to even try. In a state which over 9 million people voted in, 219,000 votes is relatively small. Even though he lost, he still won in the sense that Republicans had to dump money to save Cruz, taking away money from other Republican candidates. 

Jeff Sessions (former senator for Alabama, and former attorney general)

In 2016, Trump picked Jeff Sessions, a senator from Alabama, to be his attorney general. He was US attorney General from January of 2017 when Trump was sworn in, until November 7th 2018, the day after the midterms.) 

Some background on this guy. He’s sometimes described as “a racist little elf” since he is an old, racist and short. In fact, a lot of people say he looks like the little elf from Keebler cookies. Anyway, Sessions has a long history of trying to block African Americans from voting, and was accused of making racist comments. He is in favor of harsh drug laws, and is a hardliner on immigration. 

Sessions was in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation, that was, until it was discovered that he had a sketchy visit with Kislyak, a prominent Russian official in 2016. During his confirmation hearings, he was asked directly if he knew of anyone meeting with the Russians that was on Trumps team- which he lied and said no. (Lying to the senate is illegal, so if there had been any accountability in Washington, he could have been prosecuted for that. Yet since Washington is such a mess, it’s been long forgotten, and unlikely he will ever face punishment or further questioning.)

Due to this discovery, he had to recuse himself- meaning that he would still be attorney general, however, he just would not be able to have any involvement in the Trump-Russia case. This is what led to the appointment of Robert Muller. 

Over the past two years, Trump has humiliated Sessions, calling him names behind his back. Even though democrats didn’t like his political positions, they still wanted him in office. Being that he so strongly aligned with Trump- the only reason he would be fired is if Trump was planning on starting a domino effect, knowing it would end in the Russia investigation.

Normally, Sessions would have power over the Muller investigation. Yet since Muller started after sessions recused himself, he can’t fire him. However- Sessions could, if he wanted to- fire Rod Rosenstein. He is the deputy attorney general, one step bellow Sessions. It is Rosenstein who has the power to stop the investigation which so far he has refused to do, upsetting Trump. See if Sessions were to fire him, Trump can replace Rosenstein with a person who will stop the investigation. This is why so many people are scared now that Trump forced Sessions to resign last week. So far, Matthew Whitaker has been appointed, which is a problem since he has openly said that the Russia investigation was a hoax. If confirmed- it is likely he would stop the Muller investigation.

#ted cruz #john mccain #jeff sessions

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 3 (3 of 6)

Carrying on with my reviews of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, here’s another round that brings us to about the mid-point of the third season

Episode 11: The Hunted

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise is investigating the planet Angosia III as a candidate for entry into the Federation. Captain Picard is discussing this with Prime Minister Nayrok when a convict escapes on a transport ship from the Angosian prison colony on Lunar V. Picard offers his assistance and The Enterprise locates the ship, which flies behind an asteroid. However, only the drive section emerges from the other side with no life signs. Following it around they find the ship's wreckage. Believing that the prisoner has perished, the ship returns to the planet, only to discover the drive section they saw has disappeared.

 Picard and Commander Riker return to the Enterprise and following a hunch from Data locate an escape pod and beam aboard the prisoner. When security try to take the prisoner into custody he fights back, virtually unaffected by their phasers. He overpowers the guards and injures O'Brien before he is subdued by Lt Worf and Riker. Upon further examination the crew find that the prisoner does not emit any life signs on scanner.

 The prisoner identifies himself as Roga Danar a former soldier. Counsellor Troi meets Danar and reads little aggression from him, finding it unlikely that he could be so violent. Danar explains that he and others were genetically enhanced and mentally programmed, greatly increasing their abilities and affecting their responses when in danger. The crew also finds that despite being a prisoner Danar has no criminal record. Nayrok confirms Danar's story but says that the soldiers were unsuited for life in civilized society. When Captain Picard raises the subject with Nayrok, he refuses to discuss the abuses Danar alleges, considering it a matter of internal security, and instead simply arranges for Danar to be returned to the colony. Danar tells Troi that the conditioning was never reversed or treated, and due to its effects, a small misunderstanding could often lead to murder. Rather than try to fix the conditioning, the government imprisoned them all.

 During the transfer from the Enterprise to the Angosian transport, Danar manages to escape. Easily evading security, he cripples the Enterprise by causing an explosion in one of the Jeffries tubes, disabling the sensors. With the Enterprise blind Danar beams aboard the Angosian transport vessel. Taking control, he attacks the Lunar V colony and rescues several of his fellow inmates.

 Danar and the other inmates lead an attack on the capital and confront the Angosian government. Nayrok pleads with the Enterprise to help. Picard beams down with an away team but refuses to help, questioning the morality of how they've treated their soldiers. Nayrok and his compatriots explain the government's view on the matter; that they weren’t sure the soldiers' augmentations could be reversed, thus requiring them to be confined for their own good and perhaps used again in the future. Against this, Picard is frustrated at their intransigence on this matter.

 In the middle of this argument, Danar and his rebels storm the government building. In an act of hypocrisy, Nayrok pleads with Picard to intervene against this insurrection. Picard elects instead to depart considering he has sufficient information for his report, including the flagrant sentient rights abuses discovered, reminding Nayrok that he himself called the matter an internal affair.

 With Nayrok fruitlessly protesting against their being abandoned, Picard informs the government that they have to make a choice on what to do with their veterans. Danar smiles at the away team, happy to finally be recognized as they depart. On their return to the Enterprise, Picard notes that if the government survives, they will be given assistance in helping their veterans with their conditioning. He also notes that they may reapply to join the Federation at a later date.

Review:

This episode is strictly oriented with no focus on any single character from the main cast.  Apparently, the underlying theme of the episode was to show a metaphorical reflection and exploration of how veterans of America’s war in Vietnam were treated, and by extension remains a metaphor for how modern militaries in western society treat their veterans.  The psychological component of the episode’s sci-fi elements, in turn, is also a potential metaphor for PTSD, albeit not necessarily the most positive one given the actions of Danar under his own form of conditioning.

 More worrying, however, is that a lot of people preferred an earlier draft of the finale in which the altered Angosian soldiers would have had a massive shoot out ending in a wipeout of all the guest characters.  Frankly, I think that would have been a terrible idea, because then depending on how that was played out, you’re essentially suggesting anyone whose mental health has been adversely affected by war is doomed to some kind of mutual destruction ending on their life.  The revised ending is far more positive, because it suggests even the most ignorant of societies can learn to treat combat-induced mental trauma, and indeed mental ill health as a whole, the right way.  That kind of hopeful message is what Star Trek is ultimately supposed to be about, even if at this period in the franchise it occasionally lent too far towards its utopian ideals.

 Overall, I think this is a pretty decent episode, made even more so thanks to James Cromwell making his first of many guest appearances within the Star Trek franchise.  Of course, his most notable one is yet to come within my TNG review (*Cough* First Contact).  On the whole, I give this episode about 8 out of 10.  Could have been full marks, but somehow I don’t think it’s quite at the upper-most levels of Trek.

Episode 12: The High Ground

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The crew of the Enterprise is sent on a mercy mission to deliver medical supplies to the war-torn non-affiliated planet Rutia IV, in the middle of a decades-long conflict with rebel separatists called the Ansata. The Enterprise crew cannot intervene in the conflict itself, internal to the planet, because to do so would violate the Prime Directive. While Chief Medical Officer Dr Crusher, Lt. Commander Data, and Lieutenant Worf relax in a cafe, a bomb goes off in a public plaza, injuring many bystanders. Dr Crusher attempts to tend to the wounded bodies against Captain Picard's suggestion to return to the ship, but her efforts are interrupted when she is abducted by a man using an unknown method of teleportation. After being denied the use of the Enterprise's superior firepower to seek and destroy the Ansata's base of operations, Alexana Devos, the head of Rutian security, orders severe interrogation of all known Ansata sympathizers, an act that the Enterprise crew find immoral. Without new information from Devos, the Enterprise crew investigate the teleportation technology and find that it is used to shift between dimensions, allowing the Ansata rebels to bypass even force fields. The investigative team, which includes Wesley, lets Picard know that they need to observe more of the teleportations to be able to pinpoint the location of the base.

 At the Ansata base, Dr Crusher learns her abductor is Kyril Finn, the leader of Ansata. She refuses to eat or otherwise cooperate with Finn. After several hours, Finn lets Dr Crusher out of her restraints and requests that she help treat their wounded. She discovers that the "Inverters", the Ansata teleportation technology, cause irreversible damage to the user's DNA, and that many of the Ansata are sick due to excessive use of the Inverter. Finn admits that the Inverter is their only advantage against the Rutian government. After more hours pass, Finn believes that the Federation, by providing medical aid and working with Rutian security forces to find the doctor, is working with the Rutian government and launches an attack on the Enterprise, despite Crusher's requests to avoid harming her son. The Ansata manage to plant a bomb on the Enterprise warp engine. It is quickly transported into space by La Forge, but the distraction is enough to allow Finn to appear on the bridge. When Captain Picard jumps on Finn to save the bridge crew, he ends up being abducted. With Picard as his captive, Finn uses the Inverter to come to Counsellor Troi on the Enterprise and demand the Federation become involved in mediating the dispute, returning to the planet before security can arrive. Picard, learning of Dr Crusher's situation, tells her to continue to work on gaining Finn's confidence to hopefully end the dispute peacefully.

 Data and Wesley are able to use Finn's appearance to locate the Ansata base, and Commander Riker and Devos assemble their forces. After they transport into the base, the combined forces are quickly able to quell the resistance. Finn, as a last resort, attempts to execute Picard, but Devos kills him. It is her conclusion that if Finn remained alive, his imprisonment would spark more resistance, while being killed in battle will only elevate him to martyr status and reduce the violence in the short-term. When a young Ansata member attempts to exact revenge on Picard, Dr Crusher is able to convince him to drop his weapon, which Riker notes is a sign that there may be more fruitful discussions to resolve the issue in the future.

Review:

According to the Trek wiki-page Memory Alpha, a lot of people on the TNG crew felt that this was a flop episode, somehow being a mishandling of an episode that was done primarily to satisfy a demand for more action-oriented stories.  Apparently, it was originally intended as a metaphor on the American revolution, but then became compared to the Troubles of Northern Ireland.  Indeed, at one point Data mentions a Reunification of Ireland in 2024 resulting from terrorism, and as a result the episode has never aired on TV stations based in the Republic of Ireland, while the show was shown only in an edited format on British television until May 2006 on Sky One (September 2007 for the after-midnight repeats on BBC 2).

 However, I disagree with the opinion of the show’s crew. This was a good episode precisely because it did issue exploration, because issue exploration is what Trek often does brilliantly.  Moreover, I like how Finn points out the difference between being seen as a revolutionary or a terrorist is sometimes more about the perspective of those in power after the conflict is over and a winner, or loser, is declared.  He says this while discussing George Washington, and it’s a very apt analogy.  Had George Washington lost the American revolution, he’d have gone down in history as being akin to Guy Fawkes in many minds.  Instead, he won and gained a notable place in history as the founder of the United States.

 Also, the idea that terrorism would just be limited to how we view certain revolutions, or that Ireland was the only possible comparison for this episode at the time this series was made, is also wrong.  As we’ve come to learn the hard way in the 21st century, terrorism is also the tool of the religious extreme, and that applies to all religions, because no faith has cornered the proverbial market when it comes to terrorist acts.  However, back then in the early 1990’s, Ireland would hardly have been the only country experiencing terrorism.  Ever since its creation, the Jewish state of Israel has been subject to acts of violence from the displaced Palestinian population, which Israel routinely portrays as terrorism despite the fact that Israel invariably has the Palestinian people out-manned, out-gunned and heavily oppressed, as if subjecting them to what the Jews suffered for centuries some excuses their actions. Haven forbid it would enter either side’s head that maybe, just maybe, it would be better to share the land in peace and just agree to disagree on the whole mythical sky-figure issue.

 This is why this episode is actually far better than the show-makers seem to think; because it does what Trek does best and, rather sadly given the subject matter, retains its relevance on repeat viewings. Its only flaw to my mind is that we get another bit of entertainment where people might think there’s a bit of Stockholm Syndrome going on when there isn’t.  I’m no expert, but Beverly isn’t held captive long enough or subjected to any kind of ill-treatment that would make me buy into Picard’s warning about her ‘warming up to her captor’, just like I can’t buy into that same kind of concept in Beauty and the Beast for the same reason.  Make it at least a week or two and I’d buy it, but only a matter of hours in both cases?  Sorry, no chance, or at least not without some mind-altering substances and skilful manipulation of the captive’s psyche, none of which applies.  Overall, I give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 13: Deja Q

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise arrives at planet Bre'el IV to prevent the looming disaster of the planet's asteroidal moon falling from its orbit and crashing into the highly populated planet; as the ship arrives, the planet is already experiencing damaging effects of the moon's gravitational field. As the crew is working, Q appears on the bridge naked. Q explains that he is being punished by the Continuum for spreading chaos throughout the universe and he has been stripped of all his powers, banished from the Q Continuum, and transported to the Enterprise as a human, asking asylum. Captain Picard reluctantly helps Q, but instead of assigning him guest quarters, Picard treats Q like a criminal and throws him in the brig.

 As the moon continues to descend to the planet, Picard urges Q to use his powers and move the moon back into its original orbit. Q still insists that he is powerless except for his IQ of 2005. The captain assigns Lt. Commander Data to watch Q and he is ordered to assist the Engineering team. Q suggests that they "change the gravitational constant of the universe." Q begins experiencing more human conditions, such as back spasms and hunger. Data takes Q to the Ten-Forward Lounge. When Q enquires about what food is best to address his constant suffering, Data suggests a chocolate sundae as he has observed Counsellor Troi turning to chocolate when depressed. After ordering ten sundaes, his hunger is quickly displaced upon encountering Guinan, who takes advantage of Q's mortal form to stab him with a fork. Shortly thereafter, Q is set upon by a cloud of gaseous entities called the Calamarain, who, having previously been tormented by Q, are attempting to get revenge. After raising the shields to prevent the Calamarain from attacking Q, Picard determines that Q took refuge on the Enterprise to protect himself from alien species that hold grudges against him.

 Q's idea of changing the gravitational constant of the universe, impossible with human technology, sparks an idea in Chief Engineer La Forge to modify the gravitational constant of the moon using a warp field, and they attempt to use this. However, during the attempt the Enterprise's shields go down, allowing the Calamarain to attack Q again. Data attempts to save Q from their assault but is electrified in doing so, nearly frying his positronic brain. Realizing that his presence on the Enterprise is doing more harm than he expected, Q leaves the ship in a shuttlecraft. As the Calamarain close onto the shuttle, a second Q being appears on the shuttle and informs Q that due to his selfless act to protect the Enterprise, the Continuum is willing to give him a second chance and restore his powers. Q accepts, shrinking the Calamarain entities and teleporting them into the palm of his hand, gloating over the restoration of his powers. The other Q reminds him that he should reflect upon the lessons he's learned, and he grudgingly turns the tiny aliens loose. Q, dressed as a mariachi, returns to the Enterprise and celebrates. Nudged by Picard to leave, he departs, bestowing a parting gift on Data for showing Q how to be more human. After Q disappears, Data begins to laugh uncontrollably for a moment, to the surprise of the rest of the Enterprise crew. Upon learning that the Bre'el moon has returned to a safe orbit, Picard surmises that Q is responsible, and says that perhaps Q has a residue of humanity after all, but a cigar appears in Picard's hand with Q's voice telling him, "Don't bet on it."

Review:

Q is back, and speaking as a Marvel fan, it’s very much a case of Loki playing at being Thor.  So far, Q’s been a trickster of sorts, using his powers to amuse himself, test humanity or both.  This time, however, he gets stripped of his powers, dumped on the Enterprise and can’t get his powers back until he shows humility and selflessness.  This is something that was baked into Thor’s comic incarnation of decades before this episode, so whether the Trek people realise it or not, Marvel beat them to the punch, and I’m sure other writers have covered the same kind of story before Marvel as well.  Ultimately, it’s a fun episode as Q episodes ultimately became, but not by any means a highly original one.  For me, the best part of the episode is Q giving Data the gift of laughter.  Overall, I give this episode 7 out of 10.

Episode 14: A Matter of Perspective

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

With a routine planetary survey ahead, the Enterprise drops Commander Riker and Chief Engineer La Forge at the Botanica Four research space station orbiting Tanuga Four to check on the progress of the work of Dr Nel Apgar, a Tanugan who has been working on Krieger waves, a new promised energy source for the Federation. When the Enterprise returns, Captain Picard is told that Riker stayed behind to have a private meeting with Apgar, and moments after Riker transports back to the ship, the station explodes, killing Apgar, and almost killing Riker due to the explosion disrupting the transporter process. Tanugan investigator Krag comes aboard to accuse Riker of murder; under Tanugan law, Riker is guilty until proven innocent, and Krag demands Riker's extradition. Captain Picard requests that they hold a hearing aboard the Enterprise to determine Riker's guilt. This involves the use of a holodeck, recreating the events on the station from data logs and testimony from Riker, Dr. Apgar's wife Manua, and his research assistant, Tayna.

 In the holodeck recreation, Krag demonstrates that a directed energy beam from Riker's location prior to transport struck the Krieger wave converter, destroying it and the station, but his theory is that Riker fired a phaser just before beaming out. Riker presents his case first, with his simulation showing Apgar highly agitated with a Federation presence before he is ready for them, and Manua openly flirting with Riker. Manua then makes aggressive passes at Riker in the guest quarters when Apgar walks in on them, attempts to attack Riker, but Riker subdues him. Apgar leaves with Manua giving Riker a veiled threat. Riker's simulation concludes with his final confrontation where Apgar tells Riker that he will lodge a formal complaint about Riker's behaviour and accuses Riker of potentially damaging the project with baseless information in Riker's progress report.

 In Manua's version of the events, she is a doting wife, with her husband promising rich rewards coming from the project. From her point of view, Riker is the one making the advances, and when they are alone in the guest quarters, Riker threatens to rape her when her husband storms in to defend her, but Riker overpowers him and threatens to have the project shut down. During a recess, Riker asserts to Counsellor Troi that he never seduced or tried to rape Manua, and Troi believes him, but she tells him that Manua believes the events happened as described, and that "it is the truth as each of you remembers it".

 Tayna's testimony is her version of events from Apgar's point of view as he told her. Picard tries to have the testimony dismissed as hearsay, however, Tanugan law allows such testimony, so they proceed. In her simulation, when Apgar walks in on Riker and Manua, Apgar is the one to successfully subdue Riker, leaving Riker threatening to kill Apgar. Based on the testimonies presented, Picard is not sure Riker's case is strong enough to avoid extradition.

 Meanwhile, the crew of the Enterprise find highly focused pulses of an unknown, intense radiation striking parts of the ship, putting holes through the bulkheads. La Forge fears what would happen if this should occur inside the warp reactor. The initial assessment is that the only commonality is the timing of these events, which upon further examination they soon trace to be precisely in time with the lambda field generator on the surface, which had remained operating after the station's destruction. Picard comes to realize the truth, and prepares a new simulation on the holodeck.

 With Krag, Manua, Tayna, and Riker all present, Picard demonstrates through a combination of the testimonies that Apgar was more interested in the potential financial success of completing the Krieger wave converter; he would not get this through the Federation, and Picard postulates that he in fact was trying to weaponize the project to make money, thus explaining his hostility towards Riker's presence. Further, Picard suggests that Apgar had successfully built the converter; the holodeck simulation of it, also being fully functional, has been focusing the energy from the generator on the planet, resulting in the damaging radiation experienced on the ship, which La Forge identified as Krieger waves. Picard completes his explanation by running the holodeck simulation of the moment of Riker's transport, synchronized with the planetary generator – the holodeck simulation shows that Apgar had aimed the Krieger wave generator at Riker, but when the energy beam struck him, the beam bounced off the transporter field and hit the converter, destroying it and the station. Krag agrees with the conclusion that Apgar accidentally killed himself and Riker is exonerated.

Review:

This is basically a Riker episode, and here we get a kind of spin on his customary ‘girl of the week’ escapades.  This time, he’s accused of murder in a society where suspects are guilty until proven innocence, as opposed to the innocent until proven guilty stance of western society that Trek juris prudence is based on.  In addition, the bulk of the evidence for Riker’s guilt is testimony that varies massively from Riker’s own recounting of events, and with little physical evidence to prove what happens until the end.

 Because of all this, the episode makes several good points.  First and foremost is a point that is later made throughout the entire CSI franchise, which is that scientific evidence is ultimately superior to witness testimony, as the testimony is biased by each character’s individual perceptions and the fundamentally unreliable nature of biological memory.  In addition, as Greg Sanders points out in one episode of the tenth season of the Vegas CSI show, witnesses tend to merge what they see with prior assumptions.  This is probably most evident with the last of the trio of witness testimonies, as Tayna’s deposition is probably affected by her admiration for Dr Apgar as much as any spin Apgar himself might have put on whatever he told her.

 Secondly, the show tries to point out the error in taking a guilty until proven innocent stance.  Had Picard allowed extradition of Riker without performing the holodeck recreations, Riker’s innocence in the murder charge would never have been proven, and the character could have potentially been imprisoned or killed for a crime he didn’t commit.  This is why our system of justice has to assume innocence as the default state and prove guilt rather than vice versa; it is there specifically to protect the innocent from wrongful conviction.

 Sadly, the episode falls short on two major points. First, there is too much variance between the three testimonies regarding the Riker-Manua relationship and Apgar’s actions with Riker in the guest quarters for me to believe Troi when she says everyone’s saying what they believe is the truth.  Riker’s version portrays Manua as an unfaithful wife and he’s trying to be the consummate gentleman, Manua’s version suggests she is a doting wife and Riker a would-be rapist (which we’ve had two-and-a-half seasons to know is a flat-out lie in his case), and Tayna’s version suggests Riker and Manua were both into hooking up behind Apgar’s back.  Likewise, Riker’s version of Apgar bursting in suggests Riker acted purely defensively, Manua’s version suggests Riker went for Apgar first, while Tayna’s version shows Apgar as someone who makes a successful physical defence of himself.  That’s way too much difference for me to believe it’s just a ‘matter of perspective’. The show makers needed to get the three stories to coincide better.

 Second, there’s no follow-up regarding Riker’s possible act of rape; as much as we know Riker would never commit such an act, it seems both strange and wrong to have the show essentially ignore that aspect of the charges against Riker.  Much like the season 2 opener the child, it shows how blind we were back then regarding what we now term rape culture.  In summation, I give this episode 6 out of 10.

Episode 15: Yesterday’s Enterprise

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) encounters a rift in spacetime while on a routine mission. As they monitor the anomaly, the heavily damaged USS Enterprise-C, a ship believed to have been destroyed more than two decades earlier, emerges. Instantly, the Enterprise-D undergoes a sudden and radical change from its current timeline: it is now a warship, and the United Federation of Planets is at war with the Klingons. Neither Worf nor Counsellor Troi are seen or referred to, and Tasha Yar, who was killed years before, is now alive and running the tactical station. None of the crew notice the change, but Guinan senses that reality has shifted, and has a meeting with Captain Picard to discuss her concerns. She senses that there are supposed to be children on the ship, which of course is completely impractical on a warship. She suggests that the Enterprise-C does not belong in their time and must return to the past. Picard, who knows that this would be a suicide mission, refuses to give such an order based on Guinan's intuition alone.

 Captain Rachel Garrett of the Enterprise-C and her crew learn they have travelled into the future. Garrett explains that they were responding to a distress call from the Klingon outpost on Narendra III, and were attacked by Romulan starships. While his crew works to repair the Enterprise-C and tend to the crew's injuries, Picard and his command staff discuss whether or not the ship should return to the past. Commander Riker argues that their deaths would be meaningless, but Data suggests that it would be considered an honourable act by the Klingons. Picard discusses the situation with Garrett, who tells him that her crew will serve the Federation in the present. Picard quietly reveals to her that the Federation is on the verge of defeat and the presence of one ship will make no difference, but if the Enterprise-C were to return to the past they might prevent the war from ever starting. Garrett agrees and announces to her crew that they will return through the anomaly; at that moment, the two ships are ambushed by a Klingon Bird of Prey. Garrett is killed, and her helmsman, Richard Castillo, takes command.

 During the repair efforts, Yar becomes close to Castillo, but is unnerved by tense interactions with Guinan. Guinan reveals to Yar that she knows Yar dies a meaningless death in the other timeline, and that the two should never have met. Based on her discussion with Guinan, Yar requests a transfer to the Enterprise-C, which is granted by Picard. As the Enterprise-C prepares to return through the anomaly, three Klingon battlecruisers attack. With the anomaly becoming unstable, Picard orders the Enterprise-D to cover the Enterprise-C's withdrawal. The Enterprise-D suffers massive systems damage and major crew losses under the Klingon barrage, including the death of Commander Riker, forcing Picard to man the tactical station himself. With the Enterprise-D on the brink of destruction, the Enterprise-C traverses the anomaly, triggering the return of Enterprise-D's original timeline. In the restored timeline, Guinan – the only one subtly aware of what has transpired – asks Geordi La Forge to tell her more about Yar.

Review:

Somehow, despite a lack of underlying issue exploration, character development or anything else that typically make great Trek, this episode has gone down in history as one of the pinnacle episodes of the franchise generally and TNG in particular.  To be fair, it is fairly unique on two points.  First, it is TNG’s first episode to make any really effective use of time travel, and it’s a rare example of the time travel being people coming forward from the past and having to go back there, whereas most time travel involves heading back to the past and returning to the future.  Second, it brings back Denise Crosby as Tasha Yar…just to kill her off again.

 The real stand-out point of this episode is that after almost two seasons worth of episodes between this one and ‘Skin of Evil’, TNG basically brought back a killed off main cast character to try and re-do that death better.  Now knowing the legacy of this episode later in the TNG series, I can honestly say they could have done better.  Really, this episode shouldn’t have had a legacy just to preserve the more purposeful death for Tasha that this episode tries to provide.  Moreover, this episode fails to impose any kind of consistency on past-to-future time travel, as a much later episode would involve the same kind of time travel without history-altering interruptions, and I’ll discuss that more when that episode comes up.  For now, however, I’m content to say that I’m not about to give this episode quite the same level of praise that others seem to have afforded it.  Instead, I give it about 7 out of 10.

[pierrehardy]

Police in America

In recent weeks, the death of one man in America sparked a protest all over the country and the whole world. You know it’s bad when people are forced to protest despite a pandemic. So it’s worth taking a closer look at what happened and studying ways to move forward strategically.

This write up will cover what happened and how we can move forward for the better. I will highlight three questions: how to protest smart, how Trump can exploit this for the upcoming elections, and how to fix America’s police. For most, we use history as our guide.

TL;DR

Honestly, if you’re not too into reading, watching John Oliver’s previous episode covers the essentials.

So we have a pandemic going on, as well as an upcoming election. We also sent astronauts to space, but that feat of engineering was overshadowed by racially motivated mass protests and riots. Eerily, I’m describing 1968 (flu pandemic, Nixon vs. Johnson election, Apollo 8, and MLK’s assassination) but also 2020 (COVID-19, Trump vs. Biden, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, George Floyd’s murder). Why does this keep happening over and over? 

This is a lot to unpack, and I can’t cover it all in this blog. But know that things have barely changed in the United States: black Americans are still overrepresented in jail and they still live in districts with the worst healthcare, jobs, and schools. Racism in the US is deep and systemic and discouraging in scale, but this is no time to wallow in that. Let’s see what America can do and what same advice can be applied to our own countries.

How to protest

One thing is sure: rioting is  not the way. I understand rioting; it is the natural result of refusing to hear an angry voice that deserves to be heard. But any argument that rioting is necessary is just a fancy academic exercise that justifies unlawful stealing. A bit of rioting can be effective to be heard, sure, but it should never be excessive. Rioting can hurt businesses that are especially fragile due to the pandemic and harm the livelihoods of many people. There are three main reasons against rioting.

The first and most compelling argument against looting and rioting is history: the rioting after the assassination of MLK made predominantly black districts suffer (Figure 1). The establishments that burned down never came back. Those who can leave (which are the relatively wealthy and usually more educated), left. Shops didn’t reopen, meaning jobs also left. The home values also went down.

Figure 1 [1]

Such declines in a district will lead to more poverty, then to more violent crimes that will eventually lead to more violent policing. Excessive rioting hurts the very people the movement is trying to fight for and would put everything back to square one.

Second, any movement relies on the majority of the public opinion being in favor of the cause. If you set a city on fire, people will be too busy putting out the flames to care about what you were fighting for in the first place. Chaos also sells better in the news, so its focus will be overblown. Therefore you must protest peacefully, document it, and blast that everywhere. If the police escalate, don’t bite but keep documenting. Due to documenting, people were able to see the brutality of the police and how they are prone to escalate otherwise peaceful situations. This adds fuel and legitimacy to the protests. 

Third, excessive violence from rioting can cause a sense of fear and anarchy to the people. When people are afraid, idealism is thrown away, and restoring order will be prioritized over change. This will be an opportunity for Trump to take notes from 1968 and copy Nixon’s law-and-order platform. That leads us to the next question.

Can Trump copy Nixon?

In the 1960s, America was in the middle of the unpopular and hopeless Vietnam War, wherein Lyndon Johnson succeeded JFK after being assassinated. The protests over the Vietnam War and MLK’s assassination led to chaos that Nixon used as an opportunity to campaign that he can restore order, which worked. Today in 2020, the script is set too perfectly for Trump.

It is also worth noting that due to gerrymandering, Republicans have an advantage in the electoral college, meaning that Trump needs only a bit less than the majority vote to win. [2] This is especially concerning when you consider that Trump’s approval rating is also just slightly less than 50%. [3]

However, this is not a guarantee for Trump’s reelection. If we go back to Nixon’s victory, it was a Republican nominee defeating a Democrat president whose riots were sparked under his leadership. This time, the protests started during Trump. People are not that stupid, and they will recognize when the president is the cause of the trouble. Add the fact that people disapproved of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. [4] There is still a chance to avoid another Trump term, if only Biden can muster up enough charisma.

Policing in America today

Before delving into what can be done to ameliorate policing in America, let’s establish the current landscape. 

One reason why managing the police departments in America is difficult is because, unlike in other wealthy countries, they’re not unified. In America, there’s the federal police, state police, county police, municipal, Puerto Rico, and others. In total, there are 18,000 separate departments, each with their own rules. [5]

That being said, not all police departments are corrupted. There’s one particular department that is doing the right thing (well, okay, not perfect, but better than most) and can be used as an example or model on how to reform America’s police. This is the Camden county police department in New Jersey. I’ll dedicate a whole section on this later.

The lack of gun control in America is well known. Figure 2 shows that America is the most heavily armed rich country in the world. An armed population is an unsafe population that’s more difficult to police. This contributes to the justification that “warrior” style training is necessary for police officers. 

Figure 2

The police are doing too much to the extent that people have forgotten what the police are for. People call 911 for things that cops are not equipped to handle but can’t refuse. Here are some examples.

Police are assigned to patrol schools. [6] This should not be the job of the police but of a security agency instead. 

Police are dispatched when people call in a person acting erratically due to mental illness. [7] The police are simply not trained to deal with this. This is the job of medical professionals. 

Police are dispatched when people call in matters involving drug overdoses. [8] Like the last point, this is a job for the paramedics, not the police. 

The key is to remember that the police’s function is (supposedly) to serve and protect civilians using force while respecting their rights. In short, summoning the police anywhere should be the last resort. America seems to be trigger happy with the dispatch button. Clearly, the system is broken: the police are too deadly and has almost no accountability (Figure 3)

Figure 3 (Visualized using R; Pierre Hardy)

Ways to fix America’s police

From my research, I found nine promising solutions to fix and improve America’s police. Let’s start with the most popular one. 

Defund the police. As I mentioned, the police are doing too much. However, police unions are biting down and refusing to let go of the budget and responsibility that is too large for them to chew. Defunding is about reallocating the resources to other institutions so that they can take some work away from the police. For example, reallocate some of the funding to dedicated drug or mental illness responders, or to community initiatives. 

Bolster police accountability. Prosecutors are supposed to keep the police accountable. However, since prosecutors need convictions to climb the ladder, and the fact that police departments can hinder an investigation, the incentive to uphold justice is low. Read figure 4 for more information.

Figure 4 [11]

Limit union power. Typically, unions are underpowered these days, to the demise of laborers. It’s the opposite for police unions. They’ve been too powerful, too stubborn and too protective of their workers, making police departments more like university fraternities than agencies to serve the people. They defy politicians’ directives to fire violent officers and stop hostile “warrior” style training. They prevent the reform the police need.

Demilitarize the police. The Pentagon has been giving the police some surplus military equipment since the ’40s. [9] This is counter-productive as it fails to reduce crime and only worsens police reputation (Figure 5). The military is meant to win wars by killing their enemies. The police shouldn’t have the same tools used for that objective.

Figure 5 [10]

Fix “Qualified Immunity” loopholes. Qualified Immunity is a law that protects officers from liability for actions they did during their official capacity unless they break a “clearly established” federal law. [12] The “clearly established” loophole has been abused, like a case where cops who stole $225,000 during a search warrant had legal immunity. [13] Read the full story for more details. 

Legislate. In this case for politicians, they need to have an honest willingness to do good, since the incentive to legislate about this is tilted. So far, the main antagonists to progress are police unions and prosecutors. Meanwhile, the main benefactors would be the low-income group, which is usually politically disconnected and doesn’t vote. This is where the protests contribute the most: by pushing politicians to act. But how can the government govern a police system as disconnected as America’s? Refer to Obama’s efforts from 2014. [14]

Issue recommendations to police departments on how to modernize their police forces. 

Increase funding to Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). They help shift police tactics away from the “predator-prey” point-of-view of warrior-style training into a more community-oriented one. 

Be more active in launching federal investigations on police misconduct. These investigations usually lead to consent decrees between the police departments and the DOJ that’s useful in making departments actually improve their policing. 

Implicit bias training. The trouble with an institution that’s so deeply and systematically racist is that cops usually do not regard themselves as racists. They genuinely do not believe that they are. So any effort at pointing out their implicit biases is taken with resistance because they think it’s a reflection of their character. Nonetheless, these kinds of training should be required more and should need re-training.

Data? Being educated in business intelligence, there’s always this faux-truism that data can enhance literally anything. Can it also be in this case? Maybe. There are two main problems on why data is not sure to be effective in this case.

Data gathering through CompStat (the data software that the police use) is unreliable and unequal across different departments. [15] 

The main difficulty is that in this particular case, establishing causality is important and difficult. There are correlations everywhere, but we can’t pin the right reasons. Like, if arrests are higher than usual in a particular neighborhood, is the problem that there are too many cops in a certain neighborhood, or is crime naturally higher there? Are minorities arrested more because they do more crimes (which tends to happen if they live in a discriminative society), or it’s because the officers are racist? Or if you go deeper, is it the officers that are biased, or is it the 911 callers that are racists? [16][17]

Camden County Police Department

Camden is widely regarded as the role model for police reform. Frankly, they’re not a flawless department, and copying them entirely doesn’t guarantee the police reforms America needs. But it’s worth noting some of the policies they do that undeniably turned the department around. First, a bit of history. [18][19][20] (The whole section weaves between the 3 sources)

2012. Camden (the city) was a dangerous place, placing 5th high in the country’s murder rate. 

2013. The Camden City Police was disbanded and turned into a county police department that rehired most of the laid-off officers due to corruption. Though this time, pay and benefits were lower. 

2014. It started on a rough start. During this time, 65 excessive force complaints were filed, and crime rates were still up. 

Today. During 2019, the number of excessive force complaints went down to 3, and the murder rate was reduced by two thirds. 

With calls to disband the Minneapolis police department growing louder and Camden showing improvement, it’s worth learning from their experience. Here are some changes they did that stood out for me.

Use-of-force policy. Every Camden cop wears a body camera, and each time they use force, the footage is reviewed by four people. Every footage is seen by the watch commander and internal affairs officer, including the policeman who owned the footage and his senior officer. Sitting down and watching events unfold again helps cops change their perspectives and receive feedback from their seniors on how they could’ve handled the situation better. 

“Warrior” to “guardian.” When Camden was rebuilt, they shifted their focus to a more community-oriented policing. This shifts how the police see themselves against the citizens. They are not warriors at war with the people they serve, but rather they are the keepers of peace and protector or citizens and their rights. Their job is to build a community that’s safe, not eliminate the rot. 

Training. Camden officers are trained and re-trained again every year, in matters of de-escalation and implicit bias training. 

I believe these policy changes have profoundly contributed to the turning of Camden’s police force and are worth taking notes from to improve the way you are policed wherever you live.

George Floyd’s life

Before I finish my blog, I wanted to share what I learned about the life of George Floyd. A little obituary, in a way. I wanted to know the man’s life too, and not just his death. 

Mr. Floyd was not a perfect man, but he was not a bad man that deserved the disgrace of having his life choked out of him, face on the asphalt with a knee to his neck. Mr. Floyd grew up in Houston, in a less than ideal neighborhood. With his height reaching until six-feet-six, it was natural that he was in the Yates football team (Figure 6) and then the South Florida State’s basketball team (Figure 7). He was also into the music scene, known as Big Floyd (check out his discography at [24]), which backed DJ Screw (Figure 8).

Figure 6 (Second one from the left, upper most)

Figure 7 (leftmost)

Figure 8

As lively as his life was, he wasn’t able to escape his circumstances being on the bad side of town. During his 20s, Mr. Floyd has been arrested multiple times with armed theft and cocaine possession. It wasn’t done out of desire but of need. Struggling for a job and with a menacing figure, he was too easily drawn to it, as in 2007, when he was arrested for breaking and entering a house. 

After spending five years in prison, he aimed to be better, and he did. He devoted himself to being a better father, being more active in church, and moved to Minneapolis. Using his height and muscular figure, he worked as a bouncer in a club popular among the Latinos. His reputation as a gentle giant shone here as he was good at de-escalating trouble and greeting regulars with a hug. 

The same cannot be said regarding the previous bouncer of the club. He was a white man with jittery eyes and was an off-duty police officer that was quite trigger happy with the pepper spray while on bouncer duty. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Floyd was not spared by the COVID-19 and lost his job as a bouncer. On May 25th, he went to a store to buy cigarettes and was told that the $20 bill he used to pay for it was counterfeit. Mr. Floyd refused to return the cigarettes, and the clerk called 911 on him. What happens next is all too known, as videos circulating around of the white man with jittery eyes kneeling on the neck of a man crying for his mama as he was being suffocated. The police officer that worked in the same club as Mr. Floyd was the same man kneeling on his neck while staring directly at the video recording him, without fear in his eyes that he was going to get in trouble for what he was doing. 

[21][22][23] (The whole section weaves between the 3 sources)

References

[1] Collins, W. J., & Margo, R. A. (2004). The labor market effects of the 1960s riots (No. w10243). National Bureau of Economic Research.

[2]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/17/20868790/republicans-lose-popular-vote-win-electoral-college 

[3]https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-approval-rating-has-dropped-how-much-does-that-matter/ 

[4]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/09/presidential-job-approval-trumps-re-election-prospects-look-bleak/ 

[5]https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/twt/race-problem-black-and-white  

[6]https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/06/12/schools-police-george-floyd-protests/ 

[7]https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-mental-health-crisis-training-police.html 

[8]https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/05/01/lawmakers-say-some-police-ill-equipped-overdoses/83789462/ 

[9]https://www.autoblog.com/2020/06/08/surplus-military-vehicles-weapons-police-departments/?guccounter=1 

[10] Mummolo, J. (2018). Militarization fails to enhance police safety or reduce crime but may harm police reputation. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 115(37), 9181-9186.

[11] Trivedi, S., & Gonzalez Van Cleve, N. (2020). To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct.

[12]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity

[13]https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2019/09/17/federal-court-cops-accused-of-stealing-over-225000-have-legal-immunity/ 

[14]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Task_Force_on_21st_Century_Policing 

[15]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat#Critique 

[16] Goff, P. A., & Kahn, K. B. (2012). Racial bias in policing: Why we know less than we should. Social Issues and Policy Review, 6, 177–210.

[17]https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-06-03/svitlana-flom-amy-cooper-george-floyd-police-racism 

[18]https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/06/04/how-to-fix-american-policing 

[19]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_County_Police_Department 

[20]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html 

[21]https://www.economist.com/obituary/2020/06/04/george-floyd-was-killed-on-may-25th 

[22]https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/George-Floyds-former-teammate-wants-him-remembered-as-more-than-a-news-story-570889511.html 

[23]https://theundefeated.com/features/george-floyd-lasting-impact-as-a-two-sport-athlete-in-houston/ 

[24]https://www.discogs.com/artist/2002742-Big-Floyd 

#America #Police #Current Affairs #current events #blacklivesmatter

[spiritvaleroleplay-blog]

Faceclaim: Jessica Chastain Name: Lyenne ‘Lee’ Pence Age: 117 Species: Vampire Occupation: Surgeon How Long Have They Been in Spiritvale?: Four months

When she is on the clock, Lyenne is nothing short of professional. Because what she does for a living doesn’t allow for anything else. Even as a vampire, constantly being around heavy amounts of blood and gore, the restraint she keeps herself under to not just pounce on potential prey, in addition to the intensity of the work does lead to exhaustion. When she relaxes however, the vampire tends to seek out little nooks, the corners of things. For example, instead of just laying on the couch, she would much prefer to curl up against the armrest. Undoubtedly, hospital staff have found her plenty of times curled up in one of the cots after a several hour long surgery. But no matter what state Lee in in, her movements are precise and with meaning. She has never had the loudest voice, nor the sharpest and tends to speak quietly unless she feels she needs to be heard and her sharpen with a steely intensity. She rarely laughs but often chuckles.

Turn of the century London, at once one hell of a time to be alive and a hellish one. Incredible machines such as the automobile were rising in popularity, new products and technologies were seemingly emerging daily. And black coal smoke clogged the sky, the Thames was stained black with factory born pollutants. This is the world that Lyenne was born into. Her family was wealthy and high society called her name. She spent most of her early years preparing for such a life, studying how to be articulate, how to stand and smile. One of her greatest joys was that of riding horseback in the countryside, something she begged and pleaded to do whenever her mother and father would allow her. She was overjoyed when they finally relented and purchased the girl her own steed, and a small staff of a pair of young men to help maintain and teach her to ride.

She was just beginning her tutoring when reality clawed it’s way into her life. She was fourteen when her horse caretaker and instructor where drafted and made the short trip across the channel to France. It was a year later that one of them, James, came back. But he was different… horrifically so. Her friend had been blinded by gas, and had lost most of his right hand to a German sniper as he flailed, trying to get his mask on. And it didn’t stop there. Throughout the first world war, Lyenne witnessed hundreds of young men returning home missing parts of themselves. Whether that be limbs or senses or their spirit or friends/family. She saw the horror that war inflicted and from this blossomed the beginnings of a new passion.

Medicine was still controversial in this time. Though industrial and military technology was booming, the same was not true for the medical side. Just as many if not more soldiers perished in World War I due to improper care as they did fighting. After some discreet investigating on how she could help, Lyenne came to realize what she would rather do with her life. She approached her parents with an inclined chin and determined eyes as she told them she wished to become a doctor. Suffice to say, they disagreed. But Lyenne had gotten her horse, she would get this, one way or another. But they did not back down like they had with the beast. The reason was simple. Riding horses was seen as something a young lady such as herself could do. Running off to medical school was not. But with a stubborn streak as fiery as her hair, Lee would not be deterred. It was with a heavy heart that she, without her parents’ knowledge, sold her horse and used the money to spirit away. She would do what she knew was right, what she knew she had to do. She left a note, a brief one, and did not look back.

Initially, things were hard. Lyenne was not the most skilled learner, nor the fastest reader. But she had a very steady hand and the determination of what she had given up to get here. Lee was never the top of her class, but her ironclad will was not missed in the instructors, nor was her friendliness to her peers. She didn’t fall into the competition that others did, opting to assist those who were behind her in studies, working in tandem with those who would do her the same courtesy to strengthen their skills together. She worked to string gut for stitches and distill alcohol for disinfectant to continue paying for her education when the money she had brought with her ran out. But at last, the day came that she could step away from the classrooms and labs and into the role of a doctor, a surgeon even.

All seemed well. Lyenne worked hard at the London hospital, politely pretending that the side of town her parents still resided did not exist. Things would have likely continued this way until once more, the stirrings of war could be heard from Europe. England began once again shifting into gear to fight and Dr. Pence quickly signed up to be one of the Expeditionary forces surgeons. Her fellow countrymen were headed to France once more to fight and she would not be left behind.

War is a bloody thing, and blood in the air brings the attention of all kinds of predators and scavengers. It was during the military disaster that was the Dunkirk evacuation that it happened. Lyenne was traveling with her unit, making their way through an abandoned French town on their way back to the beach when they were ambushed at night. Not by the Germans. Something much worse. The vampires tore through them, making short work of the soldiers before their leader came upon Lyenne. From the group’s make up it was clear this creature had been praying on military units for some time, the small group of followers still wearing their uniforms. He told her that she could be turned and though she refused, when he bit into her, draining her lifeblood and cutting his own arm, pressing the bleed to her mouth… the terror. Who can blame her from drinking? And so, Lyenne lost her humanity. She had yet to learn just how much she had gained.

She spent much of the war with this rag tag group of monsters, doing what she could to subtly prevent more bloodshed. But when apart of the band of marauders, she was surrounded by her sire’s followers, never having a real chance to make a move. And so she ran, stealing away in the daytime under the cover of overcast. She was still a surgeon she told herself. It was when she rejoined British forces, claiming to have been left behind at Dunkirk and working with French resistance, that she realized just how steady her hands were now. How focused she could be, how much her enhanced eyesight could see in wounds that others could not. She realized that she could prevent death just as easily as she could snatch life away.

It was from then on that Lyenne was never long in one place. She traveled far and wide, seeking whereever things were the bloodiest, where she felt she was needed most. Whether that be in war torn Eastern Europe or Influenza ravaged America. Her choice of life did not come without a price. There was constant strain, reining in her hunger when working over a patient. She hunted animals when she could, but her schedules often prevented this from a possibility leading her to working side deals with blood drives and requesting extra blood during surgeries, keeping some for herself to feed on later. She broke once. Once after a near twenty hour emergency heart surgery, a busy week leading up to this preventing in her feeding culminating in her hunting down one of her fellow doctors in the parking lot and draining him in her desperation. She left Vietnam the next day.

Throughout her travels, Lee tried to ignore the pulls too and fro from various points of supernatural concentration.  But now hunters were growing active in Spiritvale and trouble seemed just over the horizon.  For most of her career, but not always, she had focused her work on human patients.  But she had always been drawn to places of conflict, and with peace on the brink, Spiritvale was now calling her name.

#sv:character #sv:vampire #jessica chastain fc

[neowarriorphilosopher-blog]

Introduction:

Most references to Warrior Philosophy lead to the culture of ancient Sparta and to the classic school of philosophy of Stoicism. Although both are necessary, they are not sufficient in understanding the goals of Warrior Philosophy. The goals are: pursuit of knowledge and information (becoming "rational"); suppressing greed (and other passionate emotions) in one's behavior, and acting ethically. 

I am a U.S. Army veteran; serving from 1986-2010 as an enlisted soldier in the role of a Combat Medic. Growing up during the Cole War, I joined with the idea that a strong military serves as a deterrent to war between countries; particularly liberal democracies. At the time, I thought that the U.S. had learned its lesson that the “domino theory” of promoting democracy around the world during the Vietnam War-era and that the strategy of containing Communism through war-by-proxy during the Cold War had ended. I believed that I could be a part of a professional military that, by its very existence, would reduce the chances of war and I could grow personally as a student of medicine and warfare. During my 24-year journey as a professional soldier in the U.S. Army (arguably the most liberal Democracy that has ever existed), I rigorously trained my body and my mind to achieve this goal. I was sent into the fiery crucible of combat many times at the command of my government in the service of my country. In the end, I found my initial motivations for becoming a professional soldier to be spectacularly naive and my blind trust in the benevolent nature of my country in its role in the world to be misplaced. I still love my country, I simply now understand my country. This blog is dedicated to discussing my evolution from a wide-eyed and excited 18 year old eager to escape my impoverished, insecure and violent upbringing, to where I am today. 

Early Childhood:

I grew up in Broward County, Florida in the 1970′s and later moved to Madison County, Alabama as a teenager. I am the oldest child of divorced parents, and lived with my Mother in abject poverty after my parents divorced when I was three years old. From the age of three to eleven, I spent long periods of time homeless; living on the streets or in communal “flop houses.” Our lives revolved nearly exclusively around drugs, violence, sex, and abuse. I had absolutely no security or consistency during those years and I had my little sister to try and look after as well. This chaos was how I learned life to be; it was my “normal.”  My only exposure to societal normality came in the form of inconsistent interventions by my grandmother and my mother’s two sisters, who would sweep in and rescue me and my sister whenever my mother and her boyfriend (later my step-father) would disappear periodically; days or weeks at a time. Those times in no way felt “normal.” in fact, they felt oppressive and judgmental; highly uncomfortable and ill-fitting. However, due to events directly under my control, I later set in motion a series of events that rejected the norm of chaos and embraced the norms of structure and discipline. It wasn’t pretty.

Both my sister and I were serially abused as children: mental, physical, and sexual. When it came to mental abuse and physical violence against me or my sister, I enjoyed the greatest exposure from everyone and my sister was on the receiving end of the larger amount of sexual abuse. Interestingly, neither my mother nor stepfather ever directly sexually abused me or my sister, it was always a third-party. I would like to live under the illusion that they were unaware of it, or cared that it was happening, but that is simply not possible.  

I saw my stepfather get shot for the first time when I was eight years old; he was shot by his best friend and fellow member of a “motorcycle club.” I was immediately pulled aside and coached to confess that I was the shooter and that it was an accident. As my mother screamed, some panicked, others ran, and still others yelled and fought, the actual shooter, again: my step fathers best friend, took a knee in front of me, his t-shirt soaked in my step-fathers blood, grabbed me by my shoulders and looked me in the eyes as he told me what to say. He was entirely convincing in telling me that failing to do exactly what he told me would result in my mother and my sister being badly hurt or even killed and if not then spending their lives in jail. This coaching continued as my step-fathers unconscious body was loaded into a white panel van with me and the gun and we sped to an emergency room. I had been raised to distrust law enforcement specifically since, as my mother and other adults in my life told me countless times, they were all “out to get us;” were “the bad guys;” and would “take mommy away.” I know now this to be because at most points in time, either my mother, my stepfather or others in the “communal houses” in which we resided were involved in dealing drugs, prostitution, and/or other active criminal enterprise. It was that mindset: that the police were even worse people than the man that shot my stepfather and threatened my family; that made me a highly convincing witness. The police never opened an investigation, taking my story as the truth. 

My mother usually gave better than she got when it came to violence, even when fighting with my stepfather. My mother was a hefty woman on the short-ish side and my stepfather was a large and strong man; but my mother was highly unpredictable in doling out violence. She held strong grudges. She would take a beating, cry, admit she was wrong, beg for forgiveness, whatever it took. Whenever she would discover an opportunity, she would strike. I saw her cut, stab, poison, and use various heavy blunt objects on people that had previously beaten her up; her wrath was legendary among those that knew her. It served a a strong deterrent to many to ever lay a finger on her. 

My step father was was generally passive when he was not drunk or stoned, and therefore far more predictable. He was also not as directly violent toward me or my sister as he was with my mother. I would say roughly half of the times my sister or I were physically abused by him, it was not a matter if malicious intent, but of carelessness, poor judgement, and a sense of humor that enjoyed pain in others. That is not to say that he didn’t have a mean streak...he had a wide mean streak, but it was mostly reserved for other adults: women that displeased him and men that presented real or perceived challenges to him. 

My mother and step father were in a serious motorcycle accident when I was 10 years old. My mother was riding behind my step father when a car turned in front of them, the motorcycle slamming into the passenger-side door without even having the time to hit the brakes. My stepfather sustained minor cuts and bruises. My mother suffered a shattered left femur; a compound fracture of her tibia and fibula, an open dislocation of her left ankle and a shattered left patella. I overheard the doctors saying that it was a miracle that they were able to save her leg. Without insurance or any ability to pay her medical bills, the hospital discharged her as soon as she was stable in a cast covering her from her toes to her hip and multiple external fixators, keeping the pins in her bones in place. The wrecked Indian motorcycle lay in a heap in the front yard, a huge party taking place: fires, beer, drugs, sex...everywhere in the yard, in every room in the house as well as the neighbors. My mother, sitting in her “throne”, the center of attention decided to take her moment in the spotlight to use her razor-sharp intellect to verbally emasculate my step father in front of his friends, fellow “motorcycle club” members, stranger party-crashers, and the gaggle of children milling around including me and my sister. The more my step father drank...the more intoxicated the crowd became...the angrier he got. Finally, he got in her face, screaming at her, threatening her...face blood red and spit flying from his lips. Many men cheered him on, women became quiet, and the children made themselves scarce...except me. I didn’t move. I watched. My mother, high as a kite on narcotics for her pain plus a robust hit of heroin (she was a heroin addict among other things) just sneered at him, daring him...emasculating him further. I saw it in his eyes...my mother did too. In a series of only a very few moments, she became quiet, her face paled...and my step father leaned in, put his knee on her chest and began beating her in the head and face with his fists. She almost immediately was unconscious and the men just cheered him on for what seemed like an eternity as I stood, frozen, while he beat her. After what was likely about 20-30 blows in less than a minute, a couple men tried to pull him off my mother. It ended up taking five large men to pull him off, prompting him to fight with them for another several minutes. The melee proceeded without any true conscious acknowledgement on my part. I stood there and stared at my mothers motionless body until the men subdued my step father and got him out into the yard. The room was empty except for me and my mother. In my mind I went to her in slow motion and in silence, but I am told that I ran to her screaming. I got to her side, and (my memory says) I whispered to her: “Mommy, are you ok? I love you....” over and over. Her face was bloody and swollen. There were cuts on her scalp where his ring had cut her...my closer look showed me that most damage was on her scalp, she had apparently tucked her chin, protecting her face from him as he attacked her from above. A woman, a nurse (there were always nurses and sometimes doctors at these communal houses...access to drugs was their primary “ticket” into the “motorcycle club” social orbit, with their ability to provide off-the-books medical care as a secondary benefit), examined her, talked to her as she regained consciousness. They both assured me that she would be fine and to go off with the other children. I left, but instead of going with the other children, I hid and watched my step father for several hours as he partied, drank, pissed on the fire, lit his farts...and the rest of the juvenile and banal actions of the young and intoxicated. He never once asked about my mother and he never checked on her. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, people passing out, pairing up (or in threes and fours) to continue the party in a more intimate manner, my step father got up and wandered off to the bedroom he shared with my mother. The room had a queen mattress on the floor with a couple crumpled sheets and candles stuffed into the mouths of empty bottles of cheap Italian wine (the kind with the bottoms wrapped in wicker), shrouded on the colorful wax of old candles, for light.  My mother was already there, passed out, her paraphernalia to smoke heroin and the crutches she used to get around scattered on the mattress beside her. Finding his side of the bed filled with her clutter sent him into another rage. He began slapping her face, but she was not responsive. The rage was quick in passing, laying down, his anger became more calculated. He swept her crutches away to where she would never be able to reach them, smoked some heroin and as he was slipping into his “high,” he decided to use the lighter, a “zippo” lighter, applying its flames to her cast. It made scorch marks on it and I could see him smile as if it were humorous. Still unaware that I am looking through the door, he passed out and the still lit lighter fell between my mothers legs. I really wasn’t considering what that meant at that exact moment...I simply felt rage and approached my step father. As I approached, I saw that he had set the sheets between her legs on fire and had, in my mind, set my mother on fire. I ran to the kitchen and got a big cup full of water...leaving the kitchen, my eyes fell on a steak knife, which I grabbed as I went to put out the fire. In my ten-year-old mind, all this was reasonable and made sense...the “fire” turned out to be very small and the cup of water was enough to put it out. My step father and my mother were both passed out, my mother’s pillow marked with spots of blood seeping from the wounds on her scalp and her cast and sheets between her legs scorched, and my stepfather shirtless and in his jeans...I can remember seeing the chain for his wallet draped on his hip leading to the thumb-hook that connected it to his belt-loop...passed out. My ten-year-old mind processed the tableau laid out in front of me as: My step father laying in blissful happiness that only a drug-induced stupor can provide; his lighter laying, open and inert, between my mothers legs in fire-blackened sheets; my mother’s cast scorched with purposefully applied flames; my mother’s pillow stained with the blood resulting from his earlier brutal attack. And I’m holding a knife. I don’t remember even thinking about it. I stabbed him...right in the same spot in his shoulder where the bullet scar was from when I took the blame for shooting him. I had never stabbed anyone and the knife-fights I had seen over my experience seemed to sink into flesh like a hot knife in butter, so I thought it would just sink in easy. It didn’t. The knife went into his shoulder maybe an inch...and he woke up. He said: “You little fuck...” as he grabbed me by the neck. He took the knife out with his other hand and (I think) considered stabbing me. Instead, he dropped it nest to the mattress and began punching me in my left side. Hard. First it was painful, then excruciating, then numb...he simply let me go and passed back out. My mother had woken up and seen everything after I stabbed him. She urged me to get her crutches to her. I don’t understand how I managed it, I believe I was going into and out of consciousness at that point. I rely on my mother’s recounting of the next several hours. She called my grandparents and had them come get me and take me to the hospital. Miraculously, I only had a severely bruised kidney and no internal bleeding. I didn’t go to my mother’s home again for five years. 

I saw my biological father once a year and only a few years ago did he admit that he knew what my sister and I were going through. It served as a heavy burden on him for decades. He asked for forgiveness and I wholly and totally gave it. 

I recovered from my injuries at my grandparents house, where my fate was discussed among my mother and my mothers extended family. I was asked if I would go to stay with my father for the summer. I agreed. My summer was the first time in my life that I had experienced true security and safety...a stable home where “normal families” lived. 

This story so far describes the portion of my life leading to my rejection of chaos and embrace of structure: “... I later set in motion a series of events that rejected the norm of chaos and embraced the norms of structure and discipline. It wasn’t pretty...” It was not pretty. The next chapter of my life was just as ugly...as difficult as my early childhood, but for entirely different reasons. 

In the next several posts, I will continue my story, detailing how I have become the person I am today to provide a back drop to my continued pursuit of and evolution of being a warrior philosopher. 

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #55: Swindle.

Written: 3/2/2017

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? Are you famous or somethin’?” I hear that all the time, and its hard for me to go outside without people asking me similar questions, or staring me down, quietly trying to figure out where they know me from. Maybe its my face or something, I don’t know. I’m not famous at all, and I really haven’t done anything very notable, aside from several run in’s with the law when I decided to get my income by grifting people. Sure, I may have conned a couple of people, but it was never anything big, or morally bankrupt, just small time stuff, believe me. I don’t do nothing to anybody that doesn’t deserve it.

Then again, if anyone falls for my tricks, then you know that they deserve it.

One of the best things about the way I work is that everyone always tends to think that I’m somebody else, I have one of those faces that resembles every face. “Hey, didn’t we go to high school together?” Why yes we did, and I can see you’re doing very well for yourself, but I’m in a bit of a deep end. I was doing great until my wife died from ovarian cancer, and now the governments taken all of our money in death taxes, which leaves me unable to pay for the funeral. “Hey, aren’t you on that television show about the female detective?” Why yes, yes I am, and I will give you an autograph for twenty bucks. Okay, I never said I was good at my job, I’m very small time, believe me. The only time I can make money off of people is when they approach me, thinking that I’m somebody I’m not, and everything I try to do just doesn’t work out too well.

I think the worst part is that I’ve never even failed in a spectacular manner, and my highs are pretty similar to my lows. Either I get around $20, or somebody refuses to pay me and just walks away, nothing of interest, nothing to really even talk about. I guess I should be pleased about how entirely forgettable I am, since it does wonders in my line of work, but sometimes I wonder if I really even should call myself a con man, a swindler, grifter, pretender, smooth talker, hustler, swindler, charmer, fake, louse, whatever you want to call me, I’m probably not. I’m no more than a mere opportunist, and everyone worth their salt creates their own luck, instead of waiting for it to happen to them. Woe be to me, the world’s lousiest conman! I am of such low repute, and my story is of so little of interest that you’ll forget about it after hearing of it! A couple minutes later the tale will completely leave your mind, and you will move on with your life, forgetting a forgettable man such as myself, vaguely familiar due to his lack of defining features.

Now, all of this misery led me to fall into a deep depression, which I eventually tried to keep at bay by exercising. Every day I lifted weights until I was too sore to even worry about how little I was worth worrying about, and all I had to do to get inside of the gym was to use a membership card that I found outside, on the ground. I looked vaguely like the man on the card, and they let me in without any questions. It may have been the biggest con of my life, worth hundreds of dollars with the year’s membership it carried. The second biggest con was when I lied to myself, saying that working out made me a happier person. The year spent doing this was completely forgettable, just like myself, and is not worth mentioning.

Well, there was one bit in the year that I guess could be considered something of importance, or interest, and it was when I met the steroid salesman who lurked around in the locker room, and he had mistaken me for one of his clients, and handed me a large shipment of his that had already been prepaid for. All I had to do was walk up to him and say, “Hey, did my package finally arrive?” and he assumed that I was one of his customers. A pathetic grift for a pathetic man such as myself, having to swindle drugs. You can’t call it very important, because no matter the monetary price of what I had swindled out of the possession of that vulgar man, I instead paid the price through addiction, anger, and a large amount of broken possessions. I can not tell you how many mirrors I had punched during that year, but I can say there were a lot. It must have given me such terrible luck, a lifetimes worth, because of how poorly my life had become when my training had ceased.

All bulked up like an action figure, I was finally ready to begin the scam that I had been planning throughout that year. I mean, well, its not like I was planning it too much, and it really wasn’t my idea in the first place, because I’m really not very good at these sorts of things. What happened was a man, that’s right, a tall, charming fellow with a voice perfect for radio, and a face for movies, he came up to me when I was at a restaurant, and he asked me if I knew him from somewhere. Yes, this is what happened. And I tried to get him to at least pay for my meal, claiming that I was a war hero, or some other sort of pathetic lie, and he saw right through me, but he knew that I looked perfect for a con that he had planned for quite some time. It was just another instance of me being an opportunist, a kite in the wind, a jellyfish in a sea of swindlers, only able to bob up and down and having to travel wherever the currents take me. It was just another random occurrence in life, and I had no choice but to go along with it, and I was sure that something so intelligent, genius, extravagant, something that a real master of manipulation would only be able to come up with, well, it was certainly art, yes, so why didn’t I go with it? You would have chosen to do the same thing, because its not every day that we get to work alongside the intellectual elite.

So, I start working with this dashing stranger to do the job that he had presented to me, and that I had in no way come up with myself. I’m too pathetic to think of something so grand. He told me about how wrestling had been making a huge come back, and with my age, appearance, and size, well, I could certainly pass myself off as some old wrestler coming back to earn his former glory. It wasn’t unheard of, and the people who were mainly into wrestling now had little knowledge of the very old stars from back in the day, so all I-we had to do was simple.

First, he hired some other big lug, and we dressed him and I up in some old style wrestling get ups, and we did a couple fights. Sometimes we had the other man change outfits so that we could pretend that these were all footage from different fights, and we even rented out this older boxing ring, then used trick photography to imply there was a crowd out there, when it was mainly bleachers full of cardboard cut outs and mannequins. The man who came up with this must have been really smart, dedicated, and impressive in the field if he was not only able to put all of that together, but also make it so that people actually believed-when they were placed around the internet-that the faked matches had been genuine. I must say that even I would have been fooled by the whole display, and I guess that shows that I am no more of a conman than a victim myself. The most impressive part was the camera and film that he used, which made it really seem old school, and gave it that found footage effect.

We also made a couple videos of myself, or my wrestling persona-Wild Card-yelling at a camera about made up beefs with other wrestlers. The names I would yell out were a mix of real ones and fake ones, so it would show that there were some credible names for these younger people, but would also display to them that there were other forgotten and obscure figures out there, lost to time since they were big in a world where the internet never existed, and obscurity was a bottomless pit. This was probably the best part of the whole act, even if I did have to memorize the man’s scripts, since I am terrible at improvising duologue, but it doesn’t matter who wrote it, its still fun to yell things such as:

“Mad Gator, you slept with my girlfriend and her mother, so now I’m going to get you in the ring or outside, its your choice. I’ll skin you and turn your shoes into a nice pair of shoes, that I will use to walk around carelessly in a yard full of dog shit.”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, I’M SO FUCKING ANGRY AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME FROM TEARING YOUR HEAD OFF IN THE RING!”

“Hogan, you tan son of a bitch, I’m going to pay you back for giving my daughter that abortion. I kidnapped your father and have hidden away his heart medication, so even if you free him from my thugs, you wont be able to save his life unless you meet me in the ring!”

On top of all of that, we also paid fake news sites to start posting articles about Wild Card’s downward spiral, due to his son dying in the war, which only reminded the wrestler of all of the young men that he saw die in Vietnam, and which led him to step out of the ring for good. It was a very sad story, even if it was a little pandering to veteran crowd, but I still am very proud of the work, that the guy who brought me in on the con did, and I can only wish that I would be able to write so well. I swear, if that man wasn’t spending all of his time tricking poor saps into giving him their hard earned money, then he would probably be able to do so much other amazing things with his life. It makes you think that the man has to love what he does, because he could easily become a millionaire just by playing it straight.

Anyways, there’s also some rumors that were placed around, talking about Wild Card’s interest in returning to wrestling. There’s some stuff about how he saw the light of the lord, and now he’s almost ready to face his inner demons in the ring, using the power of Christ to absolve himself, and blah blah blah. I would judge the guy for pandering this hard, but nowadays its really the easiest way to do things. Hell, it hasn’t been this easy to manipulate people since 9/11, but then again what do I know? The only thing I can pander to is somebody who mistakes me for somebody else. Pandering is the art of creating a situation, opportunity, a cause, while I am a slave to opportunity, and can only find it when it falls into my lap. After the story was put out there, we started getting all sorts of fan mail, saying how they wanted Wild Card to get back in the ring, saying how inspired they were by him. One man even wrote about how the character used to be his childhood idol, but I suspect his mind hadn’t been too solid, but money is money.

Then, while we have all of this momentum behind us, we did the next logical step, which was setting up on one of those crowd-funding sites, to get enough money to rent out a large arena where Wild Card could have his big come back match, as a way of his return to wrestling. The price we needed was much more than it actually cost to rent out the place that the man had in mind, so when we reached our goal there was already some extra cash in our pockets, plus when we went over it we were basically rolling in dough. I was shocked, because that’s the most money I had ever tricked out of anyone in my entire life, and I don’t think I could be able to get anywhere near that amount again. Although, there were a couple snags when some people tried to call the match out on what it was-a scam-but somehow this only made our fans even more devoted to the match, and they started claiming that everyone who called it a scam were actually scammers, and somehow threw politics into there for good measure.

“You think being a veteran was a scam? Go out and die for the country, and then try to say how much of a scam this all is!”

“Why do people keep trying to call this fake? What are they trying to cover up?”

Or my personal favorite: “This man lost his son. HIS SON. If he was lying to all of us (just like the lieberal media) then why did he drop out of wrestling all of those years ago? Why would he have to trick people out of money if he could’ve easily been bigger than Hogan? You know what’s a scam? Sending donations to the Democratic party, now that’s a scam. You guys think anything outside of your echochanmber is made up, when rational people know to call it what it is: THE REAL WORLD.” I don’t even know what that person was even talking about, but they donated $126, so God bless them. ———————————————————————————————————

Now, when it came to the day of the match, my plan had been really simple: take all of the money from the tickets that were sold, no refunds, and then board a flight out of the country. Everything else had been going as I had planned it, so why would this go any different?

Nothing but cheering could be heard from inside the arena, the place was packed not only with people, but with noise, with hope, and I was hearing that there weren’t even enough seats to hold everyone, so people were sitting in the aisles, stairs, everywhere they could be fit. The mastermind behind it, that suave bastard, told me that he bribed the staff to ignore the fire code, and anyways he said that if the place burned down then it would all be even better. If people died in the fire, then there would be less people to call it out as one big hustle, and then we could stage a second match in honor of all of the fans who died. This was when things started to look bad for me, and I was realizing how hard it was going to be for me to go through with the guy’s plan, I didn’t want to disappoint all of those kind people out there, but he was better than me, he was a real con artist, and he convinced me to go through with it.

Sure, there have been stories in the media that are claiming that police were investigating the match, suspecting that it was all a ploy to take the money and run, so that’s why I ended up going through with the match, and ended up in my current condition, but that’s not true at all. They even claim that I was the one behind all of it, but as you have seen, I am in no way capable of being able to pull off any of this. In order to clear my name, and prove that I am a victim of circumstance, I will tell you why I ended up fighting in the ring, and why I am where I currently am.

Now, the guy I was supposed to wrestle against was one huge mother fucker. He was like a mountain on steroids. His teeth were completely made of metal, and he had earned the name “The Compacter”, because he had reportedly crushed another wrestler, with his bare hands, and the guy not only had to go to the hospital, but due to spinal damage he was also six inches shorter than he was before that dreaded match. If there was ever a villain in wrestling, then this guy was the man who the villain was afraid of. You get the point, and you can also probably tell why the ringleader had chosen him for Wild Card’s come back, even though I had to have it explained to me three times before I was able to piece it all together. I’m surprised the guy was so patient with me, it really took me a long time to understand the scheme since I’m really just not cut out for that line of work.

So, the both of us have our bags, are dressed up to not gain any attention, and we’re all ready to skip town with all of the money from the big match. Problem is, I’m already guilty about the magnificent scam that we were about to pull off, and on top of that I see the Compacter getting ready for the match, and he’s talking to his kid. First its a sweet moment, and I sort of feel bad for how great of a father he is, but there’s no reason to risk death with a man just because he’s good to his kid. He was already paid anyways. What I saw afterwards really led me to stay, because I saw him flat out clock his own child in the face, and the poor thing is sprawled out on the floor, blood gushing from his nose, she’s-that’s right, it was his daughter-crying quietly, probably because she didn’t want to anger the beast any further. As this awful, horrible, gut-wrenchingly tragic scene plays out, guess what the monster is doing? He’s laughing his head off, that’s what.

In order to stand up to this cruel man, this bully-not because I would’ve been arrested if I tried to flee-I had to face him in the ring, to hopefully show him that he can’t treat children like that. Somebody had to stand up for the ones who can’t protect themselves, and I knew I had to be that person. Don’t call me a hero. What I did is what anyone, any Christian, should have done, and I’m glad that I did my part, even if I paid dearly for it. Sure, I might have been hospitalized for quite some time, and I’ll never be able to walk right again, but in my heart I know that I had done the right thing, because I was able to cast away my life of sin, and was able to stand up for everything that was good and righteous. If we allow evil to spread around the world, unpunished, then doesn’t that make us evil? Who are we to judge horrible deeds if we do not risk everything to seek justice?

Now, you might be wondering why there were no reports of the mastermind that I have talked about, but that’s because he is also a master of disguise, and was able to slip past the police with no problem. I heard rumors of him being able to forge passports, and he is most likely living in some foreign country under some fake name. You can tell that he is a very dangerous man, because he was able to pin many of his other schemes onto me, but like I have demonstrated, I am just a victim of chance. The only reason that they claim I have swindled all of those people, were involved in all of those multi-million cons, was because they never had pictures of the real expert, the man who got me wrapped up in this awful business, and I was the only one who was left behind.

Is this the price I should have to pay for doing the right thing, the just thing? Should I have to spend my time disabled, risking time in prison for crimes that I did not commit, all because I was a victim of a con myself? No, that cannot be right, and that’s why I must implore you to donate, because if I cannot build the funds for an appropriate defense, for private detectives to track down the real swindler, then he will only continue to trick the unsuspecting out of all of their hard earned money, and I will rot in jail in his place. Does that sound like justice to you?

#Free Write #Short Story #Writers on Tumblr #Wrestling #Con