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But in my experience theory is usually the first thing that doesn’t get the job done.
Dr. Higgs is now retired and lives in that country to the south of us that is so scary to many Americans that they want to build a wall to keep the barbarians on their own side.
The Shop
See why they have armed guards on every corner of that hospital, why they have to do that so guys like Higgs can go to work.
Then come back all tell me all's good, I can go anywhere and nobody will mess with me, and hey even if they do, I don't give a shit about retribution.
Higgs is a theorist. Sure, there are thousands of laws, some good, some bad. But the reality is most cops even it out.
Do you see every single driver going over 55 mph in a 55 mph zone getting pulled up?
Of course you don't.
But to Higgs, with his slant, which in my opinion is to influnance babes in the woods like some are, that's reality.
Which, in the real world, is absurd.
In the case of Baltimore, I haven’t heard anyone put it more succinctly than Orioles COO John Angelos after rioting caused the cancellation of a game at Camden Yards in 2015. The riots were a result of the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, a perfect example of violence begetting more violence.
“The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, and ultimate price, one that far exceeds the importance of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at Camden Yards. We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic, civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans. My greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle-class and working-class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.”
That being said, Angelos, one who made his millions sueing people, has a point. When the EPA basically shut down
Bethlehem steel, and most of our core industries were sold off for short term stockholder profits, things got bad.
But believe me, I lived there, I worked there, hired a lot of guys from there, it wasnt utopia before then either.
You took your life in your hands when you went into certain parts of that city.
Furthermore, the argument has been presented, that it was welfare, and its requirements that a woman would only get paid, per child, if a man wasn't living in the house. Supposedly this is the reason, to this day, why the family unit is consistently broken apart in those situations. Which leads to the "poor me", I don't have a daddy so I'm just gonna run wild and not follow orders, ride my dirt bike anywhere I want, make money anyway I want, and screw anyone that tries to tell me different.
Whose fault is that?
Do you really think those kind of guys, that element, is just gonna wake up one day and think, from now on, I'm gonna be a law abiding, productive part of society? Are you kidding me?
Who's gonna keep some kind of order, Angelos? Higgs?
I don't know about you, but I like having a grocery store. And a pharmacy. Stores to shop in and places to take my girl after dark and not have to be overly concerned about having to fight for my life. And before you call bullshit, buzz off.
I've been there, it happens.
And until you, Higgs or Angelos, who I'm sure has a buzzer on every door of his office building, can get it to be different, well, you might not be well advised looking at the cops so much as the problem.
But let's not generalize too much. I grew up in a small town between Baltimore and Annapolis. Surburbia defined.
And there were guys there also, that were jerks, most that didn't live to see thirty. Guys that felt entitled, that took as much as they could, with the least amount of effort, from anyone they could outwit or overpower.
It's nice to think these kind of humans don't exist, but they do.
And to think that utopia, the condition needing no police, is attainable at this point and time, is just unrealistic. A pipe dream. I mean, sounds good, but in reality it's bull crap. It's been that way as long as humans have existed. There is greed, there is sloth, in the human condition.
To think that one can change these facts, in a few decades even, is just kidding themselves. And it pisses me off when they say, usually from afar, they can.
I grew up in Glen Burnie. Had guns pulled on me maybe 4 times up there. Once hanging at The Block after hours, once in Brooklyn drinking with some buddies. Both of those guys were white guys. The other times, installing duct and
furnaces on the North Side. Once caught a guy trying to steal our tools, even tho he had a gun there were 4 of us, 2 I had hired from his neighborhood. The last time, a renovation job in Pimlico. 2 guys on a Sunday morning pulled a gun on me while I was cleaning out the scrap metal from the ductwork we had put in that week.
They showed me what looked like a 38, I showed them a 45.
That was the last job I did up there. I figured, I had been lucky, and the law of averages was gonna catch up with me sooner or later.
It was maybe 2 years later, my work vans had been broken into 3 times, I was offered a good number on the house I was living in, so I got the fuck out of there.
Here, in the little town I live in in WV, I leave the keys in the ignition, and half the time don't lock the front door.
Like going back in time 50 years.
You know, it's funny. You think you're gonna do this, and you're gonna do that. But, when it happens, well when it happened to me, each time it scared the hell out of me. Especially the last time. Those guys, seemed they hadn't been to sleep in days. They looked like they were jonesing, Eyes stone cold red, figiting around, nervous. I'm all alone, in their back yard, nobody in sight. My plan was to drop to the left, and put one each in the chest of them. Nothing fancy. Hollow points, I figured all I needed was to not get hit and still get something of them, and it was good.
But, as we talked back and forth, them telling me I could afford it, I was a contractor making big bucks, me telling them they weren't getting anything, all I could think of was, you shoot theses guys you are not going to watch tv from your couch at home tonight. Your life will never be the same. You might get 20 years and have to do 10.
Some say, you pull a gun, use it. And I always thought, yea, it gets that far, don't give them a chance.
But let me tell you guys, in real life, it's not what you think, I know when they backed off, and put their stuff back in their coats, I was never so relieved in my life.
I was just there to drive the car doesn't cut it as an excuse.
Pit Row
It’s easy to protect myself from the bad shit that goes down in the bad part of town late at night by not going there late at night. But it’s almost impossible to protect myself from a cop lying to get a search warrant and raiding my home with a swat team based on an inaccurate, anonymous tip.
The guy that made stuff up to get a warrant, yeah, he needs to be held responsible.
But, to go out and say every cop is just as bad as that, as Higgs does, is ludicrous.
And yeah, one can just give up a certain part of town.
But, what you gonna do when some jerk burglarizes your moms house? Or yours? Or car jacks your Dad when in the city on his way home from work? You gonna send him a pamphlet written by Higgs so he will see the light and change his ways?
Tell me, what's the plan.
Where I live, the “crime” that the vast majority of people get arrested for is drug possession. Drug use is a non-violent, victimless crime. The justification for drug arrests is to protect the victim from himself. Drug addiction research over the last couple of decades has shown that drug addiction is almost always caused by childhood trauma. The drugs are simply an attempt to kill the emotional pain that these people aren’t even consciously aware of. When a cop arrests a kid for drugs he is sending them down a path where every part of their life will be worse. The trauma they are already dealing with will be increased substantially. That makes the actions of the officer immoral. He has caused harm to a person that has not harmed anyone else. His only excuse is that “he was just doing his job.” That is what Higgs is talking about.
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