Prisoners in the Stone
Jun. 8th, 2020 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraSuch a fabulous day!
I got into my car, and I drove! Fifty-five miles! Across state boundaries! Through meadows spilling over with bluebells, and woods filled with dame’s rocket, and dairy farms, and strange little rural stores—the back way into the Berkshires and Great Barrington.
There I rendezvoused with the fabulousasakiyume.
We had a socially distanced picnic! A fabulous, free-form conversation about cabbages, sealing wax, and flying pigs! And a—well. I can’t call it a hike since the path was paved, but an excursion through the woods.
We met up at one of those large ponds that are scattered throughout this part of New York and Massachusetts—state boundaries here are as arbitrary as those imposed by the British upon the Middle East at the end of World War I.
Small children were actually swimming in the icy waters.
And people were kayaking.
“You keep taking pictures of those boats,”asakiyume observed, and this was true! Art Photo mode, doncha know! My theory about Art Photos (which can only be taken on phones!) is that in every Art Photo, there lurks a Dorothea Lange or a Henri Cartier-Bresson or an Ansel Adams waiting to be teased out! The process is the Photoshop version of Michaelangelo and his stone Prisoners.
###
Got home. Logged on to FB, a baaaaaaad habit, which I need to stop.
Was immediately beset by the imaginary voices of a mob of self-styled Social Justice Warriors demanding that police be defunded.
The voices may only be phosphors on an LED screen, but they resound loudly throughout my brain!
Interestingly enough, just the day before, in Boulder Creek, California, a cop was shot in the process of apprehending a madman with a truckload of IEDs and other assault weapons.
One does not want to speculate what might have happened had that madman found his way to one of the many SF Bay Area protest demonstrations.
That cop was killed.
Yes, certainly, police should not be supported as paramilitary organizations.
And laws that keep internal policing disciplinary actions private should be repealed, and lists of Bad Cops should be maintained publicly much like lists of sex offenders.
However. Getting rid publicly funded police functions is a very bad idea that will only encourage privatization.
And there’s a word for the privatization of police forces: militia.
###
I won’t even get into the banshee glee over the firing of that editor who let Tom Cotton into the New York Times opinion section.
Did I read Tom Cotton’s editorial?
No, I did not.
Would I read Tom Cotton’s editorial?
No, I would not.
But do I think he should be able to publish his opinions in a media outlet that prides itself on a commitment to, uh, inclusive news-casting?
Yes, I do.
Of course, some ungodly number of millennials and their aging “woke” apparatchiks think all so-called hate speech should be censored, and since they get to define hate speech, that means anything that conflicts with their world view gets censored.
But I believe in free speech. With the usual caveat about burning theaters.
###
Anyway, I had the choice to engage with a billion or so people bound to me by that most sacred of all connections, Facebook friendship! To enlighten them on how wrong and misguided they are.
Or to turn my computer off.
I chose the latter.
And was very pleased with myself.
I got into my car, and I drove! Fifty-five miles! Across state boundaries! Through meadows spilling over with bluebells, and woods filled with dame’s rocket, and dairy farms, and strange little rural stores—the back way into the Berkshires and Great Barrington.
There I rendezvoused with the fabulous
asakiyume. We had a socially distanced picnic! A fabulous, free-form conversation about cabbages, sealing wax, and flying pigs! And a—well. I can’t call it a hike since the path was paved, but an excursion through the woods.
We met up at one of those large ponds that are scattered throughout this part of New York and Massachusetts—state boundaries here are as arbitrary as those imposed by the British upon the Middle East at the end of World War I.
Small children were actually swimming in the icy waters.
And people were kayaking.
“You keep taking pictures of those boats,”
asakiyume observed, and this was true! Art Photo mode, doncha know! My theory about Art Photos (which can only be taken on phones!) is that in every Art Photo, there lurks a Dorothea Lange or a Henri Cartier-Bresson or an Ansel Adams waiting to be teased out! The process is the Photoshop version of Michaelangelo and his stone Prisoners.###
Got home. Logged on to FB, a baaaaaaad habit, which I need to stop.
Was immediately beset by the imaginary voices of a mob of self-styled Social Justice Warriors demanding that police be defunded.
The voices may only be phosphors on an LED screen, but they resound loudly throughout my brain!
Interestingly enough, just the day before, in Boulder Creek, California, a cop was shot in the process of apprehending a madman with a truckload of IEDs and other assault weapons.
One does not want to speculate what might have happened had that madman found his way to one of the many SF Bay Area protest demonstrations.
That cop was killed.
Yes, certainly, police should not be supported as paramilitary organizations.
And laws that keep internal policing disciplinary actions private should be repealed, and lists of Bad Cops should be maintained publicly much like lists of sex offenders.
However. Getting rid publicly funded police functions is a very bad idea that will only encourage privatization.
And there’s a word for the privatization of police forces: militia.
###
I won’t even get into the banshee glee over the firing of that editor who let Tom Cotton into the New York Times opinion section.
Did I read Tom Cotton’s editorial?
No, I did not.
Would I read Tom Cotton’s editorial?
No, I would not.
But do I think he should be able to publish his opinions in a media outlet that prides itself on a commitment to, uh, inclusive news-casting?
Yes, I do.
Of course, some ungodly number of millennials and their aging “woke” apparatchiks think all so-called hate speech should be censored, and since they get to define hate speech, that means anything that conflicts with their world view gets censored.
But I believe in free speech. With the usual caveat about burning theaters.
###
Anyway, I had the choice to engage with a billion or so people bound to me by that most sacred of all connections, Facebook friendship! To enlighten them on how wrong and misguided they are.
Or to turn my computer off.
I chose the latter.
And was very pleased with myself.
