Tomorrow, June 20th, will be the 45th anniversary of the release of the movie Jaws. I did not see it in the theater. I may be old, but I was only 3 at the time. My first memories of this iconic movie are watching it on the TV at my grandparents, likely as one of the Sunday Night Movies one of the channels had when I was about 8 or 9. It was scary (Dreyfuss peering in the sunken boat kinda got me), but the shark seemed so unlifelike that it wasn’t overly scary. No, the scary part was several years later.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That’s the preamble to the US Constitution, one of our founding documents. And the document that gives us the form, structure and limitations of our republican form of government.
Unfortunately, it looks like our modern protesters and their enablers haven’t given much thought to that phrase. In their insistence that all inconvenient history be wiped from public view by the removing of statues and renaming of lakes, buildings and institutions they appear to think that our forefathers thought they had created an utopia for themselves. My view is that they understood utopia was unachievable, but that they were working for something better than they had before. And they gave us a framework to change our laws and the structure of our government to make future improvements. It doesn’t say A perfect union, but rather “a more perfect union.” There were things they argued over incessantly, trying to hammer out a compromise. We can see that in the documents of The Federalist Papers and The Anti-Federalist Papers. They were striving for better, not perfect. Continue reading “A More Perfect Union”→
We went to church yesterday for the first time in quite awhile. It was held outside in the parking lot so everyone could “social distance” as they liked, or sit in the vehicles and listen on the radio. Weather wise the biggest problem was the heat and humidity. It was about 96 degrees out yet and humid from the previous night’s thunderstorm that rolled through. Unfortunately I felt a profound disconnect between what was being said and what the reality is.
The minister spoke about the recent unrest around the country, and specifically here in Fargo. He spoke about his “white privilege” and “systemic racism” as well as a couple of other things like “listening to the other side”, trying to tie it into his chosen verse, James 3:13-18.
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
holy bible – English Standard version
So, that is actually a pretty decent passage relatable to current events. (I took this from the little pocket bible I carry around in my backpack, even though it’s not the bible I typically use for church now or what I grew up with. It’s a handy size, so that’s why I picked it up.) It talks about making peace and some of what it takes to make that peace and for it to last.
The author, nearly 20 years ago at a different department
Fargo had another “protest” today. After “negotiations” between the city and the protest organizers (who had “demands”? WTF?) it became a “Family Fun Day” at Island Park. Things went well and were peaceful. I don’t know if the deputy chief (now resigned) who put himself undercover last weekend without telling anyone beforehand actually ended up showing up. You know you’re either doing something really right, or really wrong when <b>everyone</b> is pissed off at you. In his case, it was quite obviously really, really wrong.
Social media rumours were flying fast and furious. One which made the news was of pallets of bricks being left around town. This one had me concerned, as there was potential to do great harm to people and property. Luckily it appears to be false. I spoke to one of the Fargo PD officers this evening and he said of the three sites he had been dispatched to today, all three were active construction sites. In other words, people freaked out about pallets of bricks that were being used.
Another rumour I heard about construction sites was that people were going to be showing up to burn things down. One of the companies has apparently rented a bunch of generators and lights so that his guys can keep an eye on things tonight. No idea if that one is true, but the site is outside of our jurisdiction anyway so I don’t understand why some of the leaders around here were worried (other than the guy who owns the construction company is a huge donor).
I’ve been keeping an eye on things via the cameras, and all of my officers are out patrolling in marked squads. So far, everything is normal. I’m hoping it stays that way.
MaddMedic, I’m off this weekend if you happen to be around.
On Saturday, May 30, 2020, there were numerous protests around the country over the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, MN. For the most part I thought it was kind of useless to be protesting hundreds of miles away from where it happened, but it’s certainly within their rights to make their displeasure known.
Here in Fargo they had a protest that started downtown, marched to the police station where they peacefully mingled with police officers. Police officers got up and showed support for the protestors. Chief Todd even held up a sign as he mingled with the protestors. You see, even many police officers around the country could see the videos of the Floyd arrest and see major problems with it.
Photo of Fargo Chief of Police Dave Todd captured from Fargo Police Facebook page. Person who shared it stated she got it from someone else.
There’s an old story, in various iterations, about how the lack of a horseshoe nail a kingdom was lost. People seem to have forgotten that in our modern age. Our supply lines are fragile, fickle things, with multiple choke points. This weekend Tyson Foods took out an ad in the New York Times covering some of the difficulties they are having.
I’m hopeful that this ad might start getting people aware that there is the very real possibility that we could be staring famine in the face here in the US. The US, the most prosperous, wealthiest, most efficient country this world has ever seen is likely looking at food shortages the likes of which we haven’t seen since my grandparents were little kids. We produce so much food here in the US that we feed our enemies and keep them from starving. That’s likely to change for the next couple of years I suspect.
My neighbor works for a local grocery distributor. We chatted briefly last night about Tyson while we were waiting for our daughters to come in. He told me that of the roughly 3,000 cases of meat they had ordered they received about 200. I’ve already noticed that meat is getting expensive. I expect it to get much more so.
My suggestion would be to stock up on food stuffs now and start praying hard.
There appear to be way to many officers who got into law enforcement for the wrong reasons. This looks like they just want the power of putting the jackboot on their neighbors necks, rather than actually helping people.
Just because there is a crisis of some sort doesn’t mean that the government gets to suspend our Constitutional rights. We’ve seen several court cases to that effect in the past.
You know, this BS of pointing out bad behavior in public violating “Community Standards” on social media sites is getting old. Or pointing out behavior that would actually go against community standards that is deemed “Acceptable”. FascistBook is the most egregious abuser of this. I hear Twitter is just as bad, but that’s a service I don’t use so don’t know first hand. I once reported an image of a girl sucking a guy’s dick to FB and was told it didn’t violate their standards. Dafuque?????? Actual porn is OK? But posting that Eric Ciaramella is the likely “whistleblower” for the Trump Shampeachment, as reported by news outlets across the country, and even by Schiff himself. Oy vey!
Anyway, what prompted this post was an email I got when I logged into my yahoo account this morning from the Nextdoor Team regarding a comment I made on a post of someone driving around a neighborhood taking pictures of kids: Continue reading ““Community Standards Violation””→
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