James Williamson guest blog: Imminent Rebellion: Are we there yet?

June 20, 2020 — buckeyerino

Editor’s note: James Williamson is a native and former resident of Ohio who currently lives in Nevada.  He is also one of the brothers of yours truly, Daniel Jack Williamson, the owner of this blog.  He has written many other guest blog articles for Buckeye RINO, including a series of posts with the phrase “Imminent Rebellion” in the title (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). –DJW

 

It’s been a long time since I’ve written a political blog post.  You may ask, why so silent while the world seems to be falling apart around us?  Well, in my past posts, I was warning what could happen if we continued our current trajectory.  Now we are so far along, the idea of civil war and revolution are almost considered mainstream.  Why repeat what others are already saying?

So now I suppose my task is to say something that no one else is saying.  Or at least not many people are saying.  Or perhaps what is being said but not heard….

It seems we have plunged the country into chaos.  I say “we” because ultimately the nation’s behavior is an aggregate of the individual decisions of the 300+ million inhabitants of what we call the United States of America. I can’t think of any period in American history where the rule of law has been so threatened since the Civil War. Many critics of the president accuse him of undermining the law intentionally.  While there may be specific instances where this is true, we could also find examples of presidents trying to skirt or even defying the law going all the way back to George Washington. (Remember Andrew Jackson’s response to the Supreme Court regarding the Cherokee decision?) These behaviors are always concerning. Left unchecked, they can certainly lead to tyranny, which is why we oppose them.  On the other hand any elected official is ultimately merely a human being and therefore flawed in their thinking and behavior.  There will always be abuses.  If we can’t accept that, then we will have a hard time accepting self-governance.  Fortunately, our founding fathers anticipated this and included a mechanism to limit the amount of abuse an individual could inflict by separating governmental power into three equal branches.

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” –Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.

Thomas Jefferson, in a rhetorical way, points out that we have no choice but to accept imperfect leaders.  It may be this pursuit of the “perfect” president or form of government that has lead us to this point.  Ideology trumps practicality and, it seems, words now trump actions. No one will argue against the observation that our President is flawed.  I can also say that almost no one would say they didn’t know what they were getting into before the election.  We knew Donald Trump was a billionaire real estate magnate who loved to spend time in front of cameras.  We knew he loved salesman’s puffery and engaged in it daily.  We knew  he could be unpredictable and volatile.  We knew he liked to spend money…. You get the idea.  So why did we think any of this would change when he became President?

By now you are probably asking, “what’s your point?” (Maybe I am too…)  We are living in chaotic times with a chaotic President, or so it seems.  Notwithstanding the apparent chaos and the intensity of the rhetoric, we continue as a nation.  As long as we can maintain rule of law we will be able to continue as a nation.  The breakdown of the rule of law leads down two paths: anarchy (think French revolution) or war (US civil war).  Either way the results are usually unpalatable to the general public long term and some form of government emerges. So how do we avoid anarchy and war? The first step is to calm down and think.  Rational thought will lead to more deliberate actions that generally produce better results.  Emotional thought generally leads to actions that bring a lot of unintended consequences.  For example, if you eliminate (abolish, defund) the police how will government respond to violent crime?  The emotional thinker doesn’t have an answer but wants to forge ahead anyway.  A rational thinker may not have an immediate answer and so would be reluctant to move ahead without a solid plan in place.

Slow down.  Think before you act. The main difference between machines and people is the ability to reason and to think critically.  If we act out of emotion without rational, critical thought, we are worse than a robot.  A robot doesn’t have the ability to think critically but it also doesn’t make mistakes. An emotionalized human has set aside what makes them unique in the animal world.  There may be times where that is appropriate (i.e. when our life is in danger) but if emotions like fear, rage, and resentment drive all our decision making the results of our actions will be no better than the negative emotions that drove them.

It is often said that actions speak louder than words.  Anyone listening to media may come to the opposite conclusion.  Perhaps in a business that thrives on rhetoric and argument words are more important than actions to the likes of CNN, Fox, Facebook, and Twitter. Heated rhetoric sells.  Ironically the very same organizations that claim to be against Trump are the very keys to his electoral victory.  Why did Donald Trump beat Hilary Clinton while spending a small fraction of his competitor on the campaign?  Because the news media couldn’t keep their cameras off of him.  They acted out of emotion and didn’t stop to think.  They were so convinced that what he was saying would sink his own ship that they forgot one of the maxims of the marketing industry: all press is good press.  Trump was the political equivalent of the Kardashians.  (Maybe that’s why they get along?) Doesn’t matter if people make fun of you, doesn’t matter if people think you are ridiculous, doesn’t matter if you have substance…. Just keep the cameras pointed at you!!!!  And the media fell for it……

Now to the subject of actions.  I still operate in a world where actions do speak louder than words so here’s a few (just a few) actions by the president that reassure me:

1.       Judicial appointments – The President has taken this responsibility seriously and has appointed more judges than any other president in history.  Yes, there were extra vacancies because Mitch McConnell drug his feet and outright blocked Obama appointments, however, Trump has wasted no time in filling these positions, which indicates that he understands how important the judiciary is in maintaining rule of law.

2.       Criminal justice reform – There are a lot of critics of the bill and I myself have not studied it, however just the fact that it passed indicates that the President recognizes there is a problem and took measures to correct it.

3.       Trade renegotiation – Trump, as a businessman, understands the fundamental cost vs. benefit analysis and has come to the conclusion that we are paying too much for what we are getting.  This includes NATO  and the UN.  People may not like his style (foreign countries sure don’t) but he is advocating for the country, which is what a President is supposed to do.

4.       Firing incompetent or partisan government employees (especially Bolton) – I know this one causes a lot of alarm for some but Trump needs to say, “You’re fired!” about 10,000 more times.  I spent time working at a federal facility and it is way too difficult to get rid of bad employees there.  They know it’s near impossible to get fired and they abuse it.  Bolton was an especially important target.  He’s the equivalent of Conrad Von Hotzendorf, one of the high ranking officials of the Austro-Hungarian empire.  His constant war-hawking nearly plunged the country into a massive conflict many times before WWI.  One of the reasons it didn’t happen sooner was because Franz Ferdinand was the counter-balancing voice of reason that prevented the empire from making rash moves.  Once Franz Ferdinand was killed that voice fell silent.  Trump knows that a war with Russia would not end well for the US.  Agree with him or not, firing a reckless war-hawk demonstrates that there is more to Trump than just rhetoric.

And now for the list of things that concern me:

1.       Rhetoric – this goes without saying.  It is said that our strengths can be exploited and turned against us.  The rhetoric continues because it’s what got him elected.  It may get him elected again this fall.  What it won’t do is help anyone following him.  It provided cover for his actions. Most people can’t even tell you what he has or hasn’t done because they can’t get past what he is saying. That’s a two edged sword and could come back to bite him just as hard as it bit the media that (supposedly) opposed him.

2.       Spending – I just read that our federal budget is now higher than WWII levels relative to GDP.  That is a problem.  Honestly this was probably my biggest concern while he was a candidate and continues to be a concern.  Trump is not alone on this.  Congress, and the federal reserve seem to be very compliant. I don’t think Hilary Clinton with a democratic congress would have spent any more than we are spending now.  Maybe if AOC was president…. Unfortunately this has been a problem for so long we may be past the point of no return.  This probably warrants a separate entry.

In conclusion, while it seems that we are marching inevitably toward separation we continue as a nation.  As long as we continue to uphold our elected leaders and the rule of law we will continue as a nation, even if it seems the sky is falling.  When we, speaking collectively, stop upholding the rule of law and not only seek to overturn, but succeed in overturning election results (think assassination, frivolous impeachment, etc.) our existence as a nation will be in grave danger.

 

Posted in Congress, Donald Trump (R), executive branch, guest blog, judicial branch, law enforcement, legislative branch, National Politics, Politics in the MSM, POTUS, protests. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Abusing a badge for the purposes of badgering

June 23, 2018 — buckeyerino

First, read this.  Then I’ll weigh in.

At the outset, let me offer my apologies to the police officers who follow their conscience and the law in performing their duties.  I am told by reliable sources that the vast majority of police officers are not just conscientious and dutiful, but also brave to the point of putting their own safety in jeopardy in the interest of keeping the rest of the law-abiding public out of harm’s way.  I have met some officers that I know to be like that.  I can only hope that these reliable sources are true.

Yet, from my experience, I have met too many police officers who abuse their authority in pursuit of unworthy agendas.  How many?  Okay, now, one is too many, but I have had more unhappy encounters with police officers than that.  For now, I will share just two such experiences.

One of them lived across a street from my house on the west side of Columbus.  I called the police a couple of times due to this neighbor’s deliberate hostile provocations, but of course, after the responding officers paid a visit to the neighbor to find that this neighbor was one of their own, they returned to my door to give the neighbor’s “side of the story” (a story so lame that the responding officers delivered the message sheepishly, looking down at the floor or to the side because it was so awkward to be put in the position of repeating bald-faced lies) along with an anemic apology that in no way offered reassurance that my trouble with this neighbor would go away any time soon.

Another couple of police officers accosted me as I walked down the street on the Near East side of Columbus.  Supposedly, the police were keeping an eye on traffic–meaning motorists–but I was a pedestrian and I had not jaywalked.  At that time, I lived in the area and my car was in the shop for repairs (under warranty), so instead of driving to the grocery store, I walked.  It was my intention to purchase a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread and then return home.  They asked for my ID.  I gave it to them.  While one was questioning my integrity and suggesting I was up to something sinister, the other was on the radio asking if there were any outstanding warrants against me.  When the word over the radio was that I had no criminal record, the imperious police officer who had been antagonizing me with his farfetched ruminations on what I was really up to then changed his tune (as he handed back my ID and half-apologized) and urged me to be cautious while walking along the sidewalk because someone had been murdered the previous week at an intersection just five blocks away.  No such murder happened the prior week at that location, but I decided not to quibble with the policeman any further.  It was getting late and I just wanted to be on my way, which meant letting them go their way without argument.

Now, about that first story, let’s set aside, for a moment, that my next-door neighbor on the west side of Columbus was also routinely antagonized by the police officer who lived across the street.  Let’s set that aside because the next-door neighbor was a college professor from Nigeria who had just bought his first new house in the USA for himself, his wife, and two children–all formerly from Nigeria.  Now, I’ve been married and divorced twice, but let’s also set aside, for the moment, that I was married to my first wife at the time.  My wife and I had just bought our first new house together.  Let’s set that aside because my wife was from Japan.  Let’s also set aside that the rest of the residents of the subdivision were white and that it seemed that the police officer across the street never bothered them.  Let’s just assume that he might have peeved his other (white) neighbors, but that I just didn’t know about it.  Let’s just assume that this police officer across the street was just a pain in the butt to everybody indiscriminately, and that his poor behavior toward us had nothing to do with race.  Still, there should have been some way for the residents of the neighborhood to check the bad behavior of the police officer who lived among us.

Now about that second story, it is too hard to set aside that race was a factor.  Yes, most of the residents of the Near East were black.  I am white.  Besides living in the area, I had also worked in the area as a teller at a bank (a bank branch located even closer to the site of the previous week’s “murder”).  The police officer who was so suspiciously questioning me came right out and stated “White guys only come here for two reasons:  drugs or prostitutes.”  Yeah, he actually said that to my face.  I only had six bucks with me.  How many drugs or prostitutes can I buy with six dollars?  That money was for a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread at the grocery store.  Really.  That previous week’s murder just a few blocks away?  That was a white man murdered by black suspects, so be careful!  Still, I was really doing nothing that would have reasonably led to suspicion, let alone probable cause to investigate me.  Though nothing came of it, the officers’ suspicions were unreasonable.  What mechanism is in place to discourage the unreasonable actions of police officers?

Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention that all of these police officers were white?

But, turning back to this week’s police story out of Lorain:  A Lorain police officer accosted a man and directed the man to take a seat in the back of the patrol car.  The man wants to know the police officer’s reason for this.  The police officer says the man is going to jail and that the officer will think of crimes to charge him with on the way to the jail.  The man happens to be the boyfriend of the police officer’s daughter.  Allegedly, the man had been found in possession of marijuana at least once before in his life.  If you and your daughter are both totally against marijuana, why, the man’s marijuana possession might be a good cause for concern.  But, hey, the daughter’s eighteen, not a child.  She can make decisions independently from her police officer father.  I think it’s a lot more perplexing and disturbing for a convicted murderer on death row to receive marriage proposals from women who only know of him due to news coverage of the crimes he’s committed, but, hey, adults make their own decisions about love.  The police officer’s daughter could certainly have picked someone much worse.  On the flip side, the police officer’s daughter could not pick a perfect man to fall in love with because perfect men do not exist. (Did I mention that I’ve been divorced twice?)

It just so happened that the police daughter’s officer was a passenger in the man’s car along with two other people who lived in that neighborhood.  The mom of those two other passengers was at home. For now, let’s just call her Ms.  You can read all their names in this Chronicle-Telegram article that I prompted you to read at the start.  When Ms. came out of her house to see what the ruckus was, the police officer told Ms. that he wanted to retrieve his daughter’s computer from inside her house.  Ms. was going to allow him to do that, except the police officer was getting mouthy.  He said that he was going to write a $300 ticket to one of Ms.’s kids for not wearing a seat belt.  Ms. changed her mind. On second thought, the police officer would have to get a warrant to retrieve his daughter’s laptop from Ms.’s house.  The confrontation escalated.  Then Ms. told the police officer that she would call 911 to report the officer’s actions.  The police officer countered by saying he would arrest Ms. for calling 911 when there was no emergency to respond to.  He ordered Ms.’s two kids out of the man’s car and into the house.  Lo and behold, the officer finally sized up the fact that his daughter was still in the man’s car.  He decided he would rather have his daughter in the back seat of his patrol car than his daughter’s boyfriend, so the boyfriend was permitted to get back out while the daughter was stuffed back there.  The police officer left, daughter in tow.  The police officer received a dispatch to a road rage incident.  He did not respond to it.  After the fact, he said that he contacted another officer to handle the road rage incident, and that the other officer said he’d handle the incident on his own.

So, a guy is upset with who is adult daughter is dating.  Hey, it happens.  The rest of the fathers do not pull out a police badge and stuff their daughter in the back seat of a patrol car.  The police officer harassed Ms. and two of her family while carrying out this personal agenda and threatens them with criminal charges because they became upset with him.  He was the one who caused them to be upset in the first place.  If he wasn’t there, nothing criminal would have happened.  He was the instigator.

But the one thing that sends shivers down my spine is that a person who is charged with upholding the law and enforcing the law flat out told someone that the officer was going to send that someone to jail for charges that he intended to trump up.  There is no way whatsoever that a person like that should be on the police force.  To allow such an officer to remain on duty would totally undermine law and order.  It would undermine the public trust.  Never mind all the rest, if courtroom testimony were to bear out the fact that this police officer had any intent of trumping up charges, he, himself, ought to be criminally charged on top of being fired.

But the union is obligated to defend him from being fired if he filed a grievance contesting his dismissal.  We’ll find out more about that after arbitration this September.

By the way, the police officer and his daughter are white.  The daughter’s boyfriend is black.  Let’s set that aside for a moment to say that, no matter the identities of the people involved, the trumping up of charges by a police officer and badgering people from behind an officer’s badge just for the pursuit of the officer’s personal agenda that happens to be at odds with carrying out the officer’s lawful duties is more than enough reason to terminate his employment.  Okay, the moment for setting that aside is over.  Make of it what you will.

Posted in abuse of power, crime, law enforcement, Local Politics, Lorain, race. Tags: , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »