It’s a shame that the police slowly have changed from keepers of peace to keepers of discipline. Like many cultural shifts, the role of police slowly has changed due to similar subtle changes around them in economy, housing, family culture and attitudes about racism and elitism.

When mariner was a cub scout, a boy of eight to ten years of age, he remembers considering the local policeman a person of authority but not a person to fear. For one thing the officer walked the streets on a beat; he often talked with local citizens, businesses and did things that quietly protected his beat. He checked that business doors were locked at night; he stopped occasionally to watch a few pitches at the baseball diamond in the local park. Once, mariner’s father had a talk with the policeman about some trouble in a home at the end of the block. The policeman was a citizen of the community just like everyone else. It is likely he knew where trouble may lie. Certainly he had a feel for daily life on his beat.

What changed?

To make a long story short, class discrimination and accordingly race discrimination. Over decades of living, the suburbs evolved, wages were geographically dispersed as corporations emerged, government tax structures were modified, and neighborhoods became less heterogeneous. When mariner was young, every neighborhood was a town with its own GDP, schools, its own main street and had both working and professional families.

Slowly, mobility became easier for families – especially those whose jobs were outside the neighborhood. Families moved to neighborhoods based on income (class); in the old neighborhood multigenerational families began to disappear leaving no intergenerational history. Consequently, fewer and fewer residents were familiar and housing markets eventually dropped in value where the old GDP had disappeared.

The cop on the beat no longer knew everyone. Eventually it became cheaper to cruise a neighborhood in a squad car. Nobody knew anybody. The glue that made a community exist was gone.

When no one is sure what is happening, when no one knows anyone, when the mean income is dropping, paranoia becomes the dominant attitude. When no one knows ‘that’ person, the person is of less value and deserves less grace. Conversations become polar and accusatory. There was comfort in knowing that the police could ‘handle things’ in this social vacuum. Economically, some neighborhoods collapsed entirely, which led to vacant housing, slum conditions and criminal economies. Fortunately, the police could ‘handle things’.

While the US economy was growing rapidly, classism didn’t matter; everyone’s eyes looked to the future. The past was forgotten. Even so, many still lived in that past and did not share in the future. So society left the past to the police to manage.

In recent decades the future has not been so rosy. Society has begun to notice the disarray of classism. Recent news has begun to take notice of unrest in neighborhoods of the past. It is long overdue that society regroups and establishes more homogeneous rules. The police are part of this movement and need to know their customers personally and, figuratively, to walk the beat again.

Now if we could teach Congress this lesson.

Ancient Mariner

A couple of weeks ago, Mariner watched an episode of CBS Sunday Morning. It was a discussion about whether we should dismiss good art because the creator was an asshole. This was a follow up discussion to the recent PBS/Ken Burns special about Ernest Hemingway. It turns out Ernest qualifies as an asshole but has written some undeniably classic literature.

Mariner, though his opinion may be irrelevant, thought the CBS show was simplistic at best. The two primary guests were art critics. The first one took a clear stance that if the person is a misfit in social terms, their art should not be recognized. The second critic took a compromised position stating that we can acknowledge art in spite of the artist but the artwork is viewed by a jaundiced eye because of the artist’s behavior or, or, or because of the content of the artwork.

Of course Pablo Picasso’s fetish with breasts was brought up although his genius had nothing to do with breasts but with the bold use of composition, forcing the viewer to mentally battle between strong lines and distracting colors. The second artwork of note was ‘Thérèse Dreaming’ by Balthus, a magnificent example of art talking directly to the soul. The Metropolitan Museum of Art said this about the painting:

“Many early twentieth‑century avant‑garde artists, from Paul Gauguin to Edvard Munch to Pablo Picasso, also viewed adolescent sexuality as a potent site of psychological vulnerability as well as lack of inhibition, and they projected these subjective interpretations into their work. While it may be unsettling to our eyes today, Thérèse Dreaming draws on this history.”

Note the words sexuality, psychological vulnerability, inhibition and subjective. These are words about subconscious motive. Good artwork passes directly by the conscious mind to speak to the subconscious – the home of the soul. Only when the emotional bonding bounces back to the conscious mind is it a confrontation between private sentiment and the social decorum of the conscious mind. To many people,  emotional feelings may seem embarrassing if made deliberately conscious. The defensive measure is to call the artwork questionable.

Good art always draws its significance from the subconscious. It can be a painting, a song (Mariner equates Whitney Houston singing ‘I will always love you’ as excellent artwork in vocal music[1]), a speech, even good architecture can raise a response from the soul.

Ancient Mariner

&
[1] The Bodyguard, 1992. It took many months of arranging and rearranging this song by three giants in the movie business. It was the collective awareness of their sensitivity to their subconscious feelings that finally identified the song’s transcendent quality.

The Global Trends Report, which is compiled every four years, is an example of strategic foresight. Some clips:

“Driving the news: Many, if not most, of those trends identified in the new report from the U.S. government are trending negative.

“Shared global challenges — including climate change, disease, financial crises, and technology disruptions — are likely to manifest more frequently and intensely in almost every region and country,” the report’s authors write.

“They predict that those intensifying challenges will collide with a geopolitical structure that will become increasingly fragmented and fragile, as the U.S. competes with China for global leadership while citizens of both democracies and autocracies grow more dissatisfied with their leaders.

“Another fairly certain trend line is intensifying climate change which will lead to a less secure, more crisis-prone world that will strain global institutions.”

Axios put the full 156 page report online at

https://www.axios.com/global-trends-report-future-2040-f2d496d3-b393-4269-8756-5477379cdacb.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

– – – –

The more mariner learns about Florida the more is his desire NOT to live in Florida. Minimalist government, ignorant governor and cabinet administrators on the take. Plus all the nuances of being located in Dixie. The following story takes the cake – but at least obstetricians are saving money on their insurance premiums.

Ruth Jacques, distraught over the fatal injuries her son suffered during childbirth, couldn’t sue her doctor because of an obscure Florida state law. When she protested at his office, she was told to cease and desist. [The reader should move on to:

https://www.propublica.org/article/she-cant-sue-her-doctor-over-her-babys-death?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=feature ]

Florida has its day of reckoning, though. Climate change is coming.

– – – –

Here’s a tidbit from the news: China owns $1 trillion of the US debt, that is, China owns $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds. The open question is whether this affects the power relationship between the two nations.

– – – –

Almost half of homes in the United States now sell within one week of being listed. In Austin, the median listing price has risen 40% in one year to $520,000. Across the nation housing costs are soaring beyond the reach of most Americans. America has a record-low number of homes available for sale — just 1.03 million, according to the latest NAR data. That compares to a peak of more than 4 million at the height of the last housing bubble, in July 2007. Where is Congress – or perhaps the sympathy of the Republican Party?

– – – –

The blessing we can all count is the increasing participation of private citizens who feel they must help out in these trying times. From wildlife rescue to autism to homelessness to health to house construction to food and shelter, private individuals are stepping up, contributing cash, home space, labor and legal support. Three cheers for the empathetic American!

Ancient Mariner

On April 5 the Supreme Court reversed a previous lower court decision per a suit filed by the Biden Administration. The decision had to do with the use of social media and freedom of speech on Twitter. The decision was actually just a matter of cleaning up loose ends but the surprise came from no less than the most conservative Justice, Clarence Thomas.

In a separate response to the case Justice Thomas suggested a different remedy for the conflict between first amendment rights and private intentions to abuse truth or otherwise promote special interests not intended by the users of social media.

Justice Thomas suggested that social media be tightly regulated similar to communication companies and utilities in general. Sound theories for managing social media have not emerged, notable because of the obvious free rein by Google, Zuckerberg et al to use private information for corporate gain and to otherwise ignore negative uses that in any other business area would be subject to unending liability suits.

Justice Thomas wrote that just as electric, gas, water and telephone are stiffly regulated, so too, should social media be regulated in all aspects of public consumption. For example, the water utility is subject to regulations about water quality, equal rights to distribution, even the manner in which pipes are laid and the materials used. As an example of abuse, search the Flint Michigan ‘lead in water’ situation. Is conspiracy theory the same as lead in our social media product?

It’s too early to tell how this will emerge but with the republicans growing increasingly wary of social media, they and the democrats may find something mutually compatible that will defend freedom of speech as a delivery product without lead, profiteering, and disregard for public fairness included in the product.

Dealing with the abuse of speech is a deep and wide issue that may never be completely resolved but let’s give Clarence a chance – it’s better than what we have.

Ancient Mariner