I went to find (and steal), Mr' Dicken's opening line of "A Tale of Two Cities" and then read a little further and found the below quotes more apropos.
"France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.....
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;...."
After reading it, I realized I'm not the only literary thief lurking on the web.....seems he's not the first to want the "bad" people to bow to his God, nor that strove in fear as they aged where they once went with little thought.
One cannot help but wonder if it is merely the fears the old accumulate as they become more sedentary, more dependent upon what they read, say, and watch rather than actual facts.
I read Mr. Johnston's epistle with the complete and utter disgust that only one who is and was one of his "they"s could feel.
You cannot have Lord Trump's imperial power grab to occupy a city, without the same simplistic logic expressed by Mr Johnston here. One is the foundation of the other.
He mistakenly agrees it's necessary, and that "they" deserve it. He merely disagrees with the tactic, not the attack.
Yet both are wrong.
I find it amusing that suddenly he has come to Jesus in recognizing that it takes a community to raise a child, while ignoring that it was conservatives who studiously turned away from the last public person who stated that truth.
All I know is each of those "they's" are an individual. Of as much value as one who was on one of Mr. Johnston's sports team, in his church, starving in Gaza, betrayed in Ukraine, or caged in an ICE concentration camp.
We, as a society, have spent the last century trying to incarcerate our way to freedom. It hasn't worked, though we incarcerate more of our citizens than any country other than China. The only winners of the war on drugs have been the police-judicial-incarceration complex. And the cartels. And the Hollywood-media sideline that feeds off of the drama. A growth fed not on facts nor reason, but rather a self perpetuating hysteria and hype of which this missive is merely the latest example.
As we passively give away our freedoms in the hopes that somehow it will makes us what it cannot. Our Capitol is being occupied by the military. A military quick response force is being formed to respond to Americans that may protest the government. (At the same time this totalitarian klan is issuing pardons and monetary recompense with our tax dollars to those who actually did violently attack law enforcement but did it for them). Museums are being forced to control their content based upon whether it dissents from their worldview, taxes are raised or lowered based upon the same, treaties and laws ignored as well, schools, universities, legal representation, and constitutional liberties suppressed.
Oh and locking up the mentally ill and homeless.
You know, out of sight, out of mind - problem solved - right?
All so these fearful, ageing, and ignorant "good" people can be what they know in their hearts they cannot.
Younger, braver, safer.
Fact is, crime has been going down in DC.
If anything, as much as laws can - these policies were working, or certainly not making the conditions worse. Not if you rely on data rather than Fox.
Also, the data shows that if you want those children to get out of the legal system toward productivity, placing them in adult incarceration not only doesn't help, it increases the likelihood of recidivism. These laws gave judges discretion on the one hand, and recognized a statistically fact, that children do not have full maturity before age 25.
Again, we've tried institutionalization in the past. We've tried incarceration. Neither have worked. Remember when we deinstitutionalized the mental health sytem back in the 60's and 70's - we did so because of the abuses inherent in them, and with the expectation that treating people in the community would be cheaper and more effective.
We got half of that. It was cheaper. Because we did not ever create the community support system to replace institutionalization. Do you think we will do so now, in this time of deficits, and welfare for billionaires and the upper middle class? If you do, you're a special kind of special.
Our prisons are understaffed already. As are our police departments. Mostly thanks to conservatives. Especially DC, which has to beg Republicans in Congress for the support that other cities would automatically be able to provide themselves.
Not to mention that what set all of this previously planned occupation was not some injured child, it was one of Trump's DOGE buddies suffering a crime.
Today's conservatism. One law for me, one law for thee.....
This will not end well.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times......
What a disgusting column. Violent crime in DC is lower than it’s been my entire adult life. Anyone can google this information. How did this racist screed even get published? Shame on you.
I went to find (and steal), Mr' Dicken's opening line of "A Tale of Two Cities" and then read a little further and found the below quotes more apropos.
"France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards.....
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;...."
After reading it, I realized I'm not the only literary thief lurking on the web.....seems he's not the first to want the "bad" people to bow to his God, nor that strove in fear as they aged where they once went with little thought.
One cannot help but wonder if it is merely the fears the old accumulate as they become more sedentary, more dependent upon what they read, say, and watch rather than actual facts.
I read Mr. Johnston's epistle with the complete and utter disgust that only one who is and was one of his "they"s could feel.
You cannot have Lord Trump's imperial power grab to occupy a city, without the same simplistic logic expressed by Mr Johnston here. One is the foundation of the other.
He mistakenly agrees it's necessary, and that "they" deserve it. He merely disagrees with the tactic, not the attack.
Yet both are wrong.
I find it amusing that suddenly he has come to Jesus in recognizing that it takes a community to raise a child, while ignoring that it was conservatives who studiously turned away from the last public person who stated that truth.
All I know is each of those "they's" are an individual. Of as much value as one who was on one of Mr. Johnston's sports team, in his church, starving in Gaza, betrayed in Ukraine, or caged in an ICE concentration camp.
We, as a society, have spent the last century trying to incarcerate our way to freedom. It hasn't worked, though we incarcerate more of our citizens than any country other than China. The only winners of the war on drugs have been the police-judicial-incarceration complex. And the cartels. And the Hollywood-media sideline that feeds off of the drama. A growth fed not on facts nor reason, but rather a self perpetuating hysteria and hype of which this missive is merely the latest example.
As we passively give away our freedoms in the hopes that somehow it will makes us what it cannot. Our Capitol is being occupied by the military. A military quick response force is being formed to respond to Americans that may protest the government. (At the same time this totalitarian klan is issuing pardons and monetary recompense with our tax dollars to those who actually did violently attack law enforcement but did it for them). Museums are being forced to control their content based upon whether it dissents from their worldview, taxes are raised or lowered based upon the same, treaties and laws ignored as well, schools, universities, legal representation, and constitutional liberties suppressed.
Oh and locking up the mentally ill and homeless.
You know, out of sight, out of mind - problem solved - right?
All so these fearful, ageing, and ignorant "good" people can be what they know in their hearts they cannot.
Younger, braver, safer.
Fact is, crime has been going down in DC.
If anything, as much as laws can - these policies were working, or certainly not making the conditions worse. Not if you rely on data rather than Fox.
Also, the data shows that if you want those children to get out of the legal system toward productivity, placing them in adult incarceration not only doesn't help, it increases the likelihood of recidivism. These laws gave judges discretion on the one hand, and recognized a statistically fact, that children do not have full maturity before age 25.
Again, we've tried institutionalization in the past. We've tried incarceration. Neither have worked. Remember when we deinstitutionalized the mental health sytem back in the 60's and 70's - we did so because of the abuses inherent in them, and with the expectation that treating people in the community would be cheaper and more effective.
We got half of that. It was cheaper. Because we did not ever create the community support system to replace institutionalization. Do you think we will do so now, in this time of deficits, and welfare for billionaires and the upper middle class? If you do, you're a special kind of special.
Our prisons are understaffed already. As are our police departments. Mostly thanks to conservatives. Especially DC, which has to beg Republicans in Congress for the support that other cities would automatically be able to provide themselves.
Not to mention that what set all of this previously planned occupation was not some injured child, it was one of Trump's DOGE buddies suffering a crime.
Today's conservatism. One law for me, one law for thee.....
This will not end well.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times......
This column sucks, but the brunch at Purple Patch in DC is spectacular.
What a disgusting column. Violent crime in DC is lower than it’s been my entire adult life. Anyone can google this information. How did this racist screed even get published? Shame on you.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/violent-crime-dc-hits-30-year-low