The Fellowship of the Hole

The original members of the Fellowship of the Hole.
I'm the ridiculously handsome one on the left.

Hello again, Dear Reader.  It’s been a while.  You look great! Have you lost weight?  Just kidding, we’re Americans, so you probably haven’t lost weight…  As for me, I find myself in Iraq.  Again.  I’m on what we call an “individual augment” or “IA” for short.  That means they pluck you randomly and out of the blue from whatever life you thought you were leading and stick you somewhere else where the quality of life sucks.  It wouldn’t be so bad if they sent me someplace exciting, you know like with bullets whizzing by in a hot LZ.  But alas, they sent me to another boring staff job, just now I live in a dismal little trailer-type thing with brown linoleum walls.  Being sequestered in Mesopotamia as I am, my usual diversions in life are greatly reduced—I’ve been here 2 months now, and I’m starting to get a little stir-crazy.  So, I felt it might be a good way to pass the time to start writing silly blog posts again.  And here we are.  I’m also trying to learn the ukulele, if you can believe that.  More on all of that later.  What I want to do today is tell you another Marine Corps “sea story,” as we call them, mostly to remind myself of why I still do this stuff.

The Fellowship of the Hole

               When I’m not getting IA’d to butt-fucking Iraq, I have a job in the Pentagon advocating for the combat engineer community in the Marine Corps.  It’s actually an interesting job, and has landed me in some unusual places to watch things explode a few times, which I find most enjoyable.  Almost exactly a year ago, in December of 2017, I had just such an opportunity.  There was to be a huge exercise on the West Coast and as a part of that exercise, 1^st Combat Engineer Battalion (at the time commanded by a good friend of mine, Chris Haar) was going to conduct live-fire amphibious rehearsals with Assault Breacher Vehicles (ABVs), Amphibious Assault Vehicles (AAVs), and armored bulldozers on San Clemente Island, off the coast of California.  For the lay-person, that means they were going to land on the beach in tanks and other big armored vehicles and set off really big explosions and do other manly shit.  The Marine Corps has been so preoccupied with chasing little guys in man-dresses around the Middle East for the last 15 years, that we hadn’t really tried this out for real in a very long time—like since 1992.  So it was all very exciting.  I was going to fly out there and observe the exercise, feel the explosions, perhaps remember what it was like to be a real Marine again. 

               The combat engineer community is relatively small in the Marine Corps.  As such, we all tend to know each other, or at least know about each other by reputation.  In this case, I knew personally several members of the staff of 1^st CEB.  A certain couple of officers in particular, I don’t want to embarrass anyone so I’ll assign them aliases—let’s call them “Nate Knowles” and “Eric Spalla,” both of whom I had known for years and had been their instructor twice—once at the Marine Corps Engineer School and once at Expeditionary Warfare School.  Nate was the battalion operations officer (OpsO), and Eric was the executive officer (XO).  They told me everything was going to be taken care of.  In fact, I spoke to Nate on the phone, he said and I quote, “We have a squad bay barracks locked on, so it’s going to be fine.  All you need is your sleeping bag.  Don’t worry about anything else. I got you, sir.”  This last sentence should have been a huge red flag.  I mean, this is not my first rodeo.  But I was so excited to get away from the Pentagon and go watch explosions and hang out with old friends, I totally fell for it. 

               So I flew to San Diego, got a rental car there, and drove up to Camp Pendleton (By the way, San Diego—I love you, but you gotta do something about the rental car situation at the airport.  Seriously.  Who wants to ride a bus for 20 minutes just to begin to get a rental car?).  Once at Pendleton, I got on a Marine Corps plane.  Not just any plane, but a VIP transport plane, like a Gulfstream IV.  Traveling like a rockstar.  So far, this trip was working out great.

 

Straight Pimpin'

               After a short flight, we landed at a tiny airfield on the northernmost part of San Clemente Island.  Now I had never been to San Clemente Island before, but I ‘Google-Earthed’ it, and knew a little.  It’s a long thin island, owned by the US Navy and used mainly as a range for naval gunfire.  It’s just south of Santa Catalina (you know, as in “the fuckin’ Catalina wine mixer”). Then the truck arrived to take me to the SHOBA, short for Shore Bombardment Area, where the battalion commander was.  We drove along for about 30 minutes, and all was well until we entered the gate to the SHOBA, and then the road turned from nice, flat, normal pavement into an absolute nightmare trail.  It was hilly, eroded, and very slow going.  When we started out it was maybe about 3:45 PM, and we entered the SHOBA about 4:15 PM.  It took at least 45 more minutes before we actually arrived at the battalion’s location, a distance of maybe 2 additional miles, so it was now quickly growing dark. 

I got out of the truck, still in a good mood, and found Nate and after some handshaking and friendly greetings, I said “So where’s this squad bay?” He looked at me and said, without even the slightest shame in his voice, “There is no squad bay, sir.” 

I said, “Surely we aren’t driving all that way every day?”

He said, “No sir, we’re staying here,” and gestured around at the collection of two man tents in the area.  “The squad bay up the hill is over-run with rats, so it won’t work. Here’s your flak jacket and helmet.”

I said, “You are a terrible human being, Nate.”

To translate, a squad bay is a type of barracks with one big room filled with bunkbeds.  It sort of sucks, since you share the room with a bunch of dudes who are expelling MRE farts and foot odor everywhere, but it’s at least INDOORS.  I am now totally homeless, in a strange land, and it’s dark.  All I have with me is a steel thermos, some sunflower seeds, a long underwear shirt, a sleeping bag, and an IsoMat (a thin foam rubber mat).  Oh, I also have a pocket knife, some civilian clothes, a cell phone, and a laptop computer.  Unfortunately, there is not even a hint of a cell phone signal down here in the SHOBA, so the phone became only a camera and the laptop wasn’t much good except as part of a pillow.

I get the idea you are not appreciating the position I was just finding myself in…  Let me elaborate.

First off, it’s December and it’s at least 20 miles out into the Pacific Ocean.  And crazy windy.  Like hard-to-stand-up-straight windy.  Everything is rocky and uneven.  And let’s not forget the bombs.

This range is the only place remaining where the U.S. Navy can practice ship-to-shore fires, and has been in continuous use as such for about 80 years—since before WWII.  So there’s a LOT of dangerous junk left around everywhere as a result of this. Things like the expended cases of rockets, shrapnel, flare parachutes, etc.  And let’s not forget the random shell or bomb that failed to detonate, what we call UXO, or unexploded ordnance.  EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) technicians say that roughly 10% or so of explosive projectiles malfunction in some way.  I’ve always thought that estimate to be a little high, but even if it’s only 1%, you can imagine how many that might be in a range this old.  These are things that were meant to explode, and for whatever reason didn’t.  You can also imagine how hazardous that is.  They (EOD techs) periodically go through the range to try to clear out the majority of the UXO, but it’s very difficult to find them, even when they are on the surface, which they may or may not be.  High-velocity naval gunfire shells or even aircraft-delivered bombs that don’t detonate tend to burrow into the ground.  They sometimes do a “porpoise” maneuver, meaning they pop up out of the ground at a seemingly random place away from the point of impact, and just lay there waiting to murder you. 

Caution has never been my strong suit.

As if that isn’t enough, the island is also absolutely COVERED in cactus.  Like 15 different species of cactus, all of which have evil little spines just waiting to find their way into an unsuspecting toe or finger.  Also, as I would soon discover, it is also home to about a billion mice.  And foxes that chase them.  Neither of these two have much exposure to humans, and thus do not always keep the usual respectful distance that I have come to expect from wildlife.  Everything that lives on this island can either bite you, stick you, or stab you.

I wasn’t alone in my predicament.  Some other guys from various places in the Marine Corps had come too, with the same level of preparation as me.  They all came a few days earlier though, riding the ships and landing craft there with the engineer battalion.  So they had the lay of the land already.

After arrival the first night, after talking for a while to all my old friends, I just did the only thing I knew to do.  I found a relatively flat spot, kicked as many rocks and cactus away as I could, spread out my IsoMat and sleeping bag, and climbed in.  That night was pretty miserable.  For one thing my flat spot was not very flat, and angled toward a good-sized cactus.  The wind howled all night long, and when my bladder roused me at about 4 in the morning, I realized that it had blown my backpack down the hill about 20 yards.  The problem was that my boots and trousers were inside that pack, and I was in a field of cactus.  So I climbed down the hill in my underwear and socks (it’s maybe about 45 degrees, by the way), picking my way very carefully and very unsuccessfully through the hazards, to retrieve my boots and then to relieve my bladder.  Afterwards, I spent about an hour removing cactus spines and trying to get warm again in my sleeping bag before the sun came up.

That next morning, I was complaining to my friends about the wind, and that’s when they told me about the hole.  Of course I had seen the hole the night before, but I didn’t realize that’s where everyone else with no real gear or tent was.  Going down the steep sides was out of the question in the pitch dark of the night before, anyway.  But it offered a little protection from the wind, and best of all had a dozen or more concrete slabs, each about 4 feet by 8 feet in size.  Concrete is not usually the first choice as a sleeping surface, but at least cactus can’t grow there.  So I moved in, and thus began The Fellowship of the Hole—the group of seven of us poor souls who wound up living here for a while. 

The Hole

In defense of Nate and Eric, there actually was a squad bay.  There was an abandoned observation bunker complex up on another hill overlooking the area.  We didn’t use it because it was absolutely over-run with mice.  It had showers and toilets, but the running water wasn’t working.  I know all this because I went there.  It held the only phone that worked, so I and the rest of the Fellowship had to go up to it and take turns on the phone to change our flights when the timeline got screwed up.  The whole place smelled like a hamster cage.  The air was so thick with mouse pee that my sinuses were up in arms for hours after that.  One of the other guys told me a story about trying to take a nap here when they first arrived and waking up to find a rat sitting on his chest.  Ordinarily I don’t put much stock in stories like that, but in this case I believe him.

This is the one phone that works, in the rat building.  Doesn't look that bad, but be thankful we can't send smells over the internet yet.

During the day, we would go down to the cliffs overlooking the landing beaches and observe some truly remarkable combat engineer stuff, including everybody’s favorite—the MICLIC, short for Mine Clearing Line Charge.  That's 1,750 pounds of C4 in 3-pound bricks all along a 100 meter rope, fired with a rocket.  This thing is like porn for combat engineers.  The blast it produces has to be felt more than seen to really understand its erection-inducing qualities.  Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

Tell me that's not cool...

  I was just enjoying the show.

And a YouTube video that shows it a little closer up.

But those blasts had long intervals of nothing in between, and with cell phones out of commission, what we did most was talk.  To an actual living, breathing human standing right next to you who was actually paying attention.  We talked about anything and everything.  We talked about everything from the texture and odor of our latest poops, to war stories, politics, women, religion…you name it.  Nothing was really off the table.  And in a world where you can’t post a funny cat video on social media without some asshole making it into either a Pro-Trump or Anti-Trump statement, it was quite refreshing.  I mean, guys would still say fucked-up things, but it was to your face, and you could argue back in real time.  And you actually had to sort of listen to the other side in order to participate.  And you also always knew that the other guy might just punch you in the face if you went overboard.  These factors (especially that last one) allowed a certain civility to be maintained during even highly contentious discussions.  A vast improvement over the state of affairs in the anonymous virtual world. 

               The thing I discovered is, your smart phone has been cheating you out of some things.  First of all, you never have to be truly bored.  You can play solitaire, or candy crush, or look at Facebook, or Insta-Twit or any number of a thousand other things besides talking to the guy beside you.  If some crazy person tries to engage YOU in a conversation, you can just sort of smile at them and go right back to your little electronic buddy until they go away.  This lack of boredom seems like a good thing, and it is, but it’s an essential ingredient for things like reading, the arts, story-telling—virtually all forms of admirable human endeavor.  These things are much more rewarding than candy-crush or Clash of Clans or whatever else, but they are on the other side of boredom , and boredom sucks. These types of games and apps are interactive and engaging enough to keep you occupied, sort of, but don’t result in anything useful at all, apart from filling the time you have until your inevitable death with random noise.  As I type all this out, I am fully aware of how smug I sound.  As though I figured out the meaning of life and I’m just letting all you poor dolts in on it.  I also recognize the irony that I’m using those very electronic devices to tell you about this.  If it makes you feel any better, the very instant that internet connection returned, I was right back on my smartphone with the rest of the herd.  I’m like a junkie telling his junkie friends about the time he went to rehab for two weeks and got clean, while in the act of tying off his arm and searching for a fresh vein.

Like crack cocaine, but harder to quit.

               Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that I actually talked to these guys.  A lot.  And I listened to them too.  We didn’t agree on a lot of things, but there’s just something about shared hardship and tall tales that brings men together in a way that is difficult to describe.  Camaraderie is just not a good enough word.  I guess it’s the reason I am still hanging around in this Gun Club, long after I thought I would. 

By the way, I was supposed to be there for a couple of days, but a combination of weather and Nate being a bad human caused me to have to wait and ride the LCAC back to Camp Pendleton with everyone else instead of getting another ride in the pimped-out VIP plane.  Actually, it’s really not fair to blame all of this on Nate.  I’m just doing that to be an ass.  He totally promised me we were sleeping indoors though, so he’s not off the hook.  It’s really just the way things go in the Marine Corps.  We call it getting fucked by the “big green weenie.”  This time it resulted in another night or two in the hole, but also in these cool pics.  And another good story.  So thank you, Big Green Weenie.

 

LCAC coming in for a landing.

Damn, I'm handsome...

What Freedom Sounds Like

We've been arguing about symbols a lot lately.  Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem.  President-elect Trump made a comment that flag burning should be illegal.  The cast of Hamilton gave Mike Pence a bit of a condescending lecture.  And every time, social media lost its damn mind.



Mike Pence had the very best line, however: "I nudged my kids and reminded them that is what freedom sounds like."

My biggest reaction when I saw this? 
That hairstyle means he doesn't expect to have to wear his helmet.

You might not of guessed by my demeanor on this blog, but I am as guilty as anyone of indulging in social media.  But I have an unusual perspective, I think.  I grew up in the rural South, but now I have lived for some time in the D.C./Baltimore area.  I have family and old high-school acquaintances back in Georgia, and I have made several liberal friends.  My personal political philosophy resides somewhere in the middle with the wacky Libertarians, so I don't completely alienate either side into "unfriending" or "unfollowing," the blackballing of the modern age.  Because of this, the stories and articles shared on my Facebook feed are both red and blue, and increasingly, they are more angry on both sides.

Look at some of this stuff I found:

NOW who's throwing out racist stereotypes, Lefty? 
Hello pot?  This is kettle.

You're doing it again...

And Righty weighs in...

And there's the ultimate guilt trip.

I'm no stranger to hyperbole, as this ridiculous blog clearly illustrates, but it seems to me that maybe everyone took the actions of the second-string quarterback for the 49ers just a little too seriously.  People I know to be reasonable and upstanding citizens IRL started calling for his head online.  They posted all sorts of things, but the main tenet of their argument is that Mr. Kaepernick should be forced to (not) kneel before the symbol because VETERANS.  

But--I'm one of those vets.  I know this much--I've been serving a good long time now, but I didn't go anywhere or fight anybody so that I could force an American citizen to pay homage.  That's not the sort of country we are.  Is Colin Kaepernick kind of an asshole for choosing to protest the national anthem?  Yes, kinda, but what sort of country would we be if it was the LAW that you had to bow to the government?  I when I joined the Marines, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, not  the flag, or the president, or even the Marines.  Among the very first rights protected in that document is the right to free speech. 

Then, just when you thought it was safe to go back on Instagram, Giant Douche, full of confidence after his upset win over Turd Sandwich, sent out this tweet:

Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!  — @realDonaldTrump

This old guy obviously doesn't get the whole "freedom" thing.

The constitution protects the speech that people DON'T like, because the speech they do like doesn't need any protection. It also protects the speech of the people who want to point out that Colin Kaepernick picked a shitty way to protest, or that flag burning is inflammatory and offensive.  Never mind the fact that the Supreme Court has already addressed this issue (and recently), and found that flag burning is symbolic speech, because--well, because of course it is. 


Apparently, the First Amendment isn't as important to some as the second one is.  Silly me, I like them both. 


Gotta love the beauty of the three-part harmony of America--seldom do all three lose their way at the same time.  Here's Justice Scalia talking about that very case:

https://youtu.be/fHO6IeBOiNE

Cinema Wine

I have a confession to make.  I know this may come as a shock, but sometimes I bring external beverages into the movies.  Not just any beverage either, but wine.  Jesus Juice, as Micheal Jackson put it.  Cougar fuel.  Nectar of the gods.

It doesn’t matter if the glass is half empty or half full.
There’s clearly room for more wine.

I know, I know, it's shameful of me.  I'm supposed to buy a half-gallon of Diet Coke at the snack bar for $17, and therefore I'm cheating the movie theater out of much needed revenue.  Well, I say that the movie theaters should be ashamed of themselves, selling fountain drinks and shitty popcorn at a 10,000% mark up.  But the truth is, I usually still get that giant barrel of Diet Coke, along with my illicit contraband. It's win-win. It also means I spend the last 30 minutes of the movie doing the seated pee-pee dance.

The fatal flaw in my plan.

Some movie theaters sell booze now, so I don't pull my little smuggling game all that often anymore, but sometimes I still do.  It's just so fun for some reason. I think it's the danger. Sneaking it past the sharp eyes of that pimply-faced guy who takes your ticket and tells you which theater your film is in takes nerves of steel.

It's so thrilling to stare such grave danger in the face and get away with it.  I don't know, maybe I'm just an adrenaline junkie.  I mean, it's either this or learn how to skydive in one of those wing suits.  Not only is it super fun to do, it greatly improves the watchability of some movies that I have been tricked into seeing.  Bridget Jones's Baby springs to mind.  Ugh.

The actual sneaking of the wine isn't rocket science, but I have learned that every method has its pros and cons.  Some sort of obvious basics: no corks--only screw caps, you'll also need plastic wine glasses (only alcoholics drink wine from the bottle), and you should wait until the previews start and the lights are lowered before you start breaking out the booze.

Toilet Wine

They sell wine in cartons these days, easy for sneaking and disposable--but it's usually some sort of ass-wine that tastes like it was funneled into the carton using the butt-crack of a sweaty water buffalo. A pretty big negative.

Some brands sell single-servings in cute little glass bottles, but then you're left trying to walk in with these little bottles clinking against each other.  Also, the wine gets warm quickly in these bottles, and I'm a very discerning sneaky boozer.

This turned out to be a very useful gift.

A really good method I have used requires a good coffee thermos and a female companion with a large purse.  I've carried it in myself in my jacket, but that's a pretty risky move, because a dude that looks like me with a large metal object hidden under his coat looks a little bit threatening to some people.  I suppose I could carry a purse, but I just don't think I could pull that look off.  On the plus side, it keeps the wine perfectly chilled and comes with its own cup. The bad news is you still have to sneak it back out.

My current favorite smuggling method is to pour a bottle of wine into a nalgene water bottle.  It still gets a little warm after a while, but much more slowly than the little bottles.  Also, it looks a little less incriminating, and makes less noise.

So there you go.  Wine Smuggling 101.  I just spent two hours explaining drinking wine secretly in movie theaters, and it was great.  Didn't think of the dumpster fire that is our presidential election once during that entire time. I actually wrote this a week ago, but didn't publish because...I guess because who gives a crap?  Anyway, if you're reading it, I think we both need to get out more.

Maybe we could go to the movies.

Charmed by Charm City

I live in Baltimore, and I like it.  Yes, that Baltimore.  The one with the riots.  Remember the TV show The Wire?  The setting of The Wire is now where I live.  They call it "Charm City" here in town.  I used to find that funny, but I've come around to a different attitude.

The Marine Corps sent me here to work at a reserve battalion headquartered in the city.  I wasn't crazy about it, but the Marine Corps calls them "orders" for a reason, so here I am.   It's a command position, and I was happy to get it,  but still.

For some reason, I had the idea there might be violence.

I mean I'd driven through the city a few times, while living in Virginia.  I even had a previous girlfriend who tried to get me to like it, but I was having none of it.  I found it dirty, crowded, and noisy.  So when I found out I was moving to this dangerous and dirty place, I had a bit of a bad attitude about it.  When I saw the riots on TV (two months before moving), I developed an even worse one.


The approach most previous Marines in my position have taken is to just avoid the problem by commuting to Baltimore and living someplace else, and this was the path I intended to take as well.  But then there was this little niggle...  I was a country boy from the Deep South.  I have never lived in a big city.  The Marine Corps was offering me an adventure, and I would be a real fool to pass up an experience like that by living in the freaking suburbs.  So I did it. I rented a row house in the Canton neighborhood with a rooftop deck, and proceeded to fall in love with Baltimore.

One of the two pistol bullets
 I found on my deck.

It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns, I'll admit.  There's a police helicopter that flies overhead constantly.  There's a couple of seedy bars frequented by ancient alcoholics nearby, so sometimes they'll decide to pass out on your front stoop, leave an empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose on the steps, shuffle slowly down the center of the street, or some other such hilariousness.  Once a drunk, scrawny old geezer with no shirt and a carpet of dirty gray chest hair pounded on my front door at 2 in the morning demanding that we "fight it out."  I hear gunfire, every once in a while.  I try to convince myself it was fireworks, but I've been in the Marines for 26 years, and I know damn well it's gunfire.  I even found a 9mm pistol projectile on my rooftop deck.  Twice, that's happened, actually.  My truck has been broken into several times, and it was stolen last Thanksgiving.  It was recovered a few weeks later, with an empty gas tank, a partially used box of condoms, and some baby socks (not kidding).  Visiting the Baltimore City impound lot is an experience, by the way.  Not an experience like at Disney World, either.  

60 acres of sadness.

Condoms and baby socks?

At least they left my safety glow belt behind.
Thank God.

But even with all of this, I have to admit, I like living here.  I have a great rooftop deck, with views of the whole eastern part of the city, all the way to the harbor.  I have never much enjoyed jogging, but I do it now because I can run from my doorstep along the waterfront and it's just beautiful.  Unless you look closely at the water of course, where there's often so much trash floating that I can't stop picturing the old crying Indian commercial from the '70's.

But even the trash has a silver lining.  I learned about a thing called Mr. Trash Wheel, a funny little invention that picks up the trash from the water and is just as charming as shit.  I was so charmed I donated a bunch of money to the fund to build a second one in my neighborhood, and those of you who know me know how rare that is.  So then there I was, being a part of things...

Mr. Trashwheel
I mean, whoever thought of adding the eyes--GENIUS.

This new job I took in Baltimore, it's working as the Inspector-Instructor of a reserve Marine battalion.  The Marine Corps Reserve is pretty well known for its Christmas charity, Toys for Tots.  Perhaps you've heard of it.

It's a pretty popular charity and a lot of businesses and civic groups donate to it.  When they hold their big publicity events, they all want a few Marines in dress blues to show up.  So we get inundated with requests for Marines to do all sorts of terrible duty, like going to NFL games, attending parties, etc.  Of course at those events you're treated like a celebrity, with free drinks, lots of female attention, etc.  But believe it or not, I have a hard time finding enough Marines to cover these events. Anyway, it came to pass that I finally got on one of these difficult assignments personally--judging the Parade of Lights in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, which if you've never heard of it, is when a bunch of people decorate their boats for Christmas, get drunk, and drive around the harbor.  Yes, it's as fun as it sounds.

I'm the really attractive one.  

My job was to show up at the Polish Home Club in my dress blues, mingle with some old Polocks,  and then to go out and stand on a little boat while all the drunks come by in their boats, dancing and singing and being drunk.  A unique experience, I think.  

The most handsome judge of lighted boats.

 I drank hot cider spiked with rum, I gave my completely unqualified opinion vis-à-vis boats decorated with Christmas lights, and had a great time. So, Baltimore was starting to win me over.

There's also a festival every time you turn around in Baltimore.  There's HonFest, The Running Festival, the Baltimore Whiskey Festival, SpringFest, Beer, Bourbon and BBQ Festival, Saint Patrick's Day (big here), Fells Point Pirate Festival, Kinetic Sculpture Race, Wine Festival...the list goes on and on.  Add to that an almost total lack of the kind of douchebags that DC is overrun with--You know the guys I mean--the ones in salmon-colored pants and popped collars.

If you see me in salmon pants,
please kick me in the balls.

Baltimore scares these kinds of people away, I think.  And for that, I thank you.

Couple all of this with the many great restaurants where you can always find a table, that an Uber shows up at my door 3 minutes after I order it, and the fact that I can walk to something like 50 bars from my house, and Baltimore succeeded in winning my heart, in spite of my prejudices (and the grand theft auto).

So gracias, Baltimore.  I'm gonna hate to leave.

I Can't Breathe

This post isn't very funny, I'm afraid.  

Ferguson, MO, New York City, and many other cities in America are seeing lots of protests lately, and if you listen to the news reports on television and the radio, it's all about racism.  Except it isn't, not really.  I'm not about to attempt to defend the actions of the police officers in these particular cases.  I am not informed enough to do that, and what's more, it doesn't even matter, not really.  The question isn't what happened in a few particular cases, it's what has happened over a period of time to the social contract between our society as a whole and the police forces of this entire country.

Many people are making accusations that the police in much of America have a bias against black Americans.  I can't deny it.  I not only don't deny it, I actually believe that it exists, though there is no real way to prove it or demonstrate it in a definitive way.  Just to be clear, I am a white man, and I was raised in the Deep South.  I would have to be either a liar or incredibly naive to think that racism isn't a real thing.  I have heard examples of racism from people at all levels of society, both white and black, for my entire life.  I have no "post-racial America" delusions.  Lots of white people think that most criminals are young angry black men and that young blacks celebrate being gangsters and thugs.  Some young black people ARE that way; but certainly not all of them, or even most.   Lots of black people mistrust white people and believe that white people unfairly judge them based solely on the color of their skin.  Again, plenty of white people DO think that way, but not all, or even most.  

Racism exists in our society, and we should continue to try to educate people to break down the barriers of fear between us.  No doubt about it.  

Probably better get your taser ready, officer.

Here's the thing, though...  It's not illegal to be a racist.  Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races, according to Google.  I accept this definition, as Google has never lied to me before.  But the important portion of this definition for the purposes of this discussion is "the belief."  A belief is what someone thinks inside their own mind, and it’s not necessarily dependent upon facts.  You can't make people's private thoughts illegal (even really unpleasant ideas), and you can't really police them, either—at least not in anything that resembles a free society.  Even if we come up with a mechanism to detect the inner thoughts of our citizens, I don’t think we’d want to use it.  Not really. 

The Thought Police warned about in George Orwell's 1984 are not here just yet.  Until they do come up with a way to read people's minds,  then you aren't going to get rid of racism.  I know that I’m a nutball libertarian.  Hell, I’ve read 1984, and now I’m referencing it on a blog.  That’s right up there with quoting Atlas Shrugged like it’s the Book of Revelations, isn't it?  But that doesn't mean I’m wrong. 

Hmm… the Thought Police are policing the thoughts of the police.  Badum tish. Thank you very much, remember to tip your waitress.  

Here’s another thing--everyone has prejudices.  Everyone uses stereotypes.  It’s human nature, and not only that, it’s very useful for navigating through the world safely.  Observing the world around us and grouping things that are similar together is just the way we are wired.  There’s no changing it.

Sometimes you should go ahead and judge that book by its creepy-ass cover.

So, for all the speeches and all the self-righteous rants on NPR about how being a black male in America isn’t fair, it won’t be able to solve the problem.  Because the police are human beings, and as such are going to have prejudices, biases, and all sorts of other human faults.  You can’t force people to believe things, not without getting REALLY Orwellian.  The best you can hope for is to drive it underground.  Which will do precisely zero to change the way the police and black people view each other. 

More likely, mobs of black protesters rioting and throwing flaming bags of shit at policemen on television will cause even more of a divide.  Add in the images of those policemen arresting black people in droves, hitting them with tasers, tear gas, pepper spray, and good old-fashioned billy clubs, and it gets even worse. 

There's another thing that's been going on with police forces over the last 20 years or so.  It's been called “militarization," and usually people are referring to the acquisition of military equipment, but it might also be called “aggressive policing,” meaning that the focus is on an in-your-face, intrusive, confrontational style.  

Here's a good book about it...
Seriously, read this book.  It's a bit politically partisan, but he tells the story well.

Militarization is more than just tanks and guns and ninja outfits.  It's a mindset.  It's the idea of incremental escalation of force, until compliance is obtained.  It was this mindset that was applied by the Police in Ferguson, Missouri during the initial protests over the shooting of Michael Brown.  

Interestingly, I think some of this tendency by some policemen to resort to violence more quickly is actually enabled by the new "non-lethal" tools most cops carry these days.  Things like tasers, pepper spray, and stun guns are supposed to be making us all safer by giving the officer a choice less severe than a firearm, but I think that they actually serve as a sort of "gateway drug" for using violence, with less consequence.  The cop has a few tools in his tool chest to use to incrementally escalate the violence in the situation, and so that's the way he views his options.  This is a very different paradigm than one of de-escalation, where the idea is to calm everyone down.  

 

He's just trying to get the protesters to calm down.

Radley Balko, author of Rise of the Warrior Cop, talks about police militarization in the video below.  Notice that this discussion took place in 2013, a year before the current situation.  He's talking about SWAT teams doing "no-knock" raids on people who are sleeping in their homes to serve warrants, which I find much more alarming.  He points out that even in examples where completely innocent people are hurt and killed in their own homes, seldom is a policeman charged with any wrongdoing. 

Click to view Radley Balko video

This is where I think the real problem is.  I think the cops in America have, in general, for a variety of reasons, gotten more aggressive towards EVERYONE, and they don't seem to be being held accountable for it.  The police themselves, or perhaps the district attorney, get to decide if an officer's actions were appropriate or not.  And they often aren't all that public about the process.  THIS is the real problem--innocent citizens by the hundreds of all races and creeds are being attacked, humiliated, wounded, and even killed by the police--and then the police themselves seem to get to arbitrate any complaints.  If any complaints ARE entertained, it's only later, after the damage is done.

It's this lack of accountability and transparency that is really at the heart of people's anger these days.  If people feel oppressed and mistreated, with no way to find justice, then they will become angry, no matter what race they happen to be.  So let's stop clouding the water.  The underlying issue is one of the accountability of police departments to the communities they serve, and the respect the citizens and policemen show for each other.  If an injustice like this exists, then it will manifest itself most vividly in minority communities, but don't let that distract you from the fact that this kind of treatment shouldn't even be allowed at ALL.

We have given up too much liberty for the sake of safety.  Politicians play on our fear, fear of non-tangible ideas like "crime" or "terrorism," in order to win elections and gain power.  They've done this for many thousands of years.   It's exactly what the framers of our constitution were trying to protect us from.