Tolerance, Professional Policing and the Death of the Tea Party
I live in a very liberal town. New York City.
I love living here, not just because you hear every language spoken on earth including Pig Latin when you walk through midtown, but also because no one cares at ALL what the Hell you are all about. Dressed Like Darth Vader? Don’t expect a second look. Men in Daisy Duke shorts holding hands bother you? 3 times on every block. I’m pretty proud of my town.
Super Storm Sandy, the 9-11 Attacks, all absorbed and overcome by the toughest, coolest people on Earth, the average New Yorker. When I get a chance to go abroad people want to confront me cause I’m a “yank”. The response? ”yank this, I’m from New York” instantly changes the conversation. Everyone has been or wants to come here. It’s a World City like London, Berlin, Amsterdam or Prague. If you went to Papua New Guinea and spoke to the average person you can bet they heard of New York. Hell, every disaster ever features a lone survivor in a New York Yankee cap (which is why I keep mine handy).
If you live here and are intolerant your life will be sheer Hell. Everything would offend you. Glen Beck moved to some part of Teabagistan because he was SO intolerant people started to take offense at him constantly being offended and he became ostracized. That says a lot. Being intolerant is nearly an anathema here. Blatant bigotry is about the only way short of shoving people on the subway to get any reaction from a New Yorker.
We hate jerks. Wanna see something really funny? If you happen to be there when Bill O’Riley is at the Yankee game when they put him on the big screen he gets a chorus of hateful boos and cat calls. This is because he is intolerant. He’s also from Long Island, a place where almost every single celebrity is an embarrassing jerk. Rosie O’Donnell, Sean Hannity, Lindsay Lohan, that Nancy Grace looking fake psychic who calls herself a medium despite being an extra large on her thinnest day, the list of offensive Long Islanders goes on and on. There are also a bunch of talentless Baldwin’s embarrassing their only talented family member, Alec. Like Jerky Steven Baldwin who I would run into every time I went to my pot guy for like 3 years. He would just keep lording over us that he was going to be a rich actor like Alec. I was in no way shocked when he embezzled money from his charity and later tried to get people to send him money so he could be a freaky self-ordained Creflo Dollar sort of minister. It’s like a little chunk of Florida somehow migrated to our beautiful terminal moraine.
I think I speak for most of my friends and neighbors here when I say I think we benefit from the diversity. Some of my closest friends simply aren’t white or necessarily straight. They don’t come with any label but ‘friend’.
One of the things that enables this is a pretty damn good police force. Possibly the nations best. I was in no way surprised that a compassionate NYPD beat cop was moved to buy shoes and socks for a freezing homeless man. This story was oinly big news because the tourists who saw it never had seen that sort of Police behavior before. While not commonplace, its far from unheard of either.Sure there are definitely some awful policies like “Stop and Frisk” but they will also toss you in jail if you commit a Hate Crime In New Orleans their poorly regarded police force all fled the Unknown in the face of Hurricane Katrina.
Not one New York City Cop hesitated to run towards near certain death when we were attacked that Tuesday morning in 2001. This is a big part of why new Yorker’s are more tolerant. They know that guilty people will likely be convicted, that the wheels of justice are
more proof that NYC has America’s best police force
somewhat more well oiled than in most other cities. Just look at Los Angeles. They police hate the citizens and the citizens hate the police. Roughly every 10 years a major anti-police riot erupts due to lack of professional policing.
So what’s my peeve? Well it’s Intolerant and ignorant people who live on the outskirts of New York and other parts of America where a major metropolis is too far away to exert any cultural influence. While there are still plenty of reasonable exurbanites the intolerant ones have the biggest mouths. They are all over Social Media. They have no agenda, they simply are intolerant. So intolerant and frightened that I have gotten used to being labeled gay simply because I endorse the right for everyone to do whatever they want in a darkened room with a willing partner. Hey, it’s not my thing but I will defend this right to the end. Not because I am gay, which I am not, but because I just HATE small minded people. Unreasonable fears that being gay or smoking weed or whatever is somehow a contagious and dangerous plague and they are destined to be accosted by gay folk who are intolerant. Aside from the self despising Log Cabin Republicans by and large gay people are pretty reasonable. New York doesn’t generate gay people, nature does that. It merely attracts people who have been discriminated against because it’s known as a tolerant place. After being discriminated against most people tend to hate and avoid becoming intolerant themselves.
My year in Florida was a real eye opener. I couldn’t believe the lack of worldliness displayed. Cops drinking in uniform and jumping into their squad cars obviously over the limit was a common sight. No one looked twice. Anyone in New York would have been outraged and reported this behavior.Think about it. This is an armed cop in uniform. What if something goes down in America’s second most violent city? Like THAT cop will have the judgment to do his job? Sure he may be off duty but he’s obviously a cop and your go to guy if something happens while he’s in your establishment. Unlike violent crime on the streets the cop can’t simply ignore it or wait a half hour to show up. He’s right there when it happens. How can someone so dumb as to not so much as keep a polo shirt in the squad car when they head out boozing so as not to disgrace the uniform even GET the job of cop? This is one thing that should NOT be tolerated. It shows how little regard the local authorities have for the public. How George Zimmerman managed to not get hired as a cop is actually a shock.
Maybe it’s because aside from being stupid he would have set a bad example by actually attempting to do his job? He would have sucked at it but thats the norm in Orlando and Sanford anyway. I am not praising this murderer, I am hoping for justice for Trayvon Martin. I am just saying the guy became a self appointed cop for free and did it with misguided zeal. Imagine where some education, police training and tolerance would have taken him. Right now the lack of those things may well get him slipped the Needle Of Justice in Florida, which is in a sick competition with Texas to have the most executions, worst cops, most insane gun laws and highest teen pregnancy rates in America
Drink in uniform in New York your off the Force. Aside from letting Casey Anthony walk, the unprofessional police force is as likely to frame an innocent guy as they are to catch a guilty one. If they are a minority their chances of beating the system, no matter how innocent is remote.
Everyone is packing heat all the time. Because the Orlando Police Department as well as the PD in neighboring Sanford are more a threat to the average citizen, through poor response time and their “fuck it” attitude, I can’t really argue. #1 in abandoned children and nestled between Camden, NJ and Flint, Michigan as the 2nd most violent city in America, I guess it makes sense. Why have all those overpaid government workers when you can have do it yourself law enforcement with laws like “Stand Your Ground”. Another way to say stand your ground would be “No witness, no murder.”
Then there are people walking around with tattoos from Leviticus condemning homosexuality. 2 verses later it says tattoos are a mortal sin. Selective readingof the Bible and selective reading of the Constitution and Bible are backed up by schools filled with semi qualified core of teachers and a mass of permanent subs don’t really inspire the best learning and the first casualty is the Analytical Skills we need to truly understand the world. For example- 9 hours to maybe get a chance to vote? THAT’S what you get as an American Citizen? My hurricane ravaged city had all votes counted by 2 am. This despite a complete lack of basic utilities like electricity. Somehow Florida managed to finish just about a week ago. Is there any doubt that the small minded governor and his inhuman Cylon supporters are more concerned that the presidential election is going to be decided by a guy THEY chose beforehand….again. The reason again is Intolerance. Fear of ex Republicans Cubans as well as moderate thinking voters from the Caribbean, Mexico and pretty much anywhere else where people fulfilled their dream of being one of the best, an American.
Enter the Tea Party and their insipid poison. Hateful policies that included idiocy so bad that Christian Slater, who must have done 20 feature films, was not recognized even with all his ID. This is willful ignorance. Recently Slater received word his ballot was rejected. It’s in no way a coincidence that the Board of Elections, whose complex ballots, which allegedly take 45 minutes to certify rejected the ballot because the idiot reading it mistook his signature as reading “Christiana DiSilva”. Not disgusted yet? Read on.
The militant and completely psychotic Anti Choice movement, despite overt violent acts and accosting people all day on the street are never subject to police supervision. This to me is because the already undereducated person whose intellect has been severely inhibited due to substandard schools. This is a great payback for the Republicans who destroyed their states public school system. The real intent was republicans hate to give anything away for free when there’s ANY chance of charging for it. This combined with Governor Rick Scott’s lies and insane social policies. Theres a REASON social studies textbooks are boring, social studies is the only subject most are required to take all 4 years of High School. It’s also the only class where you develop critical and analytical skills. Killing and rewriting history with preposterous concepts like re-branding the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression.
People in Florida may have gotten screwed by their education system, but they aren’t stupid and they aren’t all a bunch of racist Yay-hoos distilling moonshine deep in the swamp. Those people do exist but if they are in any way political they usually default to Ron paul, probably because they hate themselves. Making Ron Paul president would be like having an entire nation commit suicide by cop, but that’s another post. Most Floridians are newly minted Democrats willing to stand in line for 8-10 hours to get a chance to vote.
Why? Because tolerance is spreading. The granting of rights to the LGBT community are not an offensive idea to most Americans. People have seen that this is no threat to any other kind of marriage. The Tea Bagger talking points ring hollow. Their lies and misinformation could only be maintained for so long. The truth confronted people every day. Truths like that life was alittle worse every one of those miserable 8 years when future failed presidential candidate and then Governor Jeb Bush threw their votes away and made his dimwitted brother president despite being soundly defeated. The wars and the recession that has been a hallmark of both George H.W. Bush and the completely incompetent George W Bush administrations didn’t help the world to be a better place. Later it was proven that no invasions were EVER necessary. It was stoking the flames of intolerance that ignited by the preventable 9-11 Attacks.
History shows us that successive generations are progressively more reasonable. Still, every once in a while it skips a generation and we retrograde into stupidity for a time. This time it was the aptly named “Me generation” now in their 60’s that just didn’t get it. The same people who were too selfish to serve their country in what they called an Immoral War were the same ones who showed up dressed as 18th Century Patriots bitching that they are the last generation to deserve Medicare. They conveniently changed their positions on war when they passed out of military age. They lost all compassion as they luxuriated in the prosperity they inherited and have all but destroyed.
The good news- These people are old and their sick ideas will die with them.