Let’s cut the crap in this country—or not

 

The Associated Press is reporting that “The U.S. Justice Department and Seattle officials asked a judge Tuesday to end most federal oversight of the city's police department, saying its sustained, decade-long reform efforts are a model for other cities whose law enforcement agencies face federal civil rights investigations.”

Well, that must be the case because unlike in years past you never see police patrolling downtown anymore like you used to, especially anywhere near the “infamous” Third-and-Pine intersection, which suggests police are not now in the business of “crime prevention” where they might get into “trouble,” but “post-crime reaction.” But while crime went up from 2021 to 2022, this is a bit chicken-little handwringing because violent crime going “up” from 729 to 736 per 100,000 is next door to not going up at all, despite the fact that police are mostly invisible these days, especially in downtown Seattle where small businesses complain about “crime” when Amazon is their real problem.

Despite all the whining by police and right-wing media, I don’t get the impression that police oversight is a major concern of the city, if the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight location where I work is any indication; undisturbed mail stuck under the door for weeks includes postcards from some anonymous individual whose missives would be ignored anyways because of lack of relevance:

 

 

I admit the “G.F.Y” threw me for a second or two; the postcards are addressed to the current administrator, who the sender assumes, because he has a Muslim-sounding name, must be an anti-Semite from a “shithole” Middle East country.  Obviously the sender is trying to be clever by half by using the French curse term “La Putain,” which could mean “the whore,” but “putain” is in fact commonly used by the French to express the term “fuck” as in “fuck that” or “that’s fucking great”—as actor Jean Dujardin used it during his Oscar acceptance speech. Not "clever" at all, especially since this person seems to be using this term as his or her own moniker.

It thus wouldn’t “shock” me that something like a mass shooting in this city (god forbid) could occur, although it wouldn’t be the first one. The International District (i.e. “Chinatown”) is usually regarded in the usual “model minority” way, but it was the scene of the worst mass shooting in not just Seattle history, but that of the state of Washington. 13 people were killed in the Wah Mee gambling club shooting in 1983.

Members of the community complained that the incident “stereotyped” it as a haven of organized crime gangs (and who knows, there may be one or two today), but let's not be hypocrites about this. The reality of the commentary about the district even then centered around the fact that the stereotype that Asians were more “civil” and law-abiding than other groups was turned on its head, especially in the media, which descended on the previously un-newsworthy district like vultures; this was certainly one way for a community that had isolated itself from the rest of the city to get “attention.”

Of course that is not the only way for the ignored and unknown to get “attention.” Or wait, maybe it is. The shooting in the christian Covenant School in Nashville has received a lot of that, especially the “confusion” about the gender of the shooter. An ABC News story today gave little “insight” into Audrey Hale, save that she was a good student and coworker and “artistic.” The only “question” was that she seemed to be “depressed” in some of her recent social media posts, in which she began referring to herself as a “he.”

This photo of Hale sure makes her look “female” to me…

 

…so it must have been taken at a time when she wasn’t having what has been reported as an “emotional disorder.” Just because someone is now being called “transgender” doesn’t mean they just “act like a man” and go out on a shooting rampage. Many lesbians who identify themselves as the “butch” partner in a relationship take on the “male” role, so why are we are arguing about someone being “assigned” a gender at birth? Why is this even an issue? Because certain "woke" people want to “confuse” the question of responsibility? Just because a woman puts on a man's clothes doesn’t mean she has suddenly become a man. 

How about this: someone hates being a woman so much that in order to “prove” that “she” is a “he” the mentally unbalanced individual targets a Christian school because as a former student she/he viewed the school as a prime candidate for being responsible for this  confusion,” being that it taught “traditional” values. We won't know for "certain" until police release the contents of Hale's alleged "manifesto."

OK, so we know that Republicans are not going to do anything, and why should they start now? They'd prefer Congress take a minute of silence for the tornado victims in blood-red Mississippi, where climate change denial and racial intolerance have coalesced. There have been 90 mass shootings already this year, an average of one a day. People are going to forget about this incident in a week, just like they probably don’t remember any of the others that happened two weeks ago; there are just too many to remember, unless there was something “weird” about it or a documentary was made about it, like the Columbine school shooting.

Can you name the worst mass shooter in U.S. history?  Sorry, times up. Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas shooter. Oh yes, in the last year Congress passed—what was it?—the “Safer Communities Act”? Wasn’t it supposed to make children “safer” from incidents just like the Nashville shooting? Yeah, it required more stringent background checks for people under 21 trying to buy firearms, but not for those over 21, like Hale.

The bigger question is why if she was under care for an “emotional disorder,” how was she able to legally purchased seven weapons? We are told that there are a few states where merely having a mental disorder is not a reason for denying someone the ability to purchase a gun. The answer is that laws and regulations prohibiting the sale of guns to mentally-ill people are a patchwork and loosely enforced at best. 

Hale was diagnosed with and receiving “treatment” for that undisclosed “emotional disorder,” but she wasn’t on any list; a friend of Hale contacted Nashville police about her fears of what Hale was up to after she posted on social media that “something bad” was about to happen; the friend noted that her warning was not taken with any “urgency” by police.

While the American Psychiatric Association tells us that only one percent of mass shooters have a “mental disorder,” so those with mental disabilities should not be stereotyped as being “dangerous.” This is true, but then again, what “sane” person goes out on such shooting rampages unless there is something seriously amiss mentally or emotionally?

And why after all this time did Hale still hold a grudge against the school? She was 28 years old, and Covenant only served children from pre-school to the sixth grade. The school’s website claims it is a safe, healthy environment that lets “children be children.” It is quite “exclusive” and expensive, over $16,000-a-pop--and that doesn't include costs for books and extracurricular activities; this suggests that Hale came from a background of privilege, which makes her actions even more disturbing. According to USA Today, it has 116 students, and the demographic breakdown by percentage (3.4 percent minority) suggests there are three black students and one Asian/Pacific Islander student. He must be the “one” here:

 

It is certainly possible that if she was “confused” about who she was at the time, Hale might have felt more "lonely" than "special" like this kid at certain times. But there is doubt, since the people who knew her saw potential "symptoms" only recently. We'll have to wait for that manifesto to find out why she wanted to do something "bad."

This country is so full of contradictions and “confusion” that it doesn’t know what to do but wring its hands, indulge in denial or “rationalize” the irrational. You want to cut the crap now and admit that there is something wrong with the way we handle "crisis"? Nah, that’s for people with too much time on their hands.