Bad Apples

Frankly, I'm tired of the "one bad apple" rationalizations that people come up with regarding cops that kill unarmed, and sometimes already restrained, people. In the most recent murder of a man who was falsely accused of forgery, it's not just the cop who had his knee on George Floyd's neck. He was also being restrained by two other officers while a fourth stood by. If it's "one bad apple", didn't any of the supposed "good apples" think to say "Hey bro, back off, he's cuffed and face down on the ground, he's not going anywhere, ease off"? Apparently not.

And let's take a minute to look at this whole "face down, handcuffed behind the back" default arrest position. It's probably been going on forever, but I first noticed it during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. Once the police decided to break up the protesters' encampments and arrest the participants, peaceful, nonresistant protesters were uniformly forced face down on the ground with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Another issue is the eagerness with which police officers draw their weapons in situations that are not violent.  How many times have we seen militarized police departments pointing their rifles at protesters who are doing nothing more violent than yelling? I remember working for the New York City Police Department pistol license division one summer and being told that you never point a gun at someone unless you are prepared to kill them.

It seems like the entire rationale behind an officer's actions is "the safety of the officer". I'm all for "the safety of the officer". My younger brother and father were both career police officers, and thankful that they always made it home in one piece. But in so many cases a cop who shot someone merely feared that he was in danger, reacting in a way, that resulted in an innocent person being killed. The mission of individual police officers isn't "To Protect and Serve"...not to protect and serve the public anyway, but to protect themselves at the expense of anyone who they fear is dangerous. The hell with any protection for people who get between them and their fear.

And let's further dispense with the "one bad apple" viewpoint. Not only do cops cover for one another, but the whole system allows these abuses. The killer cop in Minneapolis had 17 complaints against him for excessive force, including at least one for shooting an unarmed civilian. Police unions aggressively defend their members despite egregiously violent actions. Dismissed officers are hired by other police departments.

And lest we think that this isn't racism, Tamir Rice, at 12 years old, was shot and killed without warning while playing with a toy gun, Philanro Castile was shot in front of his girlfriend, even after informing the officer that killed him that he had a permit to carry a weapon and where that weapon was. Yet hundreds of gun carrying protesters rampage through state capitols and on streets without a peep from the police.

The axiom about bad apples, is not "There's only a few bad apples, so everything is fine since most of the apples are good" - the saying is that "One bad apple  spoils the whole bunch" (similar to the biblical saying that "a little leaven leavens the whole lump"). By tolerating the presence of these so-called bad apples, the good apples, if they were ever there, turn bad.

Essential Employees - Your Boss Doesn't REALLY Give a Shit if You Get Sick (as long as you show up for work)

Let's take a little break from the rioting and looting and police brutality and take a look at the other crisis that some people think is over: Covid-19. In particular, the issue of "essential" employees and the question of whether their employees give a shit about them.

Retail establishments that have been deemed essential and therefore remained open, have taken a variety of approaches to safety and hygiene. Some have required masks, and sometime also gloves, for customers to enter, others have only required employees to wear masks, others just some employees.  In some instances though, the measures are merely PR, and do nothing to actually protect employees or customers.

Yesterday I made a comment about a local store that supposedly requires its employees to wear masks (but not third party vendors or customers), but whose employees do not wear the masks properly (noses exposed, taking them off to have conversations etc) thus negating any real safety or public health benefit. I was vociferously taken to task for this comment (not the first time I have publicized this) which was interpreted as criticizing and judging the employees of this store. However, my criticism was and is targeted at the ownership and management of this company.

Most of my criticism is merely an offshoot of my observation over the years that this company, despite any protestations to the contrary, really doesn't care about their employees, other than as a means to generate profits. I can go on and on with examples, but in this specific instance, their actions indicate that the company doesn't really care about the health and safety of their employees.

Starting with employees' mask wearing, this requirement sounds like a good idea, but for the wearing of a mask to be effective to any degree, it needs to be done properly. Taking it off regularly, or wearing it without covering both the nose and mouth is about as effective as a bow tie. I very much understand that wearing a mask for a full shift is uncomfortable, but if it's important enough to require, then it's important enough for management to ensure that the employees are complying. Since management isn't following up, it's obvious that they don't think it's important and the mask requirement is nothing more than a public relations stunt that is burdening the employees without actually accomplishing anything. Ergo, they don't really care.

This company has been notorious for failing to address people's behavior when that behavior poses no legal liability. Vendors and consultants make remarks that would get an employee fired for sexual harassment or racism are tolerated because there is no legal liability for their actions. Despite all employees being requited to wear masks, third party vendors are not. This makes no sense. Some of these merchandisers and salesmen are in the store as much as some employees, but somehow they pose no public safety risk. Does that make sense?

Let's not neglect customers. Like most retail establishments, this company reliably sides with customers in any dispute with employees. Customers who complain about mask wearing, who complain about no mask wearing, who rant about shortages and purchase limits. This would be the time for ownership (they say that they are employee owned, but that is an illusion) to step up and defend their employees against aggressively complaining customers. But they won't. They won't require customers to mask up because they don't want to offend anyone, and they take no action to protect their employees from customers who think that being a customer requires employees to be subservient.

These employees are working under extreme stress, risking their health, and laboring day after day, week after week like it was the day before a major holiday; except those busy times slow down, there is no seeming end to this.

But B&R Stores (yeah, that's who I'm specifically talking about) gets to act like they care about the well-being of their employees, but they seemingly don't care enough to make sure that they are protected.


[Full disclosure - I was fired from B&R Stores around 5 years ago]

A Little Nuance When It Comes to God Sparing You From Covid-19

Yesterday I posted a remark on Facebook about how someone claiming that "God got this" in regard to the virus might find 60,000 people who disagreed but couldn't because they were dead.

That was a little harsh, and definitely without nuance.

A local legislator who is an atheist (although he dislikes the term itself) made this statement a few years ago:

"If someone's religion helps them get through the night, who am I, who am I to judge them?" This same man is very impatient when it comes to his fellow lawmakers attempting to insert their religious views into our state's laws.

In general, I agree.

Even though I don't subscribe to any particular religion, or subject myself to the whims of any particular god, I have no issue with people who do adhere to a religion and/or a god. I have no problem with others praying, whether it be the thanks/praise variety or intercession/supplication. Although with the latter, I suspect that a person who honestly logged all of their prayer requests and compared them to the specific, concrete results, they would find that the results were no greater than what one would expect from applying oneself to a problem, or even by random chance. However, I don't know this...but neither do the believers really know that divine intervention is happening. This is my opinion and I don't worry too much about how other people view it.

What I do object to, other than government trying to impose one set of religious beliefs on us all, is public proclamations of how, as a result of prayer, or some other adherence to a religious act, is going to cause God to protect someone (or has protected someone) from some catastrophe, most recently, Covid-19.  Now this might not seem too controversial, or rise to the level of irritation or annoyance, but the implication in assuming that you have some special protection is that all those who didn't make it, specifically these days to those who died from Covid-19, somehow didn't rate God's intervention, or didn't pray, or weren't true Christians [or you can substitute any other religion in here - it's just that the Christians seem like the most vocal.

Of course I understand that everyone dies, and that there are many, many people who have their lives cut short by war, disease, famine or accidents even. Why God allows this is one of the ongoing  problems that theologians have wrestled with for centuries, perhaps millennia. I'll let the theologians continue to grapple with it. Since I don't believe that there is a deity who intervenes in such a way to protect people who pray or obey his rules from harm, it's not a philosophical problem for me.

But to claim that you can ignore health safety guidelines and directives because "God got this" or "God is in control" either ignores the fact that despite God "having it" and being in control, around 60,000 in the United States alone have died from this disease just since the beginning of this year, or that you, by dint of your special relationship with the almighty, are somehow better than all those who God evidently didn't "have it" for. Do you really think that none of those 60,000 prayed? Or there families? Pretty arrogant, I'd say.

In my back and forth with a couple of ignore-the-guidelines people, one claimed that "God must have wanted to call them Home" and another questioned whether many of the 60,000 dead really believed that "God got it".

So, pray if you want to, convince yourself it will be effective in protecting you if you want to, quote Bible verses about how God takes care of you if you want to, but consider how you come across when 60,000 Americans, most of whom did pray, died, or when you assume that all those deaths are somehow part of your god's plan, but you're special enough to be spared.