{"id":35914,"date":"2013-04-22T04:45:09","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T09:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35914"},"modified":"2013-04-21T07:54:33","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T12:54:33","slug":"its-the-people-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=35914","title":{"rendered":"It’s The People, Stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed me a link to this piece<\/a>, by Richard Fernandez of\u00a0Belmont Club<\/em> in re not so much the police response to the Boston Marathon bombing, but our newfound cultural non-response to all sorts of violent threats:<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing, natch – but here’s the money quote;<\/p>\n

We focus on things because it is prohibited to focus on people. The TSA looks for things \u2014 scissors, liquids, shoes, etc \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t stop the underwear bomber. People now want to blame \u201caccess to guns\u201d for the Tsarnaevs. But it would be uncouth to ask about what they heard from their imam or their teachers.<\/p>\n

This is in contrast to the \u201cEl Al\u201d system of screening. They look at the man first. \u201cWho are you?\u201d is in many ways more important than \u201cHow long are your scissors?\u201d But since we can\u2019t inquire into the man, might as well look into the scissors.<\/p>\n

As time passes, more and more acquaintances will come forward saying, \u201cWell, come to think of it he did say this and that and this. \u2026\u201d It will transpire that many knew. Many suspected.<\/p>\n

But no one came forward. Why not? Because the system doesn\u2019t do things. It doesn\u2019t do people. It doesn\u2019t do mental strife. But the system has really nifty swords. Armored vehicles, dogs, drones, thermal scanners, .50 cal sniper rifles. Heck, there might even be a minigun or two out in Watertown. Betcha they work real good too. Pity they might have to be used in those neighborhoods.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s easier to clean up messes afterwards (and creates more unionized public works jobs!) than to risk the lawsuits involved in getting it right in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed me a link to this piece, by Richard Fernandez of\u00a0Belmont Club in re not so much the police response to the Boston Marathon bombing, but our newfound cultural non-response to all sorts of violent threats: Read the whole thing, natch – but here’s the money quote; We focus on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-tyranny","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35916,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35914\/revisions\/35916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}