Donald Trump has been
compared to many people, from Nigel Farage to Rupert Murdoch to Fr. Coughlin. German polymath, controversialist and celebrity Peter Sloterdijk, in
a New Yorker profile, proposes an interesting metaphor:
You know, Hegel in his time was convinced that the state in the form of the rule of law had not yet arrived in the new world. He thought that the individual - private, virtuous - had to anticipate the state. You see this in American Westerns, where the good sheriff has to imagine the not-yet-existent state in his own private morality. But Trump is a degenerate sheriff. He acts as if he doesn't care if the state comes into being or not, and mocks the upright townsfolk. What makes Trump dangerous is that he exposes parts of liberal democracies that were only shadowily visible up until now. In democracies, there is always an oligarchic element, but Trump made it extremely, comically visible.
.. and Sloterdijk adds this nugget, which has the ring of truth:
He's an innovator when it comes to fear. Instead of waiting for the crisis to impose his decree, his decrees get him the emergencies he needs. The playground for madness is vast.
Among the latest playground hijinx: the President has voiced support for
arming some teachers.
A wise old sister used to say she had no problem with ordaining women in theory, but she'd hate to see any of the women she knows who want to be priests get ordained. Any teacher who'd volunteer for gun-slingin' duties is a teacher I surely don't want to see armed.
ReplyDeleteDouglas High had a trained and armed sheriff's deputy on site. He did what most rational people would do when an AR is popping off. He stayed in his foxhole. As I said elsewhere, where you have a single gunman you have a crime scene. When you have multiple gunmen returning fire, you have a war zone. You surely don't have Wayne LaPierre's hard target. And when the cops arrive and see all that shooting, who do they shoot at?
In NRA-Trump theory, the highly-trained good guy gunfighters probably put on their POLICE jackets. (Why shouldn't teachers have jackets that say POLICE? Everyone else who thinks he has authority wears one these days, even if the only danger he faces is from an undocumented roofer who just dropped off his kids at school.) While the POLICE-for-the-nonce are dressing for combat, that guy with the AR-15 will be taking out several more students.
But the NRA gets what it wants: The school board that can't afford new books for all of its schools has to buy a lot of weapons. Or do they want teachers to pay for their guns along with the notebooks, pencils and paper they have to buy for their students?
Basic Combat Training for the Army takes 11 weeks. The average time to get through police academy is around 20 weeks. A newly minted officer is usually paired with a more experienced cop for awhile. So Trump is for giving a little extra pay to a teacher who might have been in the military at some point, to defend against an active shooter? You can pick up a volleyball coach for a little extra pay, but as Tom pointed out, even a trained sheriff's deputy froze when it came right down to it.
ReplyDeleteFrom this article from Vox: "Multiple simulations have demonstrated that most people, if placed in an active shooter situation while armed, will not be able to stop the situation, and may in fact do little more than get themselves killed in the process....The fundamental problem is that mass shootings are traumatizing, terrifying events. Without potentially dozens or even hundreds of hours in training, most people are not going to be able to control their emotions and survey the scene in time to quickly and properly respond."
Yes, well. They get three days of training.
DeleteJim, from the New Yorker article you linked: "You see this in American Westerns, where the good sheriff has to imagine the not-yet-existent state in his own private morality." Makes me think of Gary Cooper in High Noon, which we watched a few weeks ago. Trump reminds me of the feckless townspeople in that movie.
ReplyDeleteKatherine - yes, I'm sure Cooper's character is the quintessential sheriff who's too good for the town he serves. Sort of the anti-Trump.
DeleteI don't know if you've ever seen The Gunfighter, with Gregory Peck as Jimmy Ringo? The town in that film had a virtuous sheriff, too.
I am sure there have been many Westerns with degenerate sheriffs, but the only one that comes to mind right now is Silverado, which was made after the golden age of Westerns (1985). Brian Dennehy did a great job in the role.
This is not a good day to take my blood pressure.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that a Skool Bored would try to skimp on paying for trained armed officers and just give that duty to teachers as if it were any other extra curricular activity gig--year book advisor, volleyball coach, lunchroom supervisor, armed guard--is truly astounding.
Kids in the tutoring center today were saying they would be happy to be designated armed protectors of their classmates to help the teachers. Most of these kids are the last ones you'd want to volunteer for protection duty.
The distraction from studies and learning is pretty high right now, and a lot of wild talk from our prez encouraging vigilantism is concerning, especially after he totally cut off a school administrator trying to push for more shooter drills (something our college has yet to implement).
I have no doubt there are teachers and kids packing heat despite campus rules against it, and I am certainly not sleeping better for it.
I will be glad when my tutoring contract is up in May, and I can retire for good. Then if Elon Musk wants to send me to Mars, I'll be happy to go.
But only if I get to go alone.
Jean, if the Skool Bored got around to hiring more security, they'd probably be like the night security people where I work. These are mostly retired guys working for an agency for some extra cash. One of them wears an oxygen cannula. Another can't get around without a cane. Not making fun of them. Just hoping nobody's life ever depends on them doing anything fast.
DeleteSecurity is usually trained to observe and report to local law enforcement. Learned some of the ins and outs of that doing a training program for hotel cops.
DeleteOur campus cops are older, ex cops, retired military. They are very good at diffusing situations, they patrol frequently, they make friends with students, and whenever I have had to help students with a medical emergency, they were there asap. I can't imagine these guys wimping out on a shooter, but I can also imagine the hesitation anyone with a sidearm might feel up against a crazy kid with an AR15. Especially on a cannula. Yeesh.
Since the title of this post is "The Degenerate Sheriff", I have another nominee for that office. I didn't think anyone could rival Trump for being feckless, reckless, and clueless, but this person is trying. Unfortunately he is the governor of my state. The stunt he pulled today was to tweet an invite to the NRA to have their convention in Omaha. This is after Dallas uninvited them, and the Omaha-based First National Bank severed their business relationship with the NRA. Way to go, Pistol Pete. Hard to beat him for sheer cynical political posturing and opportunism, not to mention bald-faced effrontery.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping this bites him in the posterior big time. Nebraska is a pretty Republican state, but approximately 43% of the people who voted in the last gubernatorial election voted for Rickett's Democratic opponent. He hasn't gained any friends since then, and has lost some support. The college students have this all over the social media. Ricketts is not supported by minorities, and has less support among women than men (his own wife is a Democrat, wonder if there are some tense dinner table conversations).
Time for a new sheriff in town. Sorry, had to vent a bit.
Vent freely. Maybe someone ought to start a thread: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who Has the Sleaziest Governor of All? Mine -- a.k.a. Lord Voldemort (columnist Frank Cerebino) and Bat Boy (pundit Charles P. Pierce) -- is trying hard, but I know the competition out there is tougher than the Nordic Combined.
ReplyDelete