Given that there’s lots of hot hot taserin’ action in the news these days, I thought I’d fire up the four brain cells I have left and attempt a rant on the subject.
When I was a kid growing up in Ottawa, I lived next door to the Chief of Police. I wasn’t scared of cops. I had no reason to be. The man next door was a wonderful guy who had a wonderful wife and four redheaded kids who were ‘lively and intelligent youngsters’ (full marks if you get the reference). Over the last 40 years, a number of social changes have occurred which have degraded our ability as a culture to convey moral intelligence to our children, so I no longer have the warm fuzzies about cops that I did when I was eight.
Like what kinds of societal changes? Smaller family sizes, so kids don’t get the “scarce resources and you’d feckin’ better share and your big brother will pound the shit out of you if you do x” lecture. Broken families so that more children spend less time with adults who are related to them and might have some interest in conveying subtle information like how to change oil, go fishing, keep a clean home or behave properly. The women (and some single dads) who are left are tired and whiny. Byeeootiful, a substantial number of children raised by tired and whiny people!! whoo hoo. This is NOT blame the victim, if I’d had to raise Keith and Kate on my own the three of us would all be considerably more loony than we are.
What else? Looser associations between neighbours so that adults are more likely to believe their lying little swine of children than the nosy parker next door reporting on their animal torturing activities. Kids being locked in a room with a phosphor dot stranger six hours a day instead of getting in trouble outside with pipe bombs and pick up baseball games, like Murphy intended. Unbelievable quantities of brain altering substances, some legit and some not, available before puberty for substantial portions of the school aged population, and fewer adults to hit the baloney alarm when the exposure occurs. Kids hitting puberty up to two years faster than when I was a kid. Holy crap, that makes a difference! And day in, day out, the unrelenting message of thin, rich, irresponsible, mouthy, stupid, greedy, oversexed neediness that is the openly stated point or winking subtext of every goddamned commercial and print ad and most of the content in most of the broadcasts all the time and everywhere.
I don’t think I am alone in thinking this. It isn’t just that our culture is rude AND people believe in spooks and angels, or that the moon landings didn’t happen. I’m not going to hop up and down and say that things are worse now in every respect, but it isn’t just the KIDS that have had less of a fair shake being taught moral responsibility, personal pride and self-control. Most of the cops now on the street in Canada are younger than I am. So I’m thinking there are a lot of adults running around now who are having ‘control issues’ too. Or have no feckin respect for other people.
For the cops, who grew up in this toxic bullshit along with the rest of us and are not inclined by the nature of their jobs to have any high opinion of homo sap, there are a couple of wonderful new wrinkles. Like, for instance, a substantial number of the people they get to deal with are DISEASED. And, if they get any on them…. contagious. Given a choice between massaging somebody’s skull with a nightstick and possibly getting blood on you, and tasering some poor sucker, what would YOU do? Ah, no contest.
So don’t be too surprised that cops are having a field day with the completely safe tasers (or so they would have me believe). After all, if you’re healthy, a tasering can’t permanently hurt you. It sure gives the cops a healthy laugh to watch you writhe on the ground like a worm.
Further reading:
Taser International wants to be part of the solution.
Santa wants to give all the good cops a taser.
Consumer tasers. At $1000 a pop, I’m not expecting one for Xmas.
