Been thinking about a few recent events, among them: the dog shooting in Tennessee, the animosity shown by our local law towards skateboarders, a new ordinance saying that if you enclose your garage, you must build another one … it got me to wondering.
Some folks I talk to say that the law enforcement community can’t help but have a hostile attitude; that the crazies they deal with affect their emotional health so that they distrust everybody.
I’m beginning to think that the crazies are affecting all of us, not just our police.
No, I’m not talking about the mentally ill, either.
I noticed when I worked for the City that a very small percentage of the citizenry was the only segment communicating with elected officials. Of course it was the lady complaining of “ants coming from my neighbor’s yard” or the guy with “a horrible crack in my curb, please pull all this curb out and re-pour it”. They are the ones driving public policy. The problem is, most of us don’t care about ants or curbs. Yet we suffer the stupid ordinances which result from the Ant Lady’s whining.
Here’s my question for ya’ll: What about Ninety’s Tiny Population Percentage Theory? Am I correct or am I just paranoid?
The Tiny Population that controls things is not made up of “crazies”. It is the population made up of the Moneyed Elite. [sup]Of course, some of them may be crazy.[/sup]
I worked for the city engineer of a small city here in Michigan and the crazies really did seem to have a disproportionate share of agenda setting. Since I did traffic, that’s where my experience was. It wasn’t the monied elite setting the agenda at all. It was the crazies who thought that a few hundred cars a day was big city traffic, and that the speed of a speeder could be accurately judged by someone laying in bed. That is neither a joke nor an exaggeration (sp?). I don’t recall a single traffic decision in my three years there that could be considered benificial to the monied elite–indeed, the contrary was probably true. Most of the decisions would have been harmful to the business community if they had any effect at all.
We in the engineering department, while often overwhelmed by the stupidity and general insaneness of most people who had traffic issues, we recognized that they were the crazies and tried to do the right thing. The same can’t be said for the politicians. Perhaps politicians and police tend to have similarly weak minds.
There have been quite a few books written on exactly this subject (the psychology of fear) pointing out that media attention displaces reasonable caution from mundane, boring things that present much greater actual risks.
Police breaking into wrong houses or shooting family pets during traffic stops waaayy overshadow the things that actually kill or damage most of us: falls at home, careless or aggressive driving, pulling the whole array of stupid shortcuts that are so mundane we discount the danger. Very non-sexy and uninteresting, unless they verge into “Darwin Awards” extremes.
So, yes, I’d wager many of us get crazy over remote exceptions, because the real risks are so mundane.
stuyguy, our mayor & board of alderment recently passed an ordinance which says that if your home has an existing attached garage, and you enclose that garage, then you must build yourself another garage. That’s so people won’t have to look at your cars. On account of they are such hideous things to gaze upon, I reckon.
Up the road, further into the Wilds of Suburbia, our neighboring city has an ordinance which dictates which trees you may or may not cut. On your own property.
The OP has a point.
One thing that has always bugged me in the workplace, for example, is that the cranks are allowed to drive everything. By and large, I’m a good citizen, but the whiners and complainers are so persistent with their pleas to management, that they’re usually given their way. There seems to be an unwritten understanding that, “that’s how they are”. On the other hand, if I was to continually mouth off, and demand my way, somebody would say, “What’s gotten into Forbin?”.
[sup]Of course, some of them may be crazy.[/sup]