Thursday, April 21, 2011

Yet another Voltaire moment.

You pissed off yet today?  No?  Then stop reading.  You won't remain that way for long.

Via Radley Balko, we learn of two more cases of a disgusting trend that is becoming more and more common:  the State not only protecting its enforcement thugs from anything resembling accountability (this now being so common it's passe), but rewarding them with trophies, over the dead bodies of those they "protect and serve" to death.

No, I'm not making this shit up.  Yes, nobody would believe it if it weren't true.  But here ya go:

Cop shoots, kills unarmed Pace University student. Months later, he gets the police union’s “Cop of the Year” award.

and

Two Las Vegas police officers who shot and killed Erik Scott in the controversial Costco shooting last year have received honors in a national officer of the year award.

In that latter case, how about this zinger?

“I don’t see it as a controversial shooting,” he said about the Costco shooting. “What potentially could have been a bad situation they brought to an end with no citizens being hurt.


"no citizens being hurt".  Roll that thought around in your mind for a little bit.  If you weren't pissed off yet, betcha are now. (Told ya.)

And so we arrive at today's Voltaire moment.  The relevant quote is "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities," but we're just so past that now, apparently.

Atrocities are happening now, every day, against ordinary people like you and me.  (Yes, many of them are a lot more "just like you and me" than you may know.  Erik Scott, as just one of hundreds of examples, only got reclassified as a "non-citizen" when he became a non-human, on account of being shot to death for...oh, who the hell knows what the reason is today?  As Pete at WSRA says, "Do you understand yet?"

And so, perhaps the Voltaire quote needs to be updated:

Those who want you to believe absurdities, have already committed the atrocities.

For a well-adjusted human being, that should probably produce an instant Condition Orange situation.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A human being is always justified in using whatever force necessary for self-defense, against any attacker or assailant, uniformed or not.

AP