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Minneapolis is My Hellhole

By on August 22, 2020 in Everything Else, Ruminations
PersephoneK shadow and Javier (her bike) at Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis looking to the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River. Photo credit @PersephoneK

I live in Minneapolis. Yes, that Minneapolis. Infamous Minneapolis. The city where four police officers killed George Floyd on May 25th, 2020, and set the world on fire, not at all in a good way. I was away from home when the horrific event happened, and during the subsequent nights of rioting, which touched the edges of my neighborhood, and has left scars in many corners of the city, especially along Lake Street, one of the main streets through South Minneapolis. Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue were the epicenter of the unrest. On that corner, the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct building was encircled, and eventually burned down, securing a victory by those hoping to cause mayhem and destroy the system. I’m sure you know the story, but do you know the town?

Iconic Uptown Theater. Photo credit @PersephoneK

My neighborhood is called Uptown. It is west of the epicenter in the 5th Precinct. Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue form the main crossroad of Uptown. Naturally, Prince, that Minnesotan Minnesotans will never stop reminding you was a Minnesotan, wrote a song called “Uptown” about my neighborhood. He was a true Minneapolis kid. And while I didn’t grow up in the neighborhood, or even in Minneapolis, I dreamed of living here since I was a student at the University of Minnesota in the ‘90’s and took a drive through Uptown and the nearby “Grand Rounds” around the lakes with some friends. I fell in love. It’s an eclectic area. Bohemians, poor college students, artists, vagabonds, lower, middle, upper class. We got ‘em all. Old brownstone apartment buildings share streets with multi-million-dollar mansions and everything in between. Its filled with restaurants that draw residents in from the suburbs, including yuppy foodies and just out of college dude-bros. Its one of the few Minneapolis neighborhoods that feels like I’m living in a more walkable city like New York or London. I moved here on the day of another infamous Minneapolis moment when the I35W bridge collapsed in 2007, and since then the neighborhood has changed. Its been a bit gentrified. The old, divey diners have given way to Apple stores and expensive condos and apartments that exceed the previously strict building height limits, blocking out the view of downtown from some of the more popular rooftop patios. Many residents hate these facts. I see them as normal signs of change, and progress. You get some good. You get some bad. I love the vibrancy all the new people and attractions bring to the area. I love that I can walk out my door and within a block have many great places to eat and explore without having to get in my car. At least that’s how it was pre-COVID and pre-riots. Both of these things have conspired to destroy my city.

Sunset on Lake of the Isles. Photo credit @PersephoneK

Minnehaha Falls. Photo credit @PersephoneK

Minneapolis means the “City of Lakes”. According to our Parks and Rec website, the city has “180 park properties… [including] 55 miles [of] parkways, 102 miles of Grand Rounds biking and walking paths, 22 lakes, 12 formal gardens … and receive[s] about 26 million visits annually.”  Twenty-two lakes within a city of just over 400,000 inhabitants and more than 57 million square miles is nothing to sneeze at. The city earned its nickname honestly. Within five blocks of my condo, I am on the shores of Bde Maka Ska (formerly Lake Calhoun) and on the numerous bike paths, where I ride hundreds of miles each summer. My bike’s name is Javier. I may have named my bike, but I’m not a hardcore cyclist. I don’t ride in the winter, but many Minneapolitans (our preferred label) do. Winters are cold and snowy here, and the city’s residents know how to have fun in all seasons. We don’t merely hibernate in front of a fire and wait for Spring. Every February, I look forward to the Lakes Loppet (pronounced Low-Pet) a weekend long festival with many events, mostly involving Nordic Skiing (some with dogs!), ice sculpting contests, and a party on the frozen water of Lake of the Isles. I don’t Nordic ski, but the Loppet is a lot of fun. Minneapolis, especially my neighborhood, is filled with events all year long. South and Southwest Minneapolis have an air of historical, romantic fantasy scattered all over the landscape, embedded in the names of places. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “The Song of Hiawatha” in 1855, and although he never visited Minnesota, his epic poem is set “among the Ojibwe and Dakota” who lived here before the white settlers expanded westward. We have Hiawatha Avenue, Minnehaha Falls, and their namesakes are immortalized in bronze at one of the city’s most visited parks. The falls in summer is one of my favorite bike destinations. I love the roar of the water, and watching all the people explore a quintessential Minnesota attraction. Nature in the City is what makes Minneapolis special. We have a lot of nature here, but it’s also a modern city with famous theaters and museums, large multinational corporations, skyscrapers, great restaurants, micro-breweries, and major sports teams.

Minneapolis City Deer. Photo credit @PersephoneK
Wind skiing across Bde Maka Ska (Lake Calhoun) in Winter. Photo credit @PersephoneK

Since I can remember, I’ve wanted to live in a city. A BIG city. I don’t understand why exactly. I remember coming to the Twin Cities, “the Cities” for short, with my family when I was really little. We lived about 40 miles north. I’m not sure if it was Minneapolis or Saint Paul. I only remember looking up at the towering skyscrapers all around us and being enamored. They called to me. I wanted to be amongst them. Perhaps its because I am an introvert who loves to talk to and watch people. Perhaps its because I never dreamed of having kids and a yard. Perhaps it’s just embedded in my DNA. All I know is I love living in the busy, noisy, diverse, sometimes frustrating, maddening organism that is a city. A few years after college I seriously considered moving to New York City. I had no plan. I just wanted to live in the biggest city America had and absorb. Life took me on another path, and eventually, I moved out of Minnesota, but then came back home again. There was never a question that if I returned home, I would live in Minnesota’s biggest city, the city where I attended the University of Minnesota (“The U”). I never seriously considered living anywhere but in Uptown. This is where I belong.  

George Floyd memorial, 38th and Chicago,
Minneapolis. Photo by PersephoneK

What happened to George Floyd was a travesty and a tragedy. What has been happening in Minneapolis since fills me with despair. I am not going to sugar coat this. The pandemic created kindling. The killing of George Floyd lit the city on fire. Since then the city has become instable. Disquieting rhetoric, increases in homelessness, and disturbing “upticks in crime”[*] are too common, especially compared to before.  Not everyone likes big cities. It was sometimes hard to convince people to visit me, even before May 2020, but now its even harder. Some of that is completely understandable. Some of it is inflated fear. Some of it is a million other factors, all of which make me sad. I hear what everyone is saying. “Minneapolis is a hellhole.” “They are getting what they deserve.” “I’m not spending another dime in that city again.” “All the cops should abandon the place.” I understand these sentiments, but they also break my heart, and make me angry. Minneapolis is not the hellhole you’ve been told it is. The truth is in the murky middle. The city is not what it once was, but its not yet descended into a warzone.  

Minnehaha Liquor on Lake Street. Photo credit @PersephoneK

People often ask me, “are you going to move out of Minneapolis?” or the less tactful simply say “You’re an idiot if you stay in that shithole.” I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t have a great response. I’ve certainly considered my options. What the future brings, I cannot say. What I do know is the day I move out of Uptown, and especially the day I move out of Minneapolis will be a sad day for me, if it comes to that. I also know that the more people tell me I’m crazy to stay, the more they tell me they actually hope the MPD abandons us to the predators taking advantage of the chaos and poor leadership, the more people tell me its my fault for voting in the current leadership (even though I voted for none of them), the more I want to dig in my heels and fight for my home. Minneapolis is not a monolith. Its not one organism. It is made up of over 400,000 individual souls with their own lives and dreams and circumstances.

Minneapolis from Hiawatha Avenue. Photo credit @PersephoneK

This isn’t about politics to me. This is about my home. I consider myself politically homeless. Not a single council person or the mayor represents my views in any serious way. I’m a minority in this town. My vote will be meaningless because even if the entire council is voted out (and that is possible), I can almost guarantee they’ll be replaced by people I disagree with strongly on important topics, but I still love my home. I love Minneapolis. Do I not matter to you who would say the city should just crumble and die? You who say the city is a cesspool and you hope we fail, who am I to you? Nothing? Just collateral damage to prove that progressive politics is a failure? Just an idiot who deserves what she gets?  Those of us who live here in spite of the politics matter too. We love the parks, and the lakes, and the place this once was, only six months ago. You may choose not to patronize the small business owner just trying to survive, or rebuild her burned-out dream. You may think Minneapolis doesn’t matter to you from some other Minnesota town, or even beyond. Are you so sure? Are you so sure you don’t need the biggest city in Minnesota to thrive? You don’t need one of America’s 30 largest GDP per capita cities at all? Its failure would not impact you at all?  Maybe not, but are you so sure your town is nothing like us? Your town is likely run by a few powerful people leaving you at their mercy. The main difference is we’re bigger and the loss of Minneapolis will be that much more catastrophic.

Minneapolis behind Lake of the Isles.
Photo credit @PersephoneK

If I leave, and others like me leave, the only people left in the city either agree with the council, agree with the rioters, are fine with chaos, are criminals, or are the powerless. What happens to them? I have the means and power to flee if I choose to do so. Not all are so privileged. Are you ok abandoning them? Everyone must make their own choices. But you, non-Minneapolitan, do not speak for me. Leaving sounds easy, but maybe you have never loved your home as much as I love Minneapolis. Fixing what’s wrong will be hard. Without me, and without you its impossible. Real, regular people who are pawns in the games played by political and criminal factions live here. This is our home. I intend to fight for the city I dreamed about living in when I was a little girl, awed by buildings extending all the way to the clouds. This metropolis of the lakes is my home. I’m not quitting. Please, don’t give up on us yet.

Peace,

Persephone K

PersephoneK and Javier (her bike) on one of her many favorite park benches around the lakes on a beautiful summer evening. Photo credit @PersephoneK

*I once was a professional crime analyst. I am in the early phases of a new project focused on Minneapolis crime, hopefully coming soon.

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I’m a Martian American

By on June 25, 2013 in Atheism & Skepticism, Everything Else, Introvert vs Extrovert, Liberty & Freedom, Ruminations

 

Last week, I changed my Facebook timeline picture to this:

Mars_HighResolution_NASA

And added the following comment:

“This is Mars. Sometimes I feel like I was born there. Or that some people would like me to move there.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about that photograph since then… While I obviously don’t think I actually came from Mars, I have been aware for much of my life that I think a little differently than most people I know. I’m not suggesting this means I’m anything special. I don’t think I’m particularly smart. I have mediocre creativity. Am not an expert or close to it at anything.  But I do tend to think about things, at least it would seem, differently than most people I know.

Mostly, this has been somewhat of a curse.

One way in which this has become more apparent to me is during my relatively recent discovery that I’m a Classical Liberal (aka a Libertarian).  I’ve never identified fully with Democrats or Republicans, or if I think back to my days as a Christian, I never completely identified as a Lutheran, or whatever.  There were elements of those ideologies I agreed with and elements I disagreed with, but none of them completely represented my worldview in a way that felt “me.” I just tried to determine what ideas made the most sense to me, and rolled with it.  This spilled over into adulthood as I have tried to navigate the world of workplace norms and cultures (P.S. its a lot like high school), where I found myself not conforming as much as I probably should have to make life smoother sailing.  Combine a weird way of thinking with a strong sense of personal integrity and life can be a bit explosive and heart-wrenching.

A friend back home.

I remember a college class I took within my major field which was Sociology/Criminology. The professor talked about his views on drug legalization. He seemed to be saying he thought taking drugs was unwise, but that people should be free to do it, and that if they hurt others, they should pay the consequences heavily for it, but otherwise, should be left alone. I’ve come to understand this as a variation of a Libertarian viewpoint. Before he explained this theory, I would not have agreed with it, but after he gave a coherent and convincing argument, I began to see it his way, and have largely come to adopt his position as my own on that particular topic, especially as personal liberty has become one of my highest priorities in my world view. But at the time, I assumed his position must be a liberal position, since, you know… most academics are liberals, and of course he was advocating for drug use in some round about way.  No conservative would be on board with that!  But I would come to learn that this way of thinking (pro-drug legalization for complex reasons) was strongly ridiculed by both ends of the political spectrum, which surprised me. To me, after pondering the reasoning, rooted in a pro-choice-esque ownership of one’s body, and learning more about the horrific consequences of drug prohibition, it just made sense. It would be years before I heard the term “libertarian.”

[easyazon-image align=”right” asin=”B001B5VPXY” locale=”us” height=”160″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EyXD%2B7%2BfL._SL160_.jpg” width=”113″]I’ve always managed (unwittingly) to adopt viewpoints from one of the least popular angles. I assure you, I don’t go out of my way to do so.  Ok, that’s partially true if I think about it more.  I do go out of my way to consider the unconventional position, but I don’t go out of my way to actually buy into it.  I think it is partially that obtuseness to labels that brings me to those ideas in the first place. Even now, as I’ve embraced the idea of being a “libertarian,” (though I think Classical Liberal sounds cooler, smarter, and less stocking up for the Zombie Apocalypse evoking) and freely call myself one, I am hesitant to adopt the label completely. I worry it will fence in my thinking, and subconsciously lead me to believe things because I think I should in order to fit in. Libertarianism is the easiest way to explain many of my general political positions, but it in no way fully encompasses who I am or what I believe in. And who knows, in the future, the word may not explain anything about me, much in the way that Christianity no longer does, except to explain my past, and the path to who I am now.

Anyway, this blog post is not meant to be about any specific ideas I do or do not believe in.  Its about being a Martian living on the Earth.  The paradox for me is while I tend to think about things in an uncommon way (at least uncommon in my real life circles), I don’t necessarily like being such a misfit, yet I cannot force myself (nor would I want to either) to believe what I don’t believe.  Learning that I no longer believe in god has been painful. It would have been much simpler had I remained a believer the rest of my life. True, there are apostates and non-believers who have it much worse than I do. Much, much, much worse (like I rarely worry about being stoned to death for my apostasy, and usually never worry about going to jail for it since I don’t live in Kentucky or in Indonesia), but as someone who longs to fit in, but who never has, this has not been an easy row. It amuses me when occasionally someone will speak of my “chosen belief system” or say to me “you lost faith” or thinks I am willfully trying not to believe in god. What led me to unbelief was starting out as a Christian, and wanting to learn more about my faith so that I could be a good apologist and advocate for the faith. I dreamed of being the biblical archaeologist who finally proved everything in the bible was true. That fervent faith and dream is what led me to agnostic atheism, which in turn adds to the way in which I see the world differently from my peers, which adds to the way in which I am a Martian.

BTW, isn’t this little rover just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?  If you’re not already, you should follow its Twitter feed @MarsCuriosity.

File:PIA16239 High-Resolution Self-Portrait by Curiosity Rover Arm Camera.jpg

As an introvert, who loves discussion and debate the way a pothead loves snack food, I can only say, thank goodness for the internet and the power of numbers! While not perfect, the internet – this blog, social media, other forums – has allowed me to connect with other freaks in the world and share battle cries.  I would love if more readers found and interacted on this blog, and maybe one day that will happen.  If you remember back to my blog on introversion, you’ll remember introverts aren’t antisocial, just differently social.  Contrary to popular belief, introverts aren’t all, or mostly, socially inept.  And many of us even like people.

The ridiculously sexy Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation, after he read the phone book to me and I died of happiness.

Though, I’ll admit to being more on the socially shy side of introversion than many others, I hate chit-chat, small-talk, fluff, so those early stages of making new friends can be challenging for me.  Yet, I would LOVE to find more people in “real life” who share my love of deep discussion, and willingness to ponder and explore topics from unpopular vantage points.   As much as I love writing, and think I’m best when I can sort out my thoughts on a page, there is nothing like sitting at a place with amazing atmosphere, with great food, with a great friend, talking for hours about anything and everything, from who is the best Star Trek Captain (Picard, duh!)  to why we exist in the cosmos. I cherish those moments with friends, and would love to have even more of them, as I feel like they are few and far between these days as life becomes more complicated.

I only hope I don’t have to move to Mars to have more of them.

Cheers,

PersephoneK

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Unrealistic Expectations: Security vs Freedom

By on April 23, 2013 in Everything Else, Government Reform, Liberty & Freedom, US & International Affairs

AP Photo

As Americans, we must decide whether or not we prize security over freedom. We cannot have it both ways. It’s time for us to understand that. The bombing on April 15th at the Boston Marathon re-enforced that point for me, although it’s a topic I have thought about a lot over the past years since September 11, 2001. After the 9/11 attacks, our nation changed significantly, both in our psyche and our structure. Preventing such a horrendous event from ever happening again became a personal mission for me as well, leading to a new career path. I applied to, and got a job with, a certain federal agency charged with protecting America from future terrorist attacks. Over the course of my nearly 8 years there, and in the time since I left it, my view point has changed from being fairly strongly “hawkish,” to one that is much more Libertarian (though I prefer “Classically Liberal”). In short, I don’t believe we can truly protect our nation from attack while also preserving civil liberties to the level we should expect, that is, to the level preserved in the Constitution.

I once decried the foreign policy of Libertarian Guru Ron Paul as “terrifying,” but now, while perhaps not completely in agreement with his isolationist ideals, I have shifted significantly towards the non-aggressionist end of the spectrum. I don’t know that I will ever be “dovish”, the usual opposite of “hawkish,” because I believe in using force as retribution when attacked. However, I believe our Nation’s foreign policy needs a significant change to a non-interference mantra. We cannot, and should not, try to push our agenda upon the entire world.

This shift in my thinking has been formed over time, from many influences, but is based upon two primary principals:

  1. I believe that by valuing individual liberty (here and abroad) above the wishes of the collective (or government), we have a better chance of achieving world peace in the most moral way possible, and
  2. I do not believe the government has the ability (both in resources and competence), nor the moral authority to protect us from all threats, perceived and real.

If I added an unofficial third principal, it would be that the law of unintended consequences often rears its head in horrifying ways.

How does this relate to security vs liberty? I do not believe perfect (or near-perfect) security is possible, regardless of the laws or policies we enact. Even the most totalitarian states are vulnerable to terrorism, and violent crime. A person intent on causing harm to one or more individuals, will find a way to do so. But in the process of trying to prevent as much carnage as possible, we as a society, tend to readily acquiesce our freedom as a surprisingly fast pace. And as we try to impose our will on each other and other nations, we stir a hornets nest of unintended responses and attitudes, not only because violence towards our enemies inevitably hurts innocents, but because in doing so, we become hypocritical of our moral imperative to protect individual life, liberty, and property, thus denying the right to pursue happiness.

After 9/11, Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon attacks, and countless other atrocities, the natural inclination from terrified and horrified citizens, and politicians is to rush to DO SOMETHING! OR BLAME SOMEONE! OR DO SOMETHING BY BLAMING SOMEONE! Make laws and shame those that disagree! The choices we make immediately following something as horrific as these events highlight our emotional natures, and suppress our rational sides. Politicians throw barbs with the objective of trying to demonize the other side by playing off our natural emotional responses to feel revulsion, and our inability to put them into proper historical context. Inevitably, rash responses follow, and all too often get enshrined into law, further diluting our free society.

I’m currently reading Steven Pinker’s “[easyazon-link asin=”B0052REUW0″ locale=”us”]The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined[/easyazon-link]”. This book should be required reading (if I believed in such a thing, which I do not) for all Americans. With astounding amounts of evidence, Pinker proves his thesis that the world is a much less violent place right now than in all of human history. It can be hard to believe such a statement when faced with the 24/7 news cycle bombarding us with images of bomb victims, or the latest school shooting. And of course, nothing can truly heal the wounds of victims and family members whose lives have been irrevocably changed, or snuffed out. Their suffering deserves attention. They deserve our compassion. But they do not deserve us changing the fundamentals of why this country exists. Ironically, even as we have become safer, we have become less free, mostly by our own submission. This is a trend I hope we can reverse.

It’s easy to forget what the Americans who fought the Revolution risked in order to create a state ruled by the people, yet one that protected the minority and majority alike by recognizing certain fundamental, and pre-existing rights. It’s easy for us to forget what an amazing goal and ultimate achievement this was, during a time when monarchies and empires controlled their citizens with absolute authority the world over. As American students, we learn about Patrick Henry’s cry to “Give me liberty or give me death!”http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-image-liberty-image26285626 and we think, oh, that’s nice, but that doesn’t apply to my life right now. Or we think of it in a detached way, as if the Patriots were not real people fighting for real ideals in a life or death situation of winner take all. They were willing to die so that a new experiment could take shape to form a society that valued the liberty of individuals over the whims of the King or the collective. They believed that through individual liberty, the society as a whole could be one of maximum peace, tolerance, and prosperity. It’s a gamble that has been proven to work over and over again since then. The freer a society, the more peaceful and prosperous its citizens are in general.

But with the quest for liberty, we inevitably must accept a significant risk in our safety. Often in politics we hear the mantra, “if it saves one life, we should” enact that law, or restrict this freedom. My response to that particular use of our emotions as a political plaything: Of course we should try to protect lives. Of course we shouldn’t disregard the human toll. But we need to do so in a reasonable and effective way that doesn’t make this life undesirable to live, (if not for us today, but for future generations), in a way that preserves our diverse sub-cultures, and does not trample on the pre-ordained rights of individuals to live their lives as they see fit. We drift further and further from those ideals as time goes by. We have allowed fear to drive us into a collectivist way of thinking about how to improve society.

So, this brings me to my original point. Preventing terrorism is not really possible. The fact of the matter is, it is not possible to predict any future event, no matter how much money we throw at the terrorism leviathan, no matter how well trained our intelligence services are (and I’m not saying they are). There will always be a way to punch a hole in the security measures we implement. What our preventative measures almost exclusively do is make life more burdensome for law abiding individuals, while doing almost nothing to curb the violent ones. The burdens we’ve imposed on ourselves may seem worth it at the moment, but how often do we see laws being repealed, or softened? Nearly never. The call is almost always for MORE MORE MORE! And we the people allow this to continue. We are complicit because we do not value liberty any more. We are not taught to value liberty. We are taught to think of “society” as a single organism. We do not understand the unintended consequences of blessing the government with greater control over our movements and privacy. We somehow have been convinced that only through strong, central government intervention can we achieve some sort of Utopian society. We’ve been led to believe that individuality is wrong, and instead we are one people with the exact same thoughts and dreams. That we are there to serve our government, rather than our government being there to serve us.

Unlike many Libertarians, I do not believe the government is overwhelmingly corrupt. I think corruption undoubtedly exists. And I believe strongly in the axiom that “power corrupts”, but I think overall the abuses we see within government are the usually result of incompetence, and/or misaligned incentives. That is not to say that there is something inherently incompetent in people who work for the government. In my experience, some of the most amazingly talented and intelligent people work for the government. They care deeply about your life and your security. Many of them risk their lives to keep you safe. But as bureaucracy grows, so do incentives that are out of whack. Only through competition can individuals and organizations be held accountable in a truly democratic way. That system is simply not possible within government on any kind of large or adequate scale, which is one reason why I believe we need to limit the government’s authority in most aspects of our lives, especially when it comes to laws or policy designed to prevent something bad. Ultimately, government is made up of humans who are just as imperfect as you and I. To expect “it” to solve our problems is like tilting at windmills.

http://www.dreamstime.com/stock-image-windmills-kinderdijk-image26564171

The FBI is the best in the world at solving a crime that has occurred and bringing the perpetrator(s) to justice. But to ask it to prevent a crime as if it has the power of the pre-cogs from Minority Report is ludicrous. There is currently much discussion in the media about the report that the FBI had interviewed the Boston bombing’s deceased Tamerlan Tsarnaev two years ago, yet allowed him to carry out the attack. Senator Lindsey Graham is quoted as saying, “So maybe it’s the system failed, didn’t provide the FBI with the tools, or maybe they didn’t use it properly,” he added. “That’s why maybe we need to find out what happened.”

Without getting mired in the minutia of how the laws of the land work, I will just summarize by saying, the expectation that the FBI could have prevented the bombing based on this earlier interview of Tamerlan Tsarnaev is absurd unless you also accept the idea that your personal liberty is meaningless. Tsarnaev was a US Person, a description that brings with it certain rights and requirements pertaining to investigations by law enforcement or intelligence agencies. Absent any specific information that this guy was plotting an attack, (not to mention the sheer volume of these types of interviews the FBI does), it is beyond silly to suggest the FBI could have done anything to prevent the bombings, unless of course, you would prefer the FBI trample on the rights of US Persons. The same could be said of almost every single terrorist attack that has ever occurred. Misusing the benefit of hindsight knowledge to criticize an agency for something it has no power to stop is vile.

According to Daniel Kahneman in his brilliant [easyazon-link asin=”B00555X8OA” locale=”us”]Thinking, Fast and Slow[/easyazon-link], the Nobel Prize winning psychologist, individuals, even experts, are terrible at prediction. Even financial advisors, people trained through the incentive of making money for personal benefit, do a terrible job at predicting markets. And in order to attempt to analyze a trend, you need data. The more data, the better the analysis. All kinds of data are needed, and in the case of intelligence, you don’t really know what data you need to find a trend. It’s not like investigating an event that has occurred in the past, where you know how it ends, and can track the evidence backwards. The thirst for data means that data must be collected. And when you don’t know what you’re looking for, you want it all. In the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, it appears the information the FBI was given was that he had become more radicalized and had changed. I don’t mean to point out the obvious, but becoming radicalized is not actually a crime. We have something called the 1st Amendment in this country, and you are allowed to say and believe some pretty hateful things. That is not evidence of a crime, nor should it be used to put you under suspicion absent additional information that points elsewhere. In this case, the FBI was protecting your rights, and is getting trampled for it in the media and by grandstanding politicians. Yet, we as citizens are culpable in that theater.

We cannot ask the US Intelligence Community to analyze data that is paradoxically too voluminous and yet inadequate in detail, and expect it to predict impossible future violent events while simultaneously protecting our right to privacy and free speech, among other rights. You simply cannot have it both ways. Not only is predicting future terrorist attacks (or other crime) with any level of certainty or specificity an impossible goal (even if our current USIC model was perfectly structured, which it isn’t), but it is certainly not possible without giving up our fundamentals of liberty. So by trying to force that impossible mission upon the government, we make both failure, and (usually unintentional) abuse of civil liberties probable.

As I’ve thought more and more about this basic truth, I have decided that the mission of US law enforcement needs to be explicitly changed back to serving justice rather than crime/terrorism prevention, both in the letter of the law and in the American people’s minds. Justice and prevention are not the same. In a free society, we grant human beings the right to live their lives in any way they see fit so long as they do not infringe the rights of others to do the same. Put another way, my rights end only where yours begin. I cannot hurt you physically. I cannot steal your property. I cannot infringe on your fundamental individual rights, many of which are stated explicitly in the Constitution, many of which are not. Any law that restricts my freedom is not justified unless it supports that notion of equal rights. Any law that prevents my equal freedom is not a just law. Unfortunately, our legal system is riddled with these laws. Take for example the rash of anti-texting laws sweeping the nation. If I text and drive, am I more likely to get into an accident? Yes. Without question. But will 100% of individuals who text and drive get into an accident? Absolutely not. So, if I text and drive, and a police officer cites me for it despite me never having hurt a single person, how is that a just law? He is citing me based on the mere possibility that I may hurt someone or someone’s property in the future, even though I may never do so. That is the definition of pre-crime. The federal government, in particular its law enforcement agencies, should exist to provide me justice when my rights to live freely are trampled by other individuals, and that is it. A law that says I cannot text and drive even though I have not hurt anyone else is a law that suggests I have hurt the state in some way by not hurting someone else (after all, how can I be restricted when I have not hurt anyone or anything)? When the state becomes the injured party, we have a problem. How is it just to hold me accountable for a crime I may commit? A law is not just, just because it’s a law.

Our mindsets as a society should not be to first assume the government will protect us from everything, from things like our abuse of food, to the dangers of texting while driving, to the huge things like terrorist bombings. http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-freedom-way-image18974409A focus on prevention should not be, and cannot be, the role of government. Government’s responsibility should be to seek justice for us when we are harmed and our rights are abused by other individuals (or sadly by the state). It is our responsibility as individuals who seek peaceful coexistence with other individuals who think differently than we do, and who value different things than we do, to find a way to live together, and influence one another in non-coercive ways.

Are we really making gains as a society if the only way we can force our neighbors to act in ways we prefer is to make laws, which are backed by government’s monopoly of force? I say we are not. I do not believe we can ever rid our world of violence or evil people, but I especially do not believe we will ever do so by expecting the government to protect us from evil. It cannot do so to perfection, nor can it do so without restricting privacy, abusing rights (however inadvertently), and using force. My dream is for a world where the government is there to help me seek justice against those who have harmed me, and to help me enforce voluntary contracts, but that otherwise leaves me alone to work with my fellow citizens to make the world a better place by using the power of words, and actions that promote human well-being.

Justice versus security? I choose justice. I choose freedom. How about you?

 

Cheers,

PersephoneK

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