a world away
Monday: Last week's entry included a list of things that we're over in 2020, but unfortunately, despite my warnings that the list was not meant to be comprehensive, I made an omission so grave as to warrant a correction. So here it is, a thing that I really should have mentioned last week, because we are very much over it by now:
I'm talking about the rampant speculation that a certain geriatric Presidential candidate from a major political party is in the throes of cognitive decline, and therefore clinically unfit for office.
Notice how I didn't name a candidate? That's because, according to memes, apparently both Joe Biden AND Donald Trump are living in a constant fog of belligerent Alzheimer's. I say this despite having no clinical expertise or firsthand interaction with either candidate, but I know it's true because I've seen television and sometimes Biden gets a little flustered and jams his foot in his mouth, and Trump likes to make freewheeling, extemporaneous speeches full of inexplicable non-sequiturs and sentences that, when transcribed, read like they were Google-translated from 16th-century Martian.
The really interesting thing about this is that Trump supporters seem to be super keyed-in on Biden's mental state, but are seemingly oblivious to all of the cobwebs in Trump's brain, and vice versa. It's almost as if the whole “your candidate is senile, but mine isn't!” thing is just transparent concern-trolling that nobody gives half a fuck about. It's not informative. It has ZERO scientific basis, beyond science being the thing that tells us dementia does, in fact, exist. It's irresponsible to try to diagnose anyone through a TV set, even if you don't like them. It won't move the needle for anybody. It's a waste of air when you say it aloud, and it's a waste of ones and zeroes when you post it on the internet. Knock it off. No one's buying it.
Tuesday: I got a speeding ticket from a traffic camera. I maintain it was more bad luck than irresponsible driving- I got dinged for driving the normal speed limit through one of the city's newly-reactivated school zones, where the speed limit goes down to 20 MPH from 2:00-4:45 PM. The time on my citation? 4:36. NINE. MINUTES. Fuck me. Sometime in my early twenties I finally outgrew my adolescent speeding habit, but I'm no stranger to traffic tickets. I usually just pay them off, even though I, like everybody, have a couple of friends who love to tell me I'm an idiot and a sucker for pleading no contest to a moving violation. Plus, City Hall just announced that they'll be ducking behind a clause in the state constitution that “explicitly shields state and local governments from having to pay judgments against them until they appropriate the money”in order to avoid paying out a $35 million class-action settlement over the city's improper management of fines levied from these very same traffic cameras. I am a terminal layperson when it comes to this stuff, but I think that means they've been ordered to pay all of those fines back, but they don't actually have to do it until they, um, decide they feel like it? So that seems cool. And to think, people are mad at our mayor for limiting the number of fans allowed in an indoor stadium during a pandemic.
Anyway, I went to the website to pay the fine, because I am a spineless, weak-minded baby, and behold the gall of this splash page:
THE NERVE OF THESE PEOPLE. This wouldn't be more obvious trolling if they had photoshopped that cackling Leo meme over the kid in the backseat. I literally said “oh, fuck you” out loud when I saw that. I had to exercise actual, grown-up restraint in order to keep from shoving a fist through my monitor. Independent concert venues all over the country are teetering in a state of mortal peril, but apparently privately-operated traffic citation mills are a recession-proof industry. We live in an indifferent universe.
Wednesday: I'm not sure what tense to use here, because I'm writing this on Wednesday and you'll most likely read it over the weekend, but today's thought is a Facebook post from Wednesday(/today), which I have copied and pasted below:
Over the past few years, as I've been trying to be more politically involved and socially aware, I've come to understand something: "Tough on crime" doesn't work. Sure, it's a slam dunk for political candidates to call themselves "tough on crime" in an election year, but when it comes to actual policies and results, being "tough on crime" doesn't make communities stronger or safer. It doesn't even really deter crime. On the contrary, it increases incarceration and recidivism. It barricades paths to reentry and makes lifelong criminals out of defendants who would be better served- both in their own outcomes and in their ability to contribute to society- through intervention and rehabilitation. "Tough on crime" policies and politicians treat conviction rates like a scoreboard, usually at the expense of real justice. They favor vindictive sentencing practices and coercive tactics like money bail and pre-trial incarceration. These types of policies produce negligible benefits and tend to exert a disproportionate negative impact on the working class, the poor, and people of color.
That's why I'm supporting Flip the Bench here in New Orleans. Flip the Bench is a local PAC dedicated to installing judges who will preside with fairness, compassion, and humanity. If you live and/or vote in New Orleans, I implore you to please consider voting for the slate of judges endorsed by Flip the Bench. If you reside elsewhere, I cannot make any specific recommendations, but I would encourage anyone voting in this election to take the time to research your local ballot and to vote for judicial candidates who believe in rehabilitation over retribution. Please steer clear of any candidate who promises to be “tough on crime.” This is an opportunity to make real, tangible progress toward rectifying the systemic injustices laid bare earlier this year, and to propel our city and country forward in pursuit of true equality and justice for all of us.
With much of the country already in the thick of early voting, I wanted to get today's thought out as soon as I'd finished gathering it. But I'm a big fan of citations, so, for the blog, I'm going to tack on some supplementary information as to why “tough on crime” is such a harmful attitude, in case anyone has an afternoon to kill and wants to read up on some of the worst things about this country.
“Tough on crime” doesn't work:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/does-being-tough-on-crime-actually-deter-crime/
“Three strikes laws” aren't an effective deterrent:
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol29_2002/spring2002/hr_spring02_vitiello/
Nor are harsher sentences in general:
https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Deterrence-in-Criminal-Justice.pdf
Money bail is destructive:
https://filesforprogress.org/memos/money-bail-memo.pdf
Money bail doesn't do the thing it's supposed to do:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-19/new-orleans-great-bail-reform-experiment
Also, BIG SURPRISE, money bail is racist:
https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/article_8fb2ec46-d0dc-11ea-81b0-4b733e14b4bc.html
And finally, here's an up-close look at an innocent man who fell victim to the “win at all costs” culture of the New Orleans District Attorney's office under the ruinous tenure of chief prosecutor and unrepentant misanthrope Leon Cannizzaro:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/17/us/prosecutors-new-orleans-evidence.html
I don't know about you, but I could use a palate cleanser. Here's something wholesome I found on the website for Ben & Jerry's, the ice cream company run by friendly hippies.
Friday: The other day, I came across this New York Times profile on legendary jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, who went into hiding after suffering a pair of strokes in 2018 and is now coming to grips with the fact that he may never be able to play again. The article reads a little like an obituary, despite the fact that its subject is still alive and was interviewed for it. It's a beautiful piece of writing, but it's a bit unnerving. It shook me. Strokes are pretty terrifying, and I am not oblivious to the fact that they seem to happen to horn players fairly often. I try not to lose sleep over this sort of thing, but I'll admit that I think about it every once in a while, usually in a vague, Greek-tragedy kind of way.
In the more immediate sense, I feel like any present-day musician can at least sort of relate to what Jarrett going through, being isolated from such a central part of one's life and identity. This year I have felt a fraction of a fraction of what he has, and, as much as I'd like to spin it into some Dodge Ram commercial voice-over about how “it's the tough times that show us who we really are,” I hope that isn't true, because who I really am is someone who drinks too much, and eats too much, and doesn't leave the house enough, and spends too much time playing video games and watching the death of a nation unfold in slow motion on my Twitter feed. Sorry if that's a little morbid, but it's been a morbid year. I'll be fine, though. Don't lose sleep over me. I'm only visiting the neighborhood to which Jarrett may be confined for the rest of his days. I know I'm still very much one of the lucky ones.
Even, so, it's good to be reminded every now and again. Anyway, here's a jam:
