Geeky Bob

In the wake of yet another tragic and senseless mass shooting, it is not surprising to see that - once again - the anti-gun crowds are up in arms. (Pun intended.) However, I would like to point out that the problem within our society is not guns, but the glorification of their misuse in popular media (e.g. Hollywood movies, video games, and music videos).

The youth of today are constantly bombarded with the premise that guns are cool or a fast means to an end. Consider movie franchises like The Fast and the Furious, The Matrix, John Wick, Jason Bourne, and Die Hard, or video game franchises like Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, and Counter-Strike. All of these franchises have depicted graphic violence throughout each series; and more often than not, violent crimes are portrayed favorably.

The ultimate irony is that this same entertainment industry that consistently portrays guns in the worst possible way is populated by people who are the quickest to proclaim that every legal gun owner must give up their guns whenever something bad happens. But it is not the legal gun owners who have caused these societal problems; it is the entertainment industry.

I was raised around guns, and I was taught to respect them and their proper use. I was a safe and skilled rifle shooter as a teenager, and when I joined the military I continued to fire a variety of weapons safely and securely. Throughout my life I have known hundreds of people who obtained and used their weapons lawfully and respectfully. These people should not be punished for legally owning their guns and committing no crimes.

On the contrary, it is Hollywood and the other glorifiers of brutality who are at fault, and not the millions of innocent, law-abiding citizens who own guns. It is the entertainment industry that has created a climate of senseless violence through its never-ending stream of homicidal and bloodthirsty drivel, and they should be held accountable.

The Editorial Board at the New York Times recently posted an article named Ease Up on the Executive Actions, Joe, which brings up an interesting subject that I'd like to discuss. As anyone who grew up in America is aware, our system of government was created with a distribution of power between three branches: Executive (President), Legislative (Congress), and Judicial (Supreme Court). The original intent of the Executive branch as detailed in the Constitution was to enforce the laws that were created by the Legislative branch, while the job of interpreting those laws was assigned to the Judicial branch. Over the years, each President has ramped up the use of Executive Orders, which have increasingly had the same affect as laws, without having to go through the long process of Congressional debate within the Legislative branch as originally designed by the framers of our Constitution. In other words, the use of Executive Orders has overextended the intended role and reach of the Presidency and bypassed Congress. To be clear, this behavior includes both Obama and Trump.

However, throughout the Trump presidency, the common response by mainstream news outlets was that each Executive Order issued by Trump during his four years in office was a "dictatorial" abuse of power. Many of these scathing condemnations of Trump's behavior led to the inevitable comparisons between Trump and Hitler, which were - of course - completely ludicrous to anyone with a basic study of European history. (In my opinion, Mussolini might have been a better comparison, but I digress.) That being said, Biden's unceasing willingness to issue Executive Orders since taking office last week has thus far exceeded every other presidents' abuse of that particular "Executive Privilege." And yet, with the notable exception of the Times editorial that I mentioned in my opening statement, the general response of mainstream media has been applause - or silence - despite being the closest manifestation of a true "dictatorial abuse of power."

As we have seen in the rise of dictators throughout history and around the globe, "abuse" is never labeled as such by those who support the dictator and/or stand to benefit from said dictator's consolidation of power. As I mentioned earlier, our forefathers specifically founded a republic with three branches of government as a system of checks and balances in order to prevent what Biden is doing; that is to say, a single branch calling all the shots. Biden is ignoring Congress in his systemic alterations of the American political landscape, and those who spent four years loathing Trump are plodding happily along in their antipathy for their common enemy (Trump), while ignoring the fact that they are tacitly approving and condoning the very behavior to which they had vehemently objected in the very recent past. Tragically, now that the Biden administration has begun its investigations into restructuring the Supreme Court (see Biden starts staffing a commission on Supreme Court reform), the Biden administration is literally trying to find a way to bypass the last remaining hurdle to consolidating the power to govern unchecked and with impunity from a single branch of government.

I am reminded of the Triumvirate in the Republic of Ancient Rome, in which three leaders were chosen to share power and prevent an individual leader from singularly holding the reins of government. And yet, during the Triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar, one of the three was unhappy with the concept of serving with a balance of power, so he did away with the other two. This person was - of course - Gaius Julius Caesar, who appointed himself "dictator for life," thereby ending the Republic of Rome, and instituting the Imperial Age of Rome, wherein the will of the people was supplanted by the dictatorial rule of emperors. In recent years we have seen how modern dictators have followed similar paths; they gain the support of the people, and once their power is secured, they do away with anyone who can challenge their authority. (Think of Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin in the USSR/Russia for one such example from the 20th century.)

With that in mind, we now see ourselves tipping precipitously on the edge of our own decline into autocracy, and yet there are millions of people who approve of the person who is exhibiting behavior that would be viewed as totalitarian if it was occurring elsewhere around the planet (think of Putin and Navalny in modern Russia). Our populace has millions of willing and unwitting accomplices who are rejoicing in their ignorance as their own downfall looms quietly and ominously in the not-too-distant future. It is a truly frightening time when people's incessant loathing for anything to which they object has blinded them to the very real threats to their personal freedoms. At the risk of violating Godwin's Law, this lust for power is the reason why Communists and Nazis invented "enemies of the people" in order to rally the mob in support of their consolidation of authority. We now have people who are publicly proclaiming that non-Liberals need to be "deprogrammed." (See So Many Great, Educated, Functional People Were Brainwashed: Can Trump's Cult of Followers Be Deprogrammed?) That idea should strike fear into every citizen of this country. A difference of opinion does NOT justify the tyrannical brainwashing of opposing viewpoints into blind obedience and acceptance.

There was a time in this country where George Orwell's vision in "1984" of bludgeoning freedom of thought into a love for "Big Brother" was political fantasy; however, it is readily apparent that compulsory obedience to Big Brother is no longer a fable. What's more, the current trends by the social justice warrior crowd to rewrite history combined with the cooperation between mainstream/social media and tech giants to actively censor contrarian perspectives sounds an awful lot like Orwell's concept of a "Ministry of Truth," wherein "truth" is what the Party says is true, and dissenting opinion is overtly suppressed. Now that Orwell's fiction is slowly becoming fact, it is disconcerting to see the number of accomplices who line up as willing participants. The Communists had a term for these people: "Useful Idiots." From my perspective, I think that is a perfectly appropriate term for any willing participant in the dismantling of a democratic republic in favor of authoritarianism and despotism.

I have mentioned in multiple places that the people who physically attacked our nation's Capitol this week were traitors and they need to be prosecuted as such. However, I would like to say a few words with regard to Mr. Schwarzenegger's comments in the following video.

There is a modern concept called Godwin's Law, which is generally defined as: "the longer that an Internet discussion continues, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis increases proportionately." As soon as this comparison happens in most discussions, the person who makes the comparison is usually regarded as having lost the debate. The primary reason why this is assumed by all participants in the discussion is: if you cannot defend your position without resorting to ridiculous and implausible comparisons, then you're a poor communicator, and everyone SHOULD consider you a loser.

With that in mind, I'd like to state that Mr. Schwarzenegger needs to restudy his history, because his comparison to Kristallnacht was grossly inaccurate and utterly preposterous. For those who are unaware, Kristallnacht was the far-reaching destruction of thousands of Jewish businesses across Germany, resulting in the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Jews who were deported to concentration camps. Whereas during this week's traitorous activities, no one was carted off to concentration camps. No one lost their families, their livelihoods, or their property.

Please don't misunderstand, the traitors who broke into our Capitol are the wicked scum of the earth, but the events of this week and the events of Kristallnacht are so far apart that their comparison is beyond ludicrous. The actions of this week's traitors were shameful, but so were Mr. Schwarzenegger's comparisons to the Nazis. Therefore, in keeping with Godwin's Law, Mr. Schwarzenegger loses this debate.

Mr. Schwarzenegger may be correct in his assessment of Trump as a "failed leader," but then again - I seem to recall that Schwarzenegger's tenure as governor ended with him as as a "failed leader." Perhaps it takes one to know one, but either way - I'll end with this: Go home, Arnold. Your relevance in public politics is over.

Starting from one month before the election, I had made a personal vow to abstain from weighing in on the election - regardless of the outcome. Oh sure, I took potshots and anti-maskers and COVID-deniers, but for the most part I tried to say nothing about the actual election. However, in light of the anarchy that took place today in Washington DC, I think it's time to break my silence. And with that in mind, here goes:

NOTE: This post is largely based off of a message that I had posted on social media, to which I had attached the following image, which seemed apropos at the time.

The following image has been making the rounds on social media...

This image has prompted me to ask the anti-maskers who are still promoting this anti-scientific drivel the following series of questions:

First of all - are you for real? Refusing to wear a mask is somehow fighting for freedom? I'm pretty sure that our forefathers and ancestors had an entirely different opinion of what constitutes "fighting for freedom."

Next, just whom are you fighting against? There's no oppressive regime here; there are no dictators, no despots. The CDC - which is an organization that is ACTUALLY fighting for something tangible (your health) - has recommended that people wear masks; but it's largely your peers who would like you to wear a mask, and wash your hands often, and keep your distance as much as possible. All of these simple actions will reduce the spread of disease during this pandemic.

Let's reexamine the original proposition for a moment; this image claims that you're "fighting for freedom," but for which freedoms are you fighting? You still have freedom of speech. You're still free to travel. You're still free to buy the things you need, to pursue the career of your choosing, to marry whom you want, to live where you choose, to own your own home, to start your own business; you have a host of freedoms at your disposal that the downtrodden masses in other areas of the world can't even dream of having. In fact, as I look at the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, I can't seem to find any freedoms that you're actually in danger of losing.

Let's step back a bit further - just how are you "fighting" for the freedom of others? By choosing to not to wear a mask? I'll grant you that abdicating your moral responsibilities in society and endangering the health of others might be a cheap form of protest where there's little chance that any harm will come to you, but I'd hardly count that as "fighting for freedom."

On the contrary, I come from a family with five generations of military service, and I personally served 8 years in the Army. At the end of my tours, I was able to return home, but some of my friends weren't so lucky. I have stood on enemy soil and made hard choices and did things that meant some bad guys didn't go home to their families, but because I did my job some of my comrades were able to make it home, too. In other words, I know exactly what "fighting for freedom" really means, and the fact that someone would somehow equate the genuine sacrifices of others with their illogical and irrational fears through the measly act of refusing to wear a mask is disgusting and insulting.

So let me make this clear to all the anti-maskers out there: you are not fighting - because there is no enemy that you are up against. You are not preserving freedom - because no freedoms are being suppressed. You are simply being asked to adopt a few simple practices in order to safeguard the health of your community. If you cannot manage to set aside your unwarranted paranoia and step up to your responsibilities as a productive member of society, then yes - I kinda think you're acting like a disease spreading, defiant, imbecile.

That being said, stop claiming that you're fighting for freedom - because you're not.

Most people who have known me for some time have realized at one time or other that I tend to point out fake news when I see it posted to social media, and I have made no apologies for doing so. Over the years I have simply decided that I cannot bear to sit idly by when someone posts an article that I know is either an outright hoax or a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth.

With an upcoming election just around the corner, I have seen more and more people posting articles that simply aren't true about both candidates. I know that people want 'their guy' to win, but you shouldn't have to stoop to dishonesty and deception to promote your candidate.

However, my corrective behavior has quite often made people somewhat angry at me. I realize that no one likes to be thought of as a fool, and when someone (like me) points out that someone else is posting garbage, a few of those people have their noses bent out of shape when their gullibility is revealed.

That being said, the argument that I have had presented to me is, "Who made YOU the final arbiter of truth???" That's a great question, and my answer is: no one. Because I am NOT the final arbiter of truth; TRUTH is the final arbiter for itself.

If I post an article that refutes something that someone else has posted, that means that I have taken the time to do the research that the original poster failed to do on their own, and I have found a reputable source that sets the record straight. If I cannot find a reputable source that refutes something, then I do not post a correction. It's really that simple, folks. If you post crap, and I can prove it's crap, then I'll post something that says it's crap.

So to anyone who feels uncomfortable with the notion that I might shine a spotlight of unpleasant truth on your false narratives, you have my permission to unfriend/unfollow me, that way you can continue to wallow in the empty darkness of your comfortable lies. Otherwise, fake news is fair game.

There is an old adage that says, "Numbers never lie, but liars always use numbers." Over the years I have seen this adage reinforced and demonstrated countless times, which brings me to the recently-released video titled Viral Issue Crucial Update Sept 8th: the Science, Logic and Data Explained. I've seen that video a few times (because people keep sharing it on social media), and there are several glaring issues with it. But before I continue, let me be very clear about something: I think the pandemic lockdown was unnecessary, at least as far as the United States is concerned. Please keep that in mind as you read everything else I say below.

The First Major Issue with that Video

First of all - and this is most important - the numbers of infections and deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic should be lower than for other viral outbreaks because we closed businesses and made everyone maintain social distancing and wear masks!!! It should be readily apparent to anyone who is capable of reasonable thought that the extreme measures we took to combat this pandemic were directly responsible for this pandemic not being nearly as catastrophic as it could have been. THAT. WAS. THE. WHOLE. POINT. I personally think we collectively overreacted, and the long-term damages to our economy will be felt for years to come. But that being said, our overreaction had the exact effect for which it was instituted: less people got sick and/or died. So the very same people who keep saying, "Well, the pandemic wasn't that bad after all..." are affirming that the drastic measures we took were extremely effective. For this single reason alone, the entire argument in that video evaporates. The lockdown did what it was designed to do. End of story. (As a reminder, I think the lockdown wasn't necessary; but that doesn't mean it wasn't effective - because it was.)

The Second Major Issue with that Video

The presenter in that video makes no secret about ignoring comorbidities, which is when someone has an existing condition and dies after contracting COVID-19. However, ignoring comorbidities is a cheap way to manipulate the data to skew the numbers and make them seem to indicate what you want them to say, rather than what they actually say. Let me give you a hypothetical example: if I'm living with cancer, but I get shot by a gun - it is the gunshot that killed me, not my cancer. That's blatantly obvious to everyone with a brain. It's the same thing if I'm living with heart disease or lung disease and I am shot - it's the bullet that killed me, etc. Now substitute the coronavirus for the gunshot. If I'm living with cancer, but I contract the coronavirus and die - it is the coronavirus that killed me, not my cancer. It's the same if I'm living with heart disease or lung disease and contract the coronavirus and die. In each of those scenarios, I was managing my illness until I contracted the coronavirus, which is what actually killed me. What the presenter in that video is attempting to do is to discount all of the deaths where something else was present in the pathology, which artificially (and dishonestly) deflates the numbers of actual deaths. That is wrong from a scientific perspective, and it's wrong from a data perspective, and ultimately it's wrong from an ethical perspective - because for all intents and purposes he is lying. Period.

The Third Major Issue with that Video

Because of the presenter's immoral manipulation of the data, you're not getting a full picture of what's going on. In several areas of the planet - like India for example - the numbers of infections and deaths are both continuing to rise. The 'bump' that the presenter keeps showing over and over is only true for a few regions of the planet, but it's grossly inaccurate for much of the rest of the planet. Also, the presenter made the claim several times that the pandemic was largely over by the beginning of Summer 2020, and that is patently false for many areas of the globe. Once again, if you look at India alone, their outbreak started at the beginning of Summer 2020. Brazil's struggle with this pandemic started about a month before India. New cases in the United States peaked around mid-July and have slowly been decreasing since then, but still - the United States is just one country. From a global perspective, we're still in the thick of it.

The Fourth Major Issue with that Video

It is absolutely hilarious that this presenter keeps reinforcing almost all of his talking points based on an analysis of... Sweden. That's right - this dweeb is basing the majority of his arguments on observations for a tiny slice of the world that few people visit unless absolutely necessary, which is a country that has less than one tenth of one percent of the global population. The coronavirus was largely managed in Sweden BECAUSE IT'S @#$% SWEDEN!!! You CANNOT compare the United States, or Russia, or India, or pretty much any large, industrialized nation in the world with Sweden. North Carolina may have the same population as Sweden, but it's surrounded by other states; interstate commerce is constantly bringing a fresh influx of people through its borders, and at the end of the day - PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANT TO VISIT NORTH CAROLINA. North Carolina has actual BEACHES that bring people from all over the country, not a bunch of unpronounceable fjords that are only popular with retirees on cruise ships.

Conclusion

Returning to my opening statement, there is an old adage that says, "Numbers never lie, but liars always use numbers," and that concept nicely summarizes the entire video.

In closing, let me reiterate - I think the lockdown was unnecessary. And if I felt so inclined, I could probably back that up with empirical evidence, and I'll bet that I could pull it off without having to manipulate the data and lying to the world about it, too.

POSTSCRIPT:

If you're interested in learning more about the subject of manipulating data dishonestly, there's a book called Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception that I stumbled across recently. I have only read the synopsis, but after seeing so many people try to manipulate public opinion by manipulating the numbers that they use to reinforce their arguments, I've added it to my reading list.

First of all - in the interests of transparency - I have been outspoken against Trump in several blog posts on multiple occasions. I mention that in order to stress the fact that I do not a horse in this upcoming election race, so to speak. With that being said, here is my perspective on what has happened as far as riots across the country were concerned, all of which can be backed up with very simple Google searches.

As we have all seen, in the wake of George Floyd's and other tragic deaths, protests erupted across the country, and justifiably so. However, many of these protests quickly devolved from peaceful assemblies - as defined and protected by the Constitution - into quagmires of violence and crime. During all of this, the mayors of predominantly liberal cities - e.g. Seattle, Chicago, Portland, etc. - ordered their police departments to step back in order to allow protestors to "express their opinions." As a result, we had debacles like Seattle's CHAZ/CHOP - which made Seattle a laughingstock to the rest of the country. Nothing was gained by that event; it only made Seattle's already inept leaders look horribly worse. However, other major cities did not learn from Seattle's mistakes.

Of course, a common sense examination of what was happening around the country would immediately demonstrate that there were fewer and fewer "protestors" participating in the actual protests, with an ever-increasing set of opportunistic looters and violent anti-police thugs (e.g. Antifa) showing up and instigating wide-spread violence. When our ineffective combover-in-chief offered to send in troops to help these cities, his offers were refused, with people like House Speaker Pelosi likening federal troops as "Stormtroopers," and House Whip Clyburn calling them the "Gestapo."

That being said, it is a matter of speculation why these mayors allowed their cities to descend into chaos. The conspiracy theorists would have us believe that the Democratic Party thought that they could manipulate this situation into disparaging Trump ahead of the election, and I have to admit - I think that theory is entirely plausible. However, if so, they played their hand too soon, because now the violence has gone on for months, and people are tired of it. However, for the most part, people are not pinning the blame on Trump anymore, because people are smart enough to realize that he's too far removed from the communities that are being targeted by the rioting, and people are starting to wake up to the idea that it's their local leaders who are failing to restore peace in their cities. As a result, Democrats running for office (both local and federal) have begun to drop in the polls, so now these same leaders [sic] who ordered their police departments to step back and allow the rioting, looting, and other crimes to persist, are starting to take to the airwaves and denounce the very same rioting, looting, and other crimes that were previously happening unabated on their respective watches.

So here's my final analysis: there is no single public leader who may have actually said the words, "I support rioting." However, many public leaders' inactions allowed the riots to form and to continue, and all the while they did nothing about the violence and crime that were the logical outcomes of said riots. If we are to believe the voices of the "woke generation" that "Silence is Violence," then I think it is perfectly acceptable to say that any of these mayors who let their cities burn, and ordered their police departments to stand down, and refused federal assistance, were tacitly supporting the rioters, regardless of their useless rhetoric on the matter.

Legend tells us that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned, and then pinned the blame on Christian martyrs. However, history would eventually reveal that the Christian martyrs were innocent, and Nero's actual intention had been to clear out neighborhoods to extend his palace. Now it seems as though a similar scenario is playing itself out on our modern stage; Democratic mayors fiddled away as their cities burned, and now that their communities have been reduced to ashes, the lost and disenfranchised are looking for whom to blame for their suffering. Like Nero before them, Democratic leaders are trying to blame the innocent, but if history repeats itself, the public will realize where the real guilt lies.

A friend of mine just posted the following article to social media:

University of California System can't use SAT and ACT tests for admissions, judge rules

Well, all I can say is - it's about time.

SAT and ACT scores are unfair, because they reinforce centuries-old stereotypes of "smart students," which must - by definition - infer that there are "dumb students," which is a horrible label to adhere to someone.

Next, we need to abolish the A thru F grading system, since grades are an entirely subjective method of assigning values to students, and we all know that someone's inherent potential cannot be measured by something as prosaic and outdated as a comprehensive "test" that covers what someone had an entire semester to learn. And how unfair are "grades" to the student who couldn't study due to their active social schedule? Why should some introvert who spends all their time buried in books have a higher value to society?

We could, of course, replace the A thru F grading system with a system of simple pass/fail scores; but that, too, is unfair - because NO ONE is a "failure." With that in mind, we need to do away with grades entirely.

Next, we need to seriously reconsider requiring students to attend classes. With the increasing invasion of smart phones, tablets, and laptop computers in the classroom, most students only retain 5% of what is covered during a class lecture anyway. Couldn't that time be better spent?

For example, here in Tucson at the University of Arizona, dozens of students gather daily to shout well-deserved insults at the narrow-minded bigot who has the audacity to stand on a stump near the student union building and proclaim that "Jesus is the only way to God." Just think, if students didn't have to attend classes (which are nothing more than a form of academic slavery), we could increase the multitudes yelling at that close-minded "Christian" into the hundreds - perhaps thousands.

A "Christian" is not entitled to an opinion, anyway, because "Free Speech" doesn't extend to someone who says something that someone else might not want to hear, and it is far more effective for students to learn the lesson that an opposing viewpoint is nothing but "violence."

Students should be allowed to learn how to prevent the possibility of civil discussions with people they perceive as opponents while they're young, and before they enter the workplace, where a "boss" will expect them to actually "show up to work" and "do their jobs," and therefore they'll have no more time to vociferously express their important views about these @#$% fascists with opposing points of view who are taking over America.

So in the end, everyone who wants a college diploma should just get one, without any effort or standards, because those concepts are part of a historically oppressive, patriarchal, fascist, elitist, misogynistic, and racist educational system that has only existed to squash the spirit of youth across the globe.

Common Sense is Violence!!!

Educators are Fascists!!!

Fight Global Learning!!!

Years ago I saw the following statement, which - as a veteran - I thought was entirely accurate: "A veteran is someone who, at one point in their life, wrote a blank check made payable to 'The United States of America,' for an amount up to and including their life." It goes without saying that military life is not for everyone; it requires a willingness to sacrifice selflessly for others. Together with my brothers-in-arms, we missed countless holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, births, and deaths - all in the name of preventing those who would do harm from reaching the shores of our nation. I can't say that we always did this without complaint, because sooner or later the sacrifices weigh heavy on everyone's conscience. Even still, the military is an honorable profession; we collectively chose to make sacrifices so that others might live in peace, and often for less pay than someone makes flipping burgers at McDonalds. In the end, we all sacrificed something, although some - tragically - sacrificed everything. The number of spouses, children, fathers, mothers, and siblings who will grow older with a void in their lives where a loved one used to be is incalculable.

But I'd like to shift gears for a moment. A couple years ago I shared on Facebook that my wife  - who is a registered nurse - saved someone's life on a flight that was about to take off from Phoenix. The man had a heart attack and lost consciousness, but thankfully my wife and an EMT were both on the flight, and the two of them took turns administering CPR. They managed to revive the man, who had been legally dead for several minutes, and he lived without complications. But that's not the end of the story. Several months later, the Phoenix Police Department invited my wife to an awards ceremony, where they presented her with a certificate to commemorate her for her lifesaving skills and willingness to save the lives of others.

It was quite the honor, but the evening wasn't only about my wife; it was an annual ceremony for the Police Department, wherein the sacrifices of police officers from the Phoenix area were officially recognized for their outstanding achievements. As the ceremony progressed, I was amazed at what I heard. For example, several officers prevented a terrorist attack at the Phoenix Comic-Con, which otherwise would have resulted in an unknown number of casualties. Story after story of personal sacrifice and heroism had me enraptured, and over time I grew angry - because I never heard any of these stories on the news. Apparently it just isn't newsworthy when a police officer stands between a crazy person with a loaded weapon and an innocent civilian. The more I heard, the more I realized that these police officers made the same deal on behalf of their fellow citizens that I once did. They made all the same sacrifices as my brothers-in-arms: they missed countless holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, births, and deaths - all in the name of preventing harm from reaching the homes of their communities. And - tragically - some of these officers sacrificed everything, too. It was abundantly clear to me that these officers had also written a blank check made payable to the citizens of Phoenix for an amount up to and including their life. And like my fellow veterans, these officers do so for a terrible paycheck, all the while having to endure the constant scorn and contempt of those dregs of society who are incapable of policing themselves.

I cannot count the number of times in my life I have heard people complain about "some jerk police officer" who wrote them a ticket for speeding, or running a red light, or driving under the influence. I almost never hear any personal culpability from these people about their own guilt in their situation; it's always the police officer's fault. I'd like to take a moment to set the record straight - if you're pulled over for speeding, it's your fault if you get a ticket. If the police officer decides to let you off with a warning, that's his prerogative - and it might just be your lucky day. But if you have to pay a fine for something that you did wrong, it's not the officer's fault; get down off your self-righteous horse, take responsibility for a change, and shut your mouth about it. You don't have to like it, but maybe next time you'll remember to obey the law.

However, I'd like to take this train of thought a step further - there are some people in this world who do not share your sense of right and wrong. I've traveled around the world, and I've met all sorts of people who think that cheating, or stealing, or killing are perfectly acceptable ways of life. In our society, we have collectively decided that those behaviors are unacceptable, but not everyone agrees. We have our own collection of moral degenerates who still believe that cheating, and stealing, and killing are perfectly acceptable ways of life - regardless of what laws we pass or what we teach in our schools. When that happens, who is left to prevent these moral degenerates from reducing society to a maelstrom of anarchy, chaos, and suffering?

We are often told not to judge a segment of society by the transgressions of a few. We are told not to hold all African Americans responsible for the crimes of a few. We are also told not to judge all Hispanics for the crimes of a few. In a like manner, we should not judge all Caucasians for the racist stupidity of a few. Nor should we judge all Muslims for the crimes of a few. Nor should we judge all Christians for the stupidity of a few. The same follows true for police officers; we MUST NOT judge all police officers for the bad actions of a few. Because when all is said and done, and regardless of your opinion on the matter, when society starts to fall apart, sometimes the only line of defense we have is an underpaid and underappreciated police officer, who will still put himself or herself between you and a bad guy.

If you take everything that I have said into account, and you still want to destroy an institution that consistently sacrifices everything so that others can live in peace, then I suggest the following: you should join the police. If you're a good person and you think they're all bad, then join up and change them from within. On the other hand, if you can't bear the thought of living on the trivial amount of pay that police officers receive, or you can't handle the level of selfless sacrifice that is required to be a police officer, or you can't handle the thought of having to step into a domestic dispute or robbery or even a traffic stop where someone might be armed and pull the trigger before you have a chance to draw your own weapon to protect yourself, then you have no right - and I mean that sincerely - you have NO RIGHT to act as judge and jury and executioner where our police officers are concerned. Despite their many faults, most police officers are better than their peers, because these officers typically serve their communities - unthanked and unrewarded - for days on end, in harm's way, making sure that the rest of us are safe. So if you still feel the need to denigrate and defund the men and women in blue, whom I honestly regard as my fellow brothers-in-arms, then let me make this clear - you are a wicked, evil, twisted person. And yet, I hope the day never comes when you need a police officer to save you from another wicked, evil, twisted person who wants to do you harm.