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Washington’s Ad Hominem Fetish

In multiple ways, the 2008 Presidential elections were stage for some of the ugliest political discourse I have ever seen.  Hateful rhetoric became the norm, finger-pointing became the preferred battle tactic and everyone took everything so personally--it became impossible to have a civil debate.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend introduced during the 2008 elections was the absurd over-usage of the ad hominem fallacy.  For those who are not familiar with the ad hominem fallacy, it is, to quote wikipedia (I know, bad, but I honestly liked their definition the best) “an attempt to link the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.”  Essentially the ad hominem fallacy is arguing against the person instead of his/her ideas.  

What made matters even worse during the 2008 election season was the strong presence of “identity politics”--the concept that race, gender, and religion play factor in a candidate’s qualifications and that these qualifications determine the candidates ability to appeal to various demographics of potential constituencies.  With the first-ever black Presidential candidate and the first-ever Republican female Vice Presidential candidate, the battlefield was set.  All of a sudden, voting for one set of ideas became voting for one set of people and against another set of people and boy did it get ugly.  I don’t think I have ever seen more perfectly logical arguments fallaciously dismissed in the name of “racism” or “sexism” or some other form of "prejudice" in my entire life and quite frankly, I found it disgusting.  

If you did not agree with Barack Obama’s position on Health Care Reform, then you obviously hated black people.  If you did not share the same opinion as Sarah Palin on Immigration Reform, then you clearly despised women.  Instead of voting for a leftist politician with strong convictions regarding Health Care Reform and improved international diplomacy, you were voting for a black man.  Instead of voting for a right-wing politician with a passion for Tax Reform and promoting small business, you were voting for a woman. 

The sad thing is, this fetish for the ad hominem fallacy has not gone away at all, it appears that it’s here to stay at least as long as Washington continues to play identity politics.  Instead of arguing ideas with members of the TEA Party Movement, you have Janeane Garofalo, dismissing them all as racist “rednecks”.  Instead of accepting criticism and taking it in stride, you have Bill O’Reilly accusing anyone who disagrees with his Conservative principles as “un-American.” 

Love her or hate her, the highly-controversial right-wing author and political analyst, Ann Coulter, struck a chord in me recently when I read some pieces of her’s bringing attention to this issue, arguing that American political discourse has been paralyzed by this obsession with dismantling the person you are arguing against and ignoring the ideas behind them.  It dumbs down the intellectual caliber of debate and it opens up the potential danger of accepting a leader, regardless of their beliefs, based solely on the way you like them as a person (or rather on the way you like your perception of their person).  This indeed, scares the shit out me.  The prospect that some people would be willing to vote into office the next Hitler just because she’s a woman makes me tremble.  If we are serious about preserving our democratic republic--we have to ditch this ad hominem fetish once and for all and we need to start arguing ideas. PERIOD.   

The Price is Wrong

The most successful, longest running game show in the world was popular enough to establish a committed audience for a few reasons.  Originally The Price is Right was one of the only game shows that was presented beyond a quiz show format and six decades later it’s still a show that captures our attention by asking us what the value is of everyday items we all use.  As opposed to auctioning off pots and pans or washers and dryers they can be won by having the closest guess of their worth.  Imagine if the show were different though.  Take away all the lights, cameras, models, and host and have a format where instead of estimating worth you got to create it.  But instead of creating the worth of lame cars and pretty appliances that don’t belong to you, you got to do it for something more substantial and even more common that actually affects people’s livelihood.  Other people’s homes for instance.  Then let your imagination do something extraordinary and consider that this isn’t a product of anyone else’s wicked imagination but something else.  Something that’s already been happening.

No, come to think of it we’ll still need a host.  Only in place of Bob Barker we’ll let Congressman Barney Frank, former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee assume the title.  The HFSC is what oversees the entire financial services industry which includes the insurance, securities, housing, and banking industries.  It is the observation of what has happened to housing and banking under such Frank leadership that the following points will be respectively scrutinized.

Right now home values have been down for a record 17^th straight quarter, over 4 years of decreasing worth.  At present, there have been so many foreclosures now that the Census dept recently revealed that there are over 18.4 million vacant homes.  An astonishing 11% of the countries entire housing units are completely vacant on a year round basis.  In spite of the fact that the affordability of homes has greatly improved homeownership is at its lowest point in well over a decade.  This devastating market has shaken buyer confidence.  Those who can afford to buy homes have seen too well what it’s done to friends and family and are “playing it safe” in the prospect of renting.  So how did this happen?

Fortunately the government asked the same question and designated a small committee to publish a report known as the “Conclusions of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.”  Unfortunately, it’s a government report on account of a heavily government accountability problem.  Some government responsibility is acknowledged in the document by using language such as “scant regulation” and “public stewards of our financial system ignored warnings” but in an interesting way.  Throughout the entire 14 page report the only “government office” of which these comments are referred to is blamed specifically on the Federal Reserve.  It’s interesting that the only government department whose decisions are exempt from any executive or legislative ratification is on the receiving end of the most “government” blame.  Several other corporations are specifically mentioned as well but somehow the one government committee that overseas the most relevant industries that brought the disaster upon us isn’t mentioned once.  In order to further understand the relevance of the HSFC role in this catastrophe some brief history should be considered.

Traditionally banks would lend up to 75% of the value a home could be sold for.  For the past eight years Barney Frank as well as some other congressmen have pushed lenders and the FHA into lending up to 97 & 100% of home value.  Why was such easy and available credit beneath an umbrella of such “scant regulation?”  After so many people started taking out loans they couldn’t pay back the banks began to experience the weight of an even heavier problem.

Since they were loaning out exponentially higher percentages of money for home worth they simultaneously had to deal with the new negative home values the market endured after so many foreclosures.  Obviously, once someone is unable to pay back their mortgage after so many payments the bank is forced to assume the ownership of the home in order to make their money back.  The foreclosure problem in this new market has presented a massive problem for bank assets which have created some pretty repulsive balance sheets.  If Banktown USA loaned $250,000 to Jake for the home he couldn’t make payments on than when Banktown USA acquires the home they also have to acquire ownership of the fact that it’s now worth $180,000.

A balance sheet is a snapshot of the financial well being of any company.  Of course no body likes ugly snapshots, especially shareholders.  So what can be done to ensure that the public gets to continue looking at pretty snapshots?  Show them fake ones of course.

Economist Karl Denninger of Market Ticker reported some of the following results recovered from the FDIC’s recent archives.  The Bank of Illinois was recently seized by the FDIC when their balance sheet showed assets of $211.7 million and they had deposits of $198.5 million which would indicate that they were $13.2 million in the negative when in fact that was just an excessively gross exaggeration.  Their assets of $211.7 million were overvalued by more than 25% which put their actual loss at $53.7 million.

Waterford Bank of Maryland reported $155.6 million in assets and $156.4 million of insured deposits which would reveal an $800,000 shyness when in fact they generously overvalued their assets at over 30%.  Their actual loss was something over $51 million.

If those balance sheets were bad than Sun American Bank of Florida deserves a medal for excessive fraud.  They reported $535.7 million in assets and $443.5 million in total deposits.  Clearly it would look like they had a positive balance except for the fact that they happened to overvalue their assets at an astonishing 37%.  Instead of being over by $92.2 million it puts their total actual loss at $103.8 million.

These are just some the banks that have been found out.  Or rather, only those that have been caught so far.  From Florida to Illinois to the Northeast banks across the nation are reporting fraudulent balance sheets.  Not to mention the above examples are all of local banks which begs the much larger question of whether or not the big banks are doing the same thing.  At that point it’s a matter of whether or not the big banks were making easy available loans.  Do the trillion dollar empires of Citibank, Chase, or Bank of America possess a considerable amount of foreclosures now?  Since big banks issue more loans than the smaller ones and in fact own many of the smaller ones it than it would be reasonable to imagine that those big balance sheets have got some “tall tale” assets of their own.  So what indicates that the housing market is going to come back before actual home values are realized?  If the housing market doesn’t prosper before the overvalued assets of so many of these banks is discovered than the recession to come looks to be far greater. 

It’s troubling to think that such made up numbers could be so devastating.  It kind of makes me miss just having tuned in and making them up with the rest of the studio audience.  Although we should be careful to remember that ultimately and always it is the audience, the people that have true power.  It is by the people’s wishes that such “higher powers” must be obedient to.  The scoundrel forces that create the dark clouds and droughts of such an economic climate are dogs among men.  We should not be blindsided by such dogs, no matter how vicious they become, they’re still just pets.  Pets we must not only protect ourselves from but that of our children as well.  The accounting fraud that destroyed Enron and Worldcom is now happening across the banking industry.  This would be a good time to remember to have our pets spayed or neutered.

Reconsidering Feminism

I realize that some of the following thoughts and words I am about to post may be interpreted as sexist, however, I simply ask of the reader to first interpret the message behind the post and consider it and then if you still think I’m sexist...then maybe I am sexist but maybe we just do not see eye to eye on the matter.  I thought about avoiding this topic for a while for fear of being misinterpreted or offending others, but then recently I have come to see just how passionate I do feel about this topic and that I would be compromising my passion/desire for truth by not expressing my beliefs on the matter.  So here it is, reconsidering feminism...

Over the last thirty to forty years there has been much said in criticism of the male establishment in Western Civilization--and rightfully so.  I believe that the establishment should always be constructively criticized and questioned.  However, in the recent decade or so, I have began to question the current state of our civilization (in particular, the American civilization) and the methods by which our society chose to respond to/embrace the feminist critiques of the male establishment.  These questions particularly arise when I take a look at the current state of the American family.

To start out with, the current illegitimacy rate or rate of children born out of wedlock in the United States stands at about 38%-40%.  Among non-Hispanic whites the rate is 25.4%, among Hispanics (of all races) the rate is 47.9%, and among non-Hispanic blacks the rate is 69.5%.  This is more than double the illegitimacy rate of 1975 and prior to the 1960’s, the illegitimacy rate among non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks was almost dead even.  

So what? So people don’t necessarily wait to have kids anymore...yes I’m sure that’s upsetting to Conservative Christians and those with Victorian-Era values, but marriage is ultimately just a social construct that varies depending on the culture anyways, so it’s not the end of the world.  Maybe not, but what puts these statistics into perspective for me is that the divorce rate in the United States in that same time period correspondingly increased to nearly 50% (where it is today).  Which tells me that not only are people having kids outside of marriage but these kids are not being raised by nuclear units that incorporate both of their biological parents--they are either being raised in displaced/dispersed families or single-parent families and that IS a red flag in my book.  Why?  What’s so bad about being raised in a non-traditional or a single-parent family?  It’s just the direction in which the contemporary family has evolved, right?  That’s when I put my foot down.  No--no matter how much social evolutionists may try to sugar coat it, living in displaced or single-parent families will never replace or even compare to living in a two-parent household.  Period.

Study after study after study has shown that children who are raised in displaced or single-parent families are exponentially more likely to have severe behavioral problems, engage in delinquent behaviors, have low academic performance in school, and have a higher drop-out rate.  Not only that, they are also vastly more likely, when grown, to engage in criminal activity, high-risk sexual behaviors, struggle with drug and alcohol abuse and have displaced or single-parent households of their own.  In fact, I’ve even heard of recent studies that have shown that if you were to subtract the criminal population raised by single-parent families, you would have a dead-even crime rate between whites and blacks--dead-even, no disparity whatsoever.  Let’s just be real--It is NO secret that in ANY neighborhood in the nation, wherever you find high rates of children raised by displaced or single-parent families, you will find an equal (like take a mirror and wipe it with windex--exactly equal) abundance of households of low socio-economic status.  

So why did I bring these statistics and concerns forward?  Am I solely blaming feminism for the decay of the American family?  Absolutely not but I am definitely going to put blame where blame is due.  Because let’s face it, everyone has heard the cry of the single mother berating her boyfriend/husband for leaving her to raise the family all by herself.  Everyone has heard the Reverend rise to the pulpit on a Sunday morning and reprimand “the brothers” for not stepping up and “taking care of the sisters” and not taking responsibility of their actions.  Everyone has watched the Lifetime Movie™ special about the single-mother survivor who lived through 15 years of an abusive relationship with a monster of a man who beat her daily and drank himself into a stupor every night and finally, after 15 years, she got up the courage to leave him.  Everyone has heard the rallying cry of “Sisters are doin’ it for themselves...”.  But has anyone over the last twenty years stopped to take a look at the other side of the story--the consequences of feminism and the effect that it has had on men and society in general?  Did we ever take a moment while we were busy breaking down traditional gender roles to question why these roles existed in the first place?  This is where my critique comes in. 

In many ways, I consider myself a product of contemporary feminism.  I was the youngest and the only boy in a family of three powerful, successful, strong-willed women (whom, I love to death, by the way--I’m not bashing them at all, I am merely making a broader, further-reaching point using my upbringing as an example) and one very caring, very well-intentioned, yet slightly passive father.  I didn’t have many strong male role models in my life, they were mostly female and as you can imagine this led to a lot of anger and frustration as a kid and especially as a teenager when I was trying to figure out how to be a man.  

Now a lot of people would have looked at my situation and said, well your father just needs to man up and take on a more pro-active role in the family--that’s that.  But on the reverse side, I could’ve said yes but my mother and sisters built our household around feminine preferences and frequently when my father tried to be pro-active in family life, everything would blow up in his face because the household was not built to fully accommodate the presence of a male adult.  So yes, I’m sure that in situations like mine you could yell at the father and tell him to man up and take responsibility for the situation and help out the son but that’s all he’s hearing all the time anyway: from society, from church, from family.  Is it really productive to keep on repeating the same message over and over and over without examining the reason why that message is apparently not being acted upon?

I know for a fact that the dysfunctional tendencies of my upbringing were nowhere near unique to me--it has become an epidemic.  Across the country (in every racial and ethnic group) driven, successful, motherly/nurturing women are juggling work, family and home life while their passive/non-existent husbands sit on the couch and watch football, drink beer, and live off others hard work.  It has gotten to the point where the problem no longer just consists of isolated inter-family issues, it is a society-wide crisis and it is progressively getting worse and worse.  So rather than despair and bitch and moan about the state of affairs, let’s look at why they are this way and what could be done to address our society’s current social problems.

Now, I am not trying to promote any kind of religion or conservative theology by any means, but let’s look at how every major religion and holistic school of thought in the world, even those with female leaders/deities, instituted a social framework in which the father acted as the head and provider of the household and while the mother acted as the nurturer and manager of domestic details.  I do not believe that that is a coincidence--at all.  Granted, we should never blindly follow a religion or philosophy without first thoroughly questioning it, but there is no denying that ALL of the most successful, sustainable civilizations throughout history were built around this male lead/female nurturer model instituted by the various religions and philosophies that they purported to.  And I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of the major civilizations that did begin to espouse non-traditional gender roles had all seen better days and were all resting on their laurels quite comfortably and shortly thereafter fell into insignificance (i.e. the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians).

Now what am I trying to say?  That we should immediately revert back to traditional gender roles and go back to the way things were in 400BC?  Absolutely not, so please bare with me while I make my point and then elaborate on it.  My point is, those who came before us had thousands of years of experience, thousands of years of social experiments and lessons learn and re-learned and the vast majority of all of these civilizations came to similar conclusions: that men should lead, and women should nurture.  

After studying the issue myself for years, I have come to realize why those who came before us came up with this model and all of the irony involved in this model.  The truth is, almost universally, women are MORE capable leaders than men--it’s true.  Yes, you can quote me, as a self-described strong-willed man, I admit that women are generally more capable leaders than men.  Let’s face it, they are generally more driven, more self-motivated, more organized, better with time management, better at multi-tasking, less easily distracted and more quick-thinking on their feet than men are.  Whereas men are generally a little more lazy, a more easily distracted, not quite as organized, not quite as good with time management, and more prone to think with their dicks instead of their brains--all very compelling reasons why women should rule the world and why men should sit on couches, watch football, and drink beer all day.  But you see, that is EXACTLY why men should be leaders and women should be nurturers.  Because what happens when both genders do what they feel the most comfortable with (women leading and men being lazy) is that women do all of the work and men sit around and watch football.  

It’s my full belief that the traditional gender roles set in place by the civilizations of old were done so not because of some assumption of feminine inferiority but rather nearly the exact opposite, because they had known from past lessons learned that when women, who are very capable of leading, led then men became apathetic, lazy bums.  Because men will not step up when it’s not necessary (or especially when the woman is already doing the leading better than he would). I believe that the traditional gender roles were intentionally counter-intuitive but that’s exactly what made them so intuitive and effective.

I believe that the feminist movement was completely necessary because there were obvious systematic, societal abuses of women that had to be addressed and more importantly the feminist movement forced Western Civilization to wake up and remember just how capable of beings women are.  However, I think it may also be appropriate in the coming years for society to recognize that feminism has played it’s role and that it cannot effectively advance women’s rights any further without destroying the American family and consequently society as a whole.  

I think it’s high time that we begin to revisit and explore slightly more traditional gender roles in our society--not because we hate women or want to oppress them or because men want to “reclaim what is rightfully theirs” but because we know what women are capable of and we know what men become (or rather don’t become) when women take over the role of leading the family (just because women may be more capable of leading families than men are doesn’t mean that they should).  The traditional gender roles of men and women worked not because they came naturally to both men and women but because they created the perfect balance within a family dynamic by forcing both men and women to break out of their range of comfortable responsibilities and do what they are not necessarily comfortable with or best at--for the man to take the initiative, take the lead and make family decisions even when he would much rather watch football and drink beer and for the woman to be supportive and nurturing of the family and follow her husband’s lead even though she would much rather being leading the family herself.  This way a team dynamic is facilitated within the context of the family and there is all-around more participation and more involvement from all parties and no party feels like they are at their limit while the other feels useless.

It is also my belief that if society starts revisiting traditional gender roles now while we can still be rational and moderate about it, we may be able to avoid a more massive, more extreme feminist backlash that I can already feel brewing in the veins of frustrated and confused suburban teenage boys raised by powerful soccer-mom/CEO’s and in the hearts of the inner-city thug-kid who has never met his father or any of his friends’ fathers.  Kids are sick and tired of being fatherless and mothers are sick and tired of being single. If we are not there already, our society has gotten dangerously close to an extreme position on gender roles that very well may blow up in our faces in the near future.  As the saying goes, “History repeats itself,” and one can definitely see from looking back through history that the Pendulum Effect is an all-too-common theme in social affairs--society goes to one extreme and then the backlash takes it all the way to the other extreme to compensate.  For the well-being of the American family and to avoid extreme responses, in my opinion, our nation needs to start reconsidering feminism.

Additionally, if women truly want men to step up, lead, and be real men--as I constantly hear them say--then they need to simultaneously step down from the positions that they would like for men to take over.  And that does not mean wait until the man steps up and then let him lead, that means that women need to step down trusting that their men will step up, not waiting for them to do so.  Only when women demonstrate that they are willing to let go and let men lead will men start stepping up and taking on the responsibilities that society so desperately needs them to take take on.  Only then will the epidemic of the "deadbeat dad" be defeated.  Because behind every deadbeat dad (or rather in front of every deadbeat dad) is an overbearing mom.  That's my philosophy.
  
So there it is...my honest thoughts on feminism and gender roles, my apologies for being so long-winded and scattered at times...                            

The Hair Crisis

                                                                                         VS.

Who would have guessed that the biggest decision of my adult life would come down to my hair?  Ha!  I mean, I guess I could have seen it coming but not really--no, not really at all.  You see, my friends, I am faced with the decision of a lifetime: I have scheduled an appointment with the barber tomorrow at 2:30PM and I have to tell him whether I want t redo my vintage eurotrash mohawk/mullet (with lines on the sides) or if I want to scrap it all and go with an all-new adult professional haircut.

As laughable as this “crisis” is--this decision actually really does symbolize a very significant decision in my new non-student adult life.  You see, for the last 6 or so years, my hair has played a very large role in my identity.  I’m Wyatt Baker, I have crazy hair that screams my name from a mile away.  I’ve had everything from mohawks to mullets to skin bald to blue dreadlocks and everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) in between.  Yes, for brief moments in time I have had normal, professional-looking haircuts but these moments were only ever transition periods from one dramatic haircut to the next.  But this time if I choose to get a professional haircut it will be for the express purpose of getting a professional haircut--it will not be a means to an end, it will be an end itself and  that would be historic for me (if I choose to go with the professional cut, that is).

Essentially this decision is me deciding if I can getaway with my adolescent/college era extreme expressive-ism for another few months or if this really is the time for me to take my first step into the dark unknown--the adult world.  This will not be just like any other decision I make.  I’m pretty sure that once I take the plunge into the adult world there will be no turning back.  The era of “Wyatt’s Hair” will be over and a new era will begin.

So as embarrassing as it is to admit this, the decision regarding this haircut has effectively made my world come to a screeching halt.  It’s perhaps one of the biggest decisions that I will ever make: Will I choose to continue my free-loving, no-strings-attached adolescent/college lifestyle (which might I add is a lot of fun) or will I choose to end that phase of my life and consciously make the decision to begin my new adult life?  Am I ready to give up my unique image that I’ve worked so hard to cultivate over the years (an image that I have grown around and come to rely on)?  Am I ready to be judged not by my appearance but by my merit and ability?  Do I have what it takes?  I don’t know.  Am I ready to take this plunge or should I make the most of my current situation of total autonomy?  The decision is mine to make.  What will it be?

Below is a photo gallery of my various hairstyles over the years (from about 2005 to 2011) to commemorate this phase of my life and make this decision that much more dramatic and difficult.

The Science of Apathy

For the longest time I had a lot of trouble understanding apathy and even more understanding apathetic people.  I have always been a very vivacious type of person and  I always assumed that apathetic people were just lazy, like they just had some kind of inherent thumotic inferiority--lacking passion or libido or something.  But after coming to terms with my own recent apathy, I view this condition in a completely new light.

I now deduce from firsthand experience that apathy is not a lack of passion at all--in fact it is far from it--apathy is the (usually subconscious) surrender of oneself to ones immediate circumstances.  Though the manifestation of apathy is usually subconscious, it is nonetheless, rational.  It is typically a natural response to exhaustion--utter physical and emotional exhaustion which results from a seemingly endless uphill battle to find ones niche--a place where your passions matter, where they are not only appreciated but are useful/needed as well.  

When someone is unable to find a place where their passions are truly valued emotionally or monetarily (sometimes those two are one in the same), the option that seems to be the most efficient use of time and effort is to drop those passions and embrace the impulse of letting circumstance dictate your life.  It’s situations such as these that cause people to embrace quick fixes and things of immediate gratification and abandon long-term goals.  This is essentially what has happened to me this past year.  I went from someone who is so full of passion that it oozed out of my ears to someone who struggles to get out of bed each morning.  I went from someone who showered every morning and afterward picked out the outward artistic expression of my thumos in a perfectly manicured outfit every morning to someone who smells because I almost never shower and dresses like a homeless person.

But after having a lot of time to take a step (or two or three or four) back and reflect on my life, I think I can pinpoint precisely what the cause of this regression is: the feeling or perception of unvalued passion.  The devotion of two years of my life to student leadership where I was resented by those I led, the unappreciated efforts to rebuild my family, and the constant rejection by prospective employers because my gifts don’t fit a specialized job description.  The accumulation of unvalued passions in my life eventually led me to a place where it felt as if I had no control over my potential success.  

My subconscious reaction, therefore, has been to redirect my passion toward situations where there is a guaranteed or guaranteed potential outcome of success such as immediate gratification via arts & entertainment, internet surfing, and the occasional partying.  These are all activities that I can customize--where I feel in control of my potential success.  If things begin to not go successfully, I can just turn it off or switch the channel or take another shot of tequila--easy fix.

The irony of it all (which I am fully aware of) is that in order to “gain control” over my life, I have essentially forfeited control of my life to someone or something else--I am now at the mercy of my circumstances, less in control of my future than I have ever been yet somehow I still feel as though I am the most powerful I have ever been even though I know I am the weakest I have ever been.  Oh the sacrifices people make in order to push buttons rather than think, in order to have the ability to turn it all off.  But it’s not control, it’s slavery--yet it feels so right.

I know now that I will never judge homeless or unemployed people the same way ever again after my experiences this past year.  Mostly they are people who feel completely powerless who have taken what they see as the most effective path to taking control of their lives: taking on the small things in life that can’t or don’t fight back.  After all why go out and face potential rejection when you can win all day at home on the internet, on the TV, or with a bottle of Jack?  Am I right?

Well there’s the “Science of Apathy”, it wasn’t as scientific as I had hoped but it’ll suffice.  Anyways, if you’ll please excuse me, I need to go take my daily dose of Soma.

The Last Stop Cop Shop

Ever miss your stop on the train because you slept right through it? Either from too much work or too many drinks you find yourself waking up in Coney Island? You might even notice a few things whenever it happens. An MTA worker sweeping out debris or maybe a homeless person or two sound asleep. Whether you're above or below there's usually some other grounds to notice. What might otherwise be called "The Last Stop Cop Shop."

Often times there's one or two designated officers who patrol the platform in order to protect NYC but, from what exactly? Suspicious packages that managed to make it to the end of the line? Beggars that are renewing their energy in hopes of soliciting more money from people at each stop in the opposite direction? Whatever "criminals" we're being protected from it often seems that they're more often chosen than they're actually discovered. It appears that one of the most common train violations is on account of those dreadful social misfits who occupy more than one seat at 3 o'clock in the morning. How dare these subway criminals pass out on a train in a city just as notorious for it's party lifestyle as it is for it's work. Can you imagine such careless neglect from people? Where is everyone else going to sit at 3 o'clock in the morning?

How many times have you ever noticed a homeless person sleeping over more than one seat? Whenever they're discovered by the police most times they're at least given a wakeful nudge or at most scolded. Yet whenever a white or blue collar has carelessly fallen into the same violation a prompt summons is in order. In the event that such a person is without proper identification at the time (such is the case with many of the homeless) than the law seeks justice with handcuffs and handlebars. God forbid such a person had work the next day, hard to imagine that a jail pass is as good as a hospital one.

From which point such mischievous criminals are handcuffed, processed, (emphasis on the following word) wait, and see the judge where the whole ordeal won't take anymore than a meek 12 hours to a subtly less meek 2 days (depending on where they're processed). As grieving as the whole mess may sound it should at least be relieving to know that according to the law, justice has been achieved.

So altogether, a working class violator is eligible for 2 days of food, a bed, and possible job termination for taking up two seats. Yet an unemployed homeless man gets a nudge. Why? Well this is a city where spiting is illegal and smoking in public parks and benches is about to become illegal. NYC justice doesn't seem too quick about wasting it's time with such questions.

The Midtown Community Court coaches a quality of life class that attempts to cure the community from social infections like double seat occupancy. When I asked one of the coaches about what else the city planned on doing to address the vice of such belligerent seat criminals I was assured that they were not criminals, that according to the law they were mere violators. When I asked a coach why such violators were then treated like such criminals it provoked a curious expression that wanted to know what was meant. Such an expression inspired a question of my own curiosity. "Is there some sort of special edition pair handcuffs that officers use to escort violators off to jail with?"