It's so frustrating when things don't work out the way you think they should, isn't it? It ain't all good.
I have two examples of that in my life right now. The first is our plumbing. We have a clogged pipe somewhere that we can’t seem to get unclogged. We had people come out four times to work on it—twice to snake it, once to look at it with a camera, and then to hydro-jet clean it, finally... or not finally. Two days ago I was in the basement and I thought I heard a little blub, blub, blub—the telltale sign of trouble. It wasn’t super loud, and I didn't want it to be true, so I ignored it, but I heard it. And then later, S’s sister, who’s staying with us for a while, heard it too, and this time, she said, it was really big and loud.
I had the plumber come back again—the third time the same dude has been here (he reminds me of Craig from Friday)—but I knew what was going to happen. I knew that we weren’t going to be able to get it to make the sound while he was here, and, lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened. So, he didn’t know what to do, which is understandable—as far as he could tell everything was fine. But I don't think it is. He said sometimes air can get trapped and make that noise, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that the clog is still there, but I dunno. That doesn't sound right to me. I want to believe him, but I’m dubious. If I were a betting man, I'd put money on the clog reemerging in the next few months, if not the next few weeks. We shall see.
The second thing is my tooth. The one I had a second root canal on about a month ago. It’s bothering me again. It’s not super painful, but it’s causing a sort of constant low-grade throbbing irritation. It’s like, if a divine being told me it would go away in a month, and all I had to do is live with it, I could live with it, no problem. But that’s not the case. On the contrary, the endodontist told me it’s unlikely to go away and will probably get worse, if anything (likely cause: a root fracture). The only real remedy is to get it extracted.
So, it’s looking like another round of mouth surgery for me. Yay. The tooth isn’t in the front, but it’s not in the back either (it's #5, if you're hip to the dental numbering system), so I will have to get a prosthetic tooth (or tell everybody I play hockey), and then eventually another implant. Implants are great once they’re put in place (I haven’t had any trouble with the two I’ve had for the past twenty years), but they cause a lot of pain—in the mouth and the wallet—before that.
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In other news, Derek Chauvin was found guilty earlier this week on all charges for his murder of George Floyd. I thought that that's what was going to happen but was still very nervous about it. I watched the announcement live and was kinda surprised at how cathartic a moment it was for me. I wasn't surprised by the jury's decision, but I was so very relieved. My relief was threefold: It means justice was served (in this particular instance); it means the bar for police accountability is at least low enough that an officer can't asphyxiate a defenseless man on video for nearly ten minutes and get away with it; it means a potentially ugly spate of violent protest and rioting was averted.
I've talked about policing many times on this blog before, and I don't really have anything new to say on it. I'll just reiterate that the main problem with policing in this country, in my opinion, is that too many officers are too willing to use deadly force instead of other alternatives. Too many police officers are just too violent, and they have too violent a mindset. They see themselves as soldiers in the unwinnable "war on crime," instead of public servants with a duty to keep the peace. It's all this "thin blue line" bullshit, where police see themselves as the line protecting the good guys from the bad guys, and the line must be held at all costs. But in actuality who the good guys and bad guys are is rarely clear-cut, and the people police protect us from are us. There is no blue line or any sort, just a whole lot of gray.
It's not even necessarily a racial thing. I mean, it is because black people bear the brunt of police violence, but they certainly don't do so exclusively. A lot of white people get killed by police too. Put it this way, if you gave me two options—a) The amount of racism among police officers stays the same, but the willingness to use lethal force decreases a little bit; b) the amount of racism among police officers decreases a lot, but the willingness to use lethal force stays the same—I would pick a) every time.
The flip-side of this, however, is that liberals (like me) have to get real about the consequences of changing policing, especially in the short/medium-term. There seems to be some fantastical thinking that scaling back policing won't affect crime rates, but the evidence is to the contrary—more police mean less crime. (I mean, that's kinda common sense, no?) The point is, however, that crime rate is not the only metric when considering public safety policy. If it was, we could live in a police state and have a crime rate of almost zero.
The problem is that conceding crime rates could rise is a tough sell. Telling comfortable people they have to be less safe, even just marginally speaking, so that other people, they don't know and rarely interact with, can be less oppressed is a difficult political argument. So, it's not an argument police reform advocates often make. But it's probably the one that most reflects reality.
Okay, until next time...
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