Mr. Scorpio
Mr. Scorpio's Journal
NYPD Disrespect Continues, De Blasio Heckled And Booed At Cadet Graduation (VIDEO)
At one point during his speech, de Blasio said:
“You will confront all manner of problems. Problems that you didn’t create.”
At this statement, a heckler shouted:
“You created them!”
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/29/nypd-disrespect-continues-de-blasio-heckled-and-booed-at-cadet-graduation-video/
Out of my 22 year military career, I never took another person's life...
I have no qualms admitting to the fact that I served in an Air Force support career field. Had they put a weapon in my hand and sent me into a combat situation, it would have been one of those last resort situations. Besides, as most other military folks around here know, in the Air Force, the enlisted personnel aren't usually those who are trigger pullers anyway.
But I'm proud of the fact that I have no blood on my hands. I never considered taking anyone else's life an accomplishment worthy of serving my country.
As a matter of fact, I could of remained in the USAF for two more years before either needing a promotion or retiring. I chose to retire (partly) because I was sick of the fact that we were in an illegal war in Iraq, not to mention personal reasons.
Had I taken anyone's life for any reason, I don't know how I'd live with myself. Unlike the Army or the Marines, most US Airmen are not expected in engage enemy forces in close combat situations. It can happen, and has for people in support related, non-combat related specialties, but it's not always likely. Much of this has to do with mission and proximity. For example, old vets told me about Vietnam and when the Personnel Office was mortared. And I served with a woman who survived the Khobar Towers bombing and was awarded a Purple Heart. The closest I've ever come personally to any potential combat situation was during my 22 months in South Korea, during some times of tension with the North.
But, all in all, I consider myself extremely fortunate. I chose not to put myself in situations where I could take lives and I was lucky that those situations were never put upon me.
Before I joined the USAF, I told my one of my closest cousins, who just happened to be a US Marine at the time that I had decided to enlist. We were always very close since we were kids and she was very aware of my nature. It was she who suggested that I avoid the Army and the Marine Corps like the plague. I took her advice, of course. I served my time in the military and retained my humanity. I also had no blood on my hands during my service.
When I see people like George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson and others express NO REMORSE for the lives they've personally taken, I take them at their word. I also take it that they're people who have lost their humanity before they pulled the trigger. Taking someone else's life is a big deal. It can't be done casually and callously by those who have a deep sense of humanity. It can be taught, but I doubt that to even for those who have retained their sense of reality, they do have a sense of remorse. Taking the lives of others, for any reason, destroys one's own.
That's just basic human decency.
I would imagine that some of the most broken people walking around on this planet are those who have been made "heroes" for taking the lives of others and retain a deep sense of remorse for their own actions. Whether they're in war or on the streets in a cop's uniform.
Those that do not feel that remorse should never be allowed to be put in situations where they could take another's life. That is, if you want to abolish war and murder in our streets in the name of authority. That is, if you want to keep the people who would send them out to kill others out of power over all of us. That is, if you want peace.
The Rich Are Different: More Money, Less Empathy
Looking for empathy and support? You’re more likely to get it from a poor person than you are from a rich one, according to new research published in Psychological Science.
In a series of experiments, the new study found that lower-class people were better at reading emotions on others’ faces — one measure of what researchers call empathic accuracy — than people in the upper class. “A lot of what we see is a baseline orientation for the lower class to be more empathetic and the upper class to be less [so],” says Michael Kraus, a co-author of the study and a postdoctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco. (More on Time.com: Battle of the Bris: A Move to Outlaw Circumcision in San Francisco)
Why might that be? “Lower-class environments are much different from upper-class environments,” explains Kraus. “Lower-class individuals have to respond chronically to a number of vulnerabilities and social threats. You really need to depend on others so they will tell you if a social threat or opportunity is coming and that makes you more perceptive of emotions.”
Study co-author Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, agrees that people in lower socioeconomic classes “live lives defined by threat. They are threatened by the environment, by institutions and by other people. One of most adaptive strategies in response to threat is to be very vigilant and carefully attend to others and try to promote cooperation to build strong alliances.”
http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/24/the-rich-are-different-more-money-less-empathy/
José Vs. Joe: Who Gets A Job?
If's not hard to see that people have taken sides on the issue of police brutality...
Mostly ALL of the people against it are for justice for all, cop and citizen alike…
While the people who are ONLY rooting for the cops side with racists, right wingers and people who don't give a damn about black lives:
https://twitter.com/Blacks4D_Wilson/following
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23BlueLivesMatter%20&mode=users
I grew up watching a lot of dystopia in sci-fi movies and reading about it in books
The late sixties and all throughout the seventies gave us some of the best. Thank the Cold War for that.
Then Star Wars and the Star Trek revival came along, as did the feel-good, reactionary era of Reaganism and much of dystopia took a back seat.
The problem is that the dystopics were right all the long. People are recognizing that. Just look in the street.
Now that the media is more corporate owned and less prone to allowing dissent, a watered down version of new dystopia is making a revival. But only for detached entertainment and not as a message, as has been done in the past.
The dystopia of the past now becomes even more important, as some of its predictions of social, economic and environmental decay is coming to pass.
It would have been nice to have cities of glimmering spires and flying cars and all that, but the truth that those who control us would rather not share.
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