The Heir, too, is outraged over the commutation of Roger Stone.  But unlike the others, he seeks an Incident At Uganda, a last minute declaration that says, not so fast.  He found one article along those lines at a time when all the others have all but given up, prematurely writing justice's death certificate.  You can find this online titled, "Roger Stone’s Ongoing Appeal Still Pits Him Against Justice Department." But even that article when the Heir showed it to me the Mentor doesn't get at *all* the possible ways in which Roger Stone will eventually reap what he sowed.  I suggested to him, well what if he got an overconfident big head about it, and ended up with a traffic ticket for double parking his car or something?  Would that then be the legal straw that breaks the camel's back?  He considered that possibility, but then pointed out his surmise that his girlfriend that we see him with on visual may largely be his chauffeur and/or his courier, because he himself may be now in such poor health that his license may been revoked in the state of Florida, a state he otherwise sees as the emerging personal corruption capital of the world.  By no means does the Heir take any pleasure or schadenfreude in this likelihood, but what he sees that it does mean is that even if you think you can somehow outrun the Long Arm Of Justice (which of course you can't), you can't outrun the karma of your own personal health.  It's no coincidence to the Heir that after Trump falsely claimed victory or exoneration with the Impeachment (because let's not forget the fact that he's still Impeached), that's when the coronavirus made landfall in America.  A justice procedure was immediately followed by an incident related to public health.  There may come a point in time when Roger Stone's girlfriend may privately tell someone that she ended up believing he's as guilty as sin, and that he should have gone to jail after all, and that person she told will go public with that admission.  That would be what the Heir sees as Roger Stone's ultimate worst fate coming up, and he will either in life or in death wish he did go to jail accordingly, and he will burn all his tee shirts claiming he did nothing wrong.  Oh who am I kidding, the Heir believes Roger Stone will end up saying, I did *lots* of things wrong.  There, you see?  He just admitted it.  And he might end up following that up with a sincere Make Amends Tour.  His gaslighting will finally be over, and he will finally know the righteous path.  And no one the Heir sees on visual as ever entertaining that possibility.  Our society's imagination is way too limited for that sort of thing.

The Heir estimates that the "AOC Primary" took place between a week and two weeks ago.  Already the media outlets have brushed past that primary, and never bothered to explore AOC's opponents in more detail.  The Heir believes that at least one of them is a distinctly anti-AOC candidate who appeals to the significant minority of voters who are not on the AOC bandwagon.  The Heir wants to know more about that candidate(s) and their voters.  He gets the impression that those particular voters represent an in-district rebellion that AOC has to reckon with, particularly if they make up anywhere from five people to 10% of the district residents.  These are likely NOTA types who are virulently anti- Bernie Snowden, and they will emerge after Trump loses the election, which the Heir believes there's a good chance of.  The main reason for the rise of AOC is as an anti- Trump voice.  She defeated Joseph Crawley two years ago as an anti-establishment candidate.  Now the Heir sees her *as* the establishment.  Whenever the Bernie Snowden types lose a primary, which seems to happen about 80-90% of the time, they always blame their defeat on the "machine".  But if they win a subsequent time, the Heir sees them as acting as if they're entitled to that victory.  Also the more votes they win by, the more entitled they feel, so they can't spin how there's a "machine" they're up against.  They *are* the machine, and their opponents and the significant minority that voted for them the Heir sees as truly for the people, and not for a political bandwagon.

The Heir's increasing Machiavellianism.  He does not regret standing by principle and the need for social discipline in the populace in the past four or five weeks people have been debating what the role of the cops should be, and in fact he's seen ample evidence that supports the notion that most people can't look after themselves.  For example, he was wondering how almost everyone in Bachelor Blue State could be practicing social distancing and wearing masks and staying at home the past three months, since the same exact people had engaged in personal corruption in the 2010s.  Now he has the answer.  The people didn't practice social distancing solely because they thought it was the right thing to do.  They did so out of compliance with demands from the strong leadership demonstrated during the Coronacrisis.  If that leadership didn't exist, Bachelor Blue State would be totally infested like Florida is now, and Texas and Arizona, and at least a dozen other states.  The governments in those states took an Ed Snowden Anything Goes stance, and the Heir sees most residents in those states celebrate that personally corrupt sentiment coming from those governments.  And now they're seeing those cases spike.  Bachelor Blue State, on the other hand, got back onto the righteous path, and got a return on its investment in the form of decreasing infection and transmission rates.  Bachelor Blue State was able to reopen safely, but the other states reopened *un-* safely.  The Heir really isn't into organized religion or anything, but there's no doubt that the lesson to be learned from comparing Bachelor Blue State's righteous path with the other states' personal corruption is that if you go against the grain, you'll get splinters.  That one guy who complained in April about not getting fertilizer, the Heir's hoping he didn't end up in the ICU as a result.  He wishes the best for those whose opinions he disagrees with.  So the Heir says, dude, forget the fertilizer.  This is your *life* we're talking about.  And now, here comes the Heir's takeaway:

"Death is permanent.  Fertilizer you can get next year."

 

So a couple of things on the Law And Justice front with the Heir, as we progress with reforming policing.  The Heir takes note of Andrew Cuomo in New York signing reforms into law for New York.  One of those includes a requirement for a rough total of 500 cities and towns to submit their plans by April of next year to reform their departments if they want to receive state funding.  The Heir's pretty sure there are far more than 500 cities and towns in New York in total, since Bachelor Blue State numbers its towns in the thousands.  So it looks as though this set of reforms in New York does make wise regards for sleepy hamlets along the Erie and Lake Ontario coasts with no more than 20 people or so, but it would be nice if there were more specific information for the the Heir to go on.  Sleepy hamlets of 20 people aren't likely to have more than 2 cops total in *their* department, so a set of reforms that work for bigger towns aren't necessarily going to apply for sleepy hamlets.  But the Heir feels more assured that we're still going to have cops in the foreseeable future, and the Ed Snowden types' plans to get rid of all cops everywhere have failed for the time being.  They had a temporary buoyancy in light of the tragedy in Atlanta, but that's faded now.

The Heir respects and supports New York City's decision to disband its anti-crime division for the sake of more fair and sensitive policing, but he disagrees with the City's assessment that such a division is "outdated."  If crime stats go back up again, the City will have to stand ready to reinstate the division at a moment's notice.  He sees the anti-crime divisions as being put in place during the 90s to deal with the crack epidemic of the 80s, and the bad old days of the 70s.  Most young people today have no living memory of how bad things really were in those days.  The Heir remembers a Western Studies course in college that questionably required its students to make a major foray into a major city, e.g., New York, to visit a museum and do a historical analysis on an artwork of significance to the course.  This was at the height of the crack epidemic, and the Heir remembers a classmate who said he took his car into New York, and came back from the museum to see a bunch of bullet holes in his car.  So the Heir welcomed when anti-crime measures were put in place during the 90s, because battle-hardened drug cartels in the cities weren't going to respond to fair and sensitive policing.  It was partly those measures that aided in urban revival in New York and surrounding cities to the point where people felt more safe to visit those cities, and aid in those cities' economic recoveries.  The Heir concedes that at this *specific* point in time that you may not need such measures, but that doesn't mean you won't need them in the future.

The Heir now gets to talk about the movie Death Wish, and its implications for today.  What the Heir understands about Death Wish comes from a parody by Mad Magazine back in the day.  Charles Bronson plays an ordinary Joe living in a city environment whose wife and daughter are viciously attacked by muggers.  His wife dies and his daughter lies in a vegetative state.  He believes that all this could have been prevented if there was a stronger police presence, but the police were virtually non-existent for a number of reasons, including their being outnumbered and out-equipped by the muggers.  He then takes it on himself to become a vigilante to both try to make his neighborhood safer and kind of exact revenge on the muggers who attacked his family.  Apparently, things get out of hand when he thinks, let's not stop with the muggers.  Let's go after *anyone* I suspect of committing crimes, possibly including scofflaws and jaywalkers.  The Heir believes the 2010s would consider the Bronson character to be proverbially autistic.  But anyway, there's increased worry that this vigilantism poses a greater threat than the muggers, and the Bronson character is brought to justice.  The cops are forced to admit that their failure to stop crime gave rise to this vigilantism, so the Bronson character enters into an agreement that he move out the city and never come back.  The Heir only saw previews of the movie itself, and they were pretty dark and hard to take.  But the Heir feels that the Mad Magazine parody was enough to illustrate the points the movie proper was trying to make.  So here's the Heir to sum it up below.

"For those of you who still want to abolish the cops, heed the movie Death Wish, and be careful what you Wish for."

So here are some further warnings the Heir has for people to be careful what they wish for if they *really* want to defund the cops.  It's *some* major cities that want to do it under pressure from *some* protesters (at least).  But what about your one-traffic-light-town in the Far West with only 500 people, and vastly different needs and culture from Minneapolis?  Do *they* have to give up their cops too (the Heir asks)?  Because the phrase Defund The Cops the Heir takes *not* to mean defund just some of the cops of some of their money.  No, it means defunding *all* cops of *all* their money, over the *entire* country regardless of whether they've had problems with excessive force or not.  Otherwise the Ed Snowden types who support the measure would never use it as a slogan on picket signs.  A more nuanced "defunding" is just not catchy enough.  The Heir also thinks about the 1970s movie Death Wish (he *thinks* it's the Seventies) in a world where the cops are all but absent, you take your life in your hands every time you step out of your house, and it's only vigilantes who are willing to help.  By extension the Heir also thinks about the Green Berets and whether they'll end up making a comeback in the aftermath of what's to come.  The Heir wants to ruminate on each on these in more detail in the next few days or so.

"I'm concerned."

So while the Heir joins in on calling for reforms, disbanding the cops is not the answer.  The Heir concedes that the Minneapolis city council's decision to disband the cops is not subject to opinions of people who live outside the city, he sees this as Guy Fawkes Mask Wearer victory.  They'll see that as a catapult to disbanding all cops everywhere, all over the globe.  These Ed Snowdens lie in wait, looking for the right moment to override the democratic process made by the people and for the people.  The Heir looks at the city of Three River Junction in the north of Bachelor Blue State, and they've made policing work.  The police leaders took a knee in their press conference, but the Heir's pretty sure the Ed Snowdens will want to disband even good departments, including the one at Three River Junction, over the objections of city residents.  He expects Marco's Grandmother to point out that police unions are still very powerful, but the Heir sees the anti-cop forces more powerful still.  He envisions a whole series of unintended consequences in any city that's abolished its police force, including a Wild West local culture, and going back to the bad ole days of 1970's New York.  Social workers are all fine and well, but if you're getting cut off by an aggressive driver tailgating you and passing you over a double yellow line, you're not going to have a social worker pull that person over and ask, "Tell me about your feelings."  The Heir doesn't think that's going to work.  #KeepTheCops

The Heir continues his outrage over what's been happening with Lafayette Park and Buffalo NY.  With Lafayette Park, we in the Bachelor call for criminal charges to be made against those violating the rights of the protesters.  The Heir is calling out Bill Barr, and that guy who punched that cameraman in the gut, and the pilots of the helicopters flying over the protesters, and the superior officers issuing the commands.  The Heir saw that a civil lawsuit was made, but he doesn't think it's enough.  You could also push for charges of impersonating a police officer for those guys dressed up in riot gear but without proper IDs.  The Heir's not confident that the progressives will push hard enough in this regard, since he sees himself more on the side of law and justice.  Trump had that one tweet saying Law And Order, but the Heir sees Lafayette Park and Buffalo as the opposite: Lawnessness And Official Disorder.  Of course it's the fault of both Ed Snowden and the personal corruption of the 2010s that we're still not over it in the 2020s.

The Heir wants to look into both civil lawsuits and state charges against Roger Stone and Michael Flynn that Bill Barr cannot touch.  If Biden wins in November, the Heir wants the Biden DOJ to go after Barr, as well as Stone and Flynn within the contours of due process.  He doesn't believe that a guarantee against double jeopardy should allow Flynn and Stone to walk free, and continue to engage in immorality as if nothing happened.

"And also, nail Trump while we're at it."

We at the Bachelor condemn the killing of George Floyd.  The Heir also condemns the riots that took place.  But among other things the Heir's having to decide which to get to first in getting off his chest, one of those is the apparent media equation of Protests Equal Riots.  The media very well knows that's totally wrong, and the Heir publicly shames them for abdicating their journalistic responsibilities.  The media tried to throw in a weasel of, well the rioters only make up a small fraction of the protesters.  But the Heir points out that's like saying that ants make up a small fraction of the bee population.  This reporting failure is apparent to the Heir on audio where he clearly heard, "protestors have appeared for another day in a row, and a couple of stores were destroyed."  But you don't see that problem when you only get your information on visual.  What you see is clips of peaceful protesters intermixed with street fires, and then you have nothing that stops you from thinking, oh the protesters must have caused the street fires!  This morning the Heir skipped through audio program headlines that sound like very weak editorials, and focused on the headlines for the actual channel instead.  He's thinking, programs suck.  He's going through one program headline after another saying, that's BS, that's BS, that's BS.  And that's all he feels up to saying right now.

So where does the Heir begin on this one?  Stuff like Michael Flynn, and premature reopenings, and that one lady whose actions threaten enforcement of compliance.  With Michael Flynn, the Heir references a video that you can search for on Youtube with the search terms "michael flynn dismissed not so fast".  It's a legal expert video, and one thing he points out that for some reason the Heir didn't see on the Insurgent News Network is the role that Emmet Sullivan's going to play.  The Insurgent Network only *briefly* mentions Judge Sullivan, but they downplay him in favor of trying to tell people that the Michael Flynn case is done already.  But as the video points out, not so fast.  The video talked about how among other things Judge Sullivan assigned a magistrate judge to the case for the apparent purpose of requesting amicus briefs.  Carmen wasn't sure what that was, so the Heir reminded her that's better known as Friend Of The Court brief, i.e., third parties.  What the Heir takes out of that is that Judge Sullivan's finding reasons to maintain justice in all senses of the word, in effectively requesting legal experts and groups to possibly make a legal case in their amicus for morality and principle at large in society.  The Heir thinks the judge wants people to come up and say that a dismissal of the Flynn case would set a bad example for others in society who, too, want to get off scot-free with felonies.  It's possible there's a criminal justice element on this one, in case a lawyer files a brief who represents someone who's served decades just for being caught with a joint, or a similarly less serious offense.  Everyone seems to think that Judge Sullivan will ultimately move to honor the dismissal request, but only the Heir thinks that may not happen.  He's thinking that Judge Sullivan will likely match unprecedented with unprecedented.  Experts agree that a motion to dismiss a case where the defendant has pleaded guilty twice is unprecedented, but that for a judge to deny dismissal would also be unprecedented.  The Heir's also sure that once a dismissal denial happens, everyone on the Insurgent Network would be like, oh wow this really blows my mind, I never thought that judge would *ever* do that!  Well, the Heir did, and he did so when it wasn't fashionable.

The Heir believes that compliance is falling apart, and enforcement will follow sooner after, and it'll be like the Wild West that Tony Sayers/Mayers lamented in Wisconsin.  Again it's about a video, and again the Heir didn't see the video since his judgement with analog audio is that the video is just news porn with no substantive implications whatsoever.  He heard on analog audio that a few days ago somewhere between 6-8 copies confronted a lady who had her mask around her chin but refused to wear it properly.  She then spat on the cops and claimed that she had the coronavirus.  This is what the Heir calls cop-spitting and/or coronassault.  He's heard it all over the compliance briefings with Bachelor Blue State, so this isn't an unusual occurrence.  The lady was then interviewed by the onlooking media saying she wants to have all charges against her dismissed, but the Heir's having none of it.  Firstly, the lady waived her right to remain silent, since what she said to the press can *and will* be held against her in a court of law.  Secondly, the way the Heir heard the report on audio sounded like all 8 cops jumped on the lady and wrestled her to the ground, but he's pretty sure this isn't what happened.  He's pretty sure it was only two cops, with one cop initially, and then the other tried to help his colleague.  He's sure the lady deliberately dropped to the ground, thereby forcing the cops to stoop down accordingly, making it look as if they forced her to the ground.  And thirdly, it's the video.  How does the Heir know this wasn't a cop-hating setup?  It feels to him like the lady had an accomplice with a phone, and she said to him/her, okay watch me instigate here, and then approached the cops without a mask on, just baiting them to take action.  This is even worse than the other case a couple weeks ago, because the cop in that case was caught sitting on the guy's back and whipping him upside the head.  This didn't happen here, so the Heir's thinking that it's yet another anti-cop move that will only serve to denigrate enforcement and compliance, and it ultimately affecting the suburbs of Bachelor Blue State, as opposed to just troubled areas in New York City.  The Heir understands that these areas exist in the city, and you have to account for them.  The Heir *also* understands that so-called ambassadors will have little to no effect in these same areas any more than the cops ever did.  Ambassadors in the Bachelor Blue Shoreline is one thing, ambassadors in troubled city areas are quite another.  People generally credit themselves for being a big of a jerkass as possible in those cases the Heir's covered thus far, so there's little hope that troubled areas of the city will be any better than the Wild West.

"The Wild Wild West.  That was a song from the late 1980s."

So the Heir's trying to figure out where to begin on this one.  Stuff like the Michael Flynn thing, the bars in Wisconsin being "Open Immediately" solely because of that high courts's wrongful decision, political hyperbole in the media.  The Heir believes the first two can be addressed pragmatically with brainstormed legal lists, and he asks for a little assistance from people outside the Bachelor culture like Maya Wiley and Chuck Rosenberg accordingly.  Those two at least he sees as the least likely to surrender to despair in their analysis.  With this thing with hyperbole, what the Heir wants to point to is video titles he's seeing on Youtube.  There's a movie out called "Death Of A Nation," and there's a video with a title that reads something to the effect of, corruption of DOJ is now complete.  The Heir did a google search on his Loungtyp asking, how many people are employed by the DOJ?  The answer is, 113,000 or so as of last year.  So if corruption of that entire department is "complete," solely by Bill Barr, he would have had to corrupt all 113,000 people working there, which is an impossibility.  It's not something the Heir at least has ever heard of before, but this is the problem with progressive reporting.  They portray an adversary as omnipotent and invincible, and then a week later *actual* reporting shows that person as anything but.  And here's a clue that that's hyperbole that the Heir noticed.  In neither of those titles did he see anything to the effect of, "we can say without hyperbole blah blah blah," a la Kent Brockman.  Alternately, he sees it as hyperbole if they updated those video titles to read "Without Hyperbole Death Of A Nation," or "Without Hyperbole The DOJ Is Completely Corrupted."  With the DOJ thing, the Heir also sees vague video titles suggesting that Bill Barr's getting ready to go after Trump's political enemies, like Funny Named Skinny Kid or Joe Biden.  But he has not heard anything substantive, like Bill Barr issuing a warrant for Funny Named's arrest on trumped out charges or something.  Unlike most progressives, the Heir's ready in case that happens, because he knows how big a wuss Bill Barr is.  The guy's backed down in the face of public pressure, but that pressure he observes is organized *without* assistance from the larger progressive movement.  The demonstrators outside of Paul Manafort's trial a couple years ago organized *themselves.*  They did not bother crawling to the Bernie Snowdens on *anything.*  But anyway, the Heir doesn't see anything that's wrong with law and justice that can't be fixed with what's *right* with law and justice.

"I hereby issue a Cease And Desist Order on DOJ's arrest warrant on Funny Named Skinny Kid.  The DOJ has 48 hours to comply.  If not, they'll be challenged in court."

The Heir wanted to talk about this one for well over a week now.  Like most people, he's appalled by at least a still of that one video of that suspect being beaten in New York.  He was concerned in case that might lead to a rollback of compliance enforcement all across the board, from New York into Bachelor Blue State.  Thankfully that doesn't seem to have happened.  People are encouraged to call or text a special hotline in case they believe there was excessive force used in compliance enforcement.  That's how it currently is in BBS.  This stands in contrast to New York where the Heir sees a direct threat to enforcement through this talk of "minders" taking over the role of cops in enforcing compliance.  His low confidence in human nature *ever* really doing the right thing indicates that the so-called minders, if they're ever appointed, would likely be ignored by the violators, and you'd have to get the cops in there anyway.  He strongly doubts that most people in that one neighborhood where that beating took place would ever regard or respect a "minder."  He wonders if an increasing consistent amount of non-compliance in both that neighborhood and the others eventually led to the beating incident.  Sure, two wrongs don't make it right, but if a cop issues a friendly reminder to people in a given neighborhood to maintain a 6-foot distance, or not have large gatherings, and people ignore that reminder, the cop's ability to command respect is at stake.  He might as well not be a cop if that happens, the Heir points out.  So he's thinking that since failure to comply will result in X, and there was likely a failure to comply, so X happened, whether that's a forcible breakup of a gathering or a physical escort of people to maintain social distancing, and the people were like "oh how dare you," only because they may very well be out-and-out cop-haters, where does the cop go from there?  Most cops will consult with their respective precincts as to what leverage they'd have in case of an impasse, but there are those very few bad actors who will take matters into their hands, and not a good way.  And that's what the Heir believes happened two weeks ago.  Keep in mind that all we have to go on is that phone video showing the actual beating, and not all the events that led up to it.  Also, the Heir wonders, did the cop have his body camera turned on or not?  If he had it turned off against policy for officers, that should figure into either a complaint process, or even proceedings in a criminal court.  But since it's two weeks later, and the media news cycle has expired on the incident, don't expect any meaningful followup until months down the road.  The Heir's hoping it'll be sooner, so we'll have answers to some unanswered questions.

It's been ten days since Minnesota and Michigan reported spikes in the number of positive cases, but the Heir noticed that it was just over two weeks before then that those anti-lockdown protests started happening.  He sees this as likely proof that the refusal of protestors to abide by social distancing guidelines is primarily responsible for upcoming increases in cases in the Midwest, the West and the South.  He wishes that the Insurgent News Network would discuss how governors in those states are making reopening decisions based on the protests and not on the science.  Once they reopen the states and the cases get even far worse, there needs to be followup protests pushing *for* a lockdown.  The Heir remembered last week about that one counterprotestor that the media just happened to mention, but he doesn't believe there's been enough coverage regarding the counterprotestors, so he believes there are far more of them than people know.  It also doesn't help that the progressives are going to largely refuse to organize counterprotests, and instead drop the counterprotestors like a lead pipe and not give them the support they need and deserve.  The counterprotestors speaking truth to power are essentially on their own, while the progressives continue to berate ordinary people for not blindly taking the progressive side in every dang thing they can think of.  The Heir did catch AOC meeting with Elizabeth Warren on Youtube regarding essential workers, but that meeting did not make the Heir dislike AOC less, or make him see her as less snide and condescending.  That's his main takeaway, but because both participants were facing their respective Zoom cameras, it's really hard to discern body language for more specifics.  If AOC and Elizabeth Warren were to meet in person, he could tell whether they looked at each other while talking, or if one of them or both looked away and toward a viewing audience.  He did feel as if Warren and AOC had a parallel conversation going in which each comment was not a direct response to the comment before it, but was a series of comments on what each person was going to say anyway.  This was with the one minute video.  The Heir did not bother catching the five minute video, since he has better things to do, like still working on our DIY Third Pillar Music Player.  He's hoping that once we get to a good point in that, we'll at least release last year's unreleased episode on audio.  We do have a general plan to get back on audio.  We're not doing base shares permanently, but base shares like this one is a good way for us to keep everyone up to speed while we're waiting for the right time to go back on audio.

"One placard suggestion I have for the counterprotestors is something to the effect of, 'Tell my dead aunt that the coronavirus isn't real.'"