A GOOD MIND TURNS TO MUSH
(In This Case A Diseased Donut)
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one's thinking; to believe that contradiction is to abdicate one's mind and to evict oneself from reality; it always leads to the rule of the brute.
Ayn Rand
BENSON’S VIEW
March 9, 2000
In serious discourse platitudes offer small insight and no evidence. Yet, sometimes they adequately open an investigation. So let's open: It is repeatedly said that, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing." If that be insight, then a large talent in the hand of a mind of little reason and no logic is a malevolent thing, and a harbinger to tyranny.
It follows, then, that by the rules of deductive reasoning and the laws of logic, Steve Benson’s cartoon is such a harbinger. Even allowing for creative license, fictional analogy, pictorial metaphor and poetic puns, it’s an abject failure of cognition. (Albeit the visceral belief of virtually all American.) Indeed, it proves, unintended to be sure, the impeccable logic and reasoning of Frederic Bastiat’s statement as it manifests and infests American law today:
The law perverted and the police powers of the state perverted along with it. Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it pretends to punish.
The following rational critique of Benson’s reasoning and logic, and the subsequent Socratic questioning of his more artistic-poetic approach shall expose, irrefutably, his fallacious reasoning, invalid logic, and the contemptible collapse of his metaphorical cartoon approach.
First his logic, Benson demonstrates epistemological inversion of placing emotion as primary to reason. Leading, therefore, to what’s defined in a priori reasoning as argumentum Ad Ignorantum. The contention of this argument, to render reason impotent and emotion prime, is that the inferences are true because one cannot prove it isn’t. His assertion is the “hole,” a non-existent, objectively exists; hence one is required to give positive proof of the non-existence of the “hole.” Yet, in reality, the absence of the positive is sufficient to disprove the negative.
What Benson knows, or damn well should know, yet is sure that most people don’t, is that it is impossible to prove a negative—that is, prove the non-existence of an entity for which there is, absolutely, no existence. Simply put, Benson’s damn “hole” does not exist. Syllogistically, therefore, the only valid inference to be drawn from Benson’s “hole” is that bad cops do not exist!
Benson, I believe, knows all this. But whether he knows it or not it exposes his absolute loyalty to evolutionary tribalism and his icon worship of statist authority.
He consciously or subliminally replaces the verb of objective reality, to be, with the subjective-emotional verb, “ought to be.” Replaces Aristotle’s reason with Kant’s emotional mysticism. Mystics—subjectivists cannot cognitively process truth that contradicts their wishes, desires, hopes or feelings. Consequently, they “reason”: I wish cops had not raped a defenseless man with a baton. I hope that such an atrocity be the mentally deranged act of one man. I feel that all other cops would condemn, stop and report such evil acts.
And, their most sinister emotional contradiction: I have faith that the blue wall of silence does not exist! To admit the existence of such an objective reality would be to admit that virtually each and every cop on earth belongs in the bad cop portion of Benson’s mischievous donut. It would factually prove passive participation in the thousands of heinous acts under the color of authority daily!
Such a “to be” reality is not to be confessed, for as written in the great epic poem Beowulf, such is "Not the coward's enterprise!" Although very few people will agree, it is axiomatically obvious to me that when an individual witnesses an act of violence or theft against another and stands by and does nothing, not even report it, he or she is guilty of moral cowardice and passive approval.
Even more obvious and wicked, if that witness has a sworn duty to stop and report such acts, but does neither, enters into a conspiracy of silence, he or she is more culpable, more cowardly, more evil than the perpetrator. And the supreme act of such moral cowardice is perpetrated by those (media and government) who publicly defend such systems of tyranny and its brutes!
Yet what's known by all and covered up by most is the absolute existence of such a Blue Wall of Silence, a wall logically leading to the only conclusion possible: The number of bad cops is virtually unanimous!
Avoiding such damning evidence, and sagacious logic is the behavior of a helpless imbecile or an intellectual coward; I do not believe that Benson's donut defense of the brute is the behavior of an imbecile.
Like most people I write to or about, I'm sure Benson hopes that I disappear down some deep hole—donut or otherwise! And as the young, black athletes, from inner city areas, that I've taught physical education would say, "Dat be cool Coach!" They are keenly right, I could care less what Benson or any other statist thinks of me.
But what's not so "cool,” what I do care about is when I'm asked by some of those youngsters to explain the "thinking" behind Benson's dungish donut. Very little, including quantum mechanics, is as difficult to explain to teenage boys who have witnessed one or two bad cops brutalize a friend—father—brother—uncle, etc., while 6-7-8 etc. "good cops" watch; then later swear they saw nothing, or worse swear to a fabrication spun by the sadistic minds of brutes!
Just as difficult to explain is how Benson's mendacious math adds up to only a few bad cops reigning nightly terror across huge and distant inner city areas of this nation; all done while the vast majority of "good cops" hide behind the Blue Wall of Silence! Even remedial math proves that not even a Star Trek, "Beam me up Scotty,” at warp speed could distribute those "few" bad cops fast enough to account for the abuse and harassment that goes on nightly in L.A. alone!!!
Among the several errors in Benson's thinking is his inexplicable ignorance about hatred and prejudice as they have evolved through Darwinian natural selection and manifested in group protection paradigms for Homo sapiens’ tribalism and super-naturalism. Such evolutionary adaptive traits as skin color, language, clothing, food, rituals, etc., formed most of the concretes and referents for the group's institutions of state and church. (Man's tyranny or Gods!)
At the time, those traits, particularly the physical, offered desirable means to enforce the homogeneity of the tribe and to identify the enemy. Consequently, so-called "good" became so-called "bad" people or vice-a-versa when exposed to such traits of differentia, I call it the Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome.
To the point of this essay, it explains how the distorted arithmetical "reason" in Benson's tribalistic donut is possible. It accounts for natural selection's varied mutations, skin color, for example, in Homo sapiens’ differentia between groups producing human emotion (the verb "to feel" over the verb "to be") that is, at once, angelically pure and diabolically putrid.
Simply alter one variable in an otherwise identical setting, and you generically change its reality. For example, change one fundamental in the following two situations, and it instantly produces that Jekyll to Hyde/Good to Bad metamorphosis.
SITUATION ONE: A police patrol, of four cops is driving around Any City, U.S.A., populated by white, middle class residents when they observe a man struggling with the front door of a house on Angel Drive. They stop and smilingly walk toward the man. One officer asks, "Can we help you, sir?” The man repeatedly searching his pockets responds, "I can't seem to find my keys." Without hesitation the officer jokes, "Yes, it's happened to me before." The officer then pulls a special key off a ring of keys and opens the door; another officer hands the man his evening newspaper. The man thanks him, and they all wish each other a pleasant evening. (Happens everyday.)
APPARENT INFERENCES FROM PREMISES GIVEN: THESE OFFICERS ALL BELONG TO THE SUGARY SWEET PART OF BENSON'S DONUT.
SITUATION TWO: Later that night the same four officers receive orders to cruise Any Ghetto, U.S.A., populated by poor, black residents. As they turn onto Bleak Street, they observe a black man standing on the porch of tenement housing. He is fiddling with a window. They stop, cautiously step from the car, and standing behind the car doors shout, "Hey man, what are you doing!" The startled man abruptly turns. The cops instantly pull their guns and order the man not to move. The confused man, reaching for his wallet, says, "But I live here, I'll show you ¾," without hesitation the four cops shoot him 41 times! (Did happen just the other day.)
APPARENT INFERENCES FROM PREMISES GIVEN (CONTAINING OUR ONE GENETIC VARIABLE) THESE COPS BELONG TO THE DARK HOLE OF BENSON'S DONUT.
The unavoidable metaphysical, epistemological, ethical and moral question facing all "donut bakers" is, "which kind of cops are these guys?" And, "who is the majority and who the minority?"
Perhaps a column in the Republic 03/12/00, lights a candle or two: So called highly honored "good" cops in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, backed by virtually every cop and white resident of this community, are murdering the aboriginal Indian population (ah! our one variable). Jim Woldram, Chairman of Natural Studies at the University of Saskatchewan states, "This type of behavior is not uncommon—aboriginals are routinely victimized by the police.” (Emphasis mine.)
Benson's arbitrary donut logic must determine are these a majority of bad cops given the Saskatchewan police population only? Or, a minority of bad cops per the population of police worldwide? Or are they bad cops when dealing with aboriginal Indians, but good cops with everyone else?
When dealing with this type of Orwellian Newspeak and Mad Hatter's Tea Party semantics—"Who the Hell knows?” I guess we must await a Benson cartoon explaining "A few bad apples in a barrel of good ones!"
The ONLY thing to me, that smacks of reality in Benson's entire tribalistic defense of omniscient authority, albeit witch doctors or votes, totem poles or constitutions, popes or police, is that "educated,” influential people like Benson, who down play and arithmetically rationalize atrocity and brutality, under the color of authority, are far more culpable than our Jekyll and Hyde cops. And, at the very least, should be taken behind a woodshed and have their brains spanked!
Nevertheless, to his credit, he deserves rave kudos for his donut demolition of Aristotle's and Bacon's deductive and inductive reasoning. His defense of tribalism's brutes, mysticism's worship of authority and the primacy of collectivism captures more "minds" than the thousands of pages written by the bastards who fathered them: Kant, James, Mills, Humes, Hegal. Marx, Dewey, Augustine, Aquinas, et al. combined!
Though I can't envision why, many would contend that to be fair to Benson, it must be stated that he is not an Aristotelian logician; he does not make his living viewing reality through reason, logic, and science. His spin on the world is through his "feelings” and faith as an artist-poet. Reality for such "thinkers" exists not in the objective verb of existence TO BE but in the subjective verb of emotion, "ought to be." The very historical "thinking" that led Galileo, when before the Inquisition for heresy, to recant then turn to a friend and whisper, "It still doesn't change a thing!"
Fair or not let's grant him literary license, allegory, pictorial poetics, metaphor, pun, etc. Let's allow his donut to justify the visceral faith of all statists and theists that supernatural and collectivistic paradigms are sovereign over the individual human being. Let's grant him that such paradigms of authority are prime over the laws of science and the axioms of birthrights. Let's grant him that contradiction of all governments and religions that a "few" bad cops, judges, priests, ministers, presidents, popes, etc., are "a necessary evil."
Hence, let's grant him that each and every individual's birthrights, ethics, morality, economics, bodily sovereignty—his or her very existence (the only reality) must be determined and directed by some kind of pragmatic and utilitarian numbers game—albeit a pope or a vote!
Now, let's examine how these donut maker views stack up as an unabashed justification for batons up the rectum, 41 bullets for reaching for a wallet, murder as long as its aboriginal Indians, or stealing Christmas toys, as long as it's a cop, etc. Shakespeare wrote, "Though this be madness there is method in it." Let's search for the method in the madness of Benson's numbers game.
For example, in America the death penalty is legalized madness based on our number's game that a “few" Innocent people must be sentenced to death to provide justice by killing a bigger number of guilty people; hence, the method in the madness! The problem facing this number's game is the NUMBER.
For example, in Illinois recently DNA testing (Oh, my God Science rears its ugly head!) revealed the "number" of innocent people on death row has gotten too "high!" Therefore, the governor (a death penalty fan) has suspended the killing until the "number" of murdered innocent people is again proportionately correct.
In another example, they are in such a numerical mess in L.A. that they can't even find any "good" cops to fix the numbers game! In another example, the Pope has decided that the historical number of evil deeds was so egregiously high, he decided to publicly apologize every hour on the hour over television recently; hence the method—now the madness—this arithmetical apology is NOT to the slaughtered victims, but to God! As they say, "Cover your own ass!"
And another example, is there a special place in Benson’s donut for hundreds of cops who did not brutalize anyone or witness brutalization but were reported in "The Christopher Commission Report" to have broadcast (and recorded) over police scanners nightly the following statements:
"Bees they naugahyde?" the officer said. "Negrohide," his associate responded. "I feel like a real stud," one officer said, "I've been screwing the public all morning." And dozens of recordings referring to black family's domestic disputes as "Gorillas in the Mist." "Best wife beating I've seen. (She) looks like a whipped slave." "Don't cry Buckwheat or is it Willie Lunch Meat." "I'm not happy until I've violated someone's civil rights," "Hi—just got my mexercise for the night." "Go get 'em my man, and shoot him twice for me." "I think all women should be put in cages around that time of the month."
The question: Are these just hundreds of good ‘ol boys, or racist-sexist bad cops?
This numerical "example" madness could go forever. But by now the reader sees the madness, or more likely, believes me to be the mad one. Yet, it still remains murky as to the exact number of bad cops to be allowed to hold justice in favor of the “whole!” Surely Benson's donut is more muddy than clear as to what category a cop belongs to when one day he helps a little old white lady from her car, but the next day blows away a little old black lady sitting in her car fumbling for her keys!
Further, digging for method in the "Whole vs. Hole" morality is complicated by where does Benson's cop fit who doesn't abuse people or ram batons up butts, does witness such acts or knows of them, but is struck deaf, dumb, and blind behind a craven wall of silence, thus never reports them? Can we give "partial" credit as a "good" cop because he only watched Rodney King beat senseless, or he only saw Vicki Weaver's head blown off at Ruby Ridge? How's the LAPD to be divided up as an ever-escalating number of cops are found in the hole and less and less in the whole?
The devastating fact of Benson's lacerated logic is that there is virtually no act heinous enough, under the color of authority that will prompt virtually any cop to come from behind the tragic flaw in all statism, that Blue Wall of Silence. Such genetically driven behavior is a metaphysical axiom of tribalism. The tribe will be protected! That is why Benson's donut “holes and wholes” number's game can never justify or rationalize collective evil, passive or otherwise. Tribalism's offshoots statism and theism found their genesis in such absolute loyalty!
It seems unerringly clear that the entire doughy mess smacks of the Nuremberg defense. There may have been a "few" bad Nazis and SS boys, but the majority were just "good" soldiers following orders! It seems unerringly clear that the recipe for Benson's donut apology by the numbers is the alpha and omega of the recent apologies of a pathetic pope with too much blood on his hands! It seems unerringly clear that the recipe for Benson's donut contains those two ingredients measured from the depths of hell, mixed in all statism concoctions: one scoop of "no systems perfect and two spoonfuls of necessary evil."
As part of closing, here is a personal experience with such a bakery. While I was in one of America's imperfect systems, decorated with that icon of "freedom" the American flag, I witnessed daily servings of imperfect but necessarily evil systems. Here's but one such example of Benson's “hole vs. whole” paradox:
A tough, justifiably angry Mexican inmate, serving time for some marijuana offense (which accounted for over 60% of all inmates), continuously refused to obey the guards' demands that he speak to them in English (which he could if he chose) instead of Spanish. While in a particularly Nazi mood one day such a guard began to beat that inmate, yelling over and over, "You fucking Spic speak English or I'll kick your ass till you cant talk!" Munci, the man's nickname, refused until the Nazi’s promise was fulfilled.
COMMENT: The following can't be proven as fact, but since we're into a "numbers game" morality investigation, I'd bet the donut shop that the recent maudlin media spectacle over a guard killed in an Arizona prison was —"What goes around comes around justice" for just such police brutality.
Back to the prison. Six other guards witnessed this brutalization of inmate "Munci"; they did not touch the man, but refused to intervene physically or verbally. They, also, warned the rest of us (inmates watching) not to admit to seeing anything unless we wanted some of the same. So the recipe looked liked this: 7 guards, 1 beater and 6 watchers. What does Benson's donut ethics tell us? Do we have 7 bad cops or 1 bad cop and 6 good cops or a "new" category of 1 bad cop and 6 "naughty but nice."
Even after decades as a student of Darwinian evolution, natural selection that bifurcated Homo sapiens' consciousness, and tribalism's supernaturalism that wrought the ages of savagery and barbarianism, to help man survive a hostile and terrorizing world, I still sit stunned that "enlightened,” "civilized" people, like Benson, support a metaphysical edifice of violence to control violence; necessary evil to combat evil; imperfect systems to handle imperfect people!
After more attention than it deserves, Benson's cartoon demonstrates much madness and little method, but does offer incontrovertible evidence of Bastiat's wisdom stated earlier ”—the police powers of the state—guilty of the evils it pretends to punish."
And Benson is to be congratulated on his contribution to the rule of the brute.
It follows, then, that by the rules of deductive reasoning and the laws of logic, Steve Benson’s cartoon is such a harbinger. Even allowing for creative license, fictional analogy, pictorial metaphor and poetic puns, it’s an abject failure of cognition. (Albeit the visceral belief of virtually all American.) Indeed, it proves, unintended to be sure, the impeccable logic and reasoning of Frederic Bastiat’s statement as it manifests and infests American law today:
The law perverted and the police powers of the state perverted along with it. Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it pretends to punish.
The following rational critique of Benson’s reasoning and logic, and the subsequent Socratic questioning of his more artistic-poetic approach shall expose, irrefutably, his fallacious reasoning, invalid logic, and the contemptible collapse of his metaphorical cartoon approach.
First his logic, Benson demonstrates epistemological inversion of placing emotion as primary to reason. Leading, therefore, to what’s defined in a priori reasoning as argumentum Ad Ignorantum. The contention of this argument, to render reason impotent and emotion prime, is that the inferences are true because one cannot prove it isn’t. His assertion is the “hole,” a non-existent, objectively exists; hence one is required to give positive proof of the non-existence of the “hole.” Yet, in reality, the absence of the positive is sufficient to disprove the negative.
What Benson knows, or damn well should know, yet is sure that most people don’t, is that it is impossible to prove a negative—that is, prove the non-existence of an entity for which there is, absolutely, no existence. Simply put, Benson’s damn “hole” does not exist. Syllogistically, therefore, the only valid inference to be drawn from Benson’s “hole” is that bad cops do not exist!
Benson, I believe, knows all this. But whether he knows it or not it exposes his absolute loyalty to evolutionary tribalism and his icon worship of statist authority.
He consciously or subliminally replaces the verb of objective reality, to be, with the subjective-emotional verb, “ought to be.” Replaces Aristotle’s reason with Kant’s emotional mysticism. Mystics—subjectivists cannot cognitively process truth that contradicts their wishes, desires, hopes or feelings. Consequently, they “reason”: I wish cops had not raped a defenseless man with a baton. I hope that such an atrocity be the mentally deranged act of one man. I feel that all other cops would condemn, stop and report such evil acts.
And, their most sinister emotional contradiction: I have faith that the blue wall of silence does not exist! To admit the existence of such an objective reality would be to admit that virtually each and every cop on earth belongs in the bad cop portion of Benson’s mischievous donut. It would factually prove passive participation in the thousands of heinous acts under the color of authority daily!
Such a “to be” reality is not to be confessed, for as written in the great epic poem Beowulf, such is "Not the coward's enterprise!" Although very few people will agree, it is axiomatically obvious to me that when an individual witnesses an act of violence or theft against another and stands by and does nothing, not even report it, he or she is guilty of moral cowardice and passive approval.
Even more obvious and wicked, if that witness has a sworn duty to stop and report such acts, but does neither, enters into a conspiracy of silence, he or she is more culpable, more cowardly, more evil than the perpetrator. And the supreme act of such moral cowardice is perpetrated by those (media and government) who publicly defend such systems of tyranny and its brutes!
Yet what's known by all and covered up by most is the absolute existence of such a Blue Wall of Silence, a wall logically leading to the only conclusion possible: The number of bad cops is virtually unanimous!
Avoiding such damning evidence, and sagacious logic is the behavior of a helpless imbecile or an intellectual coward; I do not believe that Benson's donut defense of the brute is the behavior of an imbecile.
Like most people I write to or about, I'm sure Benson hopes that I disappear down some deep hole—donut or otherwise! And as the young, black athletes, from inner city areas, that I've taught physical education would say, "Dat be cool Coach!" They are keenly right, I could care less what Benson or any other statist thinks of me.
But what's not so "cool,” what I do care about is when I'm asked by some of those youngsters to explain the "thinking" behind Benson's dungish donut. Very little, including quantum mechanics, is as difficult to explain to teenage boys who have witnessed one or two bad cops brutalize a friend—father—brother—uncle, etc., while 6-7-8 etc. "good cops" watch; then later swear they saw nothing, or worse swear to a fabrication spun by the sadistic minds of brutes!
Just as difficult to explain is how Benson's mendacious math adds up to only a few bad cops reigning nightly terror across huge and distant inner city areas of this nation; all done while the vast majority of "good cops" hide behind the Blue Wall of Silence! Even remedial math proves that not even a Star Trek, "Beam me up Scotty,” at warp speed could distribute those "few" bad cops fast enough to account for the abuse and harassment that goes on nightly in L.A. alone!!!
Among the several errors in Benson's thinking is his inexplicable ignorance about hatred and prejudice as they have evolved through Darwinian natural selection and manifested in group protection paradigms for Homo sapiens’ tribalism and super-naturalism. Such evolutionary adaptive traits as skin color, language, clothing, food, rituals, etc., formed most of the concretes and referents for the group's institutions of state and church. (Man's tyranny or Gods!)
At the time, those traits, particularly the physical, offered desirable means to enforce the homogeneity of the tribe and to identify the enemy. Consequently, so-called "good" became so-called "bad" people or vice-a-versa when exposed to such traits of differentia, I call it the Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome.
To the point of this essay, it explains how the distorted arithmetical "reason" in Benson's tribalistic donut is possible. It accounts for natural selection's varied mutations, skin color, for example, in Homo sapiens’ differentia between groups producing human emotion (the verb "to feel" over the verb "to be") that is, at once, angelically pure and diabolically putrid.
Simply alter one variable in an otherwise identical setting, and you generically change its reality. For example, change one fundamental in the following two situations, and it instantly produces that Jekyll to Hyde/Good to Bad metamorphosis.
SITUATION ONE: A police patrol, of four cops is driving around Any City, U.S.A., populated by white, middle class residents when they observe a man struggling with the front door of a house on Angel Drive. They stop and smilingly walk toward the man. One officer asks, "Can we help you, sir?” The man repeatedly searching his pockets responds, "I can't seem to find my keys." Without hesitation the officer jokes, "Yes, it's happened to me before." The officer then pulls a special key off a ring of keys and opens the door; another officer hands the man his evening newspaper. The man thanks him, and they all wish each other a pleasant evening. (Happens everyday.)
APPARENT INFERENCES FROM PREMISES GIVEN: THESE OFFICERS ALL BELONG TO THE SUGARY SWEET PART OF BENSON'S DONUT.
SITUATION TWO: Later that night the same four officers receive orders to cruise Any Ghetto, U.S.A., populated by poor, black residents. As they turn onto Bleak Street, they observe a black man standing on the porch of tenement housing. He is fiddling with a window. They stop, cautiously step from the car, and standing behind the car doors shout, "Hey man, what are you doing!" The startled man abruptly turns. The cops instantly pull their guns and order the man not to move. The confused man, reaching for his wallet, says, "But I live here, I'll show you ¾," without hesitation the four cops shoot him 41 times! (Did happen just the other day.)
APPARENT INFERENCES FROM PREMISES GIVEN (CONTAINING OUR ONE GENETIC VARIABLE) THESE COPS BELONG TO THE DARK HOLE OF BENSON'S DONUT.
The unavoidable metaphysical, epistemological, ethical and moral question facing all "donut bakers" is, "which kind of cops are these guys?" And, "who is the majority and who the minority?"
Perhaps a column in the Republic 03/12/00, lights a candle or two: So called highly honored "good" cops in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, backed by virtually every cop and white resident of this community, are murdering the aboriginal Indian population (ah! our one variable). Jim Woldram, Chairman of Natural Studies at the University of Saskatchewan states, "This type of behavior is not uncommon—aboriginals are routinely victimized by the police.” (Emphasis mine.)
Benson's arbitrary donut logic must determine are these a majority of bad cops given the Saskatchewan police population only? Or, a minority of bad cops per the population of police worldwide? Or are they bad cops when dealing with aboriginal Indians, but good cops with everyone else?
When dealing with this type of Orwellian Newspeak and Mad Hatter's Tea Party semantics—"Who the Hell knows?” I guess we must await a Benson cartoon explaining "A few bad apples in a barrel of good ones!"
The ONLY thing to me, that smacks of reality in Benson's entire tribalistic defense of omniscient authority, albeit witch doctors or votes, totem poles or constitutions, popes or police, is that "educated,” influential people like Benson, who down play and arithmetically rationalize atrocity and brutality, under the color of authority, are far more culpable than our Jekyll and Hyde cops. And, at the very least, should be taken behind a woodshed and have their brains spanked!
Nevertheless, to his credit, he deserves rave kudos for his donut demolition of Aristotle's and Bacon's deductive and inductive reasoning. His defense of tribalism's brutes, mysticism's worship of authority and the primacy of collectivism captures more "minds" than the thousands of pages written by the bastards who fathered them: Kant, James, Mills, Humes, Hegal. Marx, Dewey, Augustine, Aquinas, et al. combined!
Though I can't envision why, many would contend that to be fair to Benson, it must be stated that he is not an Aristotelian logician; he does not make his living viewing reality through reason, logic, and science. His spin on the world is through his "feelings” and faith as an artist-poet. Reality for such "thinkers" exists not in the objective verb of existence TO BE but in the subjective verb of emotion, "ought to be." The very historical "thinking" that led Galileo, when before the Inquisition for heresy, to recant then turn to a friend and whisper, "It still doesn't change a thing!"
Fair or not let's grant him literary license, allegory, pictorial poetics, metaphor, pun, etc. Let's allow his donut to justify the visceral faith of all statists and theists that supernatural and collectivistic paradigms are sovereign over the individual human being. Let's grant him that such paradigms of authority are prime over the laws of science and the axioms of birthrights. Let's grant him that contradiction of all governments and religions that a "few" bad cops, judges, priests, ministers, presidents, popes, etc., are "a necessary evil."
Hence, let's grant him that each and every individual's birthrights, ethics, morality, economics, bodily sovereignty—his or her very existence (the only reality) must be determined and directed by some kind of pragmatic and utilitarian numbers game—albeit a pope or a vote!
Now, let's examine how these donut maker views stack up as an unabashed justification for batons up the rectum, 41 bullets for reaching for a wallet, murder as long as its aboriginal Indians, or stealing Christmas toys, as long as it's a cop, etc. Shakespeare wrote, "Though this be madness there is method in it." Let's search for the method in the madness of Benson's numbers game.
For example, in America the death penalty is legalized madness based on our number's game that a “few" Innocent people must be sentenced to death to provide justice by killing a bigger number of guilty people; hence, the method in the madness! The problem facing this number's game is the NUMBER.
For example, in Illinois recently DNA testing (Oh, my God Science rears its ugly head!) revealed the "number" of innocent people on death row has gotten too "high!" Therefore, the governor (a death penalty fan) has suspended the killing until the "number" of murdered innocent people is again proportionately correct.
In another example, they are in such a numerical mess in L.A. that they can't even find any "good" cops to fix the numbers game! In another example, the Pope has decided that the historical number of evil deeds was so egregiously high, he decided to publicly apologize every hour on the hour over television recently; hence the method—now the madness—this arithmetical apology is NOT to the slaughtered victims, but to God! As they say, "Cover your own ass!"
And another example, is there a special place in Benson’s donut for hundreds of cops who did not brutalize anyone or witness brutalization but were reported in "The Christopher Commission Report" to have broadcast (and recorded) over police scanners nightly the following statements:
"Bees they naugahyde?" the officer said. "Negrohide," his associate responded. "I feel like a real stud," one officer said, "I've been screwing the public all morning." And dozens of recordings referring to black family's domestic disputes as "Gorillas in the Mist." "Best wife beating I've seen. (She) looks like a whipped slave." "Don't cry Buckwheat or is it Willie Lunch Meat." "I'm not happy until I've violated someone's civil rights," "Hi—just got my mexercise for the night." "Go get 'em my man, and shoot him twice for me." "I think all women should be put in cages around that time of the month."
The question: Are these just hundreds of good ‘ol boys, or racist-sexist bad cops?
This numerical "example" madness could go forever. But by now the reader sees the madness, or more likely, believes me to be the mad one. Yet, it still remains murky as to the exact number of bad cops to be allowed to hold justice in favor of the “whole!” Surely Benson's donut is more muddy than clear as to what category a cop belongs to when one day he helps a little old white lady from her car, but the next day blows away a little old black lady sitting in her car fumbling for her keys!
Further, digging for method in the "Whole vs. Hole" morality is complicated by where does Benson's cop fit who doesn't abuse people or ram batons up butts, does witness such acts or knows of them, but is struck deaf, dumb, and blind behind a craven wall of silence, thus never reports them? Can we give "partial" credit as a "good" cop because he only watched Rodney King beat senseless, or he only saw Vicki Weaver's head blown off at Ruby Ridge? How's the LAPD to be divided up as an ever-escalating number of cops are found in the hole and less and less in the whole?
The devastating fact of Benson's lacerated logic is that there is virtually no act heinous enough, under the color of authority that will prompt virtually any cop to come from behind the tragic flaw in all statism, that Blue Wall of Silence. Such genetically driven behavior is a metaphysical axiom of tribalism. The tribe will be protected! That is why Benson's donut “holes and wholes” number's game can never justify or rationalize collective evil, passive or otherwise. Tribalism's offshoots statism and theism found their genesis in such absolute loyalty!
It seems unerringly clear that the entire doughy mess smacks of the Nuremberg defense. There may have been a "few" bad Nazis and SS boys, but the majority were just "good" soldiers following orders! It seems unerringly clear that the recipe for Benson's donut apology by the numbers is the alpha and omega of the recent apologies of a pathetic pope with too much blood on his hands! It seems unerringly clear that the recipe for Benson's donut contains those two ingredients measured from the depths of hell, mixed in all statism concoctions: one scoop of "no systems perfect and two spoonfuls of necessary evil."
As part of closing, here is a personal experience with such a bakery. While I was in one of America's imperfect systems, decorated with that icon of "freedom" the American flag, I witnessed daily servings of imperfect but necessarily evil systems. Here's but one such example of Benson's “hole vs. whole” paradox:
A tough, justifiably angry Mexican inmate, serving time for some marijuana offense (which accounted for over 60% of all inmates), continuously refused to obey the guards' demands that he speak to them in English (which he could if he chose) instead of Spanish. While in a particularly Nazi mood one day such a guard began to beat that inmate, yelling over and over, "You fucking Spic speak English or I'll kick your ass till you cant talk!" Munci, the man's nickname, refused until the Nazi’s promise was fulfilled.
COMMENT: The following can't be proven as fact, but since we're into a "numbers game" morality investigation, I'd bet the donut shop that the recent maudlin media spectacle over a guard killed in an Arizona prison was —"What goes around comes around justice" for just such police brutality.
Back to the prison. Six other guards witnessed this brutalization of inmate "Munci"; they did not touch the man, but refused to intervene physically or verbally. They, also, warned the rest of us (inmates watching) not to admit to seeing anything unless we wanted some of the same. So the recipe looked liked this: 7 guards, 1 beater and 6 watchers. What does Benson's donut ethics tell us? Do we have 7 bad cops or 1 bad cop and 6 good cops or a "new" category of 1 bad cop and 6 "naughty but nice."
Even after decades as a student of Darwinian evolution, natural selection that bifurcated Homo sapiens' consciousness, and tribalism's supernaturalism that wrought the ages of savagery and barbarianism, to help man survive a hostile and terrorizing world, I still sit stunned that "enlightened,” "civilized" people, like Benson, support a metaphysical edifice of violence to control violence; necessary evil to combat evil; imperfect systems to handle imperfect people!
After more attention than it deserves, Benson's cartoon demonstrates much madness and little method, but does offer incontrovertible evidence of Bastiat's wisdom stated earlier ”—the police powers of the state—guilty of the evils it pretends to punish."
And Benson is to be congratulated on his contribution to the rule of the brute.
1 comment:
Excellent points.
I was able to find links to the Christopher Commission and also a report that focuses on the progress of implementing the reforms in the Christopher Commission. I haven’t read through them yet but here they are for future reference if any readers might be curious.
Christopher Commission
“Five Years Later: A Report to the Los Angeles Police Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department’s Implementation of Independent Commission Recommendations,” May 1996.
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