Punkie

I often think he’s a second grader lying on his oral book report.

I have seen some rhetoric about this, like “a few bad apples,” but here’s the problem with this and a lot of enforcement jobs.

• Polite and decent people, on average, dislike confrontation. Thus, are not particularly attracted to these types of jobs.
• This leads to an uneven amount who are fine with confrontation or even like it. Some of these people are sociopaths and psychopaths.
• People who are psychopaths are actually very attracted to position where they have power over people.
• US Customs are not regulated under the same laws as police or military. They can do what they want, when they want, with little to no discretion.

Are all US customs agents bad? No, of course not. But unchecked power is dangerous for anything. I can’t tell you what percentage is or is not, because you can’t measure a negative. But I see this in military, police, hired guards, and politics.

Many years ago, they cavity searched an underage girl at my local airport (Dulles) as she returned with her family from a vacation in Jamaica. They separated her from her family, did not tell her family, and searched all her holes “for drugs.” They defended their actions by saying, “if we told people we didn’t cavity search babies, they’d hide drugs inside babies.” Essentially admitting, with no shame, they’d cavity search an infant. All in the name of “stopping drugs.” Oh and the girl? US citizen, but dark skinned. The mistake they made was her dad was a powerful attorney and went public.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106hhrg66023/html/CHRG-106hhrg66023.htm

https://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/circle/raceprofiling/stories.racial.profiling.html

And these are probably only the cases you’re hearing about.

One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can’t swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water. “Where would we have learned or practiced?” Over the years, I have learned that a lot of people in the US cannot swim, especially when they were poor as kids, even in major cities near water.

A childhood friend of mine had to sign a waiver in New Zealand because her and her team were climbing down some canyon notoriously hard to get to except by rescue helicopter. She got stuck, and the rest of the team went to go get help. She paid $58,000 in 1990s money for the rescue. So it’s not just the US.

When I did sales management in the late 80s to mid 90s, we called them “penalty boxes.” To get a manager to quit, you reassign then to a store or location that is either guaranteed to be soul sucking, high crime, or otherwise not profitable enough to make commission or bonuses. They do that in education as well, like send teachers to difficult schools to get them to quit and skirt union rules.

I think it depends on where you live. In my case, I see about 4-5 a week on my security cameras, but only a few a year ignore the sign. On nextdoor dot com, it’s discussed and video camera footage is shared, so we know which neighborhoods are targeted. Mine is because of the aging population of upper middle income folks.

Solicitation at my door.

1. I have a sign, on my door, that says “no solicitors.”
2. By law, all solicitors must have a solicitation license from the county on their person. It’s a photo ID issued by the county. None of them do.
3. I work from home with a handicapped wife. Do not bother me.

I give them one chance to go away. If they press it, I demand to see their license, which “Oh it’s in the truck” or “it’s in the office” or “I am not soliciting, I am giving you a FREE ESTIMATE…” I call the cops. Fuck em. Non-emergency number, I state a description of a suspicious man who refused to show me a solicitation license, and kept asking me to open my door. I describe the direction they are going with dates, streets, and times.

A few get nabbed. Some of these guys are known to the police because they are possibly casing your house and they have a ton of camera evidence of them peeping in windows and gates.

I get about 5-6 a week. It’s worse when I pick up the phone, because I am waiting for a call from a number I might not know. Most recently I was acting as a job reference. Out of 20 calls, 2 were legit. The moment I started answering the phone, the spam calls increased to a few a day (they established I was a real number). The only way I get off these lists is to pretend I am another call center. Then they start to die down back to only a few a week (or whomever is calling from dozens of unknown caller id’s that leave no voice mail or voice mail is the tail end of a recording).

Shoujoago’s Twitch streamer. She’s an artist, female drag performer, and lover of cats. She plays obscure independent games she finds, draws stuff, sometimes has game nights, and hosts with her cat Marzipan. Huge Phoenix Wright fan. Usually has streams 2-3 times a week. Very calm and relaxed.

https://twitch.tv/shoujoagogo

It’s not that great. They are overpopulated and ruining the ecosystem, so we were paid to hunt them. But the meat is rancid, it’s wrought with disease, and even the pelts are worthless: 50/50 poly/cotton isn’t even suitable for rags or waterproof enough for tarps.

They have no natural predators either, and the are clogging the rural landscape. If we leave them to rot, they smell terrible and poison the soil and water table. In 2020-2022 we thought disease would wipe them out, but they banned birth control and are breeding faster than we can control.

There were programs to feed the homeless from various donations from hunters, but even the homeless reject them because they taste like cigarettes and stale Miller Lite. There’s plans to use their bodies for construction filler, but the are oily and unstable. In bodies of water their fat floats them to the surface like fatburgs one finds clogging sewers.

The whole program is a disaster.

Here’s the problem: Christians have no self-monitoring going on. Anyone can claim to be “Christian” and it’s killing them. It’s just a useless label anyone can apply to themselves or others. There’s no certification, vetting, or sponsorship to revoke. It’s a Jesus mask that so many can just strap onto their face with some rubber bands and do the same evil they have always done. This was one of the reasons against idolatry in the Ten Commandments: any fool can claim they represent God. “You shall have no other Gods before me,” means “I am the only God,” then goes on to say, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.” which is building on the same premise. “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain” is trying to cover all bases. But people break these all the time.

Christians need to unite on a common ground and make a stance of what they universally believe in. But yes, I hear you laughing, and you’re probably right, that’s never gonna happen. You’re going to have factions like the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 claiming the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 are heretical scum, and push people off bridges. I mean, this is not a new problem, either. Look at the Crusades. Witch Burnings. The Spanish Inquisition. The list goes on and on.

In the end, it’s all about people wanting power. Whether they have a Jesus mask or not, some people are facist assholes, want to be in charge, and they don’t care who they hurt or what they destroy to get there.