Ramblings

Jack wrote this in March, 2006:

Morning blogsters:

This morning there was a newspaper in my yard.  I don’t subscribe to newspapers, but I figured since it was there, and since I haven’t seen or heard any news for a while, maybe it was the coincidence coordinators had something I was supposed to see, or maybe it was Dancing Lessons From God, which I try to keep alert for.

Front page was full of some cop in Tijeras got himself dead by some parolee.  Cops doing a major man-hunt, roughed up some kid who looked like the suspect and drove a similar car…. warned him he’d be well advised not to drive the car until the guy is caught, hinting dark possibilities resulting from mistaken identity.

Hokay.  Every day there’s a homicide or three in Albuquerque… several more in the rest of New Mexico.  A little over a year ago a good friend of mine was murdered, and when it wasn’t obvious who did it they said, ho-hum.  Forgot about it.

So, where’s the difference here?  People getting killed all over the place and nobody gets more than a sigh from the police.  But a man who happened to volunteer to be a soldier for the bureaucracy knowing his life might occasionally be risked and we get a Chinese Firedrill.

Every time.

Why is the life of a police officer worth more than the life of an 80 year old man they accidently shot when they were kicking down the door to the house next door and he came out with a flashlight to see what was happening?  Ho hum.  Mistaken identity.

Why is it worth more than a kid, a mother, anybody?

We all know why.

When you own the system some people are just more equal than others.  Orwell said it first.

Anyway, the big news of the day in New Mexico is some cop got killed in Tijeras.  Ho hum.

You newswatchers and readers hereabouts brace yourselves for a couple of weeks hearing about how frequently he brushed his teeth and what color the brush was.

Jack