FBEL – Malicious Compliance

I’ve seen a couple of videos of DC police (or at least people dressed as police well enough that they appear real to me) challenging people sitting on their own porches, asking for ID and demanding their questions be answered. This is, in my VERY strong opinion, not good. Unless those people are having a rave and offering the cops illegal drugs, or are smashing in windows or beating their wife and kids in front of the cops, the cops should not be bothering them. We’re protected against unreasonable search and/or seizure.

It’s easy to blame this on Trump. That’s what the Left is doing. “Oh look, Trump has weaponized the National Guard!” First and foremost, Trump has not “weaponized” anything other than maybe his ability to tweak leftists. Second, the DC Nat’l Guard is different from the States’ Nat’l Guard. It is the only branch of the NG that directly reports to the President. That’s for good reason. In other words, the Nat’l Guard was already under the President’s control. It wasn’t “wrested away” from the Mayor; she never had control of it to begin with.

But let’s go back to the police and/or NG who are roaming DC’s streets and harassing people on their porches. That is illegal, and those who are bothering people doing nothing suspicious beyond filming the authorities should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I believe that what they’re doing is a form of malicious compliance. I’ve only seen a handful of videos showing authorities badgering people doing nothing wrong, and while the cops in the videos are being excessively polite, they’re making statements I consider to be stupid. They’re asking to see ID, and proof that people live in the homes which they’re sitting in front of. Last I checked, you don’t have to prove that kind of thing. I believe that there are a handful of angry authorities out there, leftist holdouts or whatever, who are not interested in making DC safer. I believe they’re interested in making a scene on camera to make the whole of the NG operation look bad.

The term malicious compliance means that the letter of the law is being followed, to the detriment of the spirit of the law.  Sometimes, this is done because a boss is telling you to do something stupid, and you’ve made several attempts to correct that boss, to no avail. So you follow the boss’s instructions exactly, enabling you to show that you’ve done only what you were told to do, and nothing else. Generally, it can be a good method to winnow out bosses who really don’t understand how to utilize good employees as it’s non-violent and generally not overly harmful. In the hands of leftists in DC, however, it could (and I believe will) undermine what Trump is trying to do.

I find it interesting that the interviews I’ve seen regarding the homeless in DC, OF the homeless, have been positive toward Trump. An interviewer was going up and down streets in a bad part of town, where there were tons of folks in tents and sleeping on the sidewalks. While it wasn’t “beautiful” in the usual sense, the tents were orderly, not blocking travelers, and frankly it was cleaner than most cities I’ve seen. The homeless people that were interviewed said that troops had been through but seemed much less interested in them than in the drug users and sellers, and the people who were being violent or disruptive. One lady went so far as to say she had been homeless for months in DC, and this was the first time she’d slept soundly because the cops were rounding up the trouble makers. Several homeless people said that the troops weren’t bothering them, and that they’d offered various services and made folks aware of housing opportunities and jobs and such.

This is very different from the “angry” videos of the cops challenging the young men on their porch. It makes me consider whether malicious compliance was in use at the time of the “angry” cops. I would also note that the people in the “angry” videos were wearing black flak vests labeled “police” and were identifying themselves as police. The homeless camp people talked about the Guard specifically. It seems to me that the Guard is acting very politely, taking care of business as quickly and efficiently as they can, without hurting those who don’t deserve it. The police, on the other hand, well some of them seem pretty butthurt over the Guard being in town.

I’ve seen several articles lately in legacy media claiming Trump is “gunning for the unhoused” (that’s the new term for homeless, btw), that he’s sending troops to every city in the nation to clean out the unhoused, and to shove them into interment camps. That’s all I’ve seen, however. I’m not seeing NG being sent out to lots of cities. They’re in DC right now, cleaning up there. Frankly, we don’t have enough NG to sweep the whole damn country clean anyhow. Trump has the direct and legal authority to do it in DC, and that’s where he’s starting. Red states will take action on their own once they know they’re safe to do so, is my guess. After that, there won’t be a lot of tourism in the dangerous blue states, so they’ll kind of be forced to clean up their acts in order to survive.

All of that said, I do have some concerns I consider valid.

1. We already have a mental health crisis in this nation. There aren’t enough therapists around to help out the current load of people in need. Now Trump is setting things up to foist a very large number of new people onto the waiting list that is already so long that non-suicidal folk are waiting years to see someone. I am worried that the mental health system (and also the local ERs and hospitals) will be quickly overwhelmed and sent into chaos. That’s a Bad Thing in so many ways.
2. We need to watch police and the Guard wherever they are, and make certain that acts of malicious compliance are dealt with swiftly and with no mercy. People who refuse to do their jobs, or who wiggle their way through orders to make sure they look bad, need to be punished, publicly.
3. We need to find out WHY people are homeless. Those who are homeless because they can’t afford housing, those can hopefully be helped. Get them jobs and interim housing, maybe give them a hand up (rather than a hand out) to get on their feet. They should be easy to get off the streets. Those who are homeless due to mental health issues (ESPECIALLY veterans) need to be dealt with accordingly, and using kid gloves. Mental health issues, especially schizophrenia and related mental disorders, cause people to do things they normally would not, and that is not their fault. If we find people who have these severe disorders, we need to get them help, get them on meds (or off meds, whatever’s right for them), and get them stable. Once that happens, again it shouldn’t be too difficult to get them off the system and into the world again. The drug abusers might be lumped in with the mental health folk, honestly, because most of them are self medicating. Teach them how to deal with the problems before they turn to drugs, and the issue goes away. Dealers, on the other hand, should be thrown in gulags and have the keys melted into the locks (please note, I mean hard drugs like meth, heroin, coke, etc… not pot, LSD, shrooms). Once we understand the reason for homelessness, we should be able to sort them gently into categories and help them become members of the larger society.
4. For those few who actually wish to live “not in homes”… we should work with them to find an answer. Sleeping in parks and on city streets is not a good answer, and perhaps we simply need to find out their reasons for not wanting to be in a home. If they want to live rough, and I get it because I’ve had moments where I wanted to as well, perhaps we can find space for them in our forests or camping areas. Give them a place to be how they want to be without defacing our streets. There has to be an actual answer that doesn’t involve forcing people into lives they don’t want to live (or can’t live).
5. If Trump wants to bring back asylums for people with mental disorders, I would be cautiously optimistic about that. Some truly horrific things happened in asylums in the past, but we know a lot more about mental health today than we did in the 50s and 60s. Involuntary commitment should be like abortions: safe, rare, and legal. It should be the last resort, but a viable and GOOD option for those folks who simply cannot live in today’s world. At one time, this country had homes for folks with issues, where they could be supervised but still have jobs and a measure of self esteem and self worth. I believe that’s been taken away, shoving those people onto an already overburdened mental health system, burned out families on their last straw, and the streets. But it has to be done RIGHT, and that’s where my concern comes in. We have to avoid the mistakes of the past. If we want assisted living for people with Down’s Syndrome, for instance, then we need to make it happen with appropriate oversights and supervision for those doing the assisting. We *cannot* allow people to fall through the cracks, let killer nurses or whatever roam freely. The watchers have to be watched, too.

There’s a lot to consider. But it isn’t impossible. I see so many positive things happening. I feel safer, today, than I did a year ago. I see grocery prices going down (for most things). I see gas prices coming down. I see companies investing in America again, tentatively but it’s happening. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for a year, and I’m about to be able to let it out, finally.

To take this back to the Left, because that’s the perspective I’m trying to give you guys, they’re falling apart. The “thinking Left” are starting to question what their uppers are doing, and in doing so, are getting tossed out on their asses for challenging the authorities. There’s larger and larger groups of people in between Left and Right, looking confused and upset. I watch people on the Right offer them a hand, and they’re taking it, but they know that they aren’t Conservative (at least in the historic meaning of that word). They just aren’t radical leftists. But they’re being TOLD they’re now MAGAts or Republicans or Conservatives, because they can’t do what they’re told or think what they’re told. So there’s a lot of upset milling about happening.

The radical Left (which appears to be about half of the Left at this point) are breaking out the hair dye and getting more piercings (not that the Right can’t do those things… the Left just seem to use it as a signaling thing rather than as a personal statement). They’re doing things like putting themselves into danger of being run over by NG vehicles and police cars during raids. They’re frequently mistaking human trafficking raids for ICE raids (because those two often overlap, sadly), and attempting to intervene. They appear to be actively supporting the destruction of the fertility of the human race, education of our children, protection of our women and children and homes, rights and privileges of women and POC and Natives… And their thinking Left neighbors are starting to see it for what it is.

I think that if we wait patiently for another 8 to 10 years, we’ll see the dismantling of the current Democratic Party, and the rise of something much more Liberal and progressive. As the thinking Left works its way out of its funk, they will gather together and form a new party. And that’s not a bad thing. The United States of America, if it’s to continue to exist in any form, needs to have two or more parties that continue to represent the needs, wants, and requirements of We the People. The breakdown is happening because the DP no longer represents most of their constituents. As the “little people” realize that, change will begin to happen. Balance will return, and we’ll see better things blooming.

I believe that we tend to “go where we’re looking.” It’s what we teach our kids – look in the direction you want to drive, and the car will generally go that direction. We need to look where we WANT to go, and stop dragging back and looking at the train wreck off to the side. It’s a wreck; let it die on its own. We have shit to do.