Every week I read the crime blotter in the local paper up here, because… well, you want to know what crime is like in your little area, right? Yeah. But mostly because it’s good for giggles and the enduring touches of absurdity that are the core of a well-rounded life.
Almost all law enforcement here is through the PA State Police in Laporte. Yes, we have a county sheriff, but he seems mostly responsible for salting away those who need to be removed from the public sphere for the Greater Good. (We don’t even have our own jail; we export our crooks and crooklets across the county line to our neighboring incarcerators.)
Anyway, awhile back I started to note that the charges in the blotter filed for various crimes (mainly DUI, weed possession, and some form of harassment) were getting… a mite strange. I was no longer just “DUI,” but “DUI and…” a variety of added unlikelihoods.
Online, I further noted that either things have changed throughout the country and wider world, or I was just getting more observant: The same creeping charge sheet was happening everywhere.
So here’s a random selection of weird crime charges I’ve collected over the last roughly three months:
- “causing grievous bodily harm with intent.” Yup, only that – “intent.” So is this the same as or different from “causing grievous bodily harm just for the hell of it”?
- “recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and common assault.” I guess there must also be “virtual assault,” “highly uncommon assault,” and possibly “egregious assault with Indian spicing.”
- “assault with a deadly weapon with a hate crime enhancement.” As everybody knows, hate crime will enhance any assault.
- “obstructing an official proceeding, assaulting police with a weapon and robbery.” I don’t remember the details and can’t quite envision the context.
- “DUI combined with substance.” It really was pretty substantial, since it involved a drunk-driving Mississippi state senator.
- “obstruction of official business.” A fairly laidback charge when applied to a man climbing 73 stories up the exterior of a South Korean skyscraper, barefoot, while wearing only shorts.
- “grand larceny and mischief, as well as misdemeanor counts of conspiracy and criminal trespass.” A bunch of teens, slapped for roasting and eating the town’s swan.
- “voluntarily causing hurt by means of a heated substance.” A woman in Singapore, for scalding her husband with boiling water. (Well, it could have been an involuntary whim.)
- “criminal solicitation in the second and fourth degree, tampering with physical evidence, and conspiracy in the fifth degree.” Just shows how many degrees you can heap on a guy for his second attempt to hire a killer to off his wife.
- * * *
I see a tendency among political commentators (I try to avoid them like the bubonic plague but don’t alway succeed) to equate Trump and Florida governor DeSantis. This is a mistake! Yes, both are vile, repulsive human beings, but that’s only the unlettered surface response.
As I’ve probably claimed before, Trump is stupid but wily. The stupid is obvious, but the wilys of the world are skilled at a kind of street smarts that has little to do with intelligence: It’s an ingrained ability to see how to take advantage of the weakness in others to order to create your own personal advantage.
People in places like up here judge you by who you are (or by who they think you are), not by your looks, position, or smarmy pretense. I think Trump appeals to many of them not because he’s a good guy but because they see him as a straightforwardly bad guy, right up front.
DeSantis, alas, is actually smart, which gives him a different kind of advantage. He can form his asininity to sound like it’s based on logical reality.
How about a wider contrast. Trump’s raucous hatred is intensely personal, not ideological; he hates anyone who is not himself. DeSantis’s hatred, by contrast, is less personal than ideological; he hates anyone who does not share his warped beliefs.
Now let’s take this yet a little further.
The fear that either of these two miserable examples of humanity might become (again, or for the first time) U.S. president calls up specters of Nazi Germany. I’ll say it – right of the bat – that I think that’s ridiculous. This isn’t Germany in the 1920s, and neither of these guys has the heft to pull off a Hitler, no matter how much they might want to.
But…
Again thinking back on Nazi Germany, I see an interesting pair of analogies:
Trump as Goering
DeSatis as Goebbels
Goering was a blithering dumbbell, placed several levels above is competence, with no concern beyond his own festering skin.
Goebbels was a clever, probably brilliant believer in the Nazi ideal of racial superiority.
Make of that what you will (or won’t).
One last partisan gasp:
I’ve been wondering right along whether Trump’s pronounced reluctance to read anything handed him might reflect a learning disability: not that he avoids the written word by choice, but that he simply can’t fully comprehend it.
Recent extracts reported from his interactions with his lawyers in the secret-document retention case now make me wonder if there isn’t something deeper at work. Take this from one ecorded conversation:
“They presented me this—this is off the record, but—they presented me this,” Trump continues. “This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn’t done by me, this was him.”…“I just found, isn’t that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret.”
Does this represent someone, even in private conversation, who can speak or understand basic English?
[I was about to apologize if I had offended anyone of an opposing political persuasion, but I quickly withdrew that incipient apology. In your case I intended to offend and exquisitely enjoyed the offense.]
lickhaven 