I’d say about the same about the police. Framing the issue primarily as an inconvenient paperwork problem shows a pretty twisted awareness, and I suspect that there was something more behind it.

Rich,
I’ve seen the same newspaper stories, and unfortunately, it seems plausible enough that the cops really haven’t been given adequate instructions, and can’t get anything done about it unless they complain to the press.

If you wish to be dissociated from my seemingly (but not really!) murderous posts, I could shift your link from “Friends” to “Where We Troll”.

I think I’m going to sign my name

Robert Waldmann self-aware quibbler and confusionist

From now on. Ah if only I had the guts to claim to be skilled.

OK I admit it. Sometimes I’m an educated, thoughtful, sophisticated NPR person, but usually I just act dumb to amuse myself.

Meanwhile, around the state where I live (Massachusetts) decriminalization of marijuana possession, I heard the statistic that Massachusetts alone imprisoned more than 6,000 people for nonviolent possession (not sale) of drugs last year. Can you even imagine how many people 6,000 people is? It’s more people than you’ll know in a lifetime, for most values of “know”.

And the cops are all worried about what they’re going to do about this new decriminalization. From here:

“Police say they have two main problems with the law.

Many complain that their current citation books lack a check-off box for marijuana possession and they have yet to receive updated ticket books, although temporary forms are available through a state website.

More fundamentally, they complain that officers have no way of determining the identity of people they stop on the street for smoking marijuana. Before the law was changed, officers could arrest them, or threaten them with arrest to force them to show identification. Now, they say they cannot force users to show IDs, and cannot arrest them if they refuse to identify themselves. ”

No ticket books with the correct check mark! It’s like something out of an absurdist play. There’s a true face of America, right there.

But he was a honky of the honkies, so he got a lot of unearned sympathy and indulgence.

I think that a lot of the malefactors are caught in a mush of wishful thinking, testosterone, magical thinking, partial understanding, excessive self-love, ambition, tunnel vision, etc., so that they may not think at all about the consequences for others. Other malefactors are predatory and proud, Randians and Social Darwinists, etc. The first group might actually fit the “non-agency” model we’ve argued about, but they’re still culpable malefactors and I think that in all cases there were moments when they knew what they were doing.

But sophisticated, state-of-the-art, amphetamine-powered math, and multi-layered derivatives that no one really understood, certainly made the self-serving ignorance and misuderstanding easier to attain.