Young blogwatcher,
Why the pretense?

So reactions to the one-liner post from a week ago have ranged from, “Interesting thesis. You got anything to back it up?” to, “Woman–we have told you before what happens when you smoke the crack rock.” I’m not sure if I can cash it out to everyone’s satisfaction, but here are a couple thoughts: 1. The Divine Comedy is able to be a comedy because it’s Dante’s story; could it really be a comedy from the perspective of a soul who must stay in Hell?

2. Related–I’m working on three stories, linked to hell, purgatory, and heaven. I’ve finished rough drafts of all of them. The Heaven section is very noir p.i., and the Purgatory section is sort of black-and-white newspaper movie meets expressionist-influenced early horror. When I wrote that post, I’d been thinking about why the Hell section doesn’t work, and one of the big reasons is that I haven’t worked out what genre would be appropriate. It should definitely have some elements of Greek tragedy, I think, which are lacking now; but whereas I intuitively chose the genres for the other sections, and only understood the choices to some extent afterwards (for example, the private investigator is seeking truth, and also struggling to have faith and compassion within a hard-bitten, noir world–“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean”), I’m having to work much harder and more rationalistically to find a way of telling the Hell section. That suggests, to me, that I don’t really know what I’m trying to say with it yet. I suspect once I understand the story itself better, its genre will become clear.

3. This First Things post on a Russian production of Twelfth Night points, I think, to the way in which a simple act of repentance or reconciliation–or a refusal to perform that act–can change the genre of a play. (I don’t think most of Shakespeare’s “comedies” are actually comedies. Love’s Labour’s Lost is an exception, and maybe also Much Ado About Nothing, though I don’t remember that one very well.)

Okay… now to the blogwatch.

The Agitator:

…Do you see the double standard, here? If the warrant is legit, they are allowed to make mistakes. You aren’t.

This discrepancy grows all the more absurd when you consider that they have extensive training, you don’t. They have also spent hours preparing for the raid. You were startled from your sleep, and have just seconds to make a life-or-death decision. To top it all off, many times they’ve just deployed a flashbang grenade that is designed to confuse and disorient you.

What’s the solution? It isn’t to encourage people to start shooting raiding cops to kill. That kind of talk is foolish, and needs to stop. But it isn’t to encourage people to refrain from defending their homes, either. Both of those suggestions will lead to more people dying — both police and citizens.

The solution is actually pretty simple: Stop invading people’s homes for nonviolent offenses.

more

and: “By conservative estimates, there are about 110 of these types of raids per day in America. The vast majority are for drug crimes. Think this was the only one conducted after shoddy police work? Think this was the only one conducted based solely on the word of an informant? Think it’s pure coincidence that in the one raid that made national attention last week, we now learn that something went severely wrong in the investigation that led to it?”

and: “…SWAT teams are increasingly being used for white collar crimes too. Just a few months ago, a SWAT team deployed flash grenades and broke into the home of a man suspected of mortgage fraud. A couple of years ago, two middle-aged women were subjected to the SWAT treatment for suspicion of defrauding the Small Business Administration (the two were later exonerated — the fraud turned out to be a clerical error). And of course, we shouldn’t forget about Sal Culosi, the Fairfax optometrist shot and killed by a SWAT team sent to his home after an undercover detective caught him gambling on football games with a few friends.”

and lots more

Jane Galt adds:

…For a libertarian, I’m pretty sympathetic to the police; I have no idea what I’d be like if my job routinely involved confronting people (often intoxicated) with a clear desire to hurt or kill me. But the idea that they would be held to a lower standard than the innocent folks they accidentally burst in on is lunatic. Hello, police state.

Incidentally, as far as I’m concerned, Radley Balko’s work on Cory Maye is indisputably the best thing the blogosphere has ever done. That’s citizen journalism. Emphasis on the “citizen”.

more

Dappled Things: Many, many, many forms of Masses from before the Council of Trent. (Posted esp. for ePiscoSours, since for my own part I am not good with anything more complex than the Novus Ordo.)

Virginia Postrel: “…Most kidney patients–and the friends and relatives from whom they’re likely to get organs–are of relatively modest means. Prohibiting organ sales doesn’t “help the poor.” It hurts poor kidney patients, by keeping them on dialysis and shortening their lives. It hurts poor relatives of kidney patients, by forcing them to choose between saving their loved ones and taking financial and health hits. It hurts poor, healthy would-be donors by depriving them of economic opportunity. If you don’t want poor people to sell their kidneys, give donors with big income tax breaks or college-loan forgiveness, so that only the affluent will get the money. Let Ivy League grads sell their kidneys instead of their eggs. But don’t just prohibit compensation.”

and a fascinating post on “the lost meaning of Casino Royale.”