STATES OF DENIAL

Two weeks ago Hamas fighters crossed the border from Gaza to Israel and committed atrocities on the innocent people there, men, women, and children as young as infants. Some twelve hundred souls were sent packing from their bodies.

Another couple of hundred were roughly placed on the road to Gaza in their new roles as hostages, human shields, and PR pawns.

Israel's Defense Force went to work, blasting buildings in vast, seemingly random projects of radical urban renewal, leaving ruins everywhere in Gaza City.

Immediately folks took to the streets across the globe to protest this action, the inciting events having been sent to the purgatory of yesterday's news.

Prompting the question: What should Israel have done in response to the (let's face it, barbaric) attacks by Hamas?

Let's look at the options:

1. Do nothing.

Just why they would take this option breaks down into two camps:

a) Israel had it coming. Nothing the Hamas fighters could have done would not have been perfectly legitimate activity in payback to any number of high-handed actions taken by Israel over the years, including grabbing the country of Palestine and hiding it beneath an entirely new country meant to be a homeland for the Jews of the world.

Many folks in the region seem to fall into this camp.

Or b) In a noble effort to end the tit-for-tat pattern of action/reaction, Israel might take the impossibly high road by simply not reacting to this egregious assault. Take one for the team, as it were, to open the way for new dialogue aimed at solving the Palestinian problem once and for all.

(As if there were a country in this world populated by human beings that Zen-like and mature.)

Since it's too late to take option one, let's move on:

2. Stop the bombing.

After a sustained two-week long spasm of vengeful and destructive action, Israel should now stand down. Moving to option 1b above, Israel could forgo any further damage in hopes that a new dialogue could now begin, the air having been cleared, etc.

This seems unlikely. What's been cleared is the path for a ground war, and it's likely that is what's going to be the future for Gaza. The only hope now is that the ground war can be fought in the most humane way possible, with the utmost care taken to support the almost entirely innocent civilian population. To make that work, the IDF would need to set up massive aid programs, running parallel to their hunt for Hamas fighters and leaders.

Will they take that effort? The US will probably insist, though the results are likely to be underwhelming. And the world will continue to grumble.

More options:

1) Hamas is targeted for destruction. Israel aims to kill every last one of those guys, to end forever the threat hanging over its head.

The problem there is that killing every member of the group is not enough. You have to eradicate the very idea of Hamas, lest it be rebuilt from the ground up. (With unlimited support from Iran.)

Even harder, you have to end the need for Hamas to exist, and that can only happen if a full and lasting solution to the Palestinian question can be achieved.

2) Hamas is allowed to survive. Unfortunately, Israel is in no mood to live with this option, no matter how the decision room is populated by so-called adults.

In fact, a long and protracted ground war is planned, one that will last many months. Can a build-up of US military power clamp down the region until Israel finishes its work?

Does the world have enough patience to let things play out? Probably not.

Despite treaties with some adjacent Arab nations, agreeing to the right of Israel to exist, everything might change in the face of long-term Israeli destructive action in Gaza. The war could widen until it becomes downright Biblical.

(I will remind you that some evangelical Christian groups in the US support Israel because they expect Armageddon to be started there. End Times, baby!)

The one thing that might keep this war from expanding uncontrollably would be to have an end-game solution simultaneously in the works.

(I'm trying to avoid the phrase "final solution.")

What could such a solution look like?

It would almost certainly have to be a Two-State solution that fundamentally restructures the region.

Imagine this: A census of the area, counting up all Jews and Palestinians. Then two new countries are formed, divvying the land in equal shares between the two groups.

Perhaps surrounding Muslim countries could contribute land of their own, to fatten the prize before partitioning.

Jerusalem could sit on the border, an open city available to all—Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druids, Zoroastrians, and so forth: a religious GTA free-for-all.

(Can you smell the smoke from the opium pipe from where you are?)

Israel, of course, would never agree to such a plan. Her Muslim neighbors might, but if the choice was between a two-state solution and a one-state solution (Palestine only), I think we know how things would go.

Basically, the continued existence of Israel depends on the willingness of the US to back it fully in whatever it wants to do. How long can that continue?

Perhaps all the way until Iran becomes a nuclear power.

Armageddon is starting to sound pretty good right about now. Two bad there's no actual reward for getting through it.

Just a radioactive wasteland populated by road warriors and hairy mutants.

Maybe Israel should set its sights on Mars.

TRUMP VS. THE DEEP STATE

What if Donald Trump is right when he says the 2020 election was stolen from him?

What would that mean?

The short answer: He'll be screwed in 2024.

See, if some Superduper Deep-State operators had the power to yank the election out from under Trump's righteously victorious feet, it's clear they must also have had the know-how to hide all the evidence of that plot.

(The Deep State controls the Deep, right? Which is why the Kraken has been buried at the bottom of the sea, tightly shackled.)

Sure, there was the usual evidence of small-time fraud at the polls. Happens every election cycle. But knowing how the minority-party Republicans react to existential threats, that fraud probably sent more votes to the Trump camp than to Biden's.

(Remember the guy who went on Fox News to complain that his dead wife "voted"? It turned out he did it himself: his-and-her votes, both for Trump.)

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there was simply no credible evidence of massive, election-altering fraud. What does that tell you?

Just this: If the Deep State actually did steal the election in 2020 (and hid the evidence), why would they not do the same thing in 2024?

Only one reason, really: Trump World has so fallen apart since November 2020 it could be argued that no extraordinary intervention would be necessary in the next presidential election.

Check it out: Not only did Trump's Supreme Court shoot down Roe v. Wade and Affirmative Action—and make no mistake, The Donald claims full credit for these decisions—the man himself is under indictment for multiple crimes, stuff he allegedly did while president or in the process of packing his junk before scramming out of the White House.

All outcomes that will absolutely galvanize the Democratic base.

(Look what just happened in the dead-of-summer Special Election in Ohio, where Pro-Abortion voters dominated.)

The wild card: Trump will defy every attempt of the courts to stopper his hyperactive mouth. As a result, sensitive Grand Jury info is likely to hit the airwaves. (Not to mention his penchant for excoriating [and docking] witnesses.)

Bottom line: The man could potentially end up in jail awaiting trial.

That's an outrage (of his own making) that would likely enhance his political position, at least among die-hard Republicans. Hell, it might even melt the heart of the occasional Democratic snowflake.

Short of jail, however, Trump could find himself levied with accelerating fines that will threaten to drain his campaign coffers. Loyal Republicans might have to sell their homes and send the money to the guy in an effort to keep the poor man out of the Graybar Hotel.

Or, if not actually jailed, picture Trump shuffling ankle-braceleted up and down the slowly corroding halls of Mar-a-Lago.

House arrest for the terminally tasteless.

The good news for him, though: Indoors he'd be safe from Italian-built space lasers.

The plot to lightning-strike the guy on the golf course would have to go on the back burner once again.

For now.

 

IN HIS OWN WORDS

So what's this latest Trump audio tape about?

A while back, General Mark Milley (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff) said he worked to keep Donald Trump from making bad decisions in the final days of his presidency. Kept him from invading Iran, for instance.

Trump was recorded at his golf club in Bedminster, NJ, disputing this outrageous notion. He does so by whipping out the classified war plan for Iran and pointing out he didn't actually write it himself. Milley and his boys did!

The very existence of this secret document, which he is clearly leafing through during the recording (as he points out how it goes on for pages), exonerates Trump completely in the "Milley Case."

Or so Trump thinks.

The fact is, Trump's interest in attacking Iran put General Milley in the position of having to prepare such a plan. That's his job. But the existence of that plan does not contradict Milley when he says he worked to keep Trump from implementing the plan.

Only Trump, and his coterie of sycophants, could possibly think so.

Donald Trump always looks for any ragged edge to peel back someone's largely accurate account of reality. If he were accused of shooting some guy ten times, he would claim that proof he didn't shoot the guy more than six or seven times completely exonerates him.

That the poor fellow is dead, perforated by a great many bullet holes, is a detail that can safely be ignored. You need to focus on what's important here! Shooting a guy ten times is monstrous, and saying Trump did such a thing is a disgrace! Shooting the guy no more than eight or nine times, tops, is an entirely different matter.

And look, look: Trump has proof! Listen to the tape, okay? Count the rounds as they're fired. No way is that ten whole gunshots! It's beyond belief that folks could try to get away with such a despicable lie!

(Those guys have got to be politically motivated, right?)

Trump's reaction to the Bedminster tape is that it was leaked by the prosecution and is played out of context. I'm surprised he doesn't claim it's a deep fake created by AI, perhaps by the same gang of cyber-thugs who generated a porn star named "Stormy Daniels" (obviously a made-up name).

Saying that something was leaked seems to be an attempt to invalidate the actual contents. See, it's the leaking that's the real crime! A crime committed just to throw dirt on a former president. And, to be technical, not really even a former president, since Trump to this day maintains he won the election "by a lot."

Should he happen to win in 2024, Trump will see that as more proof the election of 2020 was rigged. Plus he now gets to crow about how he defeated their obvious attempts to rig 2024 as well!

Next, he can seek righteous vengeance for all those political atrocities!

And then, like a sports arena, he can re-brand the country. In future the US shall be called "Donald J. Trump's Nazi America Forever."

(Quick, print that on the money! And rest assured, every denomination will have the emperor's grinning mug on it!)

The good news out of this bizarre but possible development: Europe might send armies to liberate us, the way we sent antifa armies to defeat the Axis powers.

(I wonder if Trump considers the actions of this country in WWII to be a hate crime?)

In his latest statement about the tape, Trump seems to imply he was lying about the Iran Attack document. Or exaggerating out of bravado. But it's hard to understand what his audience was cooing over during the recording. Someone present suggested the item was the sort of thing Hillary Clinton would print out all the time. You know, something tasty from her vast and treasonous store of classified emails.

Sorry, Trump, but the Iran Attack doc was on the table. Nothing else tracks.

(Reminds me of the would/wouldn't "fix" following the Trump-Putin news conference in Helsinki. Total freakin' nonsense, man!)

All this is just a truncated preview of the nonsense he's likely to spew if the Bedminster incident ever gets charged.

I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, the fellow is going to run out of lawyers willing to put up with his incessant blathering while awaiting trial for this or that crime.

DJT: "It's not fair! They won't stop using my own words against me!"

Judge: "Why don't you try keeping your mouth shut?"

DJT: "Are you kidding? Have you met me?"

CAUTION: LOW CLEARANCE

Say you're a Company Commander in the Army. On your desk is a Top Secret document. Into your office comes a young troop you happen to know has a Top Secret clearance. Can you slide that document across the desk, ask him to read it?

No.

Or, at least, not necessarily.

Look, I don't know everything there is to know about such matters, but in the Army I held a Top Secret clearance, which I needed to authenticate the presidential release of nuclear weapons. (I never had to actually do it. Far as I know, nukes haven't been authorized since the bombing of Nagasaki.)

Don't know everything, like I said, but I did learn the basics.

In the world of classified documents you need two things to get access to the good stuff: 1) a security clearance high enough to cover the rating on the document, and 2) a need to know.

Just having a clearance doesn't cut it. Reading that classified document has to be necessary for you to perform your assigned duties. A guy with a Top Secret clearance can't just romp through a room full of Top Secret docs and sample at will.

Now, let's say you're the President of the United States with a Top Secret document on your desk. Into the Oval Office waltzes a man without any security clearance whatsoever. But this guy is known to be an expert on some esoteric subject or other.  (That's why you sent for him, right?) Let's say you (as President) need this man's opinion on the material covered in the Top Secret document sitting atop the Resolute desk. Can you hand that guy the document and let him read?

Yes, you can.

You, as Commander in Chief, can make the determination that you have an overwhelming need to know what this guy will say after perusing that document. You can declassify the doc for this guy at this time in that room, just to get his input.

Note that the document is still classified Top Secret. That hasn't changed. You're just saying that in order for you to perform your duties as President, you need to let this guy, who has no security clearance, have the opportunity to read it.

It appears Donald Trump has misunderstood this process, that he has forgotten the very particular circumstances that have to prevail for him to summarily declassify highly sensitive materials.

He seems to have latched onto the perverse notion he can wrinkle his nose and declassify a room full of documents just so he can play with them at his leisure when he is no longer in office.

Now, it's easy to see how he may have made this mistake. His enormous ego tells him stories and he has no choice but to believe them. Why? Because all those stories enhance his delusion of what a great and powerful man he is.

For instance, his ego tells him he's a genius, and the fellow is so stupid he must agree. His defective brain is naturally positioned to believe this bizarrely unlikely cognitive assessment.

Trump has now been federally indicted for being the idiot he cannot avoid being.

(Is helpless idiocy a legal defense?)

As a result, Trump has to tell a new story, the one about how Biden's Department of inJustice is out to destroy him for political reasons. He has to say those people are deranged maniacs performing the greatest evil ever seen in the history of this country.

Trump either knows this to be true, or has come to realize he needs to pretend to know it. Either way, his supporters believe him.

And they can't help it, either. They are, after all, human beings, creatures who are stupid and crazy and unaware of it. Their heads are full of crap they know to be true, because everywhere they look they see what their idiot brains tell them is proof.

In this case, they can also enjoy a phalanx of prominent Republicans who go on TV to repeat Trump's dangerous lies.

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake says the corrupt Deep State will have to go through her and 75 million Trump followers to get at their beloved ex-president. (And she reminds us that most of these patriots are members of the NRA and therefore heavily armed.)

Unfortunately for her, Special Counsel Jack Smith has already gone through her like she was the ghost of a rancid fart.

It remains to be seen how many of the 75 million armed Trumpists will show up to bust their guy out of prison when the time comes (and perhaps kill him by accident in the process).

But maybe that bloody scenario won't be necessary. It's possible Donald Trump could cut a deal to avoid a trial altogether. What would that look like?

One big hot mess, that's what.

Not only would Trump have to admit (under oath) he's not the godlike being his ego insists he is, but any reasonable deal would need to include his agreeing to never seek public office again. Unfortunately, that would fit beautifully into the false narrative of political persecution he can't stop promulgating.

To avoid that hassle, maybe Trump's favorite judge could take it upon herself to dismiss the charges against him.

No problem with that, right?

I mean, it's not like the man faces any other legal jeopardy.

(Speaking of which: What of Trump's Bedminster Golf Club and the possibility of additional charges? The damning stuff mentioned in Jack Smith's Florida indictment has yet to rise to the level of actual charges. Such charges would have to be voted by a grand jury impaneled in New Jersey.)

To be fair, Judge Cannon might take this opportunity to cut ties with Trump, to demonstrate to one and all she has learned her lesson.

Or, even weirder, she might go out of her way to suck up to the prosecution, even run the risk of getting a conviction overturned in appeal because of bad decisions from the bench.

But not on purpose, right? Right? Because that would be diabolical....

THE EQUALIZER

Everybody on this planet, it seems, wants to be an American. And I understand: It's a pretty nice country, with substantial (if not universal) opportunity for economic advancement. What's not to like?

(Plenty, but that's for another time.)

We're the Shining City On A Hill. Come on in, the water's fine!

You want a better life, come to America.

You wanna get rich, come to America.

You wanna be President, hold up, Bubbles. You gotta be born here.

(But Moms, you want your kids to be President, haul your bloated carcass over the line and unload your progeny here in America. But be advised, that loophole might close in the future...)

In any case, for practical purposes, it's generally not enough to say you seek the economic opportunities of this country. You'll probably need a better reason.

Oh, I know: Apply for asylum!

Just say your home country is trying to kill you. Listen, it's not fool-proof, but this method definitely has legs.

And drawbacks. Like massive competition.

Seems like everybody's country is trying to kill all but a handful of its favorite people. (Lots of oppressive countries offer better lives to selected citizens than the average American gets. It's good to be the King [or a close friend].)

We could just print up citizenship papers for every person on the planet, subject to their arrival on our borders. (Wet foot/dry foot, people: You gotta plant at least one tootsie on American soil!)

Or we could change the basic model.

End all asylum. Instead, fix the root problem.

In effect, we become the Equalizer, worldwide.

Got a problem in your home country, let us know. We'll work to fix it.

(I've said this before: The best way to keep Mexicans from crossing the border into the US is to make Mexico a paradise nobody in their right minds would want to leave.)

So, the new model: Don't come live in our house. We'll fix your house, so you can stay there.

Would that cost more money to implement? Probably. But this policy would almost certainly catch less political flack than the solution we're currently trying to operate.

(Not to mention, Donald Trump rode into the White House largely on the illegal immigration path. And the bills for that event are still piling up, threatening to drag us under.)

On the downside, expect a lot of push-back from the designated "problem" countries. But what the hell, America is already seen as a bully in much of the world.

Another, rather tricky problem: This country needs a substantial number of foreign workers to raise our crops and perform other jobs Americans mostly reject as beneath them. As a consequence, we may need "apprentice Americans," folks on a path to citizenship. When those people get fully vested, a new batch comes aboard, and so on. Let the economy sort it out.

(Hits on the economy are not the only problem, of course. A lot of closed-minded Americans simply don't like foreigners of any stripe.)

Still, the Equalizer model has its good points. With American help, many people might be willing to fight the system in their home country, rather than admit defeat and travel a dangerous road only to grovel in makeshift border camps, begging Tio Gringo for favors.

Might it not be better for your mental health to stay home and work on existential problems at the source? The way it is now, America only offers hope of a better life if you come here. Maybe it's time to try changing that.

GODZILLA

Donald Trump says he's done nothing wrong. He claims he's being targeted by various agencies of the US justice system, purely for political reasons.

They're all out to get him, he says, in this disgraceful and un-American Witch Hunt. (Oh, how low the country has sunk since his glory days in the White House!)

These nefarious and corrupt agencies are acting in furtherance of a political weaponization of the country's legal apparati. Remarkably, it's happening at all levels of government.

Trump knows this for a fact.

His followers know it.

In fact (as Trump likes to say), everybody knows it.

Certainly, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy knows it, and he's mounting congressional investigations to prove it. He wants NYC prosecutor Alvin Bragg to defend the alleged fairness of actions taken against the former president.

In the meantime, it seems unlikely Trump will triumph in every single one of his many courtroom engagements. Let's take a look at current and future entanglements:

In Manhattan, he has now been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records when he signed documents reimbursing his former fixer for paying off a porn star named Stormy Daniels.

In Georgia, he's being investigated for attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election. ("I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have." Have? Doesn't he mean need? For one of his patented "perfect phone calls" this statement seems downright imperfect.)

DOJ's special counsel Jack Smith is looking into Trump's role in setting off the Jan 6 Riot at the Capitol, as well as the ex-president's hoarding of National Archive documents, many of them classified. An obstruction of justice charge seems more and more likely here.

(Trump concentrates on the classified nature of the documents, claiming he has the presidential power to declassify items with a shrug of his imaginary mental machinery. He doesn't get that these things simply don't belong to him, classified, declassified, or otherwise.)

Back in New York, folks are interested in how Trump inflated or deflated the value of his properties depending on whether he sought to get loans or avoid taxes.

In Trump's mind, all these hassles are the result of a weaponization of the legal system by political foes. Some of his enemies are Republican Never-Trumpers. The majority are likely Democrats or sodden denizens of the Deep State (aka CHUDs).

But isn't there another possible explanation? Earned or not, Donald Trump does appear to have a reputation of playing fast and loose with the rules.

(It's almost as if he feels he's entitled to do so.)

What if people attack him simply because he's out there rampaging through the city, knocking over buildings, bellowing his displeasure, spraying his radioactive fire-breath in all directions?

What if shooting at Trump is quite natural, given his legendary destructive nature?

Another of Trump's features is his Godzilla-like inability to communicate.

(Remember "covfefe"?)

Trump has a problem with words and their meanings. Asked during a presidential debate to tell white supremacists to "stand down," he famously said: "Stand back and stand by," a statement the Proud Boys quickly adopted as their new motto.

I suspect Trump thinks he did say "stand down," as requested. After all, he used the word "stand" twice in that sentence. That's gotta count for something, right?

Whenever he makes a verbal gaff, you can expect a pair of knee-jerk responses: supporters will excuse him, and the man himself will double-down on his statement.

His enormous ego demands he own his words and defend them. Very rarely will he back down, usually by saying he was just joking. (Though he has also said: "I don't kid.")

(At the Helsinki news conference with Putin, Trump seemed to believe Vlad over US security personnel. Not only did Putin not interfere in the 2016 election, "I don't know why he would have." Trump later claimed he'd misspoken; he'd meant to say "I don't know why he wouldn't have." That just makes no sense at all, but the American people have moved on.)

Trump's gigantic ego makes him look silly much of the time, but he seems unaware of it. Maybe that just makes him human, the folks who are by nature stupid, crazy, and unaware of it.

(This trio of traits make a happy life on this planet nearly impossible.)

Donald Trump points out his legal problems are not even his problems. "They're not coming after me. They're coming after you," he tells his howling mob.

While taking their money hand over fist.

The man seems poised to keep on keeping on, staggering his way through the countryside toward the 2024 election.

I wonder if the nation can survive the damage of this burned-out path of destruction.

AGAIN AND AGAIN

And now, Tyre Nichols.

Another chance to demonstrate we haven't learned a thing from the Rodney King beating or from any of the other videos that have surfaced since.

So, what should we have learned from Rodney King? That the police will beat you until you comply with their demands—demands shouted by multiple officers in great excitement in the beginning, which can be confusing, demands long since gone silent as the action drags on: Get on your belly with your hands behind your back.

Once you begin to fight the police, this is the only position they will respond to. Until you get into this position, they will continue to deliver pain: by baton, by Taser, by pepper spray, by fist, by service boot.

These are the only tools the police have, and they are all designed to deliver pain in an attempt to coerce you into changing your mind and agreeing to cooperate with the arrest now in progress.

They hurt you because it's simply all they have in their arsenal.

(Unless, of course, they are demons straight out of hell. Those guys hurt you because they like it. Defunding those cops wouldn't help; you'd have to exorcise the bastards.)

What cops need, of course, was demonstrated in the opening minutes of Star Wars (Episode 4: A New Hope). Princess Leia has delivered the plans of the Death Star to the droid, R2D2. Storm troopers find her, she attempts to flee, and she's zapped with a phazer (or whatever they call it), set to "stun."

And down she goes. No fuss, no muss: instant unconsciousness.

If cops had that, every disputed arrest would end in a hurry. With no life-threatening beating, and no gunshots to center mass.

Giving in to the idea of arrest is not an admission of guilt. It's a sign of intelligence. It's an acknowledgment of reality.

When the officer says "turn around and put your hands behind your back," do it. Don't just stand your ground and demand to know why.

Asking why is a violation of law. It's called "resisting arrest."

You don't have to fight the cops to be guilty of resisting arrest. Anything you do or say that delays the officer in the performance of his duties is an instance of resisting arrest.

(By the way, depending upon where you live, resisting arrest may also apply to EMTs. Say you're walking along the road and an ambulance pulls along side. The driver wants to know where Main Street is. If you purposely point the guy in the wrong direction, you may be guilty of "resisting arrest.")

So, was the Tyre Nichols case a situation where a guy put his health in danger by refusing to cooperate with his arrest? Probably.

But there are questions.

People (including the Chief of the Memphis Police) are questioning whether the cops had any reason for stopping Nichols in the first place.

The cops on the scene say he was guilty of reckless driving, but the video shows none of that. It starts with Nichols being dragged out of his car.

Folks are starting to wonder: Was the guy just targeted at random?

Well, what if he were? Does that change anything?

Not really. Cops are gifted by sworn oath with the privilege of arrest. You have to go along with that, or the whole system falls apart.

You may not know why they are yanking you out of your car, but you don't need to. If you have good reason to believe those guys are police officers, you have to comply.

Call their bluff. Let the cops put their careers on the line. Smile (to yourself) and daydream about what you're going to do with all the money you're going to get when you sue the police department.

Let 'em cuff you and put you in the back of a squad car (watch your head getting in).

Maybe they'll come over to talk to you. Maybe they'll begin to see they've made a mistake and let you go. (You could still probably sue for emotional distress.)

On the other hand, maybe it takes a Zen Master to submit to an arrest he knows is bogus.

(But before you get all self-righteous, remember you're just a human being, and as such you're probably so mentally defective you're wrong about pretty much everything and the cops were right to grab you. Too bad the cops are also human.)

Bottom line: Resist arrest and the cops will hurt you. Guaranteed.

They HAVE to. Pain is the only tool in their arrest kit. Star Wars phazers are literally fictional, at this time. Maybe in the future...

But here's a solution that could be applied immediately: change the law.

If the guy doesn't want to be arrested, let him go.

You heard me.

So long as the cops remind the guy that walking away has its cost. If he is later arrested and convicted of the crime in question, the penalties will be double.

Double the fine, double the jail time, etc. Maybe triple.

Cops wouldn't like it, because they like to finish what they start, but we could change the law at once.

And frankly, cops shouldn't be too negative about the idea.

Fact is, a lot can go haywire during an arrest. If pain doesn't change the guy's mind, the last resort is to swarm him. Cops will likely be hurt, get an elbow in the nose or something. A guy on angel's dust might take seven or eight cops to subdue him.

That's a lot of moving parts.

Letting the guy walk away is an option worth considering. With caveats:

If the guy was driving, he has to leave on foot.

If a weapon is involved, all bets are off.

Another way to avoid arrest situations: turn a lot of crimes into citation offenses. No arrest necessary. Or transform unwanted events from criminal to civil.

In the Tyre Nichols case, if he was indeed driving recklessly, and it took some effort to get at him, yanking the man out of the car was probably warranted.

And the guy absolutely refused to cooperate with the arrest. He even got away and ran off. Cops had to go after him and physically place him in custody. It was messy, to say the least.

But once in police control, as shown in the last parts of the video, the cops kept hitting the man, with fist and baton. Why? Were they trying to get him to do something he wasn't willing to do? We don't know.

Were the cops expressing their frustration by acting out? That's a crime.

After it was over, they let the fellow languish on the ground. And apparently EMTs took their time getting to work.

Were more crimes committed here, by the cops and others? Absolutely.

Could all of this been avoided if Nichols had consented to the arrest in the first place? Almost certainly.

From Rodney King onward, the vast majority of these horrible, violent videos only shows the inevitable aftermath of a decision by the perp to avoid arrest.

Showing tape of a cuffed man being placed in a squad car is not newsworthy, so we don't see much of that on the nightly broadcast. After all, if it bleeds, it leads. But if it just gets in the car, it falls to the cutting room floor.

Can we humans learn to be arrested without the carnage? Beats me.

But probably not...

Black men especially may view arrest as a form of lynching. So they fight back, insuring the worst. Good idea? No. But it's what you have to expect from humans.

We're not just our own worst enemy. We're everybody's worst enemy.