Imagine my surprise at seeing a typographical error — or was it merely proof of my point? — when I saw these words:

….some of whom were citizens of the United States.

That was supposed to say, “of Germany.”

But, as I noted, the similarities are great. While writing, I confused the two!

As the person who exerts the effort to make this blog happen, I’d say it would be fair for you to allow or disallow as pleases you.

I know you’re a respectful person with an interest in principles and shared benefit, so when you give Mr. Essman a fair shake it’s unsurprising. I know you’re generous, too, so the graciousness you’ve displayed so far with giving him repeated opportunity to fix his behavior is unsurprising. Well, you’ve actually given him a lot of slack.

I don’t dispute that you’ve the right (in the name of fairness) to squelch Mr. Essman. For everyone involved you probably should. I’m just pointing out that you can’t expect him to be reasonable. I wanted to tell you what the mechanisms were that caused him to be unreasonable.

It’s difficult to navigate the emotions of other people (and ourselves, really), and rather than do that we set ground rules for behavior. Those ground rules feel pretty justified — requiring people to be reasonable and respectful — and they ultimately have good practical effect. I say employ them when you need to and when you can. Bear in mind that requiring reason and respect, or whichever Terms Of Use you choose, is only one way to facilitate discourse.

We should note that there are situations in which we are not the power that has the ability to dictate the rules. I would caution against adopting a Terms Of Use mindset as a universal perspective on communication. “No, honey, we went out to dinner at least once this year and I refuse to discuss the matter until you refrain from hyperbolics.” “I’m sorry, sir, but if you cannot address me in a more respectful tone I will not even consider your demand for my wallet.” Terms Of Use help in certain scenarios, and hurt in others.

Ban Mr. Essman if you so feel. He’s disrespectful, he persistently misunderstands you though you’ve made yourself clear, and he is not contributing positively to the discussion such that it benefits anyone except himself. He’s primarily driven by need to vent his feelings, and reason is only being dragged in to serve that end. When the driving force is feelings rather than an urge to uncover truth and logic, you don’t get rationality, you get rationalization. Banning Mr. Essman would help your blog’s quality, with benefit to you and your readership at large. It will not, however, help your relationship with Mr. Essman.

If you want to help your relationship with Mr. Essman, validate his feelings. Positively acknowledge whatever degree of truth there is to the things he says about a) how the police are valuable, b) how his gratitude makes sense. He wants to be reasonable, but he can’t if you contradict these things.

I won’t allow it if someone does it to him; I won’t allow it if someone does it to you; I will no longer allow it if it’s done to me.

As I’ve said, disagreement is one thing. You and I, for example, have not infrequently disagreed with one another when we talk about philosophical or social issues. We don’t attack one another as part of the debate.

In the old days, people were expected to argue passionately, but reasonably and, if not exactly politely, honestly and without rudeness. Today, apparently, this can only be accomplished by posting “Terms of Use” to remind people about ordinary social courtesy and give them a heads up as to what will not be approved for posting, then simply enforcing it.

It would appear I’m going to have to go the way of many other blogs and billboards online and put up a “Terms of Use” document.

It’s impossible for him emotionally to accept devaluation of the police.

It’s critical for him emotionally that others validate his deeply-carved gratitude.

Run afoul of either of these things and he’ll stumble out of bounds into irrationality, misperception, and mischaracterization.

Lest your blood pressure and health be affected, I recommend you grasp these mechanisms before you push for him to behave.

Frustration caused by people not playing by the rules (being irrational, twisting words)… is the same thing as the frustration caused by attachment to the idea that people must play by the rules.

We’ve all got our biases. It’s a shame we fight one another about them. It only entrenches us.

I don’t recall anywhere saying that I became frightened or felt a sense of doom when I saw the helicopter.

I continue to approve your posts so that they can show up here, even though I believe you don’t read the articles completely before you write your responses.

You and I do not see things the same. This is clear and I understand that. Lots of people don’t see things the same as you do; lots of people don’t see them the same as I do. I do not mind that you disagree with me. But I will ask you to quit misrepresenting what I’ve stated. Make your disagreement and honest one.

If you cannot do that one thing — that is, stop stating or implying that I’ve said things I have not said — then I will no longer approve your posts. I am not a government. You don’t have constitutionally-guaranteed rights to post on my blog. I set up comments for honest and open, thoughtful discussion. That does not mean you have to agree with me.

It does mean you should quit pretending that I believe or say things that I neither believe nor say.

Besides, you look like you can’t make up your mind. When you do understand what I’m saying, or you like it, you have a polite response, like you did on “Bad Cop, uh…Bad Cop.” When you don’t understand, or when you don’t like what I’ve said, you make false statements and imply or make negative statements about my personality.

The public — me included — does give the police accolades when they deserve it. As a defense attorney, it is my job, with requirements set down by the State Bar of California, to make sure the State and its agents (law enforcement officers, DAs and judges) follow the law and to make them prove their cases. Too often, they do neither. But people with attitudes like those you’ve expressed here want to “give them the benefit of the doubt.”

The result is that we have civil rights ignored and over 100,000 innocent people in jail or prison.

You may not like it, but the Founders of this nation actually did not establish police departments (those didn’t come along until 1838 in Boston, 1844 in New York and 1854 in Philadelphia). In fact, I think they would not have wanted them. We don’t have a state of anarchy without police departments. If we did, they’d have been in a state of anarchy until the mid to late 1800s in most of the United States. Yet that wasn’t the case.

And, in fact, one can make an argument that the Founders would roll in their graves over the idea that we have police departments. They didn’t believe in “standing armies in peacetime” and would surely have seen police departments as standing armies.

Believe it or not, our Founders thought people should have a huge amount of freedom to make life choices which we currently do not have. Our Founders knew that power has a corrupting influence on everyone, practically without exception.

At any rate, again, disagree with me if you wish. Make logical arguments against what I’m saying. Try to back up those arguments. That’s what this comments section is for. I don’t ask that people come here just to praise or agree with me. I also don’t ask that they come here just to tell me how stupid they think I am, or how twisted, or how anti-police (which isn’t even actually true), or how [fill in your favorite insult]. What I hope is that there will be honest discussions.

Because the problems with our “justice” system are significant. DAs, judges and myself periodically have discussions in which they agree with that last statement, even though I suspect it will offend you.

And the thing is, the problems will only be addressed and, hopefully, fixed or at least improved, if we have honest dialog about the best ways to do that.

So stop twisting my comments. Disagree? Fine. Just stop twisting my comments to imply or state that I’ve said something I didn’t. Or, I’m sorry, the alternative is that, yes, I will stop your posts from going through. Not because you disagree with me (as I’ve now said repeatedly, because I think you have a hard time hearing this), but because you cannot have an honest dialog without being insulting and implying insulting things.

This is my last word on the subject. I’m not going to get into another long argument with you. If you are incapable of at least being honest about what I’ve said, your posts will not be approved.

Thank you.

There will always be some element of “discretion” in determining how much something makes sense. It’s hard to draw a clear line between capricious and reasonable. An incident like this with the grey car involved in a shooting could fall squarely into the grey area between the two.

I have to believe that if they’re putting the resources of a helicopter into a particular area that there are elements of the situation encouraging them to think that this will be useful to the purpose of finding the suspect. In this regard I think their actions might not be considered arbitrary. I doubt the presence of the wedding had anything to do with their thinking. (“So what made it reasonable to stop Josh’s car one block from the wedding reception?”)

It’s certainly not inconceivable that a police officer could be influenced by any of a vast array of unreasonable biases in their work, or worse yet could be influenced by any of a vast array of selfish, unofficial motivations. I bet it happens all the goddamned time. This extraction was as close to proof of such malfeasance, however, as maybe Josh’s car was reasonably suspicious.

Part of the disregard for people that facilitates abuse of authority comes from a feeling of separation. “Us v. them”. Authorization for physical dominion over people is doubtlessly a large factor in developing the “us v. them” mindset. You can’t eliminate this factor, but you can maybe lessen its effect or find other ways to discourage the separateness mindset. Determining all the salient factors and counteracting them as you can sounds like a good idea.

Coming at the problem of totalitarianism with an antagonistic mindset towards the specific elements that you see as problematic (i.e., the police) is an understandable reflex. And it makes sense at first blush. But if you agree with me that an “us v. them” mentality is a substantial factor in making the bad police mindset, you might consider coming at rehabilitation through a method other than condemnation and rejection.

A disturbed child might intend you harm out of an immature or unreasonable reaction to past experience — say they spent time in an abusive household and thought love was shown through scorn. Their misbehavior would not be stopped through condemnation.

I don’t want to deny you the right of expressing your feelings about incident. It’s very important that you do so. I recommend you find good ways to do so. Be careful not to use a way that exacerbates the situation.

Can you imagine having the police officers say “We’re very sorry, sir, for the inconvenience and grief you might be experiencing from this incident. We’re doing the best we can in service of all the people of our city. If you have any comments at all that you’d like to share, please contact me at the number on my card. Good day.”? Can you imagine them being more inclined to say these things after telling them they’re making a police state?