We all Need to Believe (in Something)

Luke Scott, a baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles, believes that Barack Obama was not born in this country.  Whether he pursued this belief by joining a lawsuit to unseat the president is not clear.  But he made it clear, Obama is foreign-born and not good for this country in any case.

Another ballplayer, Milton Bradley, is as famous for his belief that dinosaurs walked the earth with humans as he is for his numerous tantrums and tirades on the field.  He's been on the disabled list for mental health issues lately, though.

Now, we may scoff (or cheer) at their beliefs but I know one thing - we all need to believe in something.  A former colleague of mine in the newspaper business used to harangue me in the press box that, "You need to stand for something.  Otherwise you'll fall for anything."  Now I tended to disregard his advice because, frankly, my colleague was a certifiable loon who was later arrested for stalking an ex-girlfriend while dressed in women's clothing (and heels).  I'm not sure he was convicted, but I'm still certain he's crazy.

But nowadays, I tend to side with the loony tunes.  Recently, I was reading an article about the efficacy of psychotropic drugs (you know, Prozac and the ilk) for treating depression and there seemed to be two basic conclusions that rest in tension with one another:  1) that most drugs have no measurable effect on depression and feelings of mental well-being but 2) the belief that the drugs are working to lessen the depression (i.e. the placebo effect) is the strongest indication that the symptoms will be relieved.

So let me get this straight.  If I merely believe the pills work, they will work?  How about all the people who read the study and realize all the money poured into psychiatric pharmaceuticals is wasted?  They are completely shit out of luck now, aren't they?  How about this disclaimer for Prozac -- "actual knowledge of this drug's ineffectiveness may be hazardous to your mental health."

Because let's face it, knowledge is power and power is dangerous.  It can eviscerate beliefs -- Prozac makes me unsuicidal, Kevin Cooper is innocent, early humans walked with the dinosaurs (don't kill me, Milton) -- puncture sacred cows (we're not talking about you, Oprah) and basically make other people look stupid.  Now who wants to do that?

Believing in something means, I think, believing in other people, being part of a community.  I, for example, believe my children will grow up to be productive members of society and that belief is far important than I actually know about them (like the fact that my son leaves his pen in his pants and it soils the rest of the laundry).

So I guess here I am, living in the land of Hope, kind of like Bill Clinton, the man from Hope, Ark., who sought to blot out the pain of his alcoholic father but sticking his member in every skank and gopher hole he could find.  "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow," the refrain of the Fleetwood Mac song played over and over at his inauguration.   I'm not sure that's what BC was thinking about.

So let's think those PG thoughts, stay off the Prozac and stop mixing our mammalian epochs with our reptilian ones.  And hopefully tomorrow, the Mayan apocalypse will be staved off for another day and we will still be here.

Criminal Legislation as Narcissism

Unless you've been asleep for the past 20 years (maybe your meth high wore off a long time ago), you know that this country has seen an explosion of laws named after people.  Mostly little helpless people.  Megan's Law.  Jessica's Law.  Laci and Connor's Law.  Maggie's Law.  Bud's Law.
OK, there is no Bud's Law (as far as I know).  But you get my point.  Lots of laws named after people, mostly the first names of children who have been the victims of horrific crimes.
So how could this be a bad idea, you ask?  How could you be against (fill-in-the-name)'s law?
Well, I'm really not against anything -- save for lazy thinking.  I'd like to think I'm for principled thinking, the content of which I"m not going to lay out today.  I think we'd all like to think we're principled thinkers, only we never quite measure up.  But in the interest of brevity, I'll let one of my principles slip out today -- we have too many laws!  That's probably more a pet peeve but there, it's out there now.  Now I realize I am not alone in this belief, many probably share it.  But few seem willing to sacrifice their other beliefs to uphold a principle (definitions to come at a later date).
Now I would submit that "we have too many laws!" is primarily a libertarian principle.  But who feels like a libertarian when their loved one gets viciously murdered by some psychopath (or maybe just an asshole)?  Not many, I think.
So Megan's dad probably didn't feel very libertarian when his little girl was murdered. And Connor's dad probably didn't feel like reading Reason Magazine after his unborn son was killed and flushed into the ocean.  OK wait, that's a terrible example.
But you get my drift (absolutely no extremely tasteless pun intended).  Just like they used to say that there are no atheists in foxholes, there are few libertarians who are the parents of murdered children.
So what are we left with?  Lots of laws fueled by the memory of terrible crimes.  Lots of laws named after crime victims.  Lots of laws, period.  Now do more laws in an of themselves lower crime rates? No, but legalizing abortion did, arguably (that's for another time).  Do new laws cost time and money to enforce?  Absolutely.
Now back in the 1990s, when I was a criminal (sounds better than crime) reporter for an unnamed I.E. newspaper, I was told by the Fontana sheriff's office that they did a sex offender sweep.  It involved looking up all the deviant sodomites supposedly residing in the area (per the Megan's Law database).  Now how many of the devs did the sheriff actually know where they lived?  80%?  60%?  Try 40%.  Now why was that?  Well, the sheriff's office said they never had the time or personnel to enforce the sex offender registration statute (that's what Megan's Law is).  Now what good is a law that's not enforced.
Now brace yourself.  I'm going to use an animal anatomy analogy (say that fast five times!).  An unenforced law is a teat on a boar.  It is useless and it is worthless.  Why have the law?
Why?  So we all could feel better about yourselves, that we were doing something about somebody's terrible loss, that we were easing their pain.  And that gets right back to naming laws after people.  Who really feels good about people laws?  The people who wrote them, of course, the slimy, whorish, unprincipled bastards who nerded up your poli sci classes in college with their good intentions before running for public office.
What type of people are these public officials?  Well, I like to demonstrate with examples so here's a bad one.  My congressman is Ken Calvert, a portly man most remembered at the P-E, an old employer, for getting caught with a prostitute treating his member like a snowcone and then strong-arming Corona PD into suppressing the incident report.  He's still getting re-elected, people!
I would submit that Ken Calvert did not behave in a principled way during that time.  He's a Republican so he's probably in favor of law-and-order (who isn't?) but on that night, he did what's best for Ken Calvert, twice (or possibly more if they had Viagra back then).  It felt good to have the laws against prostitution evaporate for one glorious night, just for him.
Now sorry to pick on you Ken, but looking at your photos, you kinda remind me of my aforementioned animal anatomy analogy.  That makes you an easy target, just like laws named after people, even good people.
So tonight, let's all pray that we don't get caught with our Calvert hanging out and that no laws are named after us or any close relatives.