Slippery Slopes

Of all the icy slopes I have ascended, this one hardly registers as a slope.  No crampons or ice axe needed.  No pickets, no jumar, no rope.  This is just a driveway.

But it is a long, sloping driveway at night, with ice and snow, running down to a house on the lake.  A man in the lake house needs to go to the hospital, and our two EMTs need help getting the stretcher up the driveway and into the ambulance.  So our pagers all go off at 10:22 PM and the first five of us climb into Engine 31 to help.

Engine 31 was our front-line engine when I started, but these days it is our reserve engine.  Our new first-due engine (33) is better in every way.  31 is hooked to its umbilical cords near the back of the apparatus bay, and we tend to use it for runs where all the advantages of 33 are not needed.  Fire rigs are now criminally (as in, private equity firms should be indicted for RICO) expensive, and they have to last for decades.  Every non-critical call Engine 31 takes hypothetically extends the front-line status of Engine 33. 

That’s the dollars and cents of it, but I’m not much of a capitalist so I see things differently.  Engine 33 is the puppy, always ready to run and play.  Engine 31 is the old dog.  Contentedly resting, but happy to go for a walk if it’s not too cold.

It is cold, so we bundle the patient with blankets and pull him up the driveway on the stretcher.  Into the ambulance.  Off to the hospital, where the night shift awaits his arrival.  As calls go, this is about as simple as it gets.  Second call of the day for me, James, Mitch and Captain Brandon.  First one was an early morning fire alarm.  No actual fire, with frigid weather the likely cause of a pipe cracking and water leakage prompting the alarm.  Check the premises, turn some valves, and then back to our other lives. 

Something of a double-stuff Oreo day.  Fire call at breakfast, work at village hall, Board meeting, Fire call at night.  Poynette gained ground at the Board meeting and the fire calls went well.  Twelve plus hours of public service gets added to the ledger.  A Monday that will fade into backstory. 

Backstory for what is the question.  Watching a little YouTube last night, I wrote something down.  “When an attorney engages in deception that is pervasive and severe, especially targeted at undermining the validity of the justice system itself, the only way to protect the public is through revocation of that attorney’s license”.  Tough stuff, at 22:08 in the video of Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board v. Cramer.  Cramer’s attorney, resplendent in a purple sport coat, had an old dog, Engine 31 vibe.  The Attorney Discipline Board attorney was Engine 33, lights flashing and siren wailing. 

Not sure if it is a feature or a bug, but I watch Iowa Supreme Court videos in lieu of primetime television.  Seven people settling arguments and making law by asking questions is far more riveting than Real Housewives of Kalamazoo, or whatever else such pablum cable offers up.  There might come a day (or there may not) when I might be standing in front of them, and having a couple hundred hours of knowledge about who they are and how they go about their work could make a difference, some day.  You can learn a lot about someone by what their interests are, and how they ask a question.

Alex Pretti, for example, asked a woman if she was ok.  Seconds later, he was summarily executed by masked federal agents.  Swarmed him, knocked him to the ground.  Removed a legal sidearm he was legally carrying.  Then executed him.  Multiple shots in the back, from multiple goons. 

Broad daylight.  Any street, USA.  Try to help a woman knocked to the ground by thugs on the federal payroll, and they will execute you.  Standing in front of a vehicle so you can kill a mom who smiled at you did not have the desired effect, so let’s gang murder a caregiver.  Even the SS had the common decency to show their murderous smiles.  They probably had better training. 

Bullies.  If anything spurs me to action faster than a bully, I do not know what it is.  Hand on a hot stove, perhaps. 

The orphanage was predator or prey, and I chose to be neither.  Took my lumps, but bloodied my knuckles enough as the bullies bloodied my face to carve out my own independence.  And so it has been such. 

The desired effect is fear and timidity.  Bullies need you to fear them.  They need you to be timid.  But you only get so many days on this third marble from the sun, so do not go quietly. 

Do not comply with predation.
Do not normalize intimidation.
Do not confuse civility with virtue.
Do not conflate kindness with weakness.

Run with scissors.  Skate on thin ice.  Create art.  Help neighbors.  Punch Nazis.

Would I rather watch The Real Punk Rockers of Sheboygan than Iowa Supreme Court oral arguments?  You betcha.  But I have this theory that we have arrived at chaos, now inclusive of federal gang-murdering American citizens, because New York Times v. Sullivan empowers the arms race of lies we have arrived at and because Citizens United v. FEC monetizes those lies to keep bullies in power.  I have this corollary theory that nothing in New York Times v. Sullivan allows untrue public statements to go forever uncorrected.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

So I’ll do what I can, from where I’m at.   With or without crampons.