It seems that the title to Naomi Klein’s book, This Changes Everything, has taken on even greater meaning now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Klein’s book is about the politics of the climate crisis. But the title applies equally to the sudden appearance of the novel coronavirus that spread so rapidly and extensively … More The Ethics of Pandemics
One way to gain control over institutions and violate laws is to take unprecedented actions to generate societal chaos. Demagogues know that chaos is contagious and susceptible to manipulation through fear and hatred. We tend to think that a stable society results from the existence of laws and their enforcement by police. The facts are … More Chaos, Contagion, Hatred and Compassion
On a flight home from Los Angeles, I sat next to a young woman, a millennial apparently, who busied herself the whole flight reading a very slick fashion magazine. I notice a book in the back-of-the-seat pouch in front of her. The title was Buddha’s Brain. I had seen that title somewhere, but could not … More Suffer the Children for the Politics of Evil
The continuing surge of news stories about highly questionable police killings of unarmed civilians, is shocking enough on its own account. The victims are mostly young black or brown men but also women and even children. It is important to keep in mind that this pattern of police violence did not start with the advent … More Good Cop, Bad Cop: You Can’t Train a Psychopath to be Compassionate, But You Can Destroy a Good Man’s Compassion
A recent “dust-up” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, between the school district and the police department ought to be an important “teachable moment.” But the opportunity to resolve institutional overreach and get back to basics is likely being ignored. It all started when a highly respected middle-school teacher Marcy Slaughter allegedly threw a paperback book … More A Teachable Moment: Criminalizing Everyone
The U.S. imprisons a greater portion of its citizens than any other nation in the world. We also incarcerate a larger absolute number of prisoners than any other nation, even China! What does this tell us about our culture and about how “social control” is exercised in America? One thing is certain: more and more … More Incarceration Nation
Note: A condensed version of Part III of this series was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican, Sunday, April 13, 2014. It is hard to imagine, after watching the police video footage of the shooting to death of a mentally ill homeless man, James Boyd, by Albuquerque police on March 16, 2014, how that … More The Incredible Darkness of Being…a Cop: Warrior or Peacemaker in a Dangerous World. Part III
When I arrived in Santa Rosa, an hour’s drive north of San Francisco, I wasn’t thinking about the news reports I’d read about the police killing of the thirteen year old with the toy replica of an assault rifle in that town of 160,000 a few weeks before. It had been an uneventful trip and … More The Death of Andy Lopez and so Much More
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 