The sands of time and tide

We all know people who worship police officers no matter what they do, and others who have an unconditional kneejerk loathing of cops. Such is the obstinacy of competing mythologies. 

Cops are neither inherently heroic nor abusive. They are individuals.

Their presence makes this city more viable for most folks who can't afford their own private security detail, the lavish accoutrements and the guaranteed allowances of elitist progressivism, regardless of the regime du jour.

There's no other job in which a fragment of a second's lapse of self-control or judgment can be so irreversibly tragic on a regular and unpredictable basis. Sometimes we cut them too much slack and other times maybe not enough.

The stakes of accountability are high. They are mortal and flawed, like the rest of us, yet subjected to an expectation of enhanced infallibility.

After all, we pay their salaries.

Democrat mayoral candidate and Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mandani, in solidarity with others with whom he is ideologically compatible, has called for the abolition of certain specialized police units, including the one tasked with containment of civil unrest, which may sometimes be inflammatory and escalate to all-out rioting. There have been clashes and arrests, and Mamdani is wary of what he deems a history of law enforcement's heavy-handedness.

Even when their actions are technically in compliance with tactical playbooks, police must be answerable for gratuitous excesses that may themselves breach the peace and common decency. Giving the benefit of the doubt or a "carte blanche" can be a difference without a distinction. 

Overall, police response to demonstrations has been temperate, and they have used minimal coercion necessary to stabilize the situation. The NYPD has an enviable record nationwide for not manifesting a "cowboy mentality,”  even in the most perilous scenarios beyond crowd control. 

They should be equipped with all tools of technology and weaponry for self-defense that are suitable to their operational function. 

Protesters, regardless of the issue that impassions them, and whether they are on the wrong or the right side of history in fact or their imaginations, have no right to obstruct traffic, block bridges, paralyze commerce or draft New Yorkers into involuntary conflict and impede their freedom of movement. Arrests should be a last resort, but when made, the charges should not be instantaneously dropped, as is routinely the case.

That just invites grandstanding politicians to enact a martyrdom skit in front of cameras and microphones, and degrades not just the force of law, but its dignity.

The NYPD, like many other local and state police departments, sometimes clashes with federal law enforcement authority, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The controversy continues to rage over the "Supremacy Clause" and its precedence when disputed or defied by subservient jurisdictions.

Clearly identified and known violent felons, such as murderers and traffickers in drugs, sex and children, who have exhausted all prescribed legal appeals, should be deported, and the NYPD and state police should volitionally or otherwise be compelled to coordinate with all federal agencies. 

There must be transparency and oversight. Deportees' human rights cannot be downgraded even when their due process rights are diminished. 

But what of the children? Has their innocence no legal standing? No economic burden is too much to bear when pitted against the expulsion of human hope.

Federal officers, judges, public figures and private executives are among the targets of the new, potentially dangerous national sport of doxxing. Some politicians actually encourage it as an exercise in free speech. Fun fact: its success is measured by its effectiveness at suppressing the future free speech of its victims.

Free speech is among the most distortion-prone and guardrail-proof of our constitutional abstractions. It's a cause célèbre for aspiring persecutors. Beware its fraudulent charm as glibly preached by college presidents, hooded in moral feebleness and pseudo-sophistication.

Should colleges be defunded, even if they become dens of iniquitous bias that is tolerated in the name of free speech?  Even if administrators are whipped into obedience by government sanctions as an expedient for fiscal solvency, will it inspire an internal awakening of the message of "Never Again"? 

Is it always about money?

The college loan racket must be scrapped and reinvented. It is rife with scandal, exploitation and gross injustice, as freshly documented in a new book. 

Colleges, including some with tens of billions of dollars in endowments, know they can charge anything they want, because most students will plunge into lifetime debt to pay off the loan, clueless they are being ripped off down the road. Colleges and loan companies are co-connivers. If traditional "academia" didn't have near monopolies on higher education, they might be pressured by market forces to give students more of a bang, rather than just a fizzle, for their buck.

There should be more technical colleges, trade and other preparatory institutions, and schools offering apprenticeships and placement.

The value of the humanities and liberal arts degrees should not be disparaged, and their utility shouldn't be measured strictly in terms of economic dividends. But it is neither intellectually edifying nor financially enriching to take out a quarter million-dollar loan for a degree that will qualify for a $40,000 job.

Priorities for investment and educational opportunity should take these rapidly changing times into consideration.

A few years ago, "artificial intelligence" was still science fiction. It has become "natural" as a threat to our privacy and liberty, in that AI devices are suspected of doing surveillance, recording, and reporting content.

Last week a friend of mine introduced me to a "person" whom he claims cannot resist getting emotionally involved. It is a one-way relationship because she is an AI chatbot "assistant.” They have extended dialogues that sound as natural as though they were in the flesh together. I was as dumbfounded as King Henry VIII would have been watching a rocket blast off.

My friend invited me to strike up a conversation, but I asked "her" just one question: How many grains of sand are there on all the world's combined beaches? Within three seconds she produced a number and cited her source. 

Now that summer is gone and Labor Day calls, let's in our workplaces and hearths, celebrate to the hilt, the milliseconds of time we have left on the nuclear clock.

Use them wisely and pay off those loans!