{"id":95214,"date":"2025-04-20T03:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T07:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=95214"},"modified":"2025-04-19T15:17:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T19:17:30","slug":"the-essence-of-most-modern-western-governments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/04\/20\/the-essence-of-most-modern-western-governments\/","title":{"rendered":"The essence of (most) modern western governments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray<\/a> on the paradox of how many western governments manage the alchemy of being both omnipresent and yet absent simultaneously:<\/p>\n

Adding to my last post<\/a> about covering language that masks the massive expansion of government behind performative language about limiting government: The most Los Angeles thing I have ever seen happened behind the Yoshinoya Beef Bowl.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

See the alley between the Yoshinoya and the pharmacy? As I drove by on Wilshire, two extremely<\/em> alert LAPD officers on motorcycles were sitting at the edge of that parking lot, postures tight and poised for action, urgently scanning the street. It was like watching a gunfighter movie, in the scene when the camera closes in on the gunfighter’s eyes, watching his opponent for the draw. These dudes were ready<\/em>. If you did 38 in the 30 MPH zone, then brother, you were dead-ass done<\/em>, nailed up in the trophy case.<\/p>\n

Also, no more than thirty feet away from them, a little gaggle of filthy human zombies was passing a glass pipe around the circle, throwing up clouds of smoke, at the top end of an alley wall-to-wall full of open drug use and not terribly subtle drug dealing (and probably the prostitution that pays for the drugs<\/a>, but I didn’t wander into the alley to look). But California made the possession and use of heroin, meth, and cocaine a misdemeanor, and the DA at the time was very proud that he wouldn’t allow his office<\/a> to file most misdemeanor cases, because misdemeanors are lifestyle crimes that punish people for being poor, or for being “individuals experiencing homelessness”. So that alley full of people Hunter Bidening all day out in the open weren’t doing anything that could lead to prosecution, but your expired registration tags would bring down an immediate<\/em> police response in you happened to roll by them.<\/p>\n

Grand Guignol human depravity and ruin: no big deal. Minor traffic offenses: front and center.<\/p>\n

This is Blue Zone governance, full stop, the thing people describe as anarcho-tyranny. Common San Francisco business owner experience: Police don’t intervene in the constant vandalism and tagging that degrades business property, but the highly alert army of code enforcement officers fine business owners<\/a> for failing to clean up the damage that the city hasn’t prevented.<\/p>\n

I forget who recently suggested this on I-still-call-it-Twitter, but go to Yelp and read some reviews for gas stations in Oakland:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray on the paradox of how many western governments manage the alchemy of being both omnipresent and yet absent simultaneously: Adding to my last post about covering language that masks the massive expansion of government behind performative language about limiting government: The most Los Angeles thing I have ever seen happened behind the Yoshinoya […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,28,13],"tags":[35,343,1422,1213,750,98,201],"class_list":["post-95214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-media","category-usa","tag-california","tag-crimeandpunishment","tag-homelessness","tag-kakistocracy","tag-losangeles","tag-police","tag-securitytheatre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-oLI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95217,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95214\/revisions\/95217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}