Amerika

LA is a wonderful place. On a clear day, you can see the nextdoor neighbors. Joking aside, it continues to rack up new problems and malfunctions. These malfunctions trace to an unwillingness of an entitled elite to enforce a fundamental baseline of conduct that any functional society requires. The latest minor catastrophe involves a section of Santa Monica that is now a USPS no-go zone.

Residents in the area were delivered notices from USPS, disclosing that “delivery service is hereby suspended to all addresses located on the 13-hundred block of 14th street.”

The notice continued to state that “multiple carriers have been subjected to assaults and threats of assault from an individual who has not been located or apprehended.”

This can only meet expectations. If the LAPD caught the guy, the DA would spring him sans bail. When the perp blew off his summons like an obnoxious date, the LAPD would have a devil of a time ever finding him again. The USPS grows tired of the fornicatory. It’s tougher recruiting mail carriers when the humans bite almost as often as some of the dogs.

People get what the tolerate. The voters in Santa Monica tolerate lots of things. If service providers like the USPS are less tolerant, then Santa Monica will no longer receive quite the same level of service. This gives LA’s civil governments a choice to make. They can have postal carriers that actually deliver on a regular schedule, or they can be woke and defund the police. They apparantly have no sure bet of receiving both.

I used to live and attend Grad School in Los Angeles. I’m still appalled at the extent to which the powers that be have succeeded in screwing up paradise. It didn’t used to be a place where those who delivered the light bill required an armed escort and a suit of kevlar armor. It just never seemed that evil, dangerous, or bad.

What has left since the time when I departed has been the commitment to enforcing civilized behavior. Individual rights are important until those liberties infringe on the existence of another person. A sane civilization then has to intervene. Yet every time the standards get dropped a little more, a few more of the smart, and a few more of the sane light out for the trail.

Those that remain can’t understand why police officers apprehend criminals, write tickets, and shoot the feloniously violent. They just see the negative externalities of a police presence. They have no clue what the opportunity cost of not having a police force will end up equaling.

Ratiocination will come slowly. It will occur every time they are afraid to walk about eight blocks to the main Post Office to get their mail. Between Fifteenth Street and Seventh, here there be gorgons. At least here is that probability. The consequence of that probability then begins to constrict your life. At that juncture, a life without ordered liberty is a life without liberty at all.

Tags: crime, liberty, police