Why Progressives Fail

Progressives have a serious problem, and it prevents us from carrying the day.

For the last 50 years or so, Republicans have exemplified the proverbial “strange bedfellows.”  Democrats, on the other hand, have always been a herd of cats.  Here’s what progressives need to learn from our opponents.

• They don’t attack their base, period.  Republicans have kept their base on board by knowing their audience and validating their core values, no matter how incongruous their positions may be.  For example, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin can favor secession from the union and still be accepted as arch patriots.    They pay attention to what’s important to their base, and support them in it — logic be damned.

• They always let their base win.  Republicans managed, for many years, to keep the “constitutionalists” in the same party as evangelical Christians.   You don’t hear Republicans arguing in favor of separation of church and state, because that would anger the Christian right.   Instead, they’ve re-framed the constitution as not requiring secular government.  This way everyone gets to be right at the same time, and can co-exist within the bubble.

• They fight for their ideology.  Republicans don’t back down until they’re forced to back down.   Their ideology may be a jumbled mishmash of angry, selfish nonsense, but they don’t budge from it.  They always assume the moral high ground, and no evidence, facts or logic can move them from their belief in their own worth and virtue.  Yes, there are various ideologies within conservatism.  But it has taken decades for these variations to cause the breakdown we now see.  It worked really well for a mighty long time.

Progressives are at a disadvantage.  Our core values are harder to sell, because you have to be a bigger adult to care about other people.  You may have to delay gratification and look at the bigger picture.   It’s much easier to get people to be selfish.

The progressive value of fairness for all people is nothing new.  I believe anyone who identifies as left-leaning could identify that as a core principle.  It’s what civil rights and union membership have in common, and it’s inherently unifying.  So why aren’t we demanding it?   Why do we permit our leaders and spokespeople to abuse our base?   If progressives want to carry the day, we need to police our own ranks.   We cannot permit prominent progressives to attack our base and fly in the face of our values.

One of the pre-eminent progressive independent media outlets is The Young Turks.  Their main voice, Cenk Uygur, bounces back and forth between being part of the solution and part of the problem.  Most of the time, he’s very much part of the solution.  But when he decides to be part of the problem, he goes at it full tilt boogie.

This clip is a perfect example of the problem.   News item:  Women and gays are essential to the progressive movement.  Progressives can’t engage in this kind of lowbrow, immature fratboy nonsense. Progressive men have to evolve to the point where they don’t need to bully anyone at all, because our ideology is about inclusion.    It’s Progressive 101.  Get with the program or get the fuck out.

Fox “News” gets away with having interchangeable dumb blondes sit on stage and flash their legs because subjugating women is part of their core value.  Conservative women like Michele Bachmann make no bones about being happy in their subordinate role.  Not so with progressive women.    Gay Republicans have to be self-hating enough to support a movement that would deny them the civil rights that everyone else enjoys.   Women and gays can be conservative as long as they lack self-respect.

Sexism is an ongoing problem on The Young Turks.  Like other bullies, Cenk believes it’s all in good fun.  I couldn’t disagree more.  It’s part of the problem.  He’s big on pandering to the 18-35 male, the Howard Stern demographic.  To some extent that works.  He’s been very successful with that strategy.  What he fails to grasp is that very few women or gays regularly tune in to Howard Stern, because a lot of people — a lot of PROGRESSIVE people — find it toxic.   Sexism is anathema to progressives.

The progressive community needs to draw a line in the sand with Cenk:  You don’t have to actually respect women in the privacy of your own head, but you have to either stop shitting on them publicly or go back to being a conservative.

Xavier Onassis

Progressive Media: Dropping the Ball from A to Z

A prophet once said, “Never been a better time, than right now.”    The Republican party is embroiled in a civil war,  splitting into factions that will inevitably leave a good percentage of their base unrepresented.  It’s the neocons vs. the Libertarians, with the Tea Partiers slowly but surely waking up to the fact that Ayn Rand hated Jesus almost as much as she hated people like them.  If you haven’t made popcorn yet, it’s not too late.  The show isn’t even close to over.

What a seizable day!  With our enemy’s house divided, our media figures are coming off the top ropes, right?  We’re riding in like the blue faced guys in Braveheart, taking a pimp hand to corporate clowns, carrying our new leaders aloft on litters and placing them firmly into their congressional offices aren’t we?  Oh, we’re not?

No, we’re not.  While we have some very bright, knowledgeable and dedicated progressive commentators and bloggers,  many golden opportunities to rally the teeming throng slip right past us.  Below is a short list of public safety stories that progressives have utterly failed to leverage.  (Yeah, I know, I’m skipping a lot of letters.  But I do have an A and a Z.)

A is for Alameda.   Recently a suicidal man in Alameda, California wandered out into 40-degree water intending to commit suicide.  Police and firefighters, who did not have the training or equipment necessary to do water rescue, called for the Coast Guard to provide appropriately equipped rescuers.  The Coast Guard was previously dispatched and unavailable.   The citizen died.  Rather than get some analysis from anyone with a few days’ experience on any 911 job, the media placed the blame squarely on the individual police and firefighters.   Here’s Cenk Uygur’s reporting on the matter.  It’s worse than just bad reporting, it’s harmful, counterproductive, uninformed reporting that exacerbates social problems.   The real issue in this incident was lack of funding for public safety, which not only makes life really hard for rescuers on a daily basis, it sometimes causes citizens to lose their lives.   This story was an opportunity to rally the citizens around taxing the rich to provide the quality of life that Americans have come to expect.  Instead, we tar and feathered the first responders.  Do you really think firefighters enjoy standing there watching someone die?  Epic. Fucking. Fail.

C is for Crash Tax.   Before I go any further, let me point out that I have a great appreciation for The Young Turks.  In general I think they do a great job.  On public safety, however, they consistently screw the pooch.  It pains me to have my favorite channel be such a large part of the problem.

FDNY proposed charging end users for 911 responses.   TYT did another terrible job of reporting about it.   While Cenk and Ana did note that this is a growing trend among public safety agencies nationwide, they failed entirely to grasp that it’s part of a much larger problem.   It’s the same issue as above – we refuse to tax the rich, so the budget is smaller.  Police, paramedics and firefighters get paid less to run more calls while riding around in old, crappy vehicles.   The agencies really can’t cut our pay or benefits any lower (though they’re definitely working on it), and they’ve already slashed the training and equipment budgets to the bone.  Something’s got to give.  If we’re not willing to increase the tax base, the end user is the only other logical pocket to tap.   TYT seems to think this fee for services rendered is some sort of punishment.  Their analysis is not only uninformed, it’s idiotic and childish, and it got huge public support.   I’d like to see Ana Kasparian work one shift at an underfunded, understaffed public safety agency — just one 12-hour shift.   I’m sorry you didn’t get a new designer purse, Ana.    The police, firefighters and paramedics who suck it up day and in and day out should all chip in from their lavish handouts paychecks to get you one, out of pure shame.

Instead of alerting the citizens to the crisis we face in funding for public safety, and rallying them to — oh, I don’t know, rise up en masse and tell Grover Norquist to eat shit and die — TYT presented the story in such a way that pressures agencies to back off of the plan.  The alternative is to continue having too few people run too many calls, i.e., take it out of our (the rank and file’s) hides.  Love you too!

PIX 11 in New York did a better job of reporting it, again touching on the fact that this is a growing trend and mentioning the huge red flag of hospital-owned ambulance services, but only in passing.  Unfortunately they also failed to pick up the scent of that much bigger, much uglier story which I will cover separately.  While their reporting was less myopic and immature than Cenk and Ana’s, it still invited citizens to make idiotic comments like this:

Noone is going to call the police now when we have accidents because the fire dept is going to want to come to make money over a fender bender.

So it’s those mercenary firefighters again, damn them!  They’re not trying to come up with the money to keep their response times decent, they’re just padding the old porn-and-Doritos fund.  Best scam we ever came up with!

Another prime opportunity to raise public awareness goes whizzing past at a high rate of speed.

G is for Goodhue, MN CPR marathon.   This is possibly the most frustrating example on this list, because it could have showed what it looks like when things are working right, when the citizens and first responders understand and respect each other.   David Pakman is a fine progressive commentator, I watch him regularly.   He never makes me want to scream and throw things at the computer like TYT does.

However, he consistently misses the bus when it comes to leveraging these stories to promote the progressive ideology.   He mentioned a 96-minute CPR marathon in which the patient actually survived.   In the original piece, he speculated that the person must not have been actually dead.  In my professional experience, it is unlikely to survive 96 minutes of CPR, however David sort of skimmed the story and I had to research it on my own.  When I saw what had actually happened I was thrilled to see the system working beautifully and a dead citizen walking out of the hospital as a result.  This is the kind of thing that makes it worth getting out of bed for people like me.   It was not only the cure for PTSD, it was magically delicious.  Oh, the bridges we could build!  And again, the opportunity to raise public awareness slid right on by.  So I left him a voicemail, did further research, left another voicemail, you get the idea.  I was excited, so sue me.

This incident happened in a small town where a lot of citizens are volunteer firefighters.  They’re all trained in CPR, which IMHO should be the second big take-away in this story.  CPR SAVES LIVES, AND YOU CAN LEARN IT.  It’s easy, there’s really nothing to it, and there is no substitute.   For this person to survive, the patient care baton had to be handed off successfully hundreds of times; bystanders, volunteer firefighters, ground ambulance, dispatchers, police, flight dispatchers, doctors at Mayo, air ambulance, individuals doing CPR.  Everybody had to communicate and cooperate.   No division between rescuers and citizens, and everyone’s a winner.  Unfortunately bin Laden got killed at the same time, so nobody cared.

I is for Ipswich, MA.   This video is pretty self-explanatory.  Even the title sums it right up — “People Die.”  That’s what I’m raging about here.  People die when this shit doesn’t work right.  We, the people, need to get with the program.   The progressive media needs to grab stuff like this and run with it.  This video wraps it up nicely and puts a pretty bow on it.  We could get every reasonably sane conservative in America to vote progressive if we started working this angle.

N is for New Jersey.  This post is getting long, and I have so much to say about this.  I’ll do a separate post on Chris “Chrissie Walnuts” Christie.  (Great job here by TYT.)   Any progressive strategist who wants to take him down, just drop me a line.  He has raped the people of New Jersey by way of their public safety (and education).   If you want to shoot a flare at Governor Hindenburg, you know where to find me.  I’ll hook you right up.  I wish they would run him for president, I’d filet him.

O is for Obion County.  This one is just too difficult for me to write about right now, sorry.  I truly appreciate and respect both Cenk Uygur and Keith Olbermann.  The world is a better place with them in it.  But their coverage of the Cranick fire in Obion County, TN did really bad things to my PTSD.  I’ll address that in a separate post when I can do it justice.  It’s still not OK.

Z is for Zadroga.   It’s appropriate that this item starts with a Z, because it’s the final word, the mother of all slam dunks.  Jon Stewart had hang time on this, shattered the backboard.  Anthony Wiener booted some people in the balls about it on C-SPAN, too.   I don’t know why it takes a comedian to move the progressive agenda forward, but progressive media types need to mount up and ride.   The Republicans tried to weasel out of paying for healthcare for 9/11 first responders.   That should really be the last conversation we ever need to have.  Progressive media did cover this, notably The Young Turks among others, and the coverage they gave it was good.  But the first responders are still fighting for cancer coverage, and months roll by between media coverage of this topic.  This story should never fall out of the news cycle for one goddamned minute until we get real world “change we can believe in.”   Epic.  Fucking.  Fail.

Xavier Onassis

Mr. Spartacus Goes to Washington – A Seven-Point Plan For A Progressive 2012

A friend described this blog as my thoughts on how we (public safety people) get treated.  I’m disappointed to have that be the take-away.   The relationship between Team 911 and Joe Public is in a shambles, and fixing that is definitely part of my agenda.  But I’m not ass hurt.   I don’t want or need an apology.  That’s not what this is about.

I want corporate America to bow to the people for a change.  I want progressives to carry the day in 2012.

This blog is my cyber version of the Jersey Cavewoman’s table flip.  Well, hopefully more effective and less irrational, but you get the idea.  Bottom line, stuff needs to change.

It seems to me the time has never been more right.  The opposition has moved so far to the right that they’ve disenfranchised the sane people of this country.  Even people who never think about politics are waking up to the fact that our system is corrupt and broken.  Progressives can seize the day.  Here’s my seven-point plan for making it happen.

1.  Focus.   Some progressive commentators and bloggers are on it.   Cenk Uygur and Jane Hamsher immediately pop to mind, but there are certainly others.   There are many, however, who still think the Democrats represent us.    They don’t.  Our two choices in representation are conservative and Tea Party.   The right wing is very clear on their ideology, and they demand adherence to it.  I suggest we start calling people like Obama DINOs – Democrats In Name Only.   We need a progressive Grover Norquist – someone who comes up with a line in the sand, forces anyone who wants to run with a (D) behind their name to sign it, and goes for the jugular if they don’t.  They don’t take prisoners, and we can’t, either.  We have to stop being a herd of cats.  We need to remind the DINOs that they went extinct.

2.  Circle the wagons.  One of the things the right wing does very well is stand together.    They don’t bother with integrity, yet they never yield the moral high ground.   Vitter, Ensign, Foley, Craig, Stevens, the list goes on.   Larry Craig blows strange guys in airport bathrooms and still has a happy ending, (sorry, couldn’t resist) opting to finish out his term and being allowed to do so.  Anthony Wiener flirts on the internet and gets shunned as though he were an al Qaeda affiliated baby rapist.  Progressives need to get with the program.   We need a litmus test.  I suggest this one:  Anybody who insisted Wiener or Van Jones had to go is a DINO.   Once they show up on radar, we take them down.   I know, we’re not unified enough to go for scalps like they do.  I’d love it if we did.  I think we should identify who their most effective players are, wait for them to do or say anything that can possibly be spun in any direction, and scream for their resignation as though our lives depended on it.  I can dream, can’t I?

3.  Work for Something Bigger than Yourself.    This may be the biggest obstacle progressives face.   The right wing has crafted a message that appeals to the true believer, and they hammer it home.    President Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t want to fulfill his campaign rhetoric lest he be seen as favoring black people.  News flash folks, African America is a huge chunk of the progressive base.    We should support any president of any race who works for social justice.    We need to work at social justice, not to further our careers, but because it’s the right thing to do.   When I was a kid we were constantly told, “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem.”  That phrase has gone by the wayside, and I think we need to start using it like a mantra.   They have people who stand out in front of abortion clinics all day every day for years.  We need to nurture and cultivate our WTO protestors and Anonymous hacktivists.    We need to tell people the time has come to step up or step aside.  This isn’t about me, and it can’t be about you, either.

4.  Learn from our opponents.   Right-wing ideologues do a number of things very well, and we spend plenty of time observing them.  Media Matters does a great job of archiving and cataloging their propaganda.   Matt Taibbi breaks down their scams in terms the average person can follow if they’re motivated.  Thom Hartmann did a piece on the Concord Project, the simple strategy the Tea Party used to take over the Republican Party.  We have all the smart people, all the college professors and scientists, on our team.  So why are they winning?  They’re funded by the wealthiest people in the world.  Then again, we outnumber them thousands to one.  We can do this.

5.  Sell It.  Their secret weapon is Frank Luntz.  Here’s what he does:  “Luntz’s specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.””     He’s very good at what he does.  He turned words like “liberal,” “feminist,” “social justice” and many other words that progressives identify with into insults.   If you click that link and look at his picture, you’ll see a fat man with bloodshot eyes and teeth that look like they were carved out of butter, stuck into his peanut-shaped head at whimsical angles.  On the progressive side we have Noam Chomsky and George Lakoff, and we’re getting beat by Mr. Peanut and the Turdblossom?  WTF?

6.  Mount Up and Ride.  The teabaggers, or as we used to call such people, “the lunatic fringe,” have commandeered the GOP.  They worked hard at building their activist infrastructure, and it paid off.  Don’t believe me?  Google “become precinct committeeman” (the strategy used in the Concord Project).  You’ll find dozens of links discussing how to empower oneself within the GOP.  If you want your voice to be heard in the DNC, you have to start from scratch.  Anyone who wants to support the Tea Party can step right into a role set out by the Concord Project.  We need to make it just that easy for people to support the progressive cause.  That’s THE progressive cause, singular (i.e., take over the Democrat/Republican Lite party).  We need to roll our sleeves up and do stuff in real life instead of just talking about it.  If you’re a progressive and you want things to change, un-couch yourself.   Stand up and be Spartacus.   Tick tock.

7.  Establish Diplomatic Relations with Redtruckistan.   Back in the day, Republicans supported the police and fire department unilaterally.  There was a certain respect for and deference to public safety people.  One time when I first became a paramedic I stopped at a grocery store on my way home from work.  I noticed an elderly couple at the end of the aisle stop and look at me.  They stayed there for a while as I looked through the shelves.   I eventually noticed that the man was waiting to make eye contact with me.  I looked up, walked toward them and said hello.  He reached out to shake my hand and thank me for my service.   These are the people of the flyover states, and they’re ours for the taking.

These days we have the Libertarian Tea Party.    I’m no expert on Libertarianism, but from observing them on the internet they seem to be primarily concerned with selfishness, drinking crazy juice and squeezing pennies until they scream.   They tend to see public safety people as lazy, overpaid welfare queens, living high on the hog on our enormous, unearned pensions.  Libertarianism  involves a disconnect from reality and pervasive impracticality, i.e., they don’t seem to want to have police, paramedics or firefighters if they have to pay them.

The tides have turned.  Republicans are now directly attacking the public safety rank and file.   Police officers and firefighters can no longer count on Republican legislative support.  Grover’s anti-tax agenda has led to massive de-funding of public safety organizations, making life increasingly difficult for Team 911.   The progressive agenda would turn that around.  Unfortunately progressives have burned the bridge to our community.  This blog seeks to fix that, by getting progressives and public safety people on the same team.  Team 911 has Items 1, 2, 3 and 6 above down to a science, and the progressive movement would do really well to bring those skills on board.

I’m not talking about self-serving bullshit like we saw in Wisconsin, where all of a sudden progressives care about us when it serves them to do so.  I’m talking about progressives actually stopping, re-evaluating our relationship with Team 911, and integrating public safety people into polite society.   It could be a great thing, but it will take some work and some changed behaviors.  Let’s do this the smart way, before it comes down to storming the Bastille.

ON YOUR FEET!  WHO’S WITH ME?

Xavier Onassis

Bayonne’s Bravest

If you want to understand how things work in Redtruckistan, this video is an excellent primer.

What got reported:  Two off-duty firefighters rescued a woman and two children from the attic of their burning home.

It’s a nice feel-good story where the citizens are happy with the outcome and it’s smiles all around.   I have nothing but love and respect for those guys, and am glad they got some public recognition.

But that’s not why I’m blogging about it.  I discuss it here because it’s so telling in so many ways.  Assuming you’ve watched the clip once through, I ask you to watch it again and note a few things:

How many civilian voices do you hear?

How many firefighter voices?

I counted either five or seven civilian voices — it’s not clear whether the two off-camera voices were the same civilian witnesses interviewed on-camera later in the clip.  Zero firefighter voices.

It’s a perfect reflection of the abusive relationship between America and her first responders, like a snapshot of a perfect day in one dysfunctional family’s life.  At 1:45 the reporter mentions that the fire department wouldn’t allow them to speak on camera.

Did you notice that the first time through?  Have you ever noticed that you never hear any personal statement from any of the responders directly involved in an incident?  Even when things are good, the invisible burqa stays put.  Let’s continue the analysis.

What role, if any, did the police play?

How many police voices did you hear?  Police officers’ images shown?

The only reason the police got acknowledged at all was because this was a positive outcome; because the public was happy, the firefighters were allowed to make an off-camera statement.  Even so, their two opinions were merged into one clear, concise message:

1.  It’s not our job, it’s who we are; and

2. The police should be acknowledged for their role in the good outcome.

Had the firefighters not been allowed to make an off-camera statement (which normally would not be allowed), the average viewer would not have known that there even were police on scene.  That pisses me off.

You know how at a bonfire, sometimes the fire gets five or six feet high, and maybe you have to move back a few feet because it gets too hot?  Let me assure you, a burning house is much hotter than a bonfire, and you need to be much farther away to be comfortable.  Dunn and Daley actually made entry into the structure without any gear.  I don’t know that I would’ve done that.

Please note that the police have no training in ladder rescue, and no protective gear.  I’ve been on many a 911 call, ranging from assaults to overdoses, where I waited out in the truck while the cops went in to see what was happening.  We paramedics call them the “blue canaries” — they go in first, and when they tell us it’s safe, we go in.   They sign up to maybe get killed.  We don’t.

As a final thought, I note that the first reporter said his name, then the name of the second reporter.  Then the name of the second reporter was shown in writing.  Then again at the end of the piece the second reporter’s name was verbalized and written.  Dunn and Daley did get verbally mentioned by name, which is good and proper.  Zero of the police officers were named.  I don’t even know how many police officers were present, or whether they were male or female.  It pisses me right off.

I don’t want to sound bitter.  I’m very happy that these responders (including the police) are who they are and did what they did.  They fill my heart with gladness.   And I know that there are many others just like them — sometimes they get a chance to show it, sometimes they don’t, but that thing exists within them and I love them for it.

Xavier Onassis

Mr. Fiddlesticks: The Making of a First Amendment Martyr

This kind of thing makes public safety people grind their teeth (and hate citizens/progressives/the media).  It’s one of the root causes of police brutality.

Below are links to coverage of the same story by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and Myrna Minkoff Alyona Minkovsky of Russia Today.  [If you aren't watching RT regularly check it out - not unbiased, but excellent news and commentary.]

Alyona’s coverage

Cenk’s coverage

Long story short, someone created a number of Xtranormal cartoons detailing sheisty goings-on at the Renton, WA police department.  While they didn’t name names, the department recognized itself and got a warrant to discover the identity of Mr. Fiddlesticks and prosecute him for “cyberstalking.”  Yes, they’re saying someone is cyberstalking a police department.

Maybe it’s just me, but neither reporter linked above seems certain of something I find glaringly obvious — Mr. Fiddlesticks is a Renton police officer.

[Someone posted that the You Tube user who uploaded the videos, Mr. Fiddlesticks, is located in the UK; this doesn't change my assessment of the situation.   I'm 100% certain that the maker of these videos is a Renton police officer.]

My first hint was that they’re Xtranormal cartoons.  Xtranormal is the official language of Redtruckistan.

Further, the core issues he complains about are nearly universal among not only police, but fire and EMS personnel.  (Not the specifics about who did what, but the way codependent crap gets tolerated and good people get prosecuted.)  It’s important to understand that police officers, firefighters and paramedics are strictly forbidden from public speech.  We do not share the same freedom of speech that everyone else has.  IMHO this is a major problem that negatively impacts our society.

Mr. Fiddlesticks is obviously a police officer so disgusted by the agency he works for, and the people who run it, that he is in career suicide mode.  Make no mistake.  When they find Mr. Fiddlesticks, they will ravage him.  He’ll be asking, “Would you like fries with that?” because he’ll be radioactive in public safety.

Public safety personnel are held to very high standards — almost impossibly high.  I’ve often wondered if the bar is set that high on purpose, to enable this type of crap.  You see, when you fail to be the paragon of virtue that you’re officially expected to be, then “they” have dirt on you, and you will play  ball.  That’s how we end up with a department full of the egregious nonsense in the Fiddlesticks cartoons.

Somehow, some people manage to be that impeccable warrior that you’re supposed to be.  Machiavelli described such a person as an “independent,” a person not motivated by ego, not clutching for money or power, scratching no backs and not itchy, either.   Machiavelli opined that there is no greater threat to a prince (all of Machiavelli’s princes being corrupt pricks) than an independent in his court.   He recommended making it a top priority to get rid of any nobleman who is, well, actually noble.

While I don’t agree with some of the attitudes expressed by Mr. Fiddlesticks, my heart goes out to him.  I would love to see the culture change.  I would love it if public safety agencies had a culture that supported integrity and fostered good relations with the citizens.  In theory that’s how it is.  In practice, it’s Machiavellian.

Cenk and Alyona seem to think some civilian got some dirt on the police, and now their (civilian) freedom of speech is impacted.   Note that public safety personnel have even less freedom of speech than you do.   It would be a great gesture of support if the citizens could rally around this.  Mr. Fiddlesticks isn’t the only public safety worker who sees major flaws in the system, flaws that negatively impact all of us, and can’t say anything about it.

The user comments on the videos linked above underscore the thesis of this blog – there’s frequent use of the phrase “fucking pigs” as though the good guy in this story isn’t a police officer.  Even when the police do the right thing at great personal expense they get slammed by the citizens.

Police brutality doesn’t spring out of a vacuum.  Aside from the continual abuse hurled at them by the public, inherently stressful work, long hours, low pay, sleep disruption, and general alienation, they get attacked by their own tribe.  A goldfish can only be so healthy swimming in sewer water.  (UPDATE:  Bill O’Reilly is now using his influence to attack a police officer from within his chain of command, because the guy is dating his STBX wife.  Blog to come.)

This blog is my message in a bottle to the progressive media.  Progressives could stomp some plutocrat ass if our mouthpieces could wrap their heads around this.

Xavier Onassis

Firefighters Fight Back: Under the Invisible Burqa

Xtranormal is a software program that allows anyone to make highly snarky cartoons.  I found out about it at work.  My partner showed me an Xtranormal firehouse classic after we ran a frustrating call almost identical to the one in the cartoon (for possibly the hundredth time.)  It was thrilling to see that so many other firefighters/medics have the same experiences I do and feel the same way about them.  That’s not hyperbole.  The alienation gets intense.

Here’s a perfect example:  Boston reporter attacks firefighters, firefighters not permitted to publicly rebut.  Joe Shortsleeve is apparently much hated by the Boston Fire Department, with good reason.

While Joe Shortsleeve (and any other civilian in America) is free to rail against first responders to their heart’s content, that’s a one-way street.

If you’re tired of being employable as a first responder, all you need to do is publicly voice your opinions about public safety.  When the agency that employs you finds out that you’ve been expressing your thoughts about your career, they end that career for you.   A police officer/firefighter/paramedic with an opinion is a former police officer/firefighter/paramedic.  (You didn’t think my real name was Xavier Onassis, did you?  Seriously?)

People who use public services responsibly cannot imagine how many people are not among their ranks.   We run calls ranging from the ridiculous to the ridonkulous, and we have to patiently explain the same things over and over no matter how irate and/or irrational the citizen is.  Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we do meaningful work.  But people Rick Roll the shit out of us, and they frequently think we should enjoy it, too.

We can’t refuse service.  We can’t tell you what we really think.   We definitely can’t be sarcastic.  And if a citizen — even a known crazy crackhead — complains to our chain of command about us, we’ve got a serious problem.   We bite our lips and walk it off.

And then there was Xtranormal….  MWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA

Independent media outlets such as The Young Turks arose organically in response to the vertical consolidation of media.  (And ironically, they’re one of the worst media abusers of first responders.)  As media became more corporate and stifled, people were increasingly motivated to create new avenues of expression.  The internet, and specifically YouTube, has become the stronghold of the resistance.

That’s what Xtranormal is to Team 911.  It’s the free speech zone first responders have carved out for themselves.  I’d love to see the art form raised to a discourse more meaningful than locker room pissing competitions and gripes about frequent flyers.

Xavier Onassis

Update:  Yes, this grocery issue is a real phenomenon that happens more than you think.

Rescuing Providence on the firehouse dinner

Anonymous vs. Team 911

First, let me say that I think Anonymous, the open-source “hacktivist” group, is awesome.   I wish there were millions of Anonymi.   Anonymous is the cure for globalization.

Recently Anonymous took on BART – the Bay Area Rapid Transit.  After another incident of brutality by a BART officer, BART shut down cell phone communication to prevent Anonymous-led protestors from organizing.

I agree that we can’t have cell phone towers shut off to stifle protest.  It wasn’t cool.  Nor is brutality.  I have no desire to live in Iran (under the current regime, anyway.)

In response to the communication blockade, Anonymous hacked the website of the union that represents BART officers.   Some 100 BART officers had their home addresses published on the web, and I assume their names as well.

While I support Anonymous and agree with most (if not all) of their positions generally, this was not the right thing to do.

I’m not a police officer.  I’m a paramedic and have been a firefighter.  Before I got into this line of work I had no idea how much abuse firefighters and paramedics take from the public.  I can’t imagine how anyone stays sane working as a police officer.  The rage that gets directed at individual police officers is staggering, and it’s virtually constant.

It cannot be safely assumed that all 100 of those officers have abused the public.  Their families certainly have not done so, yet this action by Anonymous endangered the lives of spouses, children, friends and neighbors of police officers simply based on their employment.

It’s not OK.

Please note that you won’t hear any public statement from any of the affected officers about this matter.  That’s because Team 911 doesn’t have the same First Amendment rights that you, the citizen, have.   Sometimes citizens are surprised to learn that first responders are not allowed to make any public comments, no matter how publicly or how personally they get attacked.  We’re not allowed to fight back no matter what you do to us.  Might this create an environment in which citizens get brutalized?

Shall we have an America without police?  In the no-police America there would be a lot less firefighters and paramedics, because we need the police to protect us from the citizens while we do our jobs.  I, for one, wouldn’t respond to any 911 call if I had to do so without anyone watching my back.  Clearly that’s not the answer.

It takes two to tango.   The way to improve the relationship between first responders and citizens is by recognizing that the police didn’t drop from the sky like so much space junk.  They’re a reflection of you, the citizen.  Citizens have to take an ownership role in the relationship.

The police are Michael Vick’s dogs.

Xavier Onassis

En Route

My favorite cousin just said the smartest thing.  After listening to me rant for over an hour about the way public safety gets covered in the media — and how that contributes to the problem IMHO — he suggested I start a blog.

Till now, my frustration has resulted only in telephone rants to my cousin and unsolicited, mostly unanswered emails to progressive media types.

I keep hoping that someone else will get it, and care.   If we can change the conversation between the citizens and Team 911, we can make America a better place.  How cool would that be?

Xavier Onassis