Modern life being what it is, and Maryland being Maryland and Marylanders being Marylanders, it's a bit more subtle, but not much less painful.
As best I can figure it out, there are a variety of organizations, or maybe it's just people who hang out together or maybe just all listen to the same "talk radio" station. I just don't know, and I'm pretty sure that is intentional. I cannot see how it would be otherwise. Here's how it goes.
Just to be clear to any readers, this did not happen at any places of business operated by any agency of the county. But it did happen today.
All of a sudden, for no reason I understand -- because I am never confronted or accused or told anything at all -- I get attacked from behind as I am already leaving some public place of business. Usually something that seems to be perhaps a piece of optical-fiber scrap.
Fiber scrap is dangerous:
Why are Fiber Scraps So Dangerous?
Optical fiber is extremely thin and it is made of the purest glass. The process of scoring or cleaving this type of glass results in small glass shards that are difficult to see and avoid if left lying around the work area.
Accidentally brushing one's hand across a workbench can cause these tiny yet painful shards to easily penetrate the skin and migrate further into the body. These sharp particles can cause direct damage to the body as well as cause chronic infections to set in. If the glass enters the eye, damage to eyesight, including blindness, can occur. Unlike wood slivers, these glass splinters will not degrade inside your skin.
This safety issue is so important that some fiber optic cleavers include a small Fiber Optic Waste Container that is physically attached to the device. This small compartment receives the small, excess pieces of glass that naturally result during the cleaving process.
Always dispose of your glass scraps safely, and be sure to use protective eyewear when cleaving, splicing or otherwise working with bare optical fiber.
Obviously, if you wanted to injure someone pretty badly and have it be effectively medically-untreatable and almost impossible to see or to prosecute, this is the substance you want to work with: a hair-thin strand of glass at a length anywhere from the length of a pin to the length of a five-foot spear.
This sort of stuff happens just out of the blue. I can be as polite or as rude as I might want, it has nothing to do with what happens. I can be feeling good or not, be well or sick, it doesn't matter. I doubt that this is totally random and in fact it seems to be following on from something that's going on outside of my awareness, for example on a blog I don't read or a radio station I never tune in, or a church sermon I've never heard. It's not like anyone is reacting to anything I have done or failed to do, and it's not like anyone is reacting to me or to my behavior at all. It's like people are obeying orders, or reacting to some report or rumor that someone made or conveyed.
Then again, maybe someone stopped by and told them that they'd get paid $50 if they stuck a pin in "that weird guy" or whatever. I honestly have no fucking idea... other than that the cruelty and hatefullness of some people is evidently without limit.
Maryland being Maryland, and Maryland laws being Maryland laws, you can inflict a great deal of outrage on people and nothing will happen to you. Your victims can complaint relentlessly to the police, and if the officer themselves didn't actually see it happen, the police have no power to proceed. You can dial 911 all you want, nothing will ever come of it. The legislature should act, and act quickly, to alter the law so that all sworn allegations of crimes of violence are duly investigated by police.
In case nobody was keeping track, Maryland has among the highest number of Hate Crime laws, in an almost bewildering set of categories. Yet when you actually read the laws, they prohibit extremely limited and very specific courses of action. For example, the original "hate crime" law was touted as a great legislative success that was going to end all ethnic and religious hatred. Yet all it did was to prohibit drawing, painting, or carving a swastika on a synagogue.
Years have come and gone and more laws have been enacted. For example, ndew laws will take effect in October which are supposedly meant to end discrimination against people alleged to be mentally ill and/or homeless, by classifying certain acts against such persons as Hate Crime. But the laws don't actually do much other than make it a crime to burn a homeless camp.
Maryland being Maryland, and Marylanders being Marylanders, the evil people who live among us will simply look at the letter of the law, and find a way to get around the prohibitions, and to exploit the law to their own benefit.
Let me mention here that I have a bad back, among other things, and I "walk funny". This is also a symptom of a lot of people suffering from Asperger Syndrome.
Maryland being Maryland, and Maryland's laws being Maryland's laws, there is no law against harassing persons with Asperger Syndrome.
Maryland's laws being Maryland's laws, and Marylanders being Marylanders -- at least the sort of Marylanders you find working at CVS stores -- since there is no law against it, and since it causes harm and makes other people feel terrible, that shit happens all of the goddamn time and it happens to me all of the goddamn time and I reasonably thus presume that people who are more afflicted and less communicative than myself get it more and get it worse.
And I am goddamn sick of it, and think that we need yet-another law that will be touted as a yet-another ground-breaking political achievement promoting the rights of the disabled, but which will probably be chock full of loopholes, and be about as effective as spitting on a campfire as a cure for 3rd degree burns.
I propose something that will never happen, Maryland being Maryland.
Let me pause to mention that even as far away as Texas, Maryland and Marylanders are held in um "mixed esteem". I've had Texans tell me, after they asked me whence I hailed and I told them I was from Maryland, "why, you know, you don't seem to be such a bad fellow, but lemme tell you, every other person I knew from Maryland was a total fuckhead and we had to run them out of town".
Well, I would like to do something to fix Maryland's reputation, and Maryland into the bargain, with my proposal.
Criminalize cruelty. And while you're at it, make possession of any form of weaponized materiel such as optical-fiber or fiber-scrap that's used in a crime of violence, a separate felony with a sentence equal to or exceeding that of a handgun used in a crime of violence.
Add to every single law that prohibits violence, "if it would appear to a reasonable person that the act was malicious and motivated by cruelty, no person convicted will be freed to go until and unless they have demonstrated to a licensed medical practitioner in the field that they are no longer compelled by their cruelty to engage in, or promote, acts of violence or hatred".
And there has to be some way to throw in an extra penalty for people who demonstate that if they can't exercise their cruelty and hatred in a way prohibited by law, they'll find some other way to inflict and afflict on other people that isn't yet narrowly-and-specifically (and easily evadably) prohibited.
In short, the law needs to be changed so that Maryland isn't the place that has laws most favoring devious fuckwads and most limiting the ability of honest and decent people to defend themselves or have the law-enforcement community defend them.
Let's start with second-degree assault. Require all allegations of this to be investigated, and change the laws so that if the investigators establish a reasonable belief that the crime occurred, they must refer it to the commissioner, and as caseload permits, the commissioner will forward it to prosecution.
Frankly, I am tired of assholes that smile in your face and stab you in the back as soon as you're walking away from them, and smile all the larger because they know that the law of Maryland does not comprehend malice nor cruelty, and that the police are not empowered to investigate any personally-unwitnessed crime of violence other than murder or armed robbery.
0 comments:
Post a Comment