President Trump and the Caine Mutiny

A parallel between art and reality...

I came across the ending of "The Caine Mutiny" the other day, and it got me thinking.

If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. Not only is it a masterful performance by Humphrey Bogart, but also includes powerful performances by many others -- including a decidedly unlikable Fred MacMurray playing a character quite different from those he usually played.

In the movie, Bogart plays Captain Queeg, a very strict, by-the-book Navy officer newly assigned to command the Navy destroyer, Caine. Queeg is off-put by his perceived lack of discipline enforced by the ship's previous captain, and sets out to return the crew to higher standards.

Unfortunately, Queeg has a few personality quirks, an unconventional command style, was potentially promoted above his capabilities... and perhaps has some minor psychological instabilities.

Instead of offering guidance/advice and supporting their captain, Queeg's senior officers resist and undermine his every effort to command the ship. These actions exacerbate Queeg's quirks and instabilities. This causes his officers to resist more, further irritating Queeg -- a typical positive feedback loop. Eventually, Queeg's instabilities become full-blown, leading the crew to mutiny in order to remove Queeg from command.

At the eventual court martial trial for mutiny, the officers are eventually acquitted when the court sees Queeg's personality quirks in person. The officers, however, are severely chastised, saying that their actions to undermine the Captain are indirectly responsible for Queeg's breakdown, and that they could have potentially prevented these events by being more supportive and less combative.

I can't help but draw comparisons to today's political environment. Both Captain Queeg and President Trump have certain personality quirks, as well as an unconventional command style.  Both entered their offices with a desire to change the way things were done.  And one could say that both were potentially promoted above their talents. (Note that I am not making any claims that the President has any latent psychological instabilities.) While the Presidency doesn't represent the same sort of command structure as a Naval warship, I still see parallels between Queeg's senior officers' behavior, and the way that President Trump is being treated by the Congress as well as the media. Every effort -- no matter how innocuous -- is questioned and undermined. But instead of offering guidance and advice, politicians and the media do their damnedest to mock and resist the President, creating more and more hostility. In turn, this seems to further exacerbate President Trump's quirks.

Note that I am neither supporting or opposing President Trump in this analysis, simply knocking a few random thoughts around inside my head. But I see the senior leadership in Congress, as well as most in the media, continually undermining and mocking him, instead of offering guidance/support, or even constructive criticism. And for those who think that President Trump DOES have some latent psychological instabilities, do they think that this continual mocking and undermining will be helpful?

I'm Surrounded by Assholes

In the world of politics, there is something called O'Sullivan's First Law of Politics (sometimes called Robert Conquest's Second Law of Politics, but I can't recall which one came first). I don't want to get diverted into discussing those, so I won't delve any deeper (perhaps another day)*.

Instead, I'd like to propose a variation of these laws based on what I've been observing on various on-line forums.

Clausen's First Law of Web Forums: Any internet web forum not explicitly oriented towards intelligence and decency will, over time, become overrun by ignorant assholes.

I've had to leave multiple web forums over the last year or so because some members insisted on behaving poorly, preferring insults and abuse to discussion. The most recent of which was the Nextdoor.com neighborhood social media site.

Because I had the audacity to post a message requesting folks to be considerate on their use of fireworks on quiet Sunday evenings (in fact just about EVERY stinking evening since 2-3 weeks ago sounds like a war zone late into the evening), I was heckled and insulted by some of the members -- referring to me as unpatriotic, whiney, and (if you can you believe it) communist. That I don't understand what our military defends (my 23 years in the Air Force didn't sway them, either). They claim that it's their right to shoot off fireworks in celebration, and if I don't like it, I should move to some communist country.

Of course, I have no desire to subject myself to that sort of abuse, so I deleted all my posts and closed my account. With these sorts of forums, there is no way to block people, and no way to control membership so that such behavior can be mitigated. As more people like me get sick of this crap, they too, will depart. Soon, all of Nextdoor.com will be populated by nothing but ignorant assholes.

* Others have written extensively on these ideas; I doubt I can improve on them.  A few examples are:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/osullivans-first-law-in-action.php

http://www.themainewire.com/2015/09/somethings-gotta-give-osullivans-law-political-gravitational-pull/

https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-scrapbook/its-the-law

Welcome to the Potential Crime Division...

What is the purpose of a law?

 On its surface, seems pretty simple question, but think about it for a bit...

Most people might say something like “To prevent crime.” And most people would be dead wrong.

Let me put this as simply as possible:

LAWS ARE NOT INTENDED TO PREVENT CRIME!

Oh, sure, I know there are lawmakers out there who think what they're doing will prevent crimes, but that couldn't be further from the truth.  “But Mark,” you say, “we have all sorts of laws meant to prevent crime! For a simple example, we have speed limits on our roads to keep people from speeding.”

Seriously? A law on a books and a sign on the road keeps people from speeding? Have you been out on any roads, lately? No, it is the threat of sanctions from the state or local government (in the way of fines and points) that deters people from speeding. There isn't a speeding law on the books that can prevent a driver from exceeding the posted speed limit at any time or location of his choosing.

What if a police officer sees you driving down the road while singing. Or sees that you have only one hand on the wheel, with the other hand resting on the window frame.   Or thinks that the speed you are going is not safe for that particular road (in spite of being exactly at the posted limit).  And then decides to ticket you for poor driving practices. Of course, you would take that to traffic court, and get it dismissed because there are no laws on the books prohibiting those practices.

Thus, laws do not serve to prevent crime, but merely provide the framework for a government to legally sanction a person for a behavior deemed harmful to society. More importantly, with or without the law, a person can act in a certain way, but only with the law can he be sanctioned.  This basic principle protects us from arbitrary punishment by our government.


Again (this is important): Laws ONLY serve to provide a framework for a government to legally sanction someone who has behaved in a way society has deemed to be harmful.  Laws cannot eliminate that behavior.


So let's take this one step further. Let's say in an effort to prevent speeding, we pass a law prohibiting ownership of cars with engines over 350 horsepower starting next week. Cars like the Dodge Viper, with a 650 HP engine and a top speed of over 200 MPH, is clearly a car capable of violating all known posted speed limits. And at those speeds, one could cause great harm to a large number of people.

Owning such a car that you legally bought and owned last week would suddenly give the government legal framework on which to levy sanctions against you next week. But how is ownership of a particular car – even a powerful car like the Viper – harmful to society? Society is only put in harm's way if the driver behaves in a manner that is dangerous to other drivers.

Punishment for Potential Crimes

To me this is an abominable abuse of the purpose of a law – to penalize law-abiding citizens for what someone else MIGHT do with a particular possession. This is worse than punishment by the Pre-Crime division in “Minority Report” (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/) – this is punishment for Potential Crime. To turn a law-abiding citizen into a criminal by outlawing a particular item simply by the stroke of a pen is a horrible thought – it makes me cringe to even think about it.

And consider this: Just because a Corvette can speed really fast doesn't mean that people NEED a Corvette to speed really fast. Although cars like the Corvette, Dodge Viper, etc., are capable of really high speeds, most speeding is done in cars that most of us drive every day – from compacts, to station wagons, to mini-vans, to SUVs. And speeding in these “every day” cars is just as deadly to those around you.

By now, you probably know where I'm going with this, so I won't belabor the point.

So, consider the following issues:

How is such a law enforceable? How DOES the government decide who has a prohibited object? The only way to actually enforce these laws is through house-to-house searches for banned items (a clear violation of the 4^th Amendment) or by the owner of such objects to voluntarily give them up and face penalties (a clear violation of the 5^th Amendment).

The law-abiding owners of said objects will probably turn them over (or not, thus becoming criminals). However, those intent on doing harm most certainly NOT turn them over. Thus, the ban is effective only on those who wouldn't misuse them in the first place.

How do you ban easily-fabricated items? While a car is fairly complex, it is still within the capabilities of a typical back-yard mechanic to modify a standard car into something far more powerful. A firearm is far less complex than a car – a modestly-equipped shop can easily fabricate the sorts of items that the subject of the current hue and cry going on in the media. These technologies are many decades old – even more than a century old. That genie is not going back into the bottle.

Most importantly, there's the slippery slope to consider. Not not in reference to expanding the scope of bans to include more cars (or more firearms), but to the idea that governments can make any arbitrary item or action illegal because someone has deemed it potentially harmful to society if misused. If the government can make a particular car or gun illegal out of “concern for the safety of society,” then what else can they ban? Home storage of more than 5 gallons of gasoline? Metal-working machines that can be used to fabricate other weapons? Fertilizer that can be used to manufacture bombs? Fireworks and pressure-cookers? The precedent such actions set worries me immensely.

Yes, there's a problem in the US. And it needs to be fixed. But it has to be done rationally, dispassionately, and logically.  Most of all, solutions have to address the root causes of the problem, not a symptom.  Highly-charged emotions only create bad laws that reduce the freedoms held by all of the citizenry.