What Makes for "Bad Enough?"

Its interesting to me the way comments went on the last post. So much early conversation was about age of consent for medical procedures. Where I was going was that when transportation across state lines is involved, by the time you get to the point where a patient signs a consent form the facilitating adult has already committed a felony. Absent parental consent they had kidnapped the minor.

I guess that culturally there would be some kind of "no harm no foul" posture toward the kidnapping were the child returned and for some reason the legislature thought it was necessary to add another charge.

In this context though I do wonder about that bus driver. I have a suspicion that technically a minor should have to have parental consent to buy a bus or train ticket. Where's the line, county, state, federal border? An interesting artifact of the discussion. Although, if the bus driver has no intent to kidnap and is simply driving his bus and passively commits kidnapping surely there is no charge. If the bus gets into an accident and the minor dies, could the driver be charged with felony murder, as the death resulted in the act of committing the underlying crime? Really I do think I should have gone to law school.

Parents, don't let your children grow up to be artists. A public service announcement from the folks at TANBI.

Bad Enough. This is an interesting concept. I too have the reflex reaction when people say its bad here. That we're run by an American Taliban and the like. I do think it is an inequity in the rhetoric. People don't snap at Rush for calling people Nazis or Pinkos, or Commies which would seem to me to be every bit as hyperbolic as someone on the opposite end of the spectrum calling Bush and his crowd the Taliban. It's not true, but it is absolutely there in the context. Its one of the reasons I found AirAmerica difficult to listen to even though I agree in principle with the positions. When one of there guys would always say "Bush Crime Family" I would have a problem with it. When Janeane Gerafalo would start calling people names no worse than I hear on other shows going the other way it just sounded more spiteful than it does in the other direction.

I like to think its because we know better.

But I digress, I was saying that I have the same reflex when people talk about how bad it is here. I also get it when things go wrong, and not Katrina wrong but like the last week in Queens wrong. People on TV hour after hour complaining about no power, no air-conditioning. All I can think in my head is, well its no day at the beach, but then its not Darfur either. Shut up, get on the bus, and go to the movies - its cool there. As bad as it is here, its nothing like it is other places in the world. Our elections may be gerrymandered within an inch of their lives, but there are multiple candidates and anyone can vote for any of them. Our cops may occasionally step over the line, but there are no death squads roaming the streets. People may get Christmas as a national holiday and have to take a personal day for Yom Kippur, but the personal day doesn't lose you your job, and you don't have to worry about being gunned down in the street going to your observance. All things being equal the Earth is not currently hurtling toward the sun.

So I do believe that for a myriad of reasons we do tend to over react. And I also think that for some fundamentally rhetorical reason the language of the complaining just sounds worse than it really is. But also, in the context of "bad enough" I think there isn't just a line that you cross and then you are there.

Bad enough happens a little bit at a time. Often I think it begins for what are certainly legitimate reasons and only after it gets momentum does it occur to us that we have been off the rails for quite some time. I've quoted Jean-Luc Picard on this before, but its a good quote:

With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

Somewhere here there is likely a stump speech in gestation. A government that wiretaps its own without warrant is bad enough. A culture that imprisons people without regard for human rights is bad enough. A country that values profit over sustainability is bad enough. A political authority that supports corporate persons to the detriment of private citizens is bad enough. Leaders that value the appearance of morality over the practice of moral and ethical behavior are bad enough. A nation of style over substance is bad enough.

We are well past the threshold of bad enough. I wonder how so few people seem to mind?