We Have Some Good News and Some Bad News

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It’s very rare that New York City newspapers can trumpet good news about crime in the city.  But last week they could:

“Major crimes in the subways, including robberies and felony assaults, declined 18 percent from Jan. 1 through March 31, to the second-lowest level in nearly three decades, police officials said at a news conference last week. There were no murders during the same period for the first time in seven years, the officials said.”

Unfortunately, this good news was nestled near the end of a crime story that was entitled:

“Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”

For the non-New Yorker, the R Train (or RR as it used to be known in my day) is a local subway line that plies the underground between Brooklyn and Downtown Manhattan.  The details were sparse but sufficient:

“The police were searching on Thursday for a man investigators believed violated a dead man Wednesday night on a train in a Manhattan subway station, according to an internal police document.

The person who died boarded an R train at around 8 p.m., according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the matter and the internal document. It was unclear on Thursday when or how the person died.

A man entered the same train car at around 11 p.m. at the Whitehall Street-South Ferry station in the Financial District, according to the official.

Within 45 minutes, the man saw the dead man and began to rummage through his pockets, the official said. The man then began to have sex with the body, according to the official and the document.

The sexual acts were captured on surveillance cameras inside the train car, the official said.

Soon after, the man got off the train and fled, the police said.”

Well, at least it’s good to know that the surveillance cameras were doing their job even if no one else was.  So, a man can drop dead and be lying there for three hours in a subway train without anyone including the crew aware of the fact and in fact another patron can take the opportunity to bugger the departed at his leisure without fear of interruption.

So, this 18% reduction in subway crime is being touted as a great success by the Mayor and the Police Commissioner’s offices but the fact that corpses are being sodomized on the R Train is to be taken in stride.  Call me a glass half empty kind of guy but somehow the 18% crime reduction rings a little hollow when necrophilia has surfaced in Gotham City.

I used to live in New York City during the time when crime was considered at its worst.  I can remember several gruesome murders and some aberrant behavior but I will say I’ve never heard that anything like this ever happened on the subway.  And the fact that the New York Times is trying to paint this “reduction in crime” as a triumph in law enforcement can only be described as Kafkaesque.

I like how the New York Times article describes the crime, “Police Seek Man Who They Say Violated a Corpse on an R Train.”  “Who they say” as if it’s in dispute.  What else could it be?  Could he have had prior consent from the deceased in the event his corpse happened to be found on the train?

I have friends and relatives who still live in the city.  I can only assume it would be too expensive for them to relocate.  Otherwise, I cannot imagine anyone who can get out, not doing so.  The public schools have become a sad joke.  The streets are covered with filth and the homeless and crime is at the point that you probably have to fear for your life on a regular basis.

But up until now you never had to consider that after you were murdered your corpse might be sexually abused by your attacker.  This does seem like an inflection point.  Or am I being oversensitive?

13APR2025 – Quote of the Day

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When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me?—

Blaise Pascal

Donald the First

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William Shakespeare breathed life into Prince Hal and Marc Antony when he portrayed them in his plays.  He took some historical accounts and turned them into…?  Into what?  Well, into dramatic personae.  They joined Oedipus and Socrates and all the other characters that we know from the drama.  And not that the characters are historically accurate; they’re not.  They’re the invention of the playwright.  But they’re better than accurate.  They’re vivid.  Alive.  We know them.  We know them better than we know any real personalities from history or even the news of the day.  So, in a way they’re immortal.  Millions and millions of human beings have watched and heard and read the words spoken by Hamlet and Falstaff and Macbeth.  They’ve thought about the words, the intonation, the feelings the characters portrayed to understand what the characters were feeling and thinking.  This is a level of existence that otherwise only occurs for most people within the confines of their own family.  And in fact, rarely even there.  Which of us is so witty or profound or emotional that the day-to-day dialog we share with our spouses or children or friends does more than just bounce off of their consciousness?  It’s almost background noise in a way.  It’s only in moments of crisis or discussions about important matters that we choose our words carefully and fully listen to what is being said.

Outside of drama we rarely listen with our full attention to what people around us say.  Maybe during times of crisis.  I remember very clearly after September 11th 2001 that Bush gave a few very carful and important speeches and I remember that I was glad that his rhetoric wasn’t too flowery.  It was more about retribution and I was glad for it.  But that was an exception.  Most of what gets said by talking heads in the news goes in one ear and out the other and rightly so.

But it makes you think.

Who will be the next Shakespeare?  When will we get another dramatic poet of his stature?  And who will he write about?  I was thinking, “Will someone write a play called Josef Stalin or FDR or Donald Trump?”  It could happen.  These were men who defined their times.  If a great poet came along and breathed life into the character and made the story compelling future readers and viewers would be mesmerized by scenes where these characters mouthed the words that the author heard in his soul.

Of course, it might be a hundred years from now or even a couple of thousand.  Shakespeare’s closest foray into recent history was one of his last plays, “Henry the Eighth” and it was hardly in line with his greater works.  In fact, it’s doubtful he wrote most of it.  If an audience a thousand years from now watches (or however entertainment is sensed at that point) about Donald Trump it’s doubtful that the real Trump will shine through at all.  Only a comic genius, a futuristic Aristophanes could capture the bombast and swagger that “The Donald” provides in all of his speeches and interviews.  And if he did manage to capture that spirit would the audiences (especially the critics) reject it as too over the top and exaggerated?  They probably would.  But I’d go see the show on the first night.

What Does Trump Reveal to Us About America?

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Amid all the hullaballoo over Trump’s tariffs and other trade plays, there is a realization that has serious implications for our future as a nation.  If it takes an act of God to arrange for a circumstance where any of the powerful men who run this country have the best interests of everyday Americans, then what chance have we of maintaining a healthy middle class?

I think we are more or less where the Romans were at about the time of Julius Caesar.  Which is without a doubt a very bad place.  But I’m not advocating for a dictator.  I don’t think that a king no matter how he is selected is a solution.

But maybe what we need is a tribune.  Tribune was an office that was given to the plebians or common people of Rome.  The office was founded to give the common people a veto against actions by the Senate which was the legislative body of Rome and composed of the patricians or nobles.  If a law was written that negatively impacted the common people, the tribune could veto it.

Well, I think we’ve reached that point.  Both major parties are completely compromised by the special interests that buy their votes for laws that allow these companies to flourish while the common people are turned into paupers and serfs.  It’s gone on too long.  We need some kind of brake on the power of both parties.

Of course, the sticking point is how do we find the proverbial honest man?  How do we prevent the office from being filled with just another crook?  Well, the only absolutely fool proof method would be to appoint me tribune for life but even that is limited by my mortality.

A possible way to get the same effect as a tribunate without the actual office could be instituting a national referendum process to allow unpopular laws to be revoked, politicians recalled, and laws voted into existence when the Congress isn’t doing their job.

The threshold for triggering a referendum would have to be reasonably high but not onerously so. Let’s say ten million signatures.  The point is we need a way to prevent the difficulty of getting good people elected from turning our government into the monster it has become.  Everybody knows Nancy Pelosi uses her office to make hundreds of millions of dollars through insider stock trading.  If she could be fired because half of American voters get outraged about this then she probably wouldn’t be such a blatant crook.  Also don’t you think that a great majority of Americans would vote yes on a referendum outlawing insider trading for Congress?   Common sense things like this would happen naturally and should.

Well, anyway that is something I thought about today.  Direct Democracy is a dangerous thing but as we’ve already seen our system with its checks and balances has failed us pretty miserably and changes need to be made.

Maybe Trump has in mind to champion changes to the way Washington works.  Or maybe he thinks from now on we’ll elect good people.  I think after he leaves, the chances of electing only presidents who have our best interests in mind is pretty low.  We need to strike while the iron is hot and call for a constitutional convention before the crooks get back in charge.  Otherwise, we’re headed for a repeat of the Roman Empire with us as serfs.