CJ Mitchell draws this summary of the circumstances of the Brown investigation from a Jesse Waters clip:

– Brown’s head of campus security was fired from his last job for not having the proper credentials.
– Brown’s President may have removed security cameras from the campus at the behest of Palestinian activists.
– Providence’s City Council Chief of Staff is a “genderless bisexual” who was arrested for protesting at Trump tower.
– Columbia-born Providence police chief has a nephew who ran one of the largest fentanyl rings on the east coast.

The list hits hard and embarrassingly when compiled like that.

Each of these items was (or could have been) a minor story that got a little airing in our state and then drifted away.  The impression an observer gets each time that happens is that the journalists and people in charge think the common-sense standards they’re trampling are really just the remaining biases of a fading patriarchy.

I remember when I was a beginning carpenter renovating a Newport mansion and observed to the groundskeeper that the summer residents had an unusual number of nude photographs around.  She said something to the effect of, “It’s a rich-people thing.  They do that to show it doesn’t bother them.”  I later wondered why, if that’s their attitude, their son apparently felt like he had to hide his hard-core DVD collection featuring young girls in a high location only discoverable by tradesmen cutting holes for a new HVAC system.

It has a similar feeling when Rhode Island officials poke the bear of reality with their progressive stick.  They want to show that the hang-ups of old-time common sense don’t bother them.

Why not hire a minority police chief for a major university just because he left his last job under a cloud?  Why not elect people who hire radicals who see no reason to hide their activism and use their government credit cards for related purposes?  Why should the career of the potential police chief of a medium-sized city be held up because his nephew is a major drug dealer?  Why not disable security cameras to make protesters feel comfortable?

We have the luxury of fantasy living in the Ocean State because the influence of our cultural legacy, relatively high incomes, and other circumstances of the area have made it a safe and relatively comfortable place to live.  We do not have much major crime and can go long periods without controversies that turn deadly.

But Rhode Island is safe because Rhode Island is safe, not because anybody in authority does anything in particular to make it so.  It’s not our laws or state and municipal executives.  Their jobs are just made easier by the nature of the community that hired them.

What we’re seeing, now, is what happens when something major does happen in a region where the authorities aren’t really responsible for its long period of safety.  In general, it’s not they who keep us safe, so when we’re actually exposed to danger, they can’t keep us safe; they don’t know how.  Worse, the people in charge are appearing both clueless and even potentially culpable.

The worst part is that this extrapolates to all of us.  I’m not sure Rhode Islanders are capable of electing people who can do better, and frankly, that makes us culpable, too.

Featured image by Justin Katz using DALL-E.