Steelmanning The Biden Administration's Pushback on Criminal Records

You will not like this article if you are a Biden fan. Nor will you like it if you're MAGA. That's not who I am. I'm writing this article to inform, and possibly inspire, but not to cater to either side. Bottom line, I agree with the push back on Criminal Records, but for deep reasons, not the shallow ones either the Administration purports or conservatives are using to mock it. I believe that yes, as implemented, Criminal Record checks are racist, but it's fixable.

To steelman an argument is to do the opposite of strawmanning. It means to make the best possible argument for the other side. I find it an invaluable skill in this partisan age, because people are rational, and if you take the time to understand their point of view, they'll drive you less crazy.

Think J6 was an insurrection instead of a riot? Ok, what do you think the MAGA folks should have done if you accept their premise that the election was corrupt? Just go gently into the good night? Think the election was stolen? Ok, do you really think everyone was well behaved that day?

But I'm not here to talk about J6, I'm here to talks about: Sugar, Unleaded Gasoline, Whole Language, Martial Arts, Smoking Cessation, Critical Race Theory, CBD, Benzodiazepines, the War on Drugs, and the Civil War. Because believe it or not, they're all relevant. At least to me. So buckle up!

The Civil War

Let's s start with the Civil War. You're probably sure that the South caused the Civil War, that the North was just an innocent victim.

It's not that simple. Uncle Tom's Cabin (which is a great book, a literary masterpiece, IMHO) helps explain this fact: The North could have ended slavery anytime they wanted if the Northern Banks had refused to accept human beings as collateral on a loan. At most points during this period, the banks in New York owned more slaves than any of the Southerners...

Think about that. Not so smug any more are you Yankee?

Sugar is Evil

Uncle Tom's Cabin talks about how you don't want to be sold down the river. The reason you don't wants to be sold down the river is because that's where they grew sugar cane. To grow sugar cane in 1860 you would flood the fields with water, and then set your slaves to harvesting the cane. Sugar cane is nasty stuff. It's like being in a swamp of green razor blades. In 1860 there were no antibiotics.

There's a plantation you can go tour outside New Orleans that was a former Creole plantation, which means it was owned by free blacks. A sugar cane plantation would regularly lose 75% of their slaves every year to disease, it was just the cost of being in the sugar business.

On that scale, Tesla recently laying off 10% of their workforce doesn't seem so bad does it? 3/4s of your slaves die, every year. Go to work tomorrow, and cross off 3/4 of the names in your company.

Think about that the next time you have some sugar in your coffee or tea. Sugar should be blood red for all the human misery it's caused.

The Lead Crime Hypothesis

Crime statistics took a marked plunge in 1984, and no one knows why for sure. The book Freakonomics argued that it was the effect of Roe V. Wade, Giuliani claimed it was him. But the book the Lucifer Curves makes a much more compelling argument. The book argues that it was the introduction of unleaded gasoline that caused the fall, on a delay of 14 years for women, and 20 years for men. So the fall in crime rates really started in 1970 when unleaded gasoline was first introduced.

You know who lives near noisy highways? Poor people. So there was this cloud of lead spewed from cars near those poor people. Especially poor black people.

What does lead do to the brain? It dampens your impulse control and increase aggressiveness. So poor women were more likely to get pregnant at a young age, and poor men would be more violent. Luckily, there isn't any lead in gasoline at all now, since 1996. So crime rates, over all, have continued to fall.

Whole Language and the Destruction of the Public School System

The alphabet got invented about 1000 B.C. Since that time, the way to teach children to read is to:

Teach them the Alphabet.

Teach them each letter is a sound.

Teach them to sound out words.

This ancient method is known as Phonics. Children were learning to read just fine until the Department of Education decided they could do better then the previous 3,000 years. They came up with this new approach using Science™. Now they tested it first, they tested it at experimental schools, generally run under the auspices of a university.

You know who attends these experimental schools? Children of college professors.

Here's the thing. Whole Language as it came to be known works better than Phonics for 20% of children, while Phonics works for the other 80%. Children of college professors often come to school already knowing the alphabet, and often even taught to read, so they like Whole Language better.

Teachers immediately called foul and told the administration Whole Language doesn't work. The teachers were told you're anti-science™. Sound familiar? The teachers thought, oh, well, the test scores will prove them wrong. The teachers underestimated the level of stupidity and stubbornness people who don't want to admit they're wrong can show, because the administration just said: Well, sure, that's because they're poor minorities.

To be clear, there is nothing to prevent you from learning to read if you're poor or a minority. I believe Phonics is necessary because our brains are evolved for language, but not writing. You need that necessary bootstrap to get started reading, and then you need interesting things to read. This is not a theory on my part, my wife has dementia, and she lost the ability to read, and has had to re-learn how to read.

For my nephews, I started them on the Cat in the Hat, then graduated them to a trip to the comic book story, and I made them read the video game manuals on their own. YMMV.

Sit down and shut up.

One of the best schools in CA for years was the school at 2nd and Figueroa, which was in a poor minority neighborhood. It was one of the best schools because the principal told the teachers that if a student was disrespectful to the teacher, they had the legal right to suspend the student. She would then follow up to make sure the parent left work to pick up the kid, and stayed home the next day. As working class parents, that meant the whole family was punished.

Self-Medicating, Benzodiazepines, CBD, and the War on Drugs

Key thing I learned in my life was when I asked my martial arts instructor who was also a Chinese herbalist if he could help my wife quit smoking. He asked a question that made me think differently about things ever since. He said, Why does she smoke? Tobacco can be a stimulant or a depressant. She's probably self medicating.

It never occured to me to think about it that way, so I asked her at home and she said Oh, when my energy flags in the afternoon, or early in the morning, I like a cigarette.

I reported that back to sensei and he said Ok so she doesn't have a smoking problem, she has an energy problem, so if we work on the energy problem, she won't want to smoke. Which was true, he cured her hypoglycemia, and she stopped smoking.

People self medicate a lot. Why wouldn't they?

Ok, so you've got a bunch of poor people, and they're surrounded by people predisposed to criminal behavior. They're going to be pretty anxious. Their choices for self-medicating are: cigarettes (check), alcohol (check), benzodiazepines like Valium and Xanax (expensive), and pot (illegal).

Ok, so now I'm going to talk about my personal pot experience. I was anti-pot for a long time because I had a friend from High School, Dean, who became a pot-head in college and never recovered really, as all his ambition was smoked away.

But then, my wife and I were walking out dogs in the neighborhood and we got attacked by a neighbors pit bull. I got PTSD from the episode. Googling, I discovered the most effective treatments for PTSD are owning a dog (check), and pot. So I asked on Facebook for help.

Nearly every coworker past and present responded via Messenger with their favorite dispensary. A former boss said Go to Airfield Supply on Coleman, they're the Apple Store of Pot. So I did. And a very nice elf girl waited on me, heard my story of not knowing anything about pot, and suggested a 1:1 tincture, and that I take 3 drops to start.

I did that, and my PTSD was gone in about 2 weeks. YMMV.

But if I'd taken a benzo, I'd probably be still taking it. Don't take my word for it, benzos like Valium and Xanax are bad news, read about them on Wikipedia.

Working at Home Depot

I briefly worked at Home Depot in Christmas of 2020. Home Depot drug tests all their employees, and they don't distinguish between CBD and THC, even though both are legal in CA. I'm sure taking a benzo would be OK, but pot, no.

Nixon was an asshole

So Nixon wanted something to screw with the hippies and the blacks. So he started the War on Drugs. This is well documented.

So the stage is set for black people to get screwed. Bad schools, lots of crime, lots of drugs, lots of cops hassling people for the drugs. It's enough to make you want a joint...

Nixon wasn't the only one, Kamala Harris prosecuted 1,900 black people for drug related crimes... She was recently crowing about 25 of them getting pardoned.

The problem with CRT

My problem with Critical Race Theory is not that I don't believe black people haven't gotten screwed. They have. My problem is that its portrayed as this grand master plan, that the whiteys all meet once a week to figure out how to keep the darkies down.

I'm 25% Jooish. I'd know if there was that meeting... There isn't. @realDarylDavis has talked to numerous KKK members, and they're not that organized.

Fuckery and stupidity are not a conspiracy. It's just the human condition. The poor get screwed. This is not news. The powers that be won't admit they screwed up. This is also not news.

CRT is often used to justify things that actually end up hurting black people, like getting rid of the SAT, or making the schools worse.

Criminal Background Checks

Businesses don't want to hire thieves or violent people. They also don't want to hire people who show up stoned. But as we've seen, the background checks have become standard (I've gone through 3 in my last 4 jobs, and the 4th one was with a personal friend...). But it's more racist to not have a background check, because if you don't allow checks, employers tend to try to hire folks who look "ok".

Also, it's a known thing in criminology and auto insurance that people are different before age 25 than after.

What we need are smarter background checks that can distinguish between non-violent drug offenses and more serious ones.