Putting The Pieces Together - New York State Association Of Health: Fill & Download for Free

I hope more is forthcoming. And I think we are already seeing a very clear pattern emerging that goes back to long before Trump became president. Here are the results of my research on the matter …THE PATTERNThis is why the reports that Trump called American soldiers “losers” and “suckers” rings true for me …On the record, Trump has called America’s top generals “pussies,” “dopes” and “morons.” Let’s think about that for a second. If Trump thinks and speaks that way about America’s highest-ranking generals, what can we expect him to think about the lower ranks?Trump has also made it very clear that in his eyes the only "good" women are young and "beautiful pieces of ass" with large breasts, like his daughter Ivanka. Trump has also made it very clear that he has no respect for women he considers unattractive, even disparaging the looks of Angelina Jolie and Heidi Klum. (The Donald has YUGELY & BIGLY high standards for other people, not so much for his obese self.) Trump has also made it very clear that he has no respect for the handicapped, by mocking a disabled reporter. And this perverse disregard for people who don't meet Trump's superficial standards for perfection extends to veterans, from grunts to generals:Trump has even called our highest-ranking generals losers! As Bob Woodward just revealed in tapes made on the record, Trump called our top generals “pussies.” During his first presidential campaign, Trump publicly denigrated them collectively, saying, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” During a meeting at the Pentagon in 2017, he berated our top generals: “I wouldn’t go to war with you people, you’re a bunch of dopes and babies.” Trump called Jim Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.” Trump also blasted Mattis as “not tough enough” then in his incredible egotism said “I captured ISIS!” as if he had done it personally. (Of course much of ISIS remains at large, uncaptured.) Senator Tim Kaine called Trump’s attack on Mattis “delusional” and praised the former U.S. Central Command leader as “one of the finest public servants I have ever worked with in 25 years of public life.” A Military Times poll found that nearly 84 percent of troops had a favorable view of Mattis and among officers the figure was almost 90 percent. In any case, if Trump thinks and talks like that about our generals, what should we expect him to think and say about ordinary soldiers? But these horrendous insults are just the tip of an enormous iceberg …Future US president George H. W. Bush was the Navy’s youngest pilot when he earned his wings a few days before turning 19, but he was a “loser” to the draft-dodging Donald Trump because his plane was shot down.Pilots who get shot down, like John McCain and George H. W. Bush, are "losers" to Trump. Three sources told The Atlantic that Trump had described Bush as a "loser" because his plane was shot down during World War II. Bush was the youngest Navy pilot when he earned his wings a few days before turning 19. Flying a Grumman Avenger TBM torpedo bomber into the teeth of the Japanese fleet at age 19 sounds pretty damn heroic to me. How about you? And the US Navy agreed. For his 58 combat missions, Bush was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery and three Air Medals. And Bush was hardly a “loser.” In the mission where his plane went down, Bush and his crew encountered intense antiaircraft fire. While starting the attack, Bush's plane was hit and his engine caught on fire. Bush still completed his attack, released his bombs and scored several damaging hits. Bush and his crew then bailed out. Unfortunately, only Bush survived. He was rescued by the submarine USS Finback. During the month he spent on the Finback, Bush participated in the rescue of other pilots. Yeah, pretty effin’ heroic, pardon my French. What was Trump doing at age 19? Playing it safe, ducking the draft, working on his tan?BTW, such statements by Trump go WAY back in time. When Mark Bowden was writing his article about Trump for Playboy magazine in November 1996, he traveled with Trump on his private jet to Mar-a-Lago. This is what he observed:“What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former [military] pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” [This sounds like a personality disorder called “splitting” in which, like a baby, the person with the disorder judges everyone else by how they make him feel at the moment. Feel-good things are “perfect” while feel-bad things are “evil.” Thus a baby can see his mother as an angel one minute, and as a witch the next, if she withholds something he wants. People with this disorder don’t see shades of grey: everything is black or white, perfect or evil. Trump has called himself a “perfect person” more than once and claims to have “no faults” and to never bear any responsibility for anything he does that goes wrong. If he is perfect, anyone who contradicts or otherwise displeases Trump is the opposite of perfect, and that can explain why he reacts so badly to criticism, even when the criticism is warranted. It can also explain why Trump calls people who displease him “losers” even when they are not at fault. McCain and Bush were not responsible for getting shot down. McCain was not responsible for getting captured. But these things make Trump unhappy and he lashes out at the source of his unhappiness. Ditto for soldiers with missing limbs that he doesn’t want in his parades. Ditto for war dead whose graves he would rather not visit, especially when his hair might get wet.]Continuing Mark Bowden’s account:The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box—a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside—which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped—red-faced and fuming—to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced. [Bowden went on to explain that Trump became the only person he interviewed who tried to bribe him not to mention what he had seen with his own eyes.]POWs like John McCain are not heroes because Trump only likes uncaptured soldiers. Captured soldiers are "losers" to Trump. While Trump has claimed that he never called John McCain a “loser,” he most certainly did, in a 2015 videotaped interview with Frank Luntz — the same interview where Trump insisted that McCain was not a war hero. (I have provided a link to the interview at the bottom of this page.) Trump had also made negative remarks about McCain being captured in a 1999 interview with Dan Rather, questioning why he had been called a hero, so this was obviously not some sort of fluke. Trump continued to disparage McCain after his death, saying, "We sent him on the way, but I wasn't a fan of John McCain.” Trump even insinuated that McCain was in hell and seemed quite happy with that prospect: "And sometimes, you know, we had a little hard time with a couple of them, right? Fortunately, they're gone now. They've gone on to greener pastures — or perhaps far less green pastures. But they're gone. I'm very happy they're gone."Being mutilated and/or losing limbs is worse than being captured, so wounded warriors are even bigger "losers" to Trump. Trump finds mutilated soldiers embarrassing and wanted to keep them out of the 2017 Fourth of July parade, saying the inclusion of "wounded guys" is "not a good look" and that "Americans don't like that."Getting killed is even worse than being captured or mutilated, so what Trump said about the American war dead in France fits this grotesque pattern.Trump's aversion to wounded veterans is nothing new. During the first Republican presidential debate, Megyn Kelly quoted what Trump had said about other women, calling them "pigs," "dogs" and "disgusting animals." Trump earned a well-deserved public spanking for attacking Kelly, when all she had done was QUOTE him, and the endlessly petulant Trump decided to skip the next debate. Trump’s excuse? He claimed to "love" our vets so much that he preferred to do a benefit for them. This "Trump love" sounded very dubious to me, so I decided to do some independent research. What I discovered was that Trump had repeatedly tried to get New York City mayors to keep vets from selling patriotic wares on ritzy Fifth Avenue, even though this was their right by New York law. The Donald didn't "love" vets; in reality he didn't want to see them, or smell them. When New York mayors refused to deny vets their legal rights, the huffy Donald built giant concrete columns outside Trump Tower to keep wounded warriors from standing anywhere close to his expensive baubles.THE WHYSo what does Trump really mean? In my opinion, what Trump really means is this: "I was smart to dodge the draft and send other men to fight and die in my place in Vietnam. Anyone who fights and dies for his country, or gets wounded, is a moron, a fool, a loser, a sucker."WHAT DO VETERANS THINK ABOUT TRUMP’S INSULTS?Jeff McCausland, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former member of the National Security Council, wrote: “We want to believe our commander in chief wouldn’t say such incredibly offensive things. But we also know, deep down, that it’s likely he did. Because he has before.” Upon reading the Atlantic article, I was angry. Sadly, I was not surprised. These allegations are consistent with numerous other comments and actions made by Trump over the past three years that, taken together, demonstrate a clear pattern of disrespect toward the military. Even before he was elected in 2016, Trump argued that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. was “not a war hero.” He later described McCain, as well as President George H.W. Bush, as “losers” for being shot down in combat. Trump even resisted lowering the flag over the White House when McCain died. In a Pentagon meeting in the summer of 2017, Trump blasted senior military leadership in front of junior officers and civilians as “losers” and a “bunch of dopes and babies.” In the aftermath of this meeting, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly referred to the president as a "moron." The list goes on. Former Defense Secretary and retired Marine Gen. James Mattis observed that Trump used troops as political props for a photo op in Lafayette Park. Trump criticized Gold Star families and reportedly told the grieving wife of a soldier killed in combat that he “knew what he signed up for.” The president has also denigrated and directly interfered in court-martial actions against soldiers accused of war crimes. These are not gaffes, nor are they the blunders of a man who simply lacks empathy. Rather, they reveal the president’s basic lack of understanding of the military — and even bigger than that, his lack of understanding of the concept of “service.” This is a man who, in a 1997 interview with Howard Stern, bragged about how avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in the 1960s and '70s was his own “personal Vietnam.” Trump is, at his core, a figure born of privilege who views people not as individuals, but as pawns. This transactional worldview explains the fact that he simply cannot fathom why anyone would volunteer to serve. It is incomprehensible to him. In Trump’s mind, nothing is worth doing without the possibility of a significant monetary reward or boost in status. As Goldberg noted, after then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joe Dunford had delivered a White House briefing, Trump asked aides: “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”One of Trump's "losers" and "suckers" is 95-year-old WWII veteran Harvey Hafter, who spoke with evident pride of serving his country on a PT Boat, then let the Demander-in-Chief have it with both barrels: "Boy is he a loser! What has he done? Other than screw up, and that's exactly what we called them in the Navy: a Foul-Up, Top to Bottom. He can't insult us and get away with that kind of nonsense! Who does he think he is, that Draft Dodger? He's a coward! And I'd call him so to his face! I wish he were here right now! I'm five-foot-six. I weigh 135 pounds soaking wet. And I challenge him. Any way he wants: pistols, swords, fists. Any way he wants, 'cause that kind of an insult, I won't stand for it! And neither will any other service person. Who does he think he is? Whatever chance he had of getting a vote from me is gone. I want someone who's calm, quiet and not a Loud-Mouth, an Empty Barrel. I want Joe Biden. That's it."Laurence Tribe on TwitterORIGINAL QUOTESHere is what Trump said and did, as reported by The Atlantic in an article by editor-in-chief and award-winning journalist Jeffrey Goldberg:When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.THE CONFIRMATIONSJennifer Griffin of Fox News has confirmed that Trump called veterans LOSERS and SUCKERS:Jennifer Griffin tweeted:Two former senior Trump admin officials confirm .Jeffrey Goldberg reporting that President Trump disparaged veterans and did not want to drive to honor American war dead at Aisne-Marne Cemetery outside Paris.President Trump's staff explained he could cancel (his visit to the cemetery), but he was warned, 'They (the press) are going to kill you for this'." The President was mad as a hornet when they did.When asked IF the President could have driven to the Aisne-Marne Cemetery, this former official said confidently: "The President drives a lot. The other world leaders drove to the cemeteries. He just didn't want to go."Regarding Trump's July 4th military parade, during a planning session at the White House after seeing the Bastille Day parade in 2017, the President said regarding the inclusion of "wounded guys" "that's not a good look" "Americans don't like that," source confirms.The main gist of the report has also been confirmed by the Associated Press:The allegations were first reported in The Atlantic. A senior Defense Department official with firsthand knowledge of events confirmed some of the remarks to The Associated Press, including the 2018 cemetery comments.The defense official said Trump made the comments as he begged off visiting the cemetery outside Paris during a meeting following his presidential daily briefing on the morning of Nov. 10, 2018.Staffers from the National Security Council and the Secret Service told Trump that rainy weather made helicopter travel to the cemetery risky, but they could drive there. Trump responded by saying he didn't want to visit the cemetery because it was “filled with losers,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss it publicly.According to The New York Times, the Defense official who confirmed the report in The Atlantic also said that on Memorial Day 2017, Trump had gone with his chief of staff, John Kelly, to visit the Arlington Cemetery gravesite of Kelly's son, Robert, who was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan, and said to Kelly: “I don't get it. What was in it for them?"The Atlantic, citing sources with firsthand knowledge, also reported that Trump declined to support the August 2018 funeral of John McCain, a decorated Navy veteran and POW, because he was a “loser.” Trump reportedly told his senior staff that “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.” Trump was also upset that flags were flown at half-staff for McCain, saying: “What the f—k are we doing that for? Guy was a f—king loser.” In 2015, early in his presidential candidacy, Trump had publicly blasted McCain, saying “He’s not a war hero.” Trump added, “I like people who weren’t captured.” Even after McCain’s death, Trump continued to attack him posthumously. The New York Times verified that Trump resisted supporting an official funeral and lowering flags after John McCain’s death, citing McCain as “a Vietnam War hero whose military service he [Trump] had disparaged.”The Atlantic said Trump also referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” because he was shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II.The New York Times also said:“Moreover, people familiar with Mr. Trump’s private conversations say he has long scorned those who served in Vietnam as being too dumb to have gotten out of it, as he did through a medical diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels (Did a Queens Podiatrist Help Donald Trump Avoid Vietnam?). At other times, according to those familiar with the remarks, Mr. Trump has expressed bewilderment that people choose military service over making money. Some also recalled him asking why the United States should be so interested in finding captured soldiers, a comment made in the context of Mr. McCain, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Another former official said Mr. Trump often expressed discomfort around people who had been injured, although he has held events with wounded veterans.”The New York Times also said:“While Mr. Trump demanded that allies knock down the article, aides recognized that few senior military officers were willing to openly defend the president.”According to The New York Times, while John Bolton could not confirm the quotes in question because if they had been made he was not present at the time, “Mr. Bolton added that the reported comments were not out of character for the president. ‘I haven’t heard anybody yet react to say, That’s not the Donald Trump I know.’”Personally, I believe John Bolton is telling us that these are indeed the kinds of disparaging remarks Trump makes about our servicemen and servicewomen.James LaPorta, an ex-Marine and senior correspondent for Newsweek covering national security and military affairs, tweeted that he had confirmed the Atlantic reporting: “A senior Defense Department official I just spoke with confirmed this story by @JeffreyGoldberg (Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) | Twitter (Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) | Twitter)) in its entirety. Especially the grafs about the late Sen. John McCain and former Marine Gen. John Kelly …”Sarah Blake Morgan tweeted: “My colleague, ⁦@JimLaPorta⁩ (https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta)⁩), confirming ⁦@TheAtlantic⁩’s (https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic)⁩’s) reporting - including Trump’s cemetery comments in both France and Arlington’s Section 60.”Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, has disputed Trump’s assertion that he lowered the flags for Mr. McCain without complaint. Taylor said that he received calls from the White House complaining that the department had ordered flags lowered. “The president is upset, this has gone out too soon and he doesn’t want it to happen,” he quoted a White House aide telling him. “I was then asked, ‘Would you guys be able to rescind the directive?’” Mr. Taylor said in an interview. He said he resisted, and ultimately White House aides pushed Mr. Trump to keep the flags lowered. But it was made clear that the president “won’t want them down, and he’s angry.” Taylor said that he found the episode “astounding and disgusting.”According to the Washington Post:Trump also couldn’t comprehend why some of the high-ranking military men serving in his administration such as [John] Kelly and former defense secretary Jim Mattis would choose that path. He regarded their rank as a sign of accomplishment, but also of squandered earning potential. “You seem like fairly talented guys — why would you do that? You don’t make any money,” Trump said, according to the former official, who added of Trump: “Everything is transactional to him.”According to Political Wire:Fox News Confirms Trump Disparaged VeteransSeptember 4, 2020 at 4:32 pm EDT By Taegan GoddardTwo former senior Trump administration officials confirmed to Fox News that President Trump regularly disparaged veterans.According to one former senior Trump administration official: “When the President spoke about the Vietnam War, he said, ‘It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker’.”He added: “What’s in it for them? They don’t make any money.” [This sounds very much like what Trump reportedly said to John Kelly when they visited his son’s grave.]Explained the source: “It was a character flaw of the President. He could not understand why someone would die for their country, not worth it.”THE REBUTTALSThis from Politico:Senator Tammy Duckworth homed in on a different detail from The Atlantic’s report: the president’s request during a 2018 White House planning meeting for a military parade that the celebratory event not include wounded veterans such as amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” Trump allegedly said.Duckworth insisted that Trump’s remarks do not “diminish the sacrifices of wounded soldiers who gave up their limbs, like I did, for all Americans — including him.”“I’d take my wheelchair and my titanium legs over Donald Trump’s supposed bone spurs any day,” she said, referring to the medical exemption that granted Trump a deferment from being drafted into military service during the Vietnam War.Also featured on the Biden campaign call was Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004 and who has feuded with Trump since addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2016. On Friday, however, he leveled what appeared to be his most forceful and personal condemnation of the president yet.“Words matter. The words we say are a window into our souls — of how we see the world and our place in it,” Khan said. “When Donald Trump calls anyone who places their life in service of others a ‘loser,’ we understand Trump’s soul.”Khan went on to describe Trump’s life as a “testament to selfishness,” contending that the president is “incapable of understanding service, valor and courage. His soul cannot conceive of integrity and honor. And let me say very loudly and clearly so America can listen: His soul is that of a coward.”Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, a Marine veteran and the final Biden surrogate to participate in Friday’s press call, was more reluctant to discuss Trump’s reported remarks, instead explaining the historical and symbolic significance of the Battle of Belleau Wood to the U.S. Marine Corps.Many of the Marines killed in that battle are buried at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, which Trump declined to visit, and the three-week World War I conflict is widely regarded as “if not the most, certainly one of the most important battles in Marine Corps history,” according to Lamb.“That battle and that burial ground deserve the utmost respect and veneration to any American,” Lamb said, but “for a president to pass up the opportunity to pay his respect at that site, it’s just a tragedy regardless of what was said or wasn’t said.”Several of Lamb’s fellow House Democrats who also served in the military similarly criticized Trump in a conference call with reporters on Friday. The group of lawmakers included Reps. Gil Cisneros and Ted Lieu of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Elaine Luria of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey.“I was incredibly proud to serve our country. I didn’t do it because I was stupid or a sucker. I did it because I love this country,” Sherrill said, adding: “I don’t think he’s fit to be the president of the United States.”THE AFTERMATH … SO FARTrump is trying to get Jennifer Griffin fired ... This per Rolling Stone:On Saturday morning, following a late Friday night tweet from the president calling on Fox News to fire her, the network’s national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin told host Neil Cavuto that Trump did indeed use the sort of language The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg said the president had.After being asked about The Atlantic’s framing of Trump’s comments, Griffin told Cavuto that she double-checked with her sources this morning and they reconfirmed both Goldberg’s reporting and her own.“Well, I circled back with my source this morning and he firmly said this was not a one-off,” Griffin said, adding that Trump “used, according to my source, he used ‘suckers’ and that term repeatedly to describe McCain and anyone who went to Vietnam.”Griffin continued, “He always described — according to the source — Vietnam vets as those who couldn’t get out of it. And he would often say to his advisers when they suggested that he would go to visit the war dead, ‘What is it about you guys and guys who get killed?’ So, he used ‘losers.’ That’s a big part of the president’s vernacular. I think anyone who’s been around him knows that.”A recent poll by the The Military Times shows Joe Biden leading Trump with 41 percent to 37 percent among active-duty troops, a “stark departure from the military’s longstanding support for Republicans and a danger sign for the president.”Barely 15 hours after the original Atlantic article was published, VoteVets, a veterans organization that has long been critical of Trump, released an online ad (VoteVets on Twitter) featuring the parents of troops slain in Iraq and Afghanistan, each one declaring that their son or stepson was not a “loser” or “sucker.”Trump is now trying to claim that he really wanted to attend the graveside ceremony, after all. But he has been caught in an obvious lie. Trump said he "called home, I spoke to my wife and I said, 'I hate this. I came here to go to that ceremony.'" But Melania Trump was in France with him, so he obviously didn’t “call home.”THE ARTICLE AND RELATED LINKSHere are links to the Atlantic article and associated links:Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ (Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’)Fox News confirms the Atlantic account:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yARDlneN_5ETrump calls John McCain a “loser” and says American POWs are not heroes because he only likes soldiers who don’t get captured:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1dVtwfVXx0OTHER RELATED INFORMATION AND LINKSAs our nation faces its greatest national crisis since World War II, we need to heed the wisdom of highly-esteemed Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. In all his hard-won political wisdom Lindsey Graham explains who we should vote for in the coming presidential election. Lindsey Graham knows both candidates intimately. Fortunately, it's a no-brainer!If you see The Donald, duck, because he’s trying to kill you and your children in order to get reelected president!Trump does seem like a cartoon character … Bob Woodward used 18 “perfect” phone calls to turn Trump into his own Deep Throat. Don the Con shot himself in both feet, handed the Smoking Gun to the elderly Fudd, then hobbled off on the bloody stumps, still hoping to get reelected!The news that Trump knew the coronavirus was deadly in late January and revealed it to Bob Woodward in early February, and yet chose to deliberately lie to the American people is shocking, but not surprising.We can seek to understand why Trump said what he said and did what he did, but that doesn’t change the fact that what he did was a crime and that he was an accomplice in the deaths of over 100,000 Americans, with the death toll rising on a daily basis.Why would Trump lie with so many lives at risk? Trump is an egomaniac and he always wants to appear personally cool, calm and confident. Trump wants to project strength like his heroes Putin and Lil Kim. Those are odd role models for an American president, but Trump slobbers over them like a lapdog begging treats from its master. So we know how Trump wants to be seen himself.Trump worries more about his hair, polls and public image than he does about the lives and health of 330 million Americans. So he decided to “play down” the pandemic in order to look “strong” and get reelected. Saving lives was not Trump’s personal priority.Bob Woodward used 18 “perfect” phone calls to turn Trump into his own Deep Throat. Don the Con shot himself in both feet, handed the Smoking Gun to the intrepid reporter, then hobbled off on the bloody stumps, still hoping to get reelected!This is Trump’s coronavirus record as it now stands:(1) Trump has admitted deliberately lying repeatedly to the American people while 195,000 Americans went to their graves.(2) Trump has admitted that young people are susceptible to the coronavirus while publicly lying that they are immune or virtually immune. One of Bob Woodward’s most stunning revelations is that Trump knows “plenty” of young people are susceptible to the coronavirus. Not just a few, not just a very tiny percentage, but “plenty” of young people. Trump said so himself — in person, on the record, on tape. While Trump was claiming publicly and confidently that children were practically immune or “almost immune” to the virus, he told Woodward in a March 19 phone call: “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.” In April, even as he began to urge and even tried to force the country to reopen with bellicose statements and tweets, Trump told Woodward, “It’s so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.” If we put “easily transmissible” together with “plenty” of young people, the prospects for aggressive school re-openings become very problematic, if not downright terrifying. If adults are struggling to stay safe in close quarters, what can we expect from children?(3) Trump is trying to force 76 million American school children to do for nine months what he and his super-rich swampland donors, with all their resources, couldn’t do for a few days at the canceled convention.(4) What kind of man forces children to do what he can’t do himself? Trump is like the captain of a ship throwing children overboard to save his own neck and job.Is this evil con man the person we want deciding what happens to 76 million American school children? If a vaccine will be ready in a few months, why not save their lives and those of their teachers, families and friends? Why not wait just a bit longer, for everyone’s sake? The reason for Trump’s haste is obvious: he cares more about getting reelected than he does about 76 million children and the people they come in contact with. That makes him a monster. Do we really want a monster in the White House?Anyone who votes for Trump could be an accomplice in the murders of large numbers of American school children and their families, friends, teachers and other school workers.WHO’S NEXT?Trump loudly berated the World Health Organization for downplaying the asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 … but that is exactly what he did himself, as he revealed in taped conversations, on the record, with Bob Woodward.In a May 18 letter to WHO officials, Trump wrote:"On March 3, 2020, the World Health Organization cited official Chinese data to downplay the very serious risk of asymptomatic spread, telling the world that 'COVID-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza.' It is now clear that China's assertions, repeated to the world by the World Health Organization, were wildly inaccurate.""Many lives could have been saved" had the WHO warned the world earlier, Trump wrote. Later that month, he announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the global health agency.Of course, Trump was guilty of the same crimes as China and the WHO, if his allegations against them were correct. In any case, he knew the truth no later than Feb. 7, when on the record, in a taped interview with Bob Woodward, Trump revealed that he was fully aware of just how infectious and deadly the coronavirus really was. As Trump lectured the WHO, “many lives could have been saved” if he had told the truth as soon as he knew it himself.Here we have Trump admitting in his own words that he allowed many people to die whose lives could have been saved. How many lives could Trump have saved by telling the truth and acting faster and more decisively?Trump Could Have Saved Over 150,000 American LivesHere's a sobering fact: the USA has only 4.25% of the world's population yet at times has had around a quarter to nearly a THIRD of confirmed coronavirus deaths. That's a staggering disparity. How did the world's richest nation, with legions of medical experts and some of the finest medical organizations on the planet, end up with a death rate up to seven times higher than expected if its government had merely been average in its response? Epidemiologists Britta L. Jewell and Nicholas P. Jewell have said that 90% of US coronavirus deaths could have been avoided if social distancing had begun on March 2, when Trump had two months of information and warnings about the coronavirus but continued to publicly insist that it was "totally under control." Researchers at Columbia University concurred, saying that Trump's two-week delay in mitigation, from March 1 to March 15, had multiplied the U.S. death toll by a factor of six. By May 3, the price of that delay was more than 50,000 lives. The Columbia University researchers came up with a very similar 84% overall percentage of total lives potentially saved. At the 200,000 death mark, two different teams of researchers are telling us that Trump could have saved around 168,000 to 180,000 lives. And we're not out of the woods, thanks to Trump. "The fall could be incredibly gruesome," said Yale School of Medicine epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, explaining that the Trump administration largely squandered the summer months, leaving the nation no better protected than it was in June. "Somebody's going to have to explain it to me, ten years from now, why they would make all these bad choices." According to Wikipedia, American combat deaths for the Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined are under 100,000. The coronavirus has now killed many more Americans than all those horrors together, and the death toll continues to rise. Trump likes to call himself a "wartime president" but in reality he gave our greatest enemy easy access to our ports and airports when he failed to shut them down until it was far too late.Trump is far more guilty than the WHO and he is convicted by his own words. He knew that what he was doing was wrong and would result in lives being lost that could have been saved. How is this not premeditated murder on a gargantuan scale?SNAPSHOTS: IT’S UNANIMOUS — EVERYONE AGREES — TRUMP IS AN IDIOT!What the people who know Trump best have said about him …“F-king moron!” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson“An idiot, unhinged.” General John Kelly“An idiot and a dope.” General H.R. McMaster“Dumb as shit, idiot.” Gary Cohn (economic adviser)“Idiot.” White House chief of staff Reince Preibus“He’s an idiot.” Sam Nunberg“He’s like an 11-year-old child.” Steve Bannon“Trump has the understanding of a 5th or 6th grader.” General Jim Mattis“A complete idiot.” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin“The dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” William Kelley (Wharton Professor)“An empty vessel when it comes to the constitution and rule of law.” Scott Pruitt“Like a child.” White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh“Pathological liar, utterly amoral, serial philanderer." Ted Cruz“A jackass.” Lindsay Graham“Dishonesty is Trump’s hallmark.” Mitt Romney“Morally unfit, unethical, untethered to truth.” FBI Director James Comey“A racist, misogynist and bigot.” Omarosa Newman“Eventually he turns on everyone.” Michael Cohen (Trump’s lawyer and “fixer”)“A supreme sexist, thinks he’s God.” Barbara Res, Trump Co. executive"Disloyal, actual retard." Ann Coulter“Trump is one of us.” David Duke of the KKKSecretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “f-king moron” as reported by NBC News. The comments came after Tillerson had a meeting at the Pentagon with members of the White House national security team and Cabinet officials.Defense Secretary General Jim Mattis said Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader” according to accounts of Bob Woodward’s book that were published by The Washington Post. The comments came after a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19 in which Trump questioned why the government was using resources to maintain a U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula. Mattis told Trump that presence was necessary “in order to prevent World War III.”White House chief of staff General John Kelly called Trump an “idiot” and “unhinged,” The Post reported. NBC News first reported in May that Kelly had referred to the president as an idiot multiple times, in addition to making several remarks “insulting the president’s intelligence and casting himself as the savior of the country.”Trump’s first White House chief of staff Reince Preibus also called him an “idiot.”National security adviser General H.R. McMaster called Trump a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner.” At a dinner in July 2017, McMaster mocked Trump, also calling him an “idiot,” BuzzFeed News reported.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called Trump an “idiot” according to Michael Wolff.White House chief of staff Reince Priebus called Trump an “idiot” according to Michael Wolff.Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn said Trump was “dumb as shit” according to Michael Wolff.Sam Nunberg said “He’s an idiot!” on live TV.Omarosa Manigault Newman, the highest-ranking African-American staffer in the West Wing, claimed in a book published earlier this summer that Trump is a “racist, misogynist and bigot.” In her book, “Unhinged,” Manigault Newman said she witnessed Trump use racial epithets while describing presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, who is half Filipino.White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said Trump was “like an 11-year-old child,” according to Vanity Fair. He also said that Trump had “lost his step” and that he was “sick of being a wet nurse to a 71-year-old man.”Barbara Res, a former executive vice-president of Trump Organization, called Trump a “supreme sexist” and also said “he thinks he’s God.”Working with Trump is “like trying to figure out what a child wants”—White House deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh“The White House has become an adult day care center”—Republican senator Bob Corker of Tennessee“Morally unfit to be president,” “unethical” and “untethered to truth”—former FBI director James Comey, who also compared the US president to a mafia boss.“Less a person than a collection of terrible traits”—Trump’s former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn.Someone who “sucks up and shits down”—former Fox News chief and Trump confidant Roger Ailes.THE END

Already MentionedGödel, Escher, Bach; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Predictably Irrational; Darwin's Dangerous Idea; Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking; Amazon.com: The Selfish Gene; The Black Swan; Antifragile; The Symbolic Species; The User Illusion; The Beginning of Infinity;My Top Picks For General ReadersThe Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution: Richard WranghamWrangham is a primatologist who theorizes (along with other biologists) that humans are a domesticated animal. Sounds silly? Who or what domesticated us? Read the book!Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress: Steven PinkerThis book is misunderstood, presumably by people who haven’t actually read it, because the prose is pretty clear. It’s doesn’t argue that the Enlightenment has been perfectly realized or that enlightenment values are perfect values.It argues that we’ve made progress and that we need to be as honest about the wins of Western Civilizations as we are about its crimes and losses—not to pat ourselves on the back, and certainly not to ignore the plight of the disenfranchised. It’s important to focus on what works so we can keep doing it and refine it, to make it better.The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life: Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson: Books"If you want to know what makes people tick, read The Elephant in the Brain. Simler and Hanson have created the most comprehensive, powerful, unified explanation of human nature and behavior to date." --Jason Brennan, Professor of Business, Georgetown UniversityCo-author Robin Hanson describes himself as “nerdy.” I would call this book An Autistic’s Guide to Human Nature. It’s a deep look at behavior, by “an anthropologist on Mars.”Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them: Joshua GreeneThis is the best book about morality I've ever read. The first half is a tour of the current science (social science, anthropology, animal studies, brain-imaging, evolutionary theory, etc) that is connected with morality. The second half is a philosophical (and psychological) defense of the moral theory called Utilitarianism. Even if you're wind up rejecting that theory, you'll find huge value in this book. The writing is crystal clear, provocative, and laced with humor.“After two and a half millennia, it’s rare to come across a genuinely new idea on the nature of morality, but in this book Joshua Greene advances not one but several. Greene combines neuroscience with philosophy not as a dilettante but as an expert in both fields, and his synthesis is interdisciplinary in the best sense of using all available conceptual tools to understand a deep phenomenon. Moral Tribes is a landmark in our understanding of morality and the moral sense.” -- Steven PinkerSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.This is one of the top-ten non-fiction books I've read in my life. Whether or not you agree with everything in it, the book will give you something interesting to think about on almost every page. Some of it might piss you off, too.Harari's thesis is that what makes humans unique is our capacity to invent fictions and use them to structure our lives. Without believing in them, or acting as if we do, we would not be able to live together in cities or collaborate on large-scale projects. The obvious fiction is religion (well, it's fiction to those of us who aren't religious), but other fictions include free will, morality, nations, money, liberal values, legal systems, etc."Sapiens" makes its arguments using a fusion of History, Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, and pure confidence.UPDATE: I also highly recommend the sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, which uses current and historical trends to discuss the future of humanity.You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation: Deborah Tannen.Tannon, a linguist, had the clever idea of framing women and men are two different cultures—and to study their "languages" the way one would study English and French. The book made me think beyond "the battle of the sexes" to the many ways words can both clarify our ideas and befuddle our listeners. This is a great books for couples, writers, actors, and students of human nature.The Little Schemer - 4th Edition: Daniel P. Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Duane Bibby, Gerald J. Sussman.The authors use a Socratic approach to teach a difficult subject: recursion. This is a book you work through with pencil and paper, and, if you work through it, the way it stretches your mind will be more meaningful to you than the subject it teaches. It begins with the simplest of ideas and very gradually ramps up the complexity, until, by the end, your understanding is at a high level. This book is takes teaching and elevates it to a work of art. It's sort of a computer-programming book, but you don't need any programming experience to work through it.From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present: Jacques Barzun.Barzun tells the entire story of Modern Western History, making a brilliant case that there really is such a thing: that, in a sense, our culture began on its current (and future) course 500 years ago, at the birth of the Reformation. As with the best of this sort of book, it doesn't matter if you agree or disagree with its premise. It's value is that it makes a clear statement, one that will prompt you towards a sharp reaction.A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction: Christopher Alexander."Brilliant....Here's how to design or redesign any space you're living or working in--from metropolis to room. Consider what you want to happen in the space, and then page through this book. Its radically conservative observations will spark, enhance, organize your best ideas, and a wondrous home, workplace, town will result."--San Francisco ChronicleThis book's influence has leaked into other fields, notably Computer Science.The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: Jonathan Haidt.Why are Conservatives and Liberals they way they are? Why are they so often at odds? Is it due to Nature or Nurture? This book delves into why we so often argue each other. It explores the core values we live by, both consciously and unconsciously. Check out the author's TED talks!Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives | Video on TED.comJonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence | Video on TED.comEvolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives: David Sloan Wilson.This is a great companion to "The Selfish Gene," and it's a good recommendation for people who are interested in the subject but turned off by Dawkins."Evolution for Everyone is a remarkable contribution. No other author has managed to combine mastery of the subject with such a clear and interesting explanation of what it all means for human self-understanding. Aimed at the general reader, yet peppered with ideas original enough to engage scholars, it is truly a book for our time. "—Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of On Human NatureThe Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires: Tim Wu.This book puts the Internet, and, more specifically, the forces that control it, in a historical context. Rather than seeing the web as a unique and new thing, Wu considers it along with the telegraph, radio, telephone, and television networks. His book is a good general history of communication networks.Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne.The three people in the world who are still believers in Transactional Analysis will be upset by the following claim: it's a "toy psychology." As far as I'm concerned, it's an oversimplified model of how humans work. And that's its strength. It's a kind of "Humans for Dummies." It's a marvelous books for fiction writers and actors, and even though it's an oversimplified model, it contains many grains of truth. Berne thought of all human interactions as games with winners and losers. And the book is a compendium of those games.How to Solve It: G. Polya.If you ever have to solve problems (of any type), it's worth reading this book."Every prospective teacher should read it. In particular, graduate students will find it invaluable. The traditional mathematics professor who reads a paper before one of the Mathematical Societies might also learn something from the book: 'He writes a, he says b, he means c; but it should be d.' "--E. T. Bell, Mathematical Monthly"[This] elementary textbook on heuristic reasoning, shows anew how keen its author is on questions of method and the formulation of methodological principles. Exposition and illustrative material are of a disarmingly elementary character, but very carefully thought out and selected."--Herman Weyl, Mathematical ReviewWhat Is the Name of This Book?: The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles: Raymond M. Smullyan.Smullyan wrote many puzzle books, and I picked this one pretty much at random. When I was a kid, I worked through all of them, and it was as if I could feel my brain growing. Here's an example to give you a taste:Dr. Tarr is a psychologist with the Department of Health. Her job is to inspect asylums to determine whether they are in compliance with the law. Asylums have Doctors and Patients. In a compliant asylum, all the doctors are sane and all the patients are insane. Clearly, an asylum with an insane doctor or a sane patient is Not A Good Thing.Sane persons are correct in all of their beliefs. Insane persons are incorrect in all of their beliefs. Both sane and insane persons are scrupulously honest: they always state what they believe to be the case. Unfortunately, the asylums are very modern and do not use identifying devices such as uniforms, ID tags, or other devices to show which persons are doctors and which are patients. Nor is it possible to know whether a person is sane or insane by any means other than questioning them.One day, after inspecting a number of asylums, Dr. Tarr was having a drink and cigar with her good friend Professor Feather. The professor found her work interesting and asked her to recount some of her findings.“Well,” said Dr. Tarr, “at the first asylum I visited, I met an inhabitant who made a single statement. I immediately took steps to have them released.”“Wait,” interjected the professor, “so you’re saying this person was not an insane patient?”“Of course,” replied Dr. Tarr.Professor Feather thought for a moment, then asked “How is that possible? This sounds like the old Liar and Truth Teller puzzle. This person either told the truth or they lied. But there are four possibilities for any person in an asylum: Sane Doctor, Insane Patient, Insane Doctor, or Sane Patient.“Even if you knew whether they were lying or telling the truth, that would only narrow the matter down to two possibilities. For example, if they told a truth such as ‘two plus two equals four’, you would know that they were Sane. But how would you know that they were a Patient, not a Doctor?”Dr. Tarr replied with a chuckle “I agree that I could not have deduced what to do based on an inhabitant saying ‘two plus two equals four’. But in this case, the patient was quite intelligent and thought of a single statement which could establish the fact that only a Sane Patient could make that statement.“I’m sure if you think about it, you could construct such a statement. Name a statement which could only be uttered by a Sane Patient.”-- A Few Easy Ones from Raymond Smullyan.The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World: Steven Johnson.This is one of the most entertaining History books I've ever read, but it goes beyond that. As it explores the biases that keep smart people from understanding "obvious" truths, it delves into Psychology and even Philosophy.UPDATE: And if you enjoy that, you’ll surely love The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Matthew Goodman, which is the story of an incredible (and widely-believed) series of news stories that claimed the moon was teaming with life—including intelligent life.Metaphors We Live By: George Lakoff, Mark Johnson.This book explores a fascinating thesis about how we think. The authors believe that metaphor is a core part of human cognition and that our writing, speech, and ideas are laced with metaphors and metaphorical frameworks we often fail to notice. It's terrific food for thought, whether you wind up agreeing or disagreeing.The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Joseph Campbell.“Campbell’s words carry extraordinary weight, not only among scholars but among a wide range of other people who find his search down mythological pathways relevant to their lives today....The book for which he is most famous, The Hero with a Thousand Faces [is] a brilliant examination, through ancient hero myths, of man’s eternal struggle for identity.” — TimeMind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence: Hans Moravec.One would be making a mistake to let Mind Children recede unopened into a guiltless oblivion. It's a tonic book, thought-provoking on every page. And it reminds us that, in our accelerating, headlong era, the future presses so close upon us that those who ignore it inhabit not the present but the past.--Brad Leithauser (New Yorker )Moravec, by his own admission, is an intellectual joyrider, and riding his runaway trains of thought is an exhilarating experience...This is an intellectual party that shouldn't be pooped, no matter how much it may disturb the neighbours and encourage over-indulgence.--Brian Woolley (Guardian )In the Blink of an Eye Revised 2nd Edition: Walter Murch.This book, by one of Hollywood's greatest editors, goes beyond explaining a single craft. It's a door into the brain of a brilliant technician and problem solver, and many pages of it gifted me new ways of thinking, even though I'm not an editor. For instance, Murch came up with the simple (but genius) idea of taping two tiny, cut-out paper people to the bottom of his monitor. They continually remind him of the scale at which people will see movie images when they are in the theatre.The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present: Eric Kandel.This is an Art History/Criticism book written by a neuroscientist.“Eric Kandel has succeeded in a brilliant synthesis that would have delighted and fascinated Freud: Using Viennese culture of the twentieth century as a lens, he examines the intersections of psychology, neuroscience, and art. The Age of Insight is a tour-de-force that sets the stage for a twenty-first-century understanding of the human mind in all its richness and diversity.”—Oliver Sacks, author of The Mind’s Eye and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat“In a polymathic performance, a Nobel laureate weaves together the theories and practices of neuroscience, art and psychology to show how our creative brains perceive and engage art—and are consequently moved by it. . . . A transformative work that joins the hands of Art and Science and makes them acknowledge their close kinship.”—Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)“Engrossing … Nobel-winning neuroscientist Kandel excavates the hidden workings of the creative mind. Kandel writes perceptively about a range of topics, from art history—the book’s color reproductions alone make it a great browse—to dyslexia. … Kandel captures the reader’s imagination with intriguing historical syntheses and fascinating scientific insights into how we see—and feel—the world.”—Publisher’s Weekly“A fascinating meditation on the interplay among art, psychology and brain science. The author, who fled Vienna as a child, has remained captivated by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, each of whom was profoundly influenced by Sigmund Freud and by the emerging scientific approach to medicine in their day … [calls] for a new, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mind, one that combines the humanities with the natural and social sciences.”—Scientific American“Eric Kandel’s book is a stunning achievement, remarkable for its scientific, artistic, and historical insights. No one else could have written this book—all its readers will be amply rewarded.”—Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education“Eric Kandel’s training as a psychiatrist and his vast knowledge of how the brain works enrich this thoroughly original exploration of the relationship between the birth of psychoanalysis, Austrian Expressionism, and Modernism in Vienna.”—Margaret Livingstone, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School“This is the book that Charles Darwin would have produced, had he chosen to write about art and aesthetics. Kandel, one of the great pioneers of modern neuroscience, has effectively bridged the ‘two cultures’—science and humanities. This is a task that many philosophers, especially those called ‘new mysterians,’ had considered impossible.”—V. S. Ramachandran, author of The Tell-Tale BrainSex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships: Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jetha.If you want to grapple with understanding human sexuality, I recommend you read this book and its criticism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn#ReceptionUncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science by Alan CromerRecommended to me by William Archibald, this is a paradigm-shifting book about the history of Science, though Cromer disputes the whole idea of paradigms. According to Cromer, Science was anything but inevitable. The forces that started it got invented once in history, in ancient Greece. Had that not happened, there's no reason to believe we'd have Science and scientists today.The book spans all the way from the origin of our species to speculation about intelligent life on other planets.EducationHow Children Fail: John Holt.A better title might be "How Teachers Fail." When I was in my teens and first starting to grapple with problems in Education, this book opened my eyes. It started me thinking in ways that had never occurred to me before.Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing Up to Old School Culture: Kirsten Olson.Kirsten Olson's book is refreshingly unlike the general run of sludge I associate with writing about pedagogy: It seems to be entirely free of the familiar platitudes which replace thought when we read about school matters, is scrubbed clean of pretentious jargon, and offers up the twists and turns of Olson's analysis and citations with beautiful clarity. I can't imagine anyone not being better for reading this book Twice! --John Taylor Gatto, Author, Dumbing Us DownSummerhill School: A New View of Childhood: A. S. Neill, Albert Lamb.This book will challenge your ideas about education, whether you wind up agreeing with it or raging against it. While I was suffering through a traditional American public high school, this book showed me there were other possibilities, which both fascinated and depressed me. I longed to go to Summerhill.Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas: Seymour A. Papert."This is the best book I have ever read on how to assist people to learn for themselves. Papert began his work by collaborating with Jean Piaget, and then applied those perspectives in a self-programming language designed to help children learn math and physics.Papert explains Piaget's work and provides case studies of how the programming language, LOGO, can help. He provides a wonderful contrasting explanation of the weaknesses of how math and physics are usually taught in schools." -- from an Amazon reader review.See also Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: Keith Johnstone, below (in the theatre section).The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding by Kieran EganThis book, despite its boring title, is one of the most exciting intellectual adventures I've ever had. (And also despite its boring title, it's readable and witty.) It's an exciting book even if you have no specific interest in education.Egan's thesis (which will make your neurons tingle, even if you disagree with it) is that human civilizations have gone through five intellectual stages, which he calls somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic. His second thesis is that education is best when kids are allowed to fully experience and integrate each of these thinking styles.Somatic learners experience through their bodies, and we are born to learn this way. Babies learn somatically when they go from crawling to walking and when they come to understand gravity's effects by knocking over block towers.Mythic understanding involves binary categories, most famously good and evil. Pretty much everything is understood as an epic (and often magical) opposition: wicked stepmother vs handsome prince; David vs Goliath; Bilbo vs Smaug...Egan believes pre-literate cultures understand the world primarily in terms of the somatic and mythic. As they become literate, people are able to think in other forms, with the romantic bridging mythic and philosophic modes.Romantic thinking is a sort of taming of mythic thinking. It's still extreme, but instead of thinking in terms of cosmic forces or gods and goddesses, it focusing on human and natural extremes. When children become romantic thinkers, they tend to lose some of their interest in monsters and superheroes and become obsessed with human feats, like the ones in the Guinness Book of World Records. Or their gods and monsters become more human-like, as are the troubled citizens of the Marvel Universe.As people focus less on the realm of demons and dragons and more on the real world (even if mostly on the extreme parts of it), they begin to notice patterns and abstractions. Maybe there are traits all lizards have in common; maybe tall is a useful category for both mountains and skyscrapers. These thoughts lead to philosophic thinking, which gives us the tools we need to do math, science, and to theorize about history, literature and to think about any topic in an abstract or algorithmic form.In the end, we notice that our abstractions have holes in them. They are useful, but they don't perfectly model reality. And they tend to get tarnished by social and political biases. These realizations lead to ironic thinking, which is impossible to do in any major sense without first developing philosophic thinking, which in turn is founded on romantic, mythic, and somatic thinking.Egan doesn't champion any of these modes over the others. He doesn't rank them. He also takes pains to say that though they have a hierarchical relationship, it's not a neat one. They leak into each other and coexist. Mythic thinkers may not be all that good at thinking ironically, but they still manage to do it sometimes, and while the philosophic mind loses some of its nimbleness with romance, it never totally loses its romantic inclinations.His main suggestion, in the parts of the book dealing with education, is that to realize their full potential as thinkers, children must be allowed and encouraged to pass through all these stages, and depending on where his chargers are in terms of intellectual maturity, a teacher must have the ability to teach in ways that stimulate all these modes. Most eight-year-olds are romantic thinkers, and teachers do them a disservice by leaping into philosophic mode rather than capitalizing on the strengths of romance.The book also explores what's wrong with current educational systems. Egan suggests (and I agree) that the fundamental problem is that schools have three incompatible goals (and Egan explains the history behind them). Schools attempt to socialize, which in most First World countries means preparing kids for work in corporations; they also attempt to indoctrinate kids into a core curriculum of some kind; finally, they attempt to spur kids into becoming individuals--into being creative, emotionally satisfied, unique beings. The inevitable muddle comes when the needs of the business world (or the requirements of the core curriculum) collide with the needs of the individual.Most schools and teachers don't acknowledge (or even understand) this conflict exists and give kids no help in putting all the pieces together. They just say, "Here's all the stuff. Some parts don't fit well with other parts. Don't complain about that. Figure out a way to cope on your own. Sink or swim."When I was just halfway through with "The Educated Mind," I knew it was going to be a a game-changing book for me. Ever since reading it, I've examined my work to see if it contains all the levels of thought (and experience). I'm talking about my writing, my reading, and my work in the theatre. Am I communicating on somatic, mythic, romantic, philosophic, and ironic levels? If not, is there some way I can enrich my work so that it at least touches on all those modes.The greatest works of art do. That's a subjective call, of course, but it's true in my opinion. Think "2001," "The Great Gatsby," "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "King Lear" ...The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money by Bryan CaplanTerrific, challenging book by a heretical economist who slaughters every sacred cow in the pasture. Even if all the book does is make you angry, it will give you things to think about.This is the only book I know of that tackles both the problems with eduction for the individual and whether or not the huge amount we spend on education is a good value for society.WritingIn my view, despite frequent references to "Elements of Style" and Stephen King's "On Writing," there are few good books on how to write. Most of what learned was either by reading and imitation or from short essays, such as Orwell's Politics and the English Language and Twain's "Finmore Cooper's Literary Offenses": http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm.I've tried to list most of my core beliefs about writing, here: Marcus Geduld's answer to What should every aspiring writer know about writing?These three books (really four, since the first is a collection of two books) stand out. The first ...Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim: Stephen Sondheim.... is a thorough analysis of Sondheim's lyrics—by Sondheim. In case you don't know who he is, he's the generally-acknowledge "greatest muscial-theatre composer/lyricist of all time." His shows include "Sweeney Todd," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", and "West Side Story" (lyrics only). What sets his books apart is the care he takes over evert single word and the lucid explanations with which he explains his choices. Read these books even if you're a non-lyricist.The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century by Steven Pinker.This is the best guide to prose style I've ever read. It's biased towards a simple style, but if you can master that, you can use it as a foundation to build on.Clear and Simple as the Truth: Francis-Noël Thomas, Mark Turner.Though somewhat dry, this is the only book I know of that clearly explains how to write in a very specific style. And it's kind-of the ur-style: the one I'd argue all writers should master before going on to anything more complicated. It's what "Elements of Style" should be but isn't.TheatreA Practical Handbook for the Actor: Melissa Bruder, Lee Michael Cohn, Madeleine Olnek, Nathaniel Pollack, Robert Previtio, Scott Zigler, David Mamet.This is the best introduction I've ever read to Stanislavsky-based acting. (See Constantin Stanislavski). I think of it as book one in a three-book trilogy. (Composed of this book and the next two in my list.)It helps actors avoid playing murky emotional states and become active on stage. Its core approach is to have actors choose goals for each moment they are on stage.If you know someone who is thinking of becoming an actor, get him this book.The Actor and the Target: Declan Donnellan.This book (part two of my ad-hoc trilogy) delves into one specific aspect of Stanislavsky-based acting: the person (the other actor) or object you're trying to affect when you're on stage. As a director, I find motivating actors towards targets tremendously useful. For instance, if an actor is trying to "be sexy" I ask him to stop and, instead, to try to get the actress (the target) to kiss him.How to Stop Acting: Harold Guskin.In my mind, there's tremendous value in Stanislavky's system, which forms the basis of the first two books on this list. But in the end, most actors need to let all frameworks go, stop thinking about them, and just improvise. They must "be in the moment."This is the best treatment I've found of this slippery subject. Guskin was the acting coach to James Gandalfini, Kevin, Kline, Glenn Close and many other famous actors.Different Every Night: Putting the play on stage and keeping it fresh: Mike Alfreds.This book clearly explores what to me is the core difference between theatre and film. Filmmakers must sweat to get the best performance possible onto film. Theatre practitioners should, if they're smart, create an environment where there is no "best." Great theatre should be different every night (or why not see a film, instead?). Each actor in each performance should try something new, and all the performances, taken together, should explore every avenue of the story, every possible interpretation.Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair: Frank Hauser, Russell Reich.The ideas behind directing are very, very simple: watch and listen; avoid doing anything most of the time; step in with a suggestion when necessary. But, boy oh boy, is it hard to put these simple procedures into practice! Most directors do too much. Or they focus on the wrong things. I read this smart little book before every rehearsal period.Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: Keith Johnstone.Impro ought to be required reading not only for theatre people generally but also for teachers, educators, and students of all kinds and persuasions. Readers of this book are not going to agree with everything in it; but if they are not challenged by it, if they do not ultimately succumb to its wisdom and whimsicality, they are in a very sad state indeed . . . .Johnstone seeks to liberate the imagination, to cultivate in the adult the creative power of the child . . . .Deserves to be widely read and tested in the classroom and rehearsal hall . . . Full of excellent good sense, actual observations and inspired assertions.–CHOICE: Books for College LibrariesShakespeareThinking Shakespeare: A How-to Guide for Student Actors, Directors, and Anyone Else Who Wants to Feel More Comfortable With the Bard: Barry Edelstein.This is the only worthwhile Shakespeare book I've ever found for beginning actors, and seasoned actors who are new to Shakespeare. Even pros will probably learn something from it. And it's a cool book for Shakespeare fans, too, who want to learn how to read the plays better and who want an understanding of how Shakespeare's approach it.Hamlet in Purgatory: Stephen Greenblatt."Hamlet" has a bewildering and brilliant relationship to Religion, and this is the best book on the subject.Hamlet and Revenge: Eleanor Prosser.Elizabethan morality considered revenge to be a great sin. So how is it possible that Shakespeare's audience considered Hamlet a hero? This is one of the most eye-opening pieces of dramaturgy I've read. I discuss it, here: Marcus Geduld's answer to What is the meaning of "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune"?Pick this up used if you can. It's expensive new.Shakespeare's Metrical Art: George T. Wright.If you want to understand what Shakespeare was doing poetically, this is the bible. If you're new to blank verse, I recommend your read "Thinking Shakespeare" before tackling this.I delve into lots of other Shakespearean issues, here: Directing "Hamlet".FictionI gobble down fiction, so if this question was "What are some great novels?" I could list hundreds of books. Ones that would definitely make the list are "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Emma," "Wuthering Heights," "House of Mirth", "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Watership Down," "Cat's Eye", "Bleak House," "Lonesome Dove," "Catcher in the Rye," "The Queen's Gambit," and ... well, I could go on and on.While all great novels expand my mind, I've included two, below, that did so via formal experimentation. In general, I hate experimental novels. Most of them are Sophomoric: "What if the author was a character in his own work? What if the characters knew the were living in a work of fiction? Like, wow men! Cool!"Here are two exceptions:1Q84: Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Philip ­Gabriel.War and Peace: Leo Tolstoy.And this, to me and many others, is the greatest novel of all time:The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald.I've read it over a hundred times and it still keeps giving. Several famous writers, like Hemmingway, copied it out by hand, so that they could study each sentence. I've often thought of doing the same thing. Here's a lesson I learned from just one of Fitzgerald's sentences: PostUPDATE: Someone recently PMed me, asking me to recommend two fiction and two non-fiction books to him. What follows is my reply, in which I cheated and recommend more. It's interesting to compare the following list with the one above, and see how some books have a stable placement in the front of my mind while others shift.As a lifelong reader, it's almost impossible for me to pick four books without doing so at random, but I'll try, as long as you understand these aren't my four favorites. They're just four books that are meaningful to me chosen somewhat arbitrarily.I'm going pick books that I first read at least five years ago, because I want to give you recommendations that haven't just temporarily dazzled me. Otherwise, I'd suggest"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel KahnemanAmazon: Thinking, Fast and Slowand"Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas TalebAmazon: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorderwhich both struck me as deeply profound and deeply useful. But they're too recent to be "canonized" in my mind.Finally, my favorite novel is"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott FitzgeraldAmazon: The Great Gatsbybut I won't list it, because it's on so many great-works list. It's probably more helpful for me to suggest books you're less-likely to have heard about.Non-fiction:- "The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World," by Steven Johnson, is a book about one event in history (and a fascinating one), but it manages to delve into deep matters of philosophy, science, and psychology, too. It's very exciting and readable, like a "page-turner" novel.Amazon: The Ghost Map- "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present," by Jacques Barzun. The best modern-Western history I've ever read.Amazon: From Dawn to DecadenceFiction:- "Lonesome Dove," by Larry McMurtry, is, to me, a Great American Novel. It belongs on shelves next to "The Great Gatsby," "Moby Dick," and "The Scarlet Letter." It's a quest story, similar in that sense to "Lord of the Rings," but its setting is the American West in 1876.Amazon: Lonesome Dove- "Cat's Eye," by Margaret Atwood, is one of the most brutally-honest stories about childhood ever written. It's "Lord of the Flies" without the the island. And it's about little girls instead of little boys.Amazon: Cat's Eye: Margaret AtwoodHere are some other books I love:Fiction:- "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Magic Realism. Maybe the best fantasy novel ever written. Marquez creates an absolutely unique world that runs via its own surreal logic. You emerge from it a different person. The English translation is gorgeous.Amazon: One Hundred Years of Solitude- "1Q84," by Haruki Murakami is the Japanese "One Hundred Year of Solitude." It's worth reading both of them, to understand what fiction can do and where it can go—and how it can play by its own rules.Amazon: 1Q84- "House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton. A fantastic portrait of 19th-Century New York and a young woman who has to maneuver in that complex, suffocating society.Amazon: The House of Mirth- "The Queens Gambit," by Walter Tevis is simply a perfect tale. It's like a masterclass on how to write a honed but unpretentious novel. It's about a child chess prodigy. Tevis isn't a well-known guy, but many people are aware of his novels via their film adaptations. These include "The Man Who Fell to Earth," "The Hustler," and "The Color of Money."Amazon: The Queen's Gambit: A Novel- "This Perfect Day," by Ira Levin is, in my mind, the best dystopia ever written. Few agree with me, because its politics are naive compared to books like "1984" (which I also love). But Levin isn't playing politics. Nor is he doing social criticism. He's weaving a yarn, and his spare prose and world-building do just that with immense confidence. I'd say it's one of the best sci-fi books of all time. Levin's mystery "A Kiss Before Dying" is also terrific. Don't watch either of the movie versions.Amazon: This Perfect Day- "Amy and Isabelle," by Elizabeth Strout is the best story about a mother/daughter relationship I've ever read.Amazon: Amy and Isabelle- "The Box of Delights," by John Masefield is my favorite children's fantasy novel. Though not nearly as well-known as "The Hobbit" or the Narnia books, for my taste it's superior.Amazon: The Box of DelightsOther novels I love include "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte; "The Time Machine" and "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells; "Emma," "Sense and Sensibility," and "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen; pretty much any Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse; "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens; "Plain Song" by Ken Haruf; "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain; "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy; "Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger; "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee; and "Secret History" by Donna Tartt.Non-fiction:- "Godel, Escher, Bach," and "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," by Douglas Hoffstadter, two of the most thought-provoking books I've read about the human mind and artificial intelligence.Amazon: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden BraidAmazon: Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies- "Shadow Divers," by Robert Kurson is the most exciting non-fiction book I've ever read. It's about deep-sea divers, a subject that (prior to reading this book) didn't interest me in the slightest.Amazon: Shadow Divers- "The Botany of Desire," by Michael Pollan is about the symbiotic way humans live with plants. Pollan is better known for "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which is fantastic, but, for my money, not quite as much the masterpiece as this earlier book.Amazon: The Botany of Desire- "Against Joie De Vivre" and "Being With Children," by Phillip Lopate. Lopate is the best personal essayist of the 20th Century and one of the best of all times.Amazon: Against Joie de VivreAmazon: Being with Children- Essays by George Orwell. I love all of Orwell's writing, but I find his essays—especially "Shooting an Elephant" and "Such, Such Were the Joys" to be the best of his writing.Amazon: Essays Free, online: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html- "How Children Fail," by John Holt; "Summerhill School," by A.S. Neal; "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart; and the much more recent "Wounded by School," by Kristin Olson, were all deeply important to forming and informing my ideas about education.Amazon: How Children FailAmazon: A Mathematician's LamentFree online (shorter) version (pdf): http://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/mnewman/LockhartsLament.pdfAmazon: Summerhill SchoolAmazon: Wounded by School- "The Little Schemer," by Daniel Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, is the only computer-programming book I've read that's a work of art. (Really it's a puzzle book, since one doesn't need to use a computer to work through it. It explores the subject of recursion.)Amazon: The Little Schemer- "In the Blink of an Eye" by Walter Murch, about the art of film editing.Amazon: In the Blink of an EyeFacebook: Friends of ol' marcus

The short answer? Sometimes it's disgusting. Sometimes it's violent - on occasion, brutally so. It's always stressful and sometimes tragic, to the point I sometimes felt like it was leeching away at my soul. But it can also be hilarious, rewarding, and occasionally uplifting. Above all, it never ceases to surprise - it's basically a front row ticket to the weirdest show on earth, and to borrow a phrase, it ain't for the faint of heart, but I wouldn't trade the years I spent as a corrections officer for anything.That doesn't begin to do justice to the real answer, though. The real answer is going to take time. So if you're really interested, strap in for a long one.First, I should say that I haven't actually been a prison guard. What I have been is a jail guard - technically, a Corrections Deputy. I worked for six years at a small, rural county jail in the northwestern United States. I know several corrections officers who have worked at larger jails and prisons; there are differences, some significant, between their jobs and mine, but the experience is similar enough that I feel qualified to answer.However, if you want a better understanding of the experiences that corrections officers go through, try "Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing" by Ted Conover. Mr. Conover is a journalist who has a crazy habit of embedding himself with particular subcultures: he has traveled railways in the United States as a genuine hobo, and also spent time with "coyotes" smuggling illegal immigrants from Mexico into the US; he wrote excellent books about both experiences. He also attended the New York State Corrections Academy and was assigned to Sing Sing, where he worked for a year or more before authoring the book. It is a heartfelt, warts-and-all portrait of a challenging, largely ignored profession. Highly recommended.Mr. Conover had the advantage of an entire book to share his single year of experience. I am drawing on six years spent in a county jail (actually closer to eight years of work, if you factor in all the overtime), and want to keep this succinct enough to avoid scaring anyone away. As long as this response will be, it'll never begin to cover everything I could say.Corrections work is unlike any other job of which I'm aware. As you might expect, being a police officer is somewhat similar, but even that feels like a different world.People used to say, "Oh, I bet that's hard work," when they found out what I did for a living, and I never knew what to tell them. I still don't. When I think of "hard work," I think of physical labor - stuff like clearing brush or construction, two jobs I held before getting into law enforcement. By in large, corrections work was not all that physically demanding, although I learned pretty early to prioritize physical fitness for the rare occasions when strength or speed were required. There are times when there isn't even that much work to do - just a lot of sitting around or walking around, hoping nothing happens.It is, however, exceptionally challenging, and, even more than police work, exceptionally stressful.When I meet young people who want to get into law enforcement, I often recommend that they try corrections. For one thing, it's an easy foot in the door to a career field that is otherwise quite competitive. For another, it's a good way to find out if you have what it takes to work in law enforcement, but with somewhat lower stakes than a job in patrol, because you're not typically making decisions about who goes to jail or worrying about whether your perp has a gun. Lastly, it's a great training ground, because you have to learn how to communicate with criminals, with the mentally ill, and with people who are drunk or doped up, and you also have to learn how to occasionally fight them without the crutch of a gun. My time in the jail unquestionably made me a better cop once I found my way to patrol, and I'm very glad I started in a jail rather than a squad car.However, I also warn them, because - I think even more than police work - the job can chew people up and spit them out. It's utterly thankless: it's not flashy, like being a policeman or firefighter; the pay ranges from abysmal to decent, but you'll never get rich; you'll never make the news for anything you do right, and if you do make the news it's because you've fucked something up royally; and if people don't immediately think you're a scumbag knuckle-dragger who gets off on beating the wrongfully convicted, they tend to assume you're a wannabe-cop who just couldn't cut it. Perhaps not unsurprisingly, corrections as a profession has astoundingly high rates of substance abuse, divorce, suicide, depression, and PTSD.To survive the job, you need things one usually associates with law enforcement ideals: guts, integrity, the capacity for measured violence, willingness to wear a uniform, and an unhealthy affinity for coffee. But you also need a sick sense of humor and, above all else, a thick skin. And you need to remember that respect is everything: you show it to everyone, and you demand it in return. Those are the building blocks.It takes a few years of actually doing the work before you really understand the job. Cell searches, head counts, court procedures, paperwork, transports, trials, cell extractions, pat-frisk, strip searches, bookings, releases - they all blur together, and more than a few new hires have been let go because they can't juggle it all. But the routine tasks aren't the hard part. Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and a half-decent work ethic can learn the busywork as long as they can multitask.The intangibles I mentioned earlier - things like a thick skin - are what make the job challenging, and they are also what define a good corrections officer. It's more about personality, less about any specific skill. You can't teach someone common sense, patience, or courage. There's a certain amount of foundation that's required; if it isn't there, it just isn't, and no amount of training can make up for the absence.I'm going to hammer the idea of respect a lot here, and one thing that new recruits do have to learn immediately is respect. You have to give respect, whenever possible; you also have to demand respect in return. Depending on the trainee, they might have trouble with the first part, the second, or both. Those who don't figure it out, wash out quickly.It's a tough balance. Recruits, especially younger ones, often start out too respectful.A large percentage of inmates will constantly try to manipulate staff. They'll spin stories from nothing, or take the truth and bend it just enough; they look for weaknesses, especially in new officers, and once they find one, they start the con. Sometimes it's just a game - seeing what they can get you to do. Sometimes they want something - extra meds, extra blankets. Sometimes it's more nefarious; conditioned felons make a habit of trying to "turn" corrections officers, hustling or blackmailing them into smuggling in contraband or providing sexual favors.As a result, trainees are taught to follow the rules at all times. Adhering to facility policy is about the only way to avoid being manipulated, but sometimes even that isn't enough.About two months into my training period, one of my FTOs (Field Training Officers) noticed the inmates were running me around. I wasn't doing anything I shouldn't, but I was running myself ragged keeping up with relatively minor requests. A fresh roll of toilet paper here, a signature on paperwork there. He pulled me aside. "Take a deep breath, man. They're on our time. You do your job, but you do it on your time, not theirs. If they get pushy about it, hey, fuck 'em. They're just inmates."It sounds harsh, but it's something most newbies need to hear at some point.A few years later, I became an FTO myself. I saw my students do the same thing - first they'd get sucked into the trap of filling every request. Inmates will say things like, "Oh, man, you're the best officer here. You're the only one who cares." They try to exploit the anxiety of new officers, who are under the microscope from their FTOs, to gain special privileges or favors. With female trainees, the male inmates are especially aggressive, trying to leverage compliments into flirtation.Once I would point this out to my students, most immediately recognized what was going on. They'd put a stop to it, but then swing too far in the other direction. I did the same thing, after my talk from my FTO.The pendulum, which had started on the accommodating side of respect, swung the other way. An inmate waited too long to stand up and grab the supplies I was handing out, so I dropped them on the ground and walked away.I got another talk. "Look," my FTO said, "you're partly right. Fuck him, he was disrespecting you. But you gotta be better than that. When they fuck with you, that's a test too." He also told me that by returning the inmate's disrespect, I was setting myself up for future conflicts.I asked how I should have handled it, and he said I shouldn't have thrown the supplies on the floor. "That's a dis. That's coming down to his level. You just say, 'Hey, if you don't want it...' and then walk off. He'll apologize."The next time an inmate treated me like a servant, I just shrugged it off and walked away without fulfilling their request, as I'd been shown. Sure enough, I got an apology and had no more problems with that particular inmate.Some acts of disrespect, though, have to be addressed immediately. An inmate who tells you to "fuck off" has to be reprimanded immediately, and usually "locked down" (confined to their cell). You can't let that sort of thing go, because if you let one inmate tell you to fuck off, it will soon be known that you can be tested. Inmates start to think of you as weak, and any perceived weakness was an invitation for disaster.We worked two or three officers to a shift, in a facility that could comfortably house 40-50 inmates, but often climbed as high as 80. As many as sixteen inmates were housed together in a given block. We were outnumbered, in other words. Almost comically so. An officer who was unwilling to confront overt rebellion, to meet aggression with force and violence with overwhelming force, endangered not only himself but his fellow officers, and ultimately the facility as a whole.As an FTO, I had one student in particular who simply couldn't stand up for himself. He was fine when other officers were around, but quailed from any confrontation when alone. I talked to him several times, but he simply could not find it in himself to answer a challenge. He was let go not long after, as much for everyone's safety as his own.I learned, and later taught, that it was a paradox: You have to show respect, as much as possible, at all times; conversely, you cannot tolerate any disrespect, let alone any sign of aggression.Even after several years in the jail, it could be a difficult balance to maintain. You have to be conscious about it. So I made it my habit to call inmates "Sir" or "Ma'am," or refer to them as "Mr. Smith" or "Ms. Rogers." I said "Please" and "Thank You" whenever possible. Even when things came to blows, I made it a point to try to never direct profanity at individual inmates. In a stressful situation, I might say "Put your fucking hands up" or "Turn the fuck around," but I would never say "Fuck you" or "Put your hands up, shitbag." From the outside, it might sound like I'm splitting hairs, but inside the jail it is a huge distinction.When you're being called every name under the sun, when your family is threatened, when you're spit on and pissed on and threatened with sodomy and torture and death, it's hard not to stoop to that level. But when you don't, when you maintain your composure, other inmates notice.An officer who keeps her word, shows respect, and takes no shit from anyone gains the respect of the inmates she works with. One of my students had a particular gift for law enforcement; she embodied the virtues I've just described. She'd been in the jail less than a year before I heard inmates talking favorably about her amongst themselves. A new inmate would arrive, fresh out of prison and freshly back behind bars, and start to step up to her; another inmate would say, "Nah, man, she's all right, but she ain't no punk."That sort of reputation makes the job easier, and safer. It helped me out more than once. In particular, I once found myself squaring off to a man much, much bigger than me; he had informed me, in no uncertain terms, that he was going to fuck me up if I didn't give him what he wanted (a free phone call to his baby mama). My backup was coming, but I wasn't looking forward to the thirty or forty seconds it'd take them to get there, and I wasn't convinced my Taser would have any effect on a guy this big and this pissed. Two other inmates intervened."Back off, dude, he's cool. He ain't fucking with you."The guy backed off, and locked down in his cell without me having to use force - or get my ass kicked until my partners arrived.I know not all jails or prisons run that way. There are plenty of horror stories about individual officers or entire institutions, and there is a lot to be said for keeping a closer eye on corrections. I was fortunate, though; even inmates would tell me that our jail was one of the best. Good food, fair staff, and no tolerance for bullshit.That mantra - be honest, be respectful, don't take shit - doesn't just protect you at work. It helps you go home with a clean conscience.Corrections, like any job in law enforcement, requires that you be an asshole sometimes. Since I treated everyone as well as I possibly could under the circumstances, I always knew that when things went south, it wasn't my fault, and the inmate had generally earned whatever came next.That was reassuring for a couple reasons.First, since I made respect my habit, it insulated me from my own darker nature. I'm not going to lie: there were more than a few inmates that I'd have loved to put boots to. Rapists, child molesters, predatory drug dealers, the occasional murderer who darkened our door. You can't understand until you've been there, but sometimes the urge to beat the living piss out of a predator is almost inescapable.I'd been on the job maybe two years when deputies brought in a drunk who had kicked in his ex-girlfriend's door and beaten her while she held her three-year-old boy in her arms, trying to protect him. She retreated into each room in her house, and he kicked in each door to continue beating her. She finally escaped to the driveway, but by the time she was there, he had broken her nose and her son's, fractured two of her ribs, and blackened both of the little boy's eyes.In the driveway, she managed to get into her car; he tried to block her exit, so she ran him over. (That's the closest the story gets to a happy ending.) Demonstrating cockroach-esque resilience, he was only slightly scratched up after being run over. He was taken to the hospital, and was there just long enough for me to see photos of the injured toddler.I wanted to hurt the fucker. I had a three year old, too, and it didn't help that my boy looked similar to his victim. My partner wasn't a parent, but was a bit of a hothead, and was as eager as I was for a piece of this asshole. At the time, it seemed like kicking his ass wouldn't have been unethical at all; if anything, it would've felt like God's work.It would've been so easy - so fucking easy - to provoke him just a bit. One whispered insult while patting him down might have been the only push he needed to turn violent, and if he turned violent then so could we.But we didn't do it. Throughout the booking, we called him "Sir," said "Please," and generally kept our opinions on him being a worthless piece of shit to ourselves. Of course, the whole time, we were both praying he'd go sideways on us and give us an excuse to kick his ass with a clean conscience, but we didn't do anything to provoke this.As it was, he sobered up, and kicked his own ass much more thoroughly than we could have. He was one of the few inmates I encountered who was genuinely remorseful. He pled guilty to a rash of charges, attended AA meetings in the jail, served his time, and disappeared. Either he stayed sober or he moved out of state, because (unlike most of the inmates we deal with) he never came back to my jail.And, because my partner and I held to our professionalism - respect, to the bitter end - we never had to look in the mirror and know we provoked a beating. That right there would be a slippery slope.I experienced similar violent urges over time, sometimes bordering on homicidal. But it was never so hard to resist as that first incident.The sad truth is that the inmates you have to fight are rarely the ones you want to fight. The wife beaters, the violent thugs, the predatory drug dealers, even the murders, and especially the child molesters, all had one thing in common: whether out of cowardice or shrewdness, they rarely provoked physical confrontation with staff. I think it's because they were bullies, almost to the last; bullies never pick on people they aren't confident they can intimidate.So, unfortunately, most of our use of force happened either in the booking area, where fresh arrests would arrive drunk or strung out on drugs...or with the mentally ill.I hate fighting the mentally ill. Of all the inmates I deal with, I have the most sympathy for people with serious mental illness. Many of them are serious dangers to the community, but unlike your average rapist, there's not much moral culpability attached to the crimes the mentally ill commit. Yes, they're dangerous, but it's not because they're evil; it's because they're sick. The communities they live in - we all live in - have largely failed to protect them, or provide for them.Closing down psychiatric hospitals in the 60s may have been the right thing to do, but we failed to create an effective alternative. To say our nations mental health system is broken is a gross understatement. TIME magazine did a great feature on this issue earlier this month (December 2014). I'd highly recommend reading the piece.Pundits and activists complain that we over incarcerate the mentally ill. They're not wrong. We do. And jail is no place for people who need treatment. For one thing, unlike mental hospitals (which are few and far between), jails generally cannot force inmates to take their meds. For another, the jail environment is rife with predators, and just with assholes in general. If mentally ill inmates aren't outright victimized, they are often teased mercilessly, provoked, and shunned.In terms of government, law enforcement in general is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. I believe a lot of the current unrest in the wake of Ferguson has less to do with policing than it does society as a whole. Similarly, jails become the catch all for every other social system that fails: schools, the foster system, the mental health system.Dealing with people who simply didn't belong in jail - to say nothing of having to hurt them - was easily the most depressing aspect of the job.Again, respect and professionalism were the mantra. You did everything you could to avoid a fight, so when a fight did happen, you knew that even if it wasn't exactly their fault, at least it wasn't yours.Midway through one particularly busy day shift, I entered a cell to stop an angry, psychotic inmate from bashing his forehead into a wall. I didn't have backup, so I opened the door with my Taser drawn, hoping to gain compliance. (You'd be amazed how often the little laser target the Taser projects will calm down a violent inmate.) Instead of the desired result, however, the inmate immediately reached for my Taser and yelled "Give me that!" He was a small guy, and I could have taken him in a fight, but I didn't want to risk even a momentary struggle of my Taser; if it accidentally deployed, I might be the one taking a five-second ride. So I immediately deployed the darts into the guy's hand, at a distance of inches. It's something you're never supposed to do, except to keep from being disarmed - and that was exactly the situation I was in.One probe missed his hand, but the other stuck clean through the webbing between his pointer and middle fingers. I was surprised by the amount of blood. He collapsed the floor, screaming for his dad. I called for a supervisor and an aid car, made my Taser safe, holstered it, and then sat with him, trying to comfort him, until an Aid car arrived. He kept telling me, "You fucked up, you fucked up, I'll have your job. But if you just let me go, I won't say a thing, you can keep your job, just let me go!"The messed up thing was that he had already been ordered released by the judge. We were in the act of trying to process him out when he started trying to break holes in the concrete with his head. I was willing to let bygones by bygones, but the patrol deputy who responded to back me up charged him with attempting to disarm a peace officer - a felony.After the inmate was cleared at the hospital and patched up, he came back to the jail. He was oddly friendly with me, and kept trying to make deals. He'd offer to say he was never Tasered if I'd only let him go. He also eventually came up with a story, in which he claimed he was dizzy and only called out "Give me that" because he needed to hold onto my Taser for balance. This didn't fly well with the judge - his defense attorney seemed almost embarrassed presenting the defense - so he ended up pleading to a lesser charge.The whole time he was trying to sell the "dizzy defense," though, he sat on a water bucket that he'd turned upside down and scooted himself around his cell block. He told us this was so he wouldn't get dizzy again and reach for another Taser. The thing was, literally everyone in the jail - staff, inmates, trustees - knew he was acting. The only person who didn't know we knew, was the guy himself.You'd turn out the lights at night, and when he thought you couldn't see, he'd hop up and do a little jig. You could catch him mid-jig, and he'd immediately sit back on the water bucket and scream at you that you were lying, he'd never be able to stand again, how dare you taunt him by pretending he'd been dancing!He was a weird guy - angry, bitter, spiteful, and yet also capable of whimsy, and deeply, deeply loyal to his dog. After his case was settled, as he was being released (for keeps this time), he apologized to me for reaching for my Taser. "It was all a big misunderstanding," he said. "You were just doing your job."But the job wasn't all sociology, tragedy, and violence. Sometimes it was just plain disgusting.You'd get inmates who would use their own feces as an art supply, or, in rarer cases, a projectile weapon.After extracting one particularly vicious inmate from a segregation cell (he tried to bite staff whenever he could, and liked to set traps for us with cups containing a mixture of feces, urine, and Kool-aid powder), the task fell to me to clean out his cell. Normally, we would pay a private contractor to come and sanitize the thing, but he had torn it apart so badly that we were fishing improvised weapons out of the clogged toilet.Not shockingly, neither our agency policy nor our union contract require us to engage in poop-scrubbing or toilet-dredging. My boss, the jail superintendent, said he was going to do it himself, but he was an older guy and also, you know, the boss, so that didn't sit well with me. Everyone else pulled rank or just said "Fuck no," so a relatively junior female officer and I went to work. We both put on hospital masks, and rubbed Vicks VapoRub all over the inside of the masks as well as under our noses.For me, the Vicks-and-mask combination worked wonders. It's a life hack that I've used many times since, on and off the job.For my coworker, the smells being blocked wasn't enough. She was holding out a trash bag for me while I dumped in meal trays covered in feces and rotten food. I looked up and saw her dry heaving, and immediately told her to get the hell out of the cell. I was already surrounded by rotting food, piss, and shit; the last thing I needed was her to throw up on me.Honestly, though, the bits where you have to be an asshole - or get poop thrown on you - or find yourself going fisticuffs with someone - those were all things I expected. And I imagine they are the sort of things that the outside world expects when they think about life inside a jail or prison.What really surprised me was the compassion I witnessed in my coworkers. Sure, some are very rigid, some are very jaded. A few are asshats. But overall, I was consistently impressed with the men and women I worked with.One of the toughest things I ever dealt with was an eighteen-year-old autistic boy who was arrested on domestic violence charges. He had the mentality of a three year old; he sat there in our segregation cell, and when we fed him dinner he asked if the reason he didn't get dessert was because he'd been bad. I tried to explain that there isn't dessert in jail, and he started crying for his mother. I damn near started crying right along with him.Obviously I wasn't present for his original arrest, but I was disturbed enough that someone with the mind of a toddler would be thrown into jail that I asked the arresting deputy about it. He, too, was regretful; he said the young man would "snap" and go off, and in this case he had broken his mom's nose. His parents couldn't handle him, and in any case, our state's domestic violence laws required that anyone over eighteen who assaults a family member be arrested and booked; the law makes no exception for the mentally ill, and cops are actually committing a crime if they do not make an arrest. In any case, both the deputy and I agreed it was a terrible situation.I was working graveyard at the time, and our shifts lasted twelve hours. He slept through the night, and in the morning, I found myself busy with routine duties. Toward the end of my shift, right after breakfast was served, I was walking through the jail and noticed my shift partner, a guy we'll call Barnes, had taken the young man into an empty recreation area and was sitting with him while the young man ate. Barnes sat with him for the better part of thirty minutes, then helped him clean up, and held his hand as he walked back to his cell. In a place as bleak as a jail, it was among the most beautiful things I've ever seen.I wrote my partner up for a commendation the next day, and turned it in to my boss. When I did so, I learned that another coworker - an officer with a reputation for being socially awkward and even rude, with whom I and other officers had often come nearly to blows - had done the same for the young man at lunch time. The same officer then gave the kid dessert he'd brought from home, to let him know he hadn't been bad.I later learned that my boss - the same person I was turning the commendation in to - had taken the kid out to the rec yard later in the day, and shot hoops with him for the better part of an hour.I was proud to work with people like that.Another inmate who stands out as example of what the job can be, at its best, was a guy that we'll call Todd. I had encountered him in the community as a reserve patrol deputy several times. He lived on disability and social security checks, and was regarded by his community as an irritating nuisance; he wasn't violent, or even particularly creepy, but he was often admonished about trespassing, and a few neighbors had taken out anti-harassment orders. For whatever reason, though, I kind of liked him. He had a good sense of humor and was always amicable; he genuinely loved the small town he lived in, even if the town didn't love him back.Unfortunately, Todd suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. He was able to manage when he got the right medications, but at some point, his doctor accidentally prescribed Todd a lower dose of anti-psychotic medication.As a result, Todd developed a gnawing suspicion that the local bible study class was actually a Mexican drug ring. Believing himself to be an undercover DEA agent, Todd rammed two elderly couples off the road, and then held another elderly woman at "gunpoint" (he actually only had a cane).Todd was arrested and charged with vehicular assault and felony harassment, but was diverted to a mental competency evaluation at the state mental hospital. The wait list at the time was - and still is - incredibly long, though, so he languished in jail.Our medical provider at the time was ambivalent at best, negligent at worst. Unfortunately, the medical provider was also connected with senior command staff at the sheriff's office, so no amount of bitching on the part of line officers could convince our admin to fire him. So, our jail doctor, either because he didn't know better or just didn't care, dramatically over-prescribed the same anti-psychotic meds to Todd that, when under-dosed, had landed Todd jail in the first place.At first, it just made him even weirder than before. Todd confessed several times that he was my long lost father, and at one point broke down in tears, apologizing for not finding me sooner. He shared experiences he'd had in Vietnam, and I still don't know if he was telling the truth or just hallucinating. He occasionally tried to escape by pushing past us when we opened his cell door, and at one point bit my shift partner. I had to use knee strikes to get Todd to let go, and my partner was out for a few days and had to get tested. Another time, Todd urinated under the door of his cell and then invited us in for tea; when I asked him about it later, he admitted he was plotting to have us slip on his urine so he could escape from jail.As the doses of medication built up in Todd's system, though, they began to kill him. We noticed that he was having trouble talking clearly, and starting to be dizzy all the time. Then he lost control of his bowels. All along, our bosses and the medical staff told us it was fine, just his mental illness taking hold.Eventually, he passed out halfway up the hall of his cell block. We summoned an aid car, and he was transported to the hospital.I spent several days up at the hospital with Todd, where the nurses were (rightfully) furious that the jail had essentially poisoned Todd, almost to death. At first, the nurses took it out on me, since I was the nearest manifestation of the jail. Todd kept sticking up for me, though - or at least, he did when he wasn't hitting on the nurses.At one point, Todd was asked to provide a urine sample. He claimed he was too weak to do so, and a nurse had to manipulate his genitals and hold the cup. The nurse did so, and Todd caught my eye over her arm and winked. (The nurse knew exactly what was going on, and handled the whole situation with a sort of resigned humor. Apparently Todd wasn't the only dirty old man in the ER.)Later, after getting his medications sorted and being treated for a few months at the state mental hospital, Todd returned to the jail, a much-improved version of himself. He was cheerful, funny, and downright evangelistic. The day I drove Todd up to the courthouse to have his charges dismissed, he spent the entire van ride preaching to a pair of twenty-something tweakers. The tweakers were debating the finer points of injecting meth versus smoking it, anal versus oral, and how best to break into a vacation home. Todd just kept saying, "You boys need Jesus!"After he was released, I would occasionally bump into Todd in the community. He came up to me at a restaurant and introduced himself to my wife and son; with many inmates, I'd have been reaching for the pistol I always carry when off duty. With Todd, I felt like I was introducing my family to an old friend.He came back to jail maybe a year later, I believe on a probation violation or some other minor charge. His mental illness was under control, and he was a quick-witted and good-natured as ever, but his physical condition had deteriorated. He was only with us a few days, but every time I talked to him, it was obvious he didn't have long to live. He also seemed sad, which wasn't something I recalled from his prior incarceration.When it was time to release him, I was working with the jail's senior sergeant. This particular sergeant could be generously described as "gruff." He took pride in hating everything, shooting down any idea that wasn't his own, and generally trying hard to not give a shit about anything other than the safety and security of his facility. Inmates who made requests, whether legitimate or manipulative, were blown off with classy retorts such as "What do you think this is, a fucking hotel?" He would mock you if you were polite to citizens who called on the phone. National tragedies were treated by this guy as sob stories: when Gabrielle Giffords was shot, he immediately remarked, "Great, now this fucking bitch will try to take our guns." The sergeant was not long on compassion, in other words.At least, that was how the sergeant chose to present himself to the world. I got to know him over several years, and realized there was a soft, gooey center underneath the jaded crust. He secretly made generous donations to any good cause he came across, couldn't watch films or shows in which dogs were injured (let alone killed), loved and was great with kids, and would vehemently deny all of this to almost anyone.Still, hidden core of decency aside, the sergeant is not the type of guy you'd expect to ever, ever be friendly toward an inmate.And yet, when I went to release Todd, the sergeant met me at the jail exit. Todd turned to me and gave me a hug. It's not uncommon that inmates want to shake your hand, which we'll usually do on release, but hugs are unheard of. I was certain I would suffer endless mockery from the sergeant, but I let Todd hug me and hugged him back.Then, to my surprise, Todd hugged the sergeant as well. And the sergeant hugged him back.Did I mention Todd was a small guy? And the sergeant was easily six-foot-six, four-hundred-and-fifty pounds? It looked like a bear hugging a Pomeranian."I love you guys," Todd said. "You guys treat me better than anyone out there. Nobody gives me the time of day. But you guys talk to me."It broke my fucking heart. How sad is it, that Todd's best experiences were in a jail?Todd died a few months later. I knew he was in hospice and meant to go see him, but didn't make it in time. He had no family, no friends. I really believe my coworkers and I were the only people who marked his passing.Again, I know not all jails are like that. But ours was, and I am damn proud to have worked there.In addition to the acts of compassion, I was also constantly surprised by the humor. I've rarely laughed as hard as I did almost daily at work. We'd laugh at crazy shit the inmates tried to pull, at the stupidity of our bosses, at our coworker's antics, at the world in general. Some of our humor was pretty diseased, or it would've appeared so from the outside. Sick or not, it was therapy. Laughter wasn't just the best medicine, it was the only medicine.The hardest I ever laughed was immediately following one of my career low points. Remember how I spent all that time talking about respect? Well, this was the time I broke my own rule.We had booked in a heroin addict who dabbled in large-scale identity theft. The guy was renting a three story home in my county's largest town, where he lived with his girlfriend and her young daughter. At night, he and his girlfriend would switch from heroin to meth, hop in her car, and drive through our county and the three surrounding ones, stealing mail from mailboxes. He had machines to fabricate fake ID cards and driver's licenses, and had stolen thousands of dollars using fake checks, fake social security cards, fake bank accounts, the works.When he was finally busted, they found tons of mail at his house. Literally, tons. It took dozens of detectives from the town police department, county sheriff's office, US Postal Service, and a handful of other agencies months to sift through all the stolen mail.They only caught him because his girlfriend's daughter got tired of watching him beat her mom, and strolled down to the local police department.A warrant was issued, and when the cops booted his door, this genius ran up two flights of stairs and out onto the third story porch. Except, in his haste, he had forgotten he'd torn down the third story porch a few weeks earlier, over his landlord's objections. He fell down to the first story porch (there wasn't one on the second story, don't ask me why), and landed on his back.After being cleared at the hospital, he was turned over to our care and custody. We put him in a segregation cell, and he was provided with pain meds for the back injury, as well as ice packs and a bunch of juice packs. The juice was intended to help him drink water, since staying hydrated is one of the few things that we're told may help out during heroin withdrawals.This guy was the most self-righteous, demanding, entitled punk I've ever encountered. It was our fault he was in pain due to his back, our fault he was in pain from heroin withdrawals. He ordered us around, made frequent demands, and was verbally abusive whenever he was told "no."Finally, after about a week of this, I was collecting meal trays and utensils after lunch. The guy had been up pacing his cell earlier, so I figured he was well enough to get out of bed and push his meal tray and utensils out to the kitchen crew, rather than making them go in and retrieve them. I was testy already, because he'd already cussed out the same kitchen workers when they brought the trays because he didn't think his serving of pizza was big enough.Anyway, I told him to get up, and he told me to fuck off. I repeated my instruction, so he did get up, but once he pushed the tray out, he took another step toward me and just glared at me. I told him to step back, and he didn't, so I squared off and shoved him back. Up to that point, I was good.But when he stumbled onto his bunk and started calling me (and the kitchen crew) names, I just snapped. I walked in started telling him exactly what I thought of him. It went downhill from there - basically an R-rated version of "You're a poopy-head!" "No, YOU'RE a poopy-head!"My two shift partners (one was Barnes, the guy who had sat with the autistic inmate during breakfast) arrived almost immediately and started trying to back me out of the cell. At about the same time, the inmate asked if I would like to fight. Instead of the professional response, which would have been to listen to my partners and leave, I replied "Fuck Yeah, let's go!"This is why you have partners. Barnes grabbed me and physically hauled me out of the cell. The other officer remained behind and, using far more professional language than I had, tried to calm the inmate down, to no avail.For the next hour or so, the inmate was standing in his cell window, hopping up and down, spitting on the inside of the glass, calling us pussies and faggots and cowards and niggers, daring us to come back and face him like men.I stayed in the control room, cooling down. Barnes and my other partner talked to me for a while, telling me I had been out of line. Barnes was the one who used the "Poopy-head" analogy.I had to agree with Barnes, and admitted that I had engaged in some grade school shit. I told him I felt like I might as well have just stuck my tongue out and left.Barnes laughed, and suggested it might not have been a bad idea.I don't know if I made this clear when I was talking about Barnes having breakfast with the autistic inmate, but Barnes is a former Marine. More than that, he's the embodiment of everything you'd expect from a former marine. Perfect posture (inmates regularly compliment him on it), hair always cut high-and-tight, uniform pristine, boots and gear polished. He's tall, broad-shouldered. Radically conservative, very no-nonsense. He just screams "authority."Anyway, the next time Barnes had to walk past the inmate, who was still screaming threats and obscenities, Barnes turned and smiled at him. Then he put his thumb to his nose, wiggled his fingers, and stuck out his tongue, before executing an exaggerated left-face and walking away down the hall.It's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen. So incongruent, so out of place.The inmate was stunned into silence, and immediately walked back to his bunk and sat down.I later went and apologized to him for my unprofessional language. He apologized to me as well, and then suggested that perhaps, if I didn't want to be reported for my language, I might do him some favors. (Some things never change.) I told him to go ahead and report me, I was willing to face the consequences. That wasn't what he wanted to hear, but he never did report me, and I ended up telling my boss about it anyway. It was the only time I had to be "verbally counseled" for unprofessional conduct.The inmate went away to Federal prison for several years, but he returned on appeal at one point. He wasn't any less of a slime ball, but we did have a good laugh recalling Barnes' resolution to the conflict.Maybe that story isn't as funny to you as it is to me. Maybe you just had to be there. But that's the thing with law enforcement - your sense of humor goes pitch black, and also takes a twist toward the bizarre.Most of our younger clientele, male and female, were siring heirs left and right, usually with multiple partners. It wasn't uncommon for male inmates to get into fights over who was the actual baby daddy. On one memorable occasion, however, I found two guys who had come to blows arguing over who wasn't the baby daddy - neither of them wanted the responsibility.The only thing that seemed to slow down the procreation train was STDs. Once an inmate got an STD, for whatever reason, that seemed to be a wake-up call that led to more responsible sex. Or maybe just fewer willing partners, I don't know.Anyway, speaking of a sick sense of humor, we had a nurse who worked night shift, four hours a day, five days a week. Other than our useless medical provider, she was our only medical staff. Her mandate was drug and alcohol counseling, but since the actual medical provider was lazy, she generally did sick call, too.At the time, most of her energy was tied up with a very young female inmate - maybe nineteen - who was, quite literally, a whore. She would drive to nearby metro areas, turn tricks, and then come back to our quiet hamlet to turn more tricks, buy drugs, and hang out with the local burglary ring. She was a frequent customer, and had more venereal diseases than I knew existed. This was common knowledge, since she bragged about them to anyone who would listen, whether they wanted to hear it or not.The nurse at one point suggested to me that we might as well put her to good use, and let her make her way through the male blocks. "At least if she infects the rest of them, they might not pop out as many kids. They could pay her in commissary."Lest you think this nurse was serious, or some sort of black-hearted wench, she was among the most professional, compassionate healthcare professionals I've ever worked with inside the walls of a correctional institute. She genuinely cared about her inmates, as well as the officers, and was extremely conscientious. A fucked up sense of humor was just her way of coping.Once we finished laughing at her suggestion, she shook her head. "We're dead inside, you know," she said, and chuckled.In some ways, she wasn't wrong. In some ways, working in law enforcement - and especially inside a jail - does deaden you. But that, too, was a joke, one that was only half true at most, and we both knew it.You have to laugh, because the alternatives are tears or alcohol or worse. This job could wear you down - not just with its violence and its tragedy and its lunacy, but simply with its volume. I worked 700 hours of overtime one year, in addition to volunteering as a reserve deputy. The OT alone was equivalent to an extra four-plus months of full time work.Shift work is hard, too, especially with a family. My son, especially between four and six, had a really hard time when I left in the evenings for graveyard shifts. He didn't have a problem when I was gone all day, but for some reason saying goodbye to me before bedtime was a lot more troubling. It was even worse when my wife would be on nights, too; she was a dispatcher, and occasionally our shifts would line up, and we'd have to leave him with a grandparent."I don't want you to go to work," he'd say, sometimes crying. "I miss you!"Or: "Why do you want to go see the bad guys instead of me?" That's a tough question to answer, especially to a five year old who misses his mom and dad.Being a family with both parents in public safety is hard in other ways, too.Our parents, especially, don't understand that our lives don't conform to the schedules by which the rest of the world lives. They don't understand that we can't be available on Thanksgiving Day, or that Friday isn't really Friday for us.My son struggles to understand the nature of my job, even more than his mom's. "But," he asked me once, genuinely confused, "If you have the bad guys all in one place, why don't you just shoot them?""We don't shoot people just because they're bad.""Oh." He thought for a minute. "Well, why don't you just tie them all up and come home?"Why indeed. It was five-year-old conversion of the whole "lock em up and throw away the key" argument.Speaking of throwing away the key, a lot of people I meet - especially older men - like to tell me what they think should be done with inmates. I'm sure you can guess. Bread and water, dripping dungeons, public floggings, the whole nine yards. I find myself put off by these sorts of attitudes, even when they occasionally match my own opinions. These blowhards haven't been there - they haven't stared evil in the face, smelled its morning breath, laughed at its jokes, scrapped with it on a dirty floor. So: What the fuck do they know?A lot of other people I meet - especially people my age or younger - go the other way. They're the moral crusaders, the enlightened liberals. They like to talk about how broken our system is, how the prosecutors are all bastards and the cops are all brutal and the system is stacked against blacks, against women, against the poor. There may be nuggets of truth to their protests and their self-righteous hashtags, but I have no patience for them, either. Everything they think they know has been learned in an ivory tower or an Internet chat room. If they haven't been face to face with the issues they preach about, then, again: What the fuck do they know?One thing you learn, here in the trenches, is that the problems facing our nation are far more complex than the pundits and the armchair politicians would have us believe. Poverty, crime, drugs, vice, recidivism, violence, mental illness, addiction - it's all interlinked, a vicious jumble.It's sociology, but it's also personal choice. Understanding that socioeconomic forces may push a person to crime does not absolve the criminal of individual culpability. Reducing recidivism should be the goal of the system, but ultimately is the responsibility of the individual.I don't have answers to all, or even most, of our problems, but I know most of the talking heads aren't even asking the right questions, let alone putting forth the right answers.I guess I shouldn't complain. It's job security. If we ever fix this mess, we won't need law enforcement officers. I've been a corrections officer and a patrol cop, and they're the best jobs I've ever had. I don't know what else I could do, to be honest. It's in my blood now.The reality is, I wish I weren't needed. I wish our jails could be smaller, I wish people would stop hurting each other, I wish we could magic away the drugs and other addictions that are rotting our communities and our nation from the inside out.It'll never happen, though. It's not human nature. We are dragged down even as we rise up. My time in the jail was a microcosm of that, as has been my time in patrol: every lie, every act of violence, every tragedy, every failure of the system, it all builds on you, seeps away at your soul. But at the same time, the darkness makes the light so much brighter.The compassion, the courage, the humor, the sacrifice and the dedication I saw every day - from officers especially, but also from community volunteers, from paramedics and firefighters, from doctors and defense attorneys and prosecutors and social workers - it helps to balance out the weight of all that misery.Good and bad, sad and funny, violent and kind: law enforcement is a front row seat to the best show on earth. I wouldn't trade my career for anything else.So, I'm not sure that's any way to wrap this up. I know I haven't put to words everything I'd like to, and I know I couldn't begin to articulate much of what ought to be said. But hopefully the answer is at least interesting, maybe even informative.Please feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comments or by private message. I'll answer just about anything put to me.In the end, if you take anything away from this, I hope it's the same lesson I learned to apply in all areas of my life: be honest, be respectful, and don't take shit from anyone. It's not a bad way to live your life, even outside a jail.EDIT 12/31/14: I have gotten some comments and private messages asking about my thoughts on the state of the correctional system, from a policy and/or philosophical perspective. If anyone else is interested, I wrote a fairly in-depth answer at the following link: Levi Wilder's answer to What are some viable solutions or alternatives to the current US prison system problems? Obviously that answer is based exclusively on my own experiences and reading; I'm not a researcher or an expert, so take it with a grain of salt. ---- EDIT 2/11/15: Also check out Tim Dees' answer to In what ways could prison costs be reduced? for some great ideas on how to change the system for the better. ---- EDIT 10/26/15: I reworded most of the opening paragraphs because when I came back to glance at this answer, they really bothered me. ALSO, thanks to everyone who has upvoted, thanked, PM'd, or otherwise showed support. Almost a year after I posted this answer, I'm still surprised by how cathartic it was to write...and your support has been a big part of that.