“What’s going on here?” I haven’t a clue.
The Capitol Beltway, RT. 495, is one of the busiest and most dangerous highways in the Virginia/D.C./Maryland region. So, naturally, some idiot decided to do “donuts” with his vehicle at about 7 pm this Saturday night, in the middle of the Beltway in Prince George’s County where it passes through College Park, Maryland.
The line of cars behind this maniac slowed and then stopped traffic, according to Maryland State Police. Onlookers got out of their cars to watch and take videos of the spontaneous exhibition, which stopped the typically 70-80 mph traffic for abut 8 minutes. Some of the motorists saluted the driver by spinning their own cars’ wheels in place, “sending plumes of smoke into the air” according to NBC News in D.C. One video appears to show a second car participating.
You can see a video here.
I think this is my favorite part: the driver finished his stunt, and drove away. No arrest was made.
I guess he was an illegal immigrant.
Or Andrew Cuomo.
Ethics Alarms 
I guess enforcement of the law is only for non-mask wearers, Hasidic Jews, and moms taking their kids for fresh air.
Why would any police officer risk pursuing what ends up really just being a misdemeanor by an obvious maniac given that just the right conditions could round out with the officer’s career ending?
See, there isn’t just an “Overton Window” of acceptable discourse…there’s also an “Overton Window” for societal conduct. Increasingly destroy police officer’s lives after events that are increasingly shown to have been acceptable escalations of force and instead of merely curtailing police use of force in extreme cases, on the other end of the spectrum, you’ll see police avoiding pursuit of “easy” actions that might require even minimal force to resolve.
Like the “dreadful” January 6 Capitol Riot.
Don’t do jack crap about a summer of *increasingly* violent riots that were often lauded as “peaceful protests” on the heels of 4 years of leftwing misbehavior often dipping into unpunished riots on many occasions (one riot during the Kavanaugh hearings breaking into the Capitol also), why on earth would anyone think they would be punished for breaching Capitol security?
That video was from a state highway admin camera. Why in the hell did they not alert the state police? If they did call, the state police barracks, if I recall correctly, is right there on Route 1 in College Park so why such a long response time.
Beyond that what bothers me is the arrogance of drivers who believe they can do as they please. This could have easily resulted in numerous secondary collisions and injuries or it could have impeded emergency vehicles taking the critically sick or injured to hospitals.
That driver should have his or her license revoked post haste and insurance cancelled.
This is just the latest in a long line of people flaunting the law. You see videos of this sort of thing happening all the time in California. All across the country, you see gangs of people on ATV’s and motorcycles flouting all traffic laws and taking over an area. Law enforcement seems powerless to stop it.
Here is one of the nicer ones.
Here is one of the ATV’s and dirt bikes.
When the law and the justice system is perceived to be corrupt. When it is perceived to be corrupt, people lose respect for it. When they lose respect for it, law and order can no longer be maintained.
This sort of thing happens because:
(1) The police selectively enforce the law. Notice that when Antifa mobs attack someone, the police arrest that person, not the attackers? Notice the full-court press against the protesters on Jan 6, but not against the people who attacked federal buildings across the country? Notice that New York, California, Nevada and others went after churches, but not casinos? Yeah, it makes it hard to take the law seriously.
(2) The government allows flagrant, public lawbreaking by some and viciously crushes others. Remember when Hillary Clinton and numerous people who worked for her blatantly and routinely violated all kinds of classified documents laws, but wasn’t prosecuted because ‘you can’t prove they did it intentionally’. At the same time, several federal workers were prosecuted, convicted, and jailed lesser offenses involving classified documents? Hunter Biden illegally bought a pistol? Well, the FBI is going to swoop in and cover that up. Your firearm breaks and doubles while someone is borrowing it? Well, 10 years in jail for you for illegally transferring a machinegun.
(3) The government makes up evidence against people. How many FBI cases do we have where the FBI altered evidence or concealed evidence. The Michael Flynn case is just the latest. The ‘Russian Dossier”, the World Trade Center bombing, the Oklahoma City Bombing, the Enron case, etc.
(4) Judges allow all this nonsense for the government, but will send you to jail for the slightest infraction. What would happen to you if you lied to a federal judge and submitted fabricated documents? Jail, that’s what would happen. When federal employees do it, the judge may allow the evidence to be used in the trial.
Enough things like this happen and the law becomes a joke. Who is to blame? Look at #1-4. The police and the government think law and order are maintained because they have guns and can force us to obey. They don’t realize that law and order are maintained because we want to live in an orderly society and agree to abide by the rules voluntarily. When the rules become arbitrary and corrupt, however, that agreement breaks down.
I agree with these points. I also want to reiterate the point that I know has been made at Ethics Alarms before, that the police force we have is utterly inadequate to handle a large-scale event of civil disobedience. I wonder if what we’re seeing with these kind of events is testing the waters for how much the police will tolerate and how effective police response is. I also wonder if these events might be a boiling-the-frog measure, meant to tax the police beyond their resources, but doing so slowly enough that it doesn’t trigger governors or the federal government to call in the military to help restore order.
Or it could be another social media phenomenon where someone came up with a crazy idea, and now everyone is seeking their five minutes of fame by shutting down traffic with impunity.
Ryan asked: “I wonder if what we’re seeing with these kind of events is testing the waters for how much the police will tolerate and how effective police response is.”
I suspect there isn’t much thought about the broader societal issues. It’s more these idiots one of the many “Fast & Furious” movies and thought it would be cool to do donuts on a public thoroughfare just because they could. These idiots take over parking lots and like to drive like maniacs on access roads. Recently, some moron thought it would be cool to do a “fly by” and ended up smashing into another car, killing three people in the process. This past week, another rocket scientist thought he would race his pal down Richmond, west of Hillcroft and ended up fighting with a tree. The 8th Rule of Physics is: In a fight between you and a tree, you lose.
jvb
Which is precisely why misbehavior has to be stamped out on the margins before it ever gets to that point.
Tangentially related analogies (intentionally all parent-child scenarios):
1) It’s why we didn’t tell our kids when they were 3 and 4 “don’t go into the street” – we told them “do not cross the sidewalk towards the street. As parents we needed that protected margin so that if they made the rare mistake and strayed too far crossing the sidewalk, we could react while they were still in a safe area.
2) For families that still believe in some conduct being taboo, they not only make the conduct verboten, but conduct that “brushes alongside” that conduct is verboten as well. Some parents abhor profanity – and to emphasize that “shit” is a bad word, they don’t let their kids casually say “poop” or “crap”.
3) You can’t let your child or teenager get away with certain types of joking… certainly not “joking” disrespect. Because it likely will lead to one or both of two intolerable scenarios – becoming too comfortable with disrespect until disrespect is actually what is practiced OR times you must discipline or counsel your kids for an attitude and their answer is “I was just joking”. Nope.
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All behavior – endorsed or forbidden – from time immemorial throughout all civilizations isn’t just a prohibition or promotion of the exact behavior. But in a variety of ways, those behaviors have, in their orbit, materially or apparently similar behavior that also must be similarly endorsed or forbidden in order to keep the central value protected – lest even the central value erodes.
In the case of the riots – they have only gotten worse, because smaller riots early on were tolerated under the guise of “do you really want to hurt people just to protect mere property?”
Only now here we sit because while we most certainly should have been willing to hurt bad actors to protect the property of innocent people, we didn’t, and the frog has boiled.
Takeovers? Reminds me of a story someone from rural WV told me about how the Hells Angels decided they were going to try to take over one of the mountains down there. The idea went over poorly with the locals, most of whom had been shooting since they were ten. The mountain is still free and accessible, and if you go up there they say you can still find pieces of the Angels’ motorcycles and pieces of the Angels.
Boogity Boogity Boogity. Let’s go racin!
Most multi-lane Interstates look like NASCAR race tracks. And lots of people drive on them as if they are. This guy obviously took the “drive it like you stole it” thing to a new level. This is standard post-race victory celebration behavior.