This is part I of II of my response to Adam here.
It doesn’t seem to me that opportunism is particular to either system. Though systematic cynicism may yield insights, serving as a kind of critical theory for identifying fault lines, I don’t think that’s why we have the systems in the first place. We trust and make laws and enforce them because that’s the cost we have to pay to get what we actually want; which is peace and prosperity in which to flourish.
Part of the cost are the specific fault lines for opportunism that a given institution creates. But that is only part of the story.
An important part, of course. But I don’t think the radicals are right in their belief that it is the most important part.
(emphasis mine)
Well, that’s a matter of perspective. The costs are certainly the system, there is no cleaving the benefits from the costs, there is no unalloyed good, there is payment to be made, pigs must be killed so I can enjoy my meal. The question, of course, is who bears the brunt? Who has to pay for the peace and prosperity wanted by all? Whose head is getting twisted off?
Sureshbhai Patel had to pay the price for someone else’s safety.
The caller early Friday morning reports an individual walking on the street near his home. “He was doing it yesterday and today…He’s just on foot. He’s just kind of walking around close to the garage.”
The operator asks what the man looks like. “He’s a skinny black guy, he’s got a toboggan on, he’s really skinny.”
He adds: “I’ve lived here four years and I’ve never seen him before.”
Sureshbhai Patel had only arrived in the United States about a week earlier to help care for his grandson. Patel took a walk each morning, according to his son, Chirag Patel, an engineer who recently bought a home in Madison.
The caller says: “I’m just kind of following from a distance now.” He says he is about to go to work and is nervous to leave his wife with the man walking around outside.
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