To Earnest, with Love

When I was trained as a law enforcement officer a long long time ago, we were trained to use only the force necessary to protect others and ourselves; to use deadly force only as a last resort; to always act in a way that deescalated the situation, not escalated it; and most importantly, to be willing to sacrifice our lives before we took the life of an innocent. That meant that in the split second of making a decision of shoot or don't shoot, your duty was to sacrifice your life before you harmed or killed someone you weren't absolutely certain posed a threat to you or someone else. We were repeatedly reminded that the people we were engaging with were the people we had sworn to protect and serve. Law enforcement is an extremely difficult and thankless job when its done the way I was trained and I was in awe of the officers who trained us and did this thankless job every day. They were/are heroes - true heroes. Today's LE officers are not trained as police but as an o

It DOES exist! Recently, someone messaged me and remarked that because of my recent stint in politics, I must agree that there was no “good ‘ole boy network” in St. Tammany anymore.  I don’t know this person except through Facebook, but his posts, wherever I've seen them, are intelligent and respectful so his remark gave me pause.  After my year of living politically – that is, wading through an ever deepening river of slime and hoping I didn't step off into a deep hole – I am more acutely aware of the “good ‘ole boy network” than I ever was before.  Before I ran, ‘the machine” was just a concept that I understood about as well as I understand gravity.  I know it exists because I can see the effects of it all around me, but I don’t know how it works or what it looks like.  In fact, I was less certain that there was some political machine in St. Tammany before I ran than I was certain of gravity.  Having now seen the machine first hand, contrary to the messager's