On Boris Johnson, a bad man met a bad end. He was shallow, frivolous, insincere even for a politician, almost purely cynical, believed in little but himself. Because of this the things he got right had the shadow of the merely performative. He led a Tory Party that no longer seems to believe in anything, that doesn’t know what it’s about. It is not certain he was taken down by better men and women. I see nothing sad in his leaving but that he was very entertaining and had one of the best political acts—shambolic upper-class boyo, utterly lost in his personal sphere, just like you and no better than you—in modern British history.
But he was unserious. To have a really great act, you have to be a serious man. Almost oddly, that’s not something you can fake. People can see.
Party members may or may not stick with a serious man, but they won’t stick their necks out for an unserious one. That’s why his support melted away.
It is disquieting that the originating events of his fall were, in the scheme of things, so trivial—office parties, a minister’s sexual missteps. But the trivial only fatally mugs you when it seems an expression of something larger, in this case the carelessness and insincerity.
His speech stepping down was good, and one line—“When the herd moves, it moves”—will live, because it bluntly states a truth of life while, as an added benefit, painting those who abandoned him as brute and ignorant field animals startled by a noise.
But that isn’t our subject, which has to do with crime in America.
In New York, and the country more broadly, the scary thing isn’t that crime is high, though it is, though not as high as in previous crime waves. What’s scary is that people no longer think the personal protective measures they used in the past apply. Previous crime waves were a matter of street thugs and professional criminals, and you could take steps in anticipation of their actions. Don’t walk in the park at night—criminals like darkness. Take the subway in rush hour—criminals don’t like witnesses. Don’t be on Main Street at 1 a.m., but do go to the afternoon parade.
You could calculate, thereby increasing your margin of safety.
Now such measures are less relevant because what you see on the street and in the news tells you that more than in the past we’re at the mercy of the seriously mentally ill. You can’t calculate their actions because they can’t be predicted, because they’re crazy.
That is the anxiety-builder. And it’s not only the evidence of your eyes. There was a paper recently by the Manhattan Institute’s Stephen Eide. New York hardly bothers to arrest anyone now, but as Mr. Eide noted, “inmates with any mental disorder and who have been charged with a violent felony constitute a growing share of the city jail population.” People feel uniquely unprotected.
On Highland Park one thing needs saying that hasn’t been sufficiently emphasized: America has grown confused about the rights of the individual and our obligations to society. We believe in beautiful things and incorporate them in our lives: You are free to be your own strange self; all have a right to privacy; we don’t judge or interfere. But of course we are all part of something larger called society, and we have responsibilities there too.
We are losing our sense of protectiveness toward the society around us.
You know what was obvious about the shooters in Uvalde and Highland Park? They were insane and dangerous. Anyone bothering to look could see, certainly family members or close friends. The killers physically presented themselves in the world as demons you’d meet in hell. On social media they posted sick and violent videos and pictures. They had made threats. The Highland Park shooter had threatened to kill his family; police had been to the house and removed his weapons. The Uvalde shooter made threats online and posted pictures of dead cats. They were loners, in their heads and obsessed with social media.
They were our culture’s roadkill. And they’d long made it clear they wanted others on the road with them.
And nobody said a thing. This isn’t respect for privacy, and it isn’t open-mindedness—I never judge a book by its cover—it is laziness, fear of involvement, and a slovenly uninterest in the safety of others.
Families and friends are naturally loyal, but why was there no tugging sense of responsibility toward the society around their troubled young men? As in: Officer (or Judge), he’s my son and I love him, but he shows the signs of being a danger to himself and others and I need your help in handling this. If we don’t I’m afraid somebody’s going to get hurt.
Instead, the father of the alleged Highland Park killer sponsored his application for a gun permit.
This country and its culture aren’t making fewer unstable young men, but more. Maybe we need a conversation about the issues they raise and the loyalties we owe.
A last point. We respect the blue here but I am increasingly disturbed by what I see of policing in America. Since the most recent mass shootings I am thinking of how much it has changed in my lifetime.
Cops used to be guys in a blue cotton uniform with a holster and gun. Now they’re like bulked-up 1990s cartoon superheroes—militarized, mechanized, armored up, heavy helmets and vests, all the gear and equipment, the long guns and trucks like tanks. They swarm in like an army—so many of them!—and there’s something muscle-bound about it, heavy on form and rules and by the book. But who wrote this book?
The cops of the ’70s—they shot the bad guy. Cops now bark into communications systems and coordinate and tell civilians to leave the area.
And none of it seems more effective than in the past but less. A report from Texas State University on the missed opportunities at Uvalde notes that a policeman had a bead on the shooter early on and from far away, asked his supervisor for permission to take the shot and didn’t get a response. And so the murderer got into the classroom with the kids. The report also said the cops should have gone in through the windows.
You read and you think: Guys, this isn’t working. You have got to rethink how you operate.
In the old days cops were pretty good at the job but not at all good at communicating with press and public. Now all they do is communicate, with smooth, canned, lawyered statements that are sometimes quite misleading.
They’re sure good at word-saving. They’re immediate with their eloquence—Our hearts are broken; these were our mothers and daughters—but their excellence and effectiveness are less apparent.
I don’t think people trust them as much as they used to, and this is separate and distinct from the damaging racial charges of recent years.
Things look too bureaucratized, too defensive of and protective of the organization itself.
It isn’t good. And if I’m seeing it, others are.