People are dying, and the mayor of Shark City needs to close the beaches
America's city leaders need to do an about face on crime, immediately
In this scene in “Jaws,” the police chief realizes, after at least three violent shark killings, that the bumbling mayor is still not ready to close the beaches.
“August, august…” the mayor mumbles after witnessing the shark eat a man just off the beach.
“August? What are you talking about?” Chief Brody retorts. “Larry, summer's over. You're the mayor of ‘Shark City!’ These people think you want the beaches open!”
He knows Brody’s right, of course. People are dead because he pretended there wasn’t a man-eating shark preying on children and vacationers. But, of course, there was.
“I was acting in the town’s best interest,” he says, quietly, defeated.
We are at this point in the movie.
How did we get to a moment where city leaders look their constituents in the eye and still say they are acting in their city’s best interest? Murder rates in cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, New Orleans, and Los Angeles are set to break records again this year. In a world based in logic and reason, the elected politicians and prosecutors would be doing everything in their power to empower law enforcement, and punish offenders.
But we live in a crazy world, where prosecutors like Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore appeal to their base by mocking the news coverage of violence in the city. In this ridiculous parody, Mosby’s office suggests Fox 45’s crime focus and criticism of her office is the same as asking where Mosby was in 1984 when the Baltimore Colts skipped town for Indianapolis.
In Wisconsin last year, a man was released on a $1K bond after running over his former girlfriend with his car. That man went on to kill five when he attacked a Christmas Parade in Waukesha. When journalists started poking around about what could have possibly led to him being a free man at the time of the attack, they found the DA John Chisolm literally “guaranteed” something like that would happen.
In 2007, he told the Milwaukee Sentinel, “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who's going to go out and kill somebody? You bet. Guaranteed. It's guaranteed to happen.”
“It does not invalidate the overall approach,” he said. The final part of the quote is what I find the most chilling. Guaranteeing people’s death does not invalidate his “overall approach"?
That sounds like the ramblings of a troubled and violent person. But it isn’t. These are the actual values of the political class who truly believe they are helping people by cutting them (a lot of) slack. Like Mayor Larry in “Jaws”, they are still mumbling about having the best interest of the town at heart.
Police departments across the U.S. are facing crushing staffing shortages and depleted morale. There is no recruitment: the dream of being a cop chasing bad guys is being systematically erased through government education and woke pop culture. The narrative is so upside down, one Minnesota mom had to tell BLM protesters to get a grip as they protested the police killing of a man who tried to kill her and her children, before losing in a stand-off with the cops.
“This is not a George Floyd situation…This is not OK,” she screamed through tears at the protesters. “My kids have to deal with this and probably have a mental illness now. Because they almost lost their lives. There’s bullet holes in my kitchen because he sat in the f–king hallway watching me move.”
“This is not the time,” one protester said.
These protesters are beyond looking for justice and are only anti-police. There is no room for argument with this order, and they have the full support of the mayors and prosecutors in these cities.
They want to keep the beaches open. To do anything else would be to relinquish power and admit defeat, which they will not do. “August, august…” they will forever mumble.
It’s time to vote them out, and blow the shark out of the water.