Provocupreneur

On this day:

1127
Invading Jurchen soldiers from the Jin Dynasty besiege and sack Bianjing (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song Dynasty of China, and abduct Emperor Qinzong and others, ending the Northern Song Dynasty.
1349
The Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland, believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, is rounded up and incinerated.
1431
Judges’ investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc begin in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government.
1806
Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson receives a state funeral and is interred in St Paul’s Cathedral
1905
According to the Julian Calendar which is used at the time, Russian workers stage a march on the Winter Palace that ends in the massacre by Tsarist troops known as Bloody Sunday, setting off the Russian Revolution of 1905.
1909
Ernest Shackleton, leading the Nimrod Expedition to the South Pole, plants the British flag 97 nmi from the South Pole, the furthest anyone had ever reached at that time.
1916
World War I: The Battle of Gallipoli concludes with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces are evacuated from the peninsula.

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Hemingway's in Oakland is closing.

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News update: Poet killed by I.C.E., Rubio was very socially sensitive in third grade.

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What happens to a culture when information at its fingertips is seen with suspicion and disbelief?

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Minnesota, which has refused to help with federal police activities, is now furious that it can't participate in the investigations.

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Provocupreneur

Freedom and ingenuity have given us the American Constitution, Moby Dick, the creations of Edison and Musk, and social changes like Monday Night Football and the Westboro Church.

The patent, the rodeo, and the provocupreneur

The provocupreneur creates a social or political situation for his fellow citizens, hoping for a response or outcome he can sue over. A clever, recent adaptation was the man masquerading as a football fan who stalked and verbally abused a susceptible athlete to the point that the athlete grabbed him on camera. Voila! The stalker is abused, and the athlete will be an unsuccessful legal defendant.

By such innovations, fortunes are made. And the provocupreneur is wrapped in the sanctity of the law.

The athlete stalker's innovation pales before the political provocupreneur.

He creates situations that place his fellow citizens (i.e. others) in mortal danger in hopes of influencing public policy. And he uses the sacrificial victim's righteousness as fuel for his fire. The victim, misguided or not, is trying to help.

Imagine opposing the enforcement of a law against trespassing or kidnapping. Rather than allowing the conflict to be resolved in the courts, where all other rights are resolved, the provocopreneur convinces his victims to make the enforcement difficult, even dangerous, for law enforcement. He encourages his followers to rise above the law, to be a moral vigilante. If his plan fails, he simply repeats it over and over again, like the athlete's stalker. 

He hit the jackpot in Minnesota. While the circumstances are as yet unknown, a young woman decided to insert herself into an illegal alien arrest. She physically opposed police action by armed agents of the law. She jumped into a gang fight.

There is a lot horrid here. This poor woman's decision will be analyzed to a frayed mess, but there are some very dangerous elements here that we will not discuss. The expression of minority interests is an age-old tradition in this country, but the progression to violent confrontation is not. Historically, regression to violence would be evidence of failure. Not now. 

Confrontation has been imported by the provocopreneur for his own purposes. Nor is it isolated; it requires some additional help. The perception of a young, unarmed woman trying to impose her will on hostile armed men requires some vindicating atmosphere, some notion that this obviously mad act has social and political justification. This is possible only with a compliant, scavenging Press. In Minnesota, it is aided and abetted by political leaders whose sideline kibbitzing suggests we avenge the poet. 

A misguided or unguided life does not deserve to die, especially in a situation like this. But one day later, the politicians double down, and extraneous non-factors wade in. The teacher's union has held a conference on it. Then a press conference. And a press release. There is no effort to right the social and legal ship. No politician rises to advise, "Be careful here. These are federal cops armed to the teeth."

Nor will we hear from the provocopreneur, who is raising a glass and looking for his next opportunity, his next Judas goat.