Physics and Current US Politics

There is a perfectly good law of physics that says that for every force there is an equal and opposite reaction. I like this law. It's not as powerful to me as my favorite--entropy--but in the case of current US politics it seems the most appropriate.

But before I explain the connection between physics and politics, as I see it, I should explain why this is the first blog I have written since 2013. It's because everything right now is pretty much as it was two years ago. Congress has done nothing positive. The president has continued on in his Asian style of working behind the scenes. And the conservative/republican/theocratic minority has continued on in its judgmental, resistive, prescriptive way.

How many times can a writer point out the same hypocrisy and mean spirit without boring even herself?

What brings me back to this blog, however, are the civic clashes that are springing up in various cities where the police force seems to have decided that they are the enforcers of a particular culture (moneyed for a starter) rather than the protectors of the people they nominally serve.

Right here, though, I need to make clear that I am not on a racist rant. Under the right circumstances, the police will taser and shoot just about anyone who crosses their path. Most memorably for me was the case where security guards tasered an elderly man who had a psychotic episode recovering from heart surgery in the hospital. They're lucky his heart held up at all. As they walked away high fiving one another, it was clear that it was all about power, which is why this is all so dangerous.

And here is where physics comes in and that forgotten law of equal and (often completely unanticipated) opposite reactions. It is a law that strikes me as having very large implications.

For example, whatever made our gun enthusiasts think there would be no reaction to concealed carry laws? When everyone potentially carries a hidden weapon, everyone is potentially dangerous, even those who would never dream of even owning a gun. The police must suspect everyone, even old women of 90 who could still pack a piece in their purse.

And whatever made Congress think that arming local police forces as if they were about to be deployed in  a war zone would calm things down rather than inflame them?  As I heard somewhere give a man a hammer and the world becomes a nail. Give the police enough armament so sink the Titanic, couldn't it be predicted that they will look for ships to sink? I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, but the obvious effect of providing assault weapons is the tacit approval for their use. Department regulations only go so far in the adrenalin rush of a feeling of threat.

Then, of course, there are our zealots who insist on confusing their own opinions with universal truth. What other effect can there be from lifting regulations on business other than the emergence of  the cheating class? Anyone other than an "enthusiast" could (and did) predict that the reaction would be a rush by the unscrupulous to fill the void of lifted restriction by inserting greed and graft.

And, finally, who in their right mind cannot see that shifting national priorities to local governments for enforcement means that local priorities and small mindedness can be the only result. Weakening the national government that is supposed to preserve the overall moral culture of this country merely abandons people to the whims and prejudices of people who have never read, let alone understood, the Constitution that they throw around. I'm talking here of the mom and pop border posses. God knows what laws they think they are enforcing.

So that brings me back to physics. Yes, it's hard to learn. It requires concentration and commitment. Yet, it is the queen of the sciences and it has the most to teach us about this world we live in. We could all stand to step back from guilty self-interest and understand that in the scale of a universe that is billions of years old, we could benefit from recognizing our own insignificance.