Confessions of a student activist

The time would come, I heard my fellows say,
To rise above the mediocrity;
Though knowing not the hour nor the day
When it would come, I wanted to agree -
To stand against the armies of the night
Whose persecution complex, in this game,
Has long been cultivated that it might
Best keep the Reichstag oiled for the flame.
But I am small, and dare not stand alone,
Nor, when the endgame comes at last, to fold;
No David, I, with sling and well-cast stone,
Nor Robin Hood with bow of burning gold.
What fellowship have I, to help regain
My life lost on the corner of Biscayne?

Blame Florida

Hat tip to Trinity for posting this on her blog first:

"Fuck the police" is cliché, but I left my muse on the corner of Biscayne Boulevard; my rhetoric is clotted and doesn't flow as smoothly or frequently as it used to.

So what else is there to say?

I'm bad at math, and ever since I wrote a utilitarian defense of blaming rape victims I've avoided hedonic calculus, but it's still useful - even if only for comparisons.

So let's do some pseudomath.

I refused to heed an order to disperse to earn my epidural hematoma.

As far as I can tell, the student (I keep wanting to say "kid," but that's not fair: I'm not that much older than he is) did nothing specifically to earn his tasering. Taking too long for his questions, sure, but that's not a crime under any civil code I'm aware of - and Kerry obviously didn't consider him a waste of time, because he bothered to answer the kid'sstudent's questions while the tasering was underway.

So, breaking out the hedonic calculator, who came out worse in this? It seems like a simple ratio of harm dealt divided by provocation, so does the student's zero value for having no offense cancel out my side of the equation or not?

I'm overthinking this too much.

And oh yes, because I don't have anything better to say right now: fuck the police.