Never Again! (Never say never?)

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Desperate times call for desperate measures.  Leaders must "think out of the box,” which may require mismanagement of human capital and its exotic deployment. 

With all this in mind, Vladimir Putin has opted for a creative solution to the manpower shortage occasioned by his initiative of bloodshed against Ukraine. According to mainstream news sources, Putin pardoned violent felons, including at least one serial cannibal and a satanist killer, in exchange for meritorious service in the notorious Storm-Z unit of the Russian army.

Could this quick fix be tweaked and perhaps sanitized a bit for experimentation over here? It certainly wouldn't pass constitutional muster, but there are ways around that, as we see in many salient unrelated current events.

Some Super Max alumni, with their formidable skill sets, might rise to the challenge of a second chance and redeem themselves as productive members of society.  

Maybe they could ride shotgun on ambulances to protect our EMS personnel who now should get combat pay because of the frequent instances of their being victims of major assaults. And they could perform admirably in the private sector, like shadowing Triple A Road Disservice battery jump-starters, who took five hours to respond to my emergency call last week.   

Or they might provide safe conduct for posterity of Holocaust victims through no-go public areas and thoroughfares. Maybe they can fill in for the striking Mount Sinai postdocs. Or be a talent pool for restoration of the fifth firefighter from 20 engine companies, which the city, in its infinite folly, cut. 

They could be understudies for per diem assignments, like being poll watchers during elections.  

And they work incognito in Scabby the Rat costumes to protest the City Council's stonewalling of its staffers during collective bargaining.  The city recently had its annual SantaCon. Will a Scabby the RatCon become a prop for informational picketing, when management thumbs its nose at organized labor across a spectrum of industries, such as commercial office cleaners and eBay.

The possibilities are endless, now that all city agencies are being slashed because budget priorities have been shifted to accommodate commitments made to tens of thousands of new friends from abroad. 

Wherever one stands on the issue, the fact remains that our city's wealth is finite and whatever financial triage is enacted, there will be denial and deprivation among the rest of the population, whoever that "rest" may be. City Comptroller Brad Lander was right to revoke Mayor Adams' emergency powers for asylum seeker contracts, which were in some cases being awarded to entities that delivered more silence than bang for the buck of taxpayers and left migrants hanging.

The folks who've had run-ins with the justice system could, as convicts emerita, draw upon their RICO skills to do some high-powered white-collar work as well. With all the cooking of books going on, they could demonstrate their expertise as sous chefs.  

Given that credential mandates are often no longer strictly enforced but may be waived for a variety of undemocratic reasons, they may serve as consultants, bringing their unique perspectives to a range of timely issues from congestion pricing to the implementation of green-energy policy to artificial intelligence.

And speaking of artificial intelligence, I shall awkwardly pivot to the artificial intelligence, or rather the artificial sophistication of some of the addled wits of academia, as epitomized recently during Congressional hearings about antisemitism.  

The myopia and cowardice of the Ivy League presidents was symptomatic of the crisis in moral leadership that is increasingly defining us.  

Was it spiritual rot, a psychic vacuum or a lapse of judgment from being caught off guard before the implications and ramifications could race through and settle in their minds? There is not enough charity left in the world to earn them the benefit of the doubt.

When asked whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" qualifies as "bullying or harassment,” the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Liz Magill, who has since resigned, could not in good conscience give an unequivocal answer. She called it "a context-dependent decision.” Her MIT counterpart, Sally Kornbluth, did not find such language a violation of codes of conduct unless it targeted specific individuals. Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, did a verbal tiptoe around the subject, also citing "context.”

"Context,” according to Merriam-Webster, refers to 'the circumstances, conditions, or objects by which one is surrounded.” Synonyms include backdrop, framework, milieu, ambience, scenario and terrain. Methinks these college presidents are playing intellectual footsie over a matter of grave historical relevance. They would know better than to do so over the abomination of slavery.  The argument over genocide against Jews should also be immune to pseudo-intellectual finessing.

Gay affirmed Harvard's respect for the value of "free expression and giving a wide berth to free expression, even to views that are objectionable.” The evidence of unequal observance of this commendable precept is louder than the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 and hotter than the ashes of Vesuvius. Or Treblinka.

What a shame that language is such a pliable substance and putty off the tongues of people of prestigious and presumably just authority. They fiddle with the DNA of word-meanings and do violence to the concepts behind them. They provide a cozy philosophical base to their biases and sometimes attach subliminal messages that don't belong.  

They are like identity thieves who steal the definitions of words or appropriate their meanings to their own devious ends. They infect the mainstream of parlance and the so-called marketplace of ideas. They become agents, or at least candidates, of demagoguery.

It is unseemly to hide behind the cover of expedient phony erudition. The testifying college presidents should have replied confidently in a nanosecond with plain, resounding speech.   Apart from the shock and damage they caused, they gave culture and scholarship a blemish and bad odor. 

Many of the core principles of an enlightened and genuinely progressive society, including our traditions of education, have been most impressively and consistently articulated by unionists.  The labor movement should rally against antisemitism and all its coded slogans.

A person can be moved by a song or a symphony without needing to have the elements of harmony and melody parsed by a musicologist. It's an elemental thing. So is the dignity of humankind. It ought not require persuasion, given the unique sacrifice of Jewish martyrs within living memory, to sway custodial guardians and administrators of universal values of reverence for life, to outright condemn racism and antisemitism and quell it in their jurisdictions.

That should not be too much to ask.  After all, we are not Putin's prisoners.

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