The Social Contract in Canada is Breaking
On July 25 2023 Toronto Police Services tweeted as a subtweet that at 8:40pm Officers were searching for a man with a firearm. In the tweet they announced that a K-9 Dog was shot and killed. This would make now ten dead Police Officers and One dead K-9 since the last time the National Police and Peace Officer Memorial read out the names of the deceased(The last week of September). Six were killed by gunshots and two were stabbed to death. The other two died in Motor Vehicle Accidents related to the job.
The previous year there were three with only one dying from gunshot wounds. The year prior there were three with two dying from gunshot wounds. The year prior two in motor vehicle collisions. The year prior to that three with two dying from gunshot wounds.
This marks an unheard of increase in the number of Officers that have died in the line of duty in Canada and to me it signifies yet another sign that our social contract is breaking or even broken. Since I wrote my previous Article “Hostile Public Spaces” where I noted that there appeared to be an increase in Officer’s being killed on duty there has been an explosion in crime, homelessness, addiction and violence. One cannot travel to any city now without noting the utter state of decay and urban blight.
Urban Decay
As I type this article out in Starbucks in Prince Albert the Cornerstone shopping area has a band of roving addicts who wander around checking door handles, harassing shoppers and stealing from stores. Even the Starbucks I am in now keeps all their condiments behind the counter now and only puts out a few purchasable items right around the till. The barista asked me what I would like in my coffee so I asked him why there’s no condiments out for customers to mix their own coffee. He laughed nervously then said it was just easier if it was behind the Counter. I pressed him, “Really, is that the reason?” He laughed again looked side to side quickly and said, “we’ve had some issues.” then went to make my order. It is so socially verboten for people to even admit there are issues, we have to keep up this strange social illusion that everything is okay. Yet when gang members and addicts come into the store the employee’s are faced with a myriad of impossible decisions that they have to make. Even calling the police on socially unacceptable behavior in your business comes fraught with risk.
Do you call the Police and risk your employer firing you for creating problems? Or maybe Social Justice Karen will film it and plaster it on social media trying to get you fired, doxxed and harassed. Perhaps the people causing issues will go to the media and complain or if they are juveniles the parents will complain that your business is harassing some teenagers, “just blowing off some steam.” Maybe the police won’t even show up if they get too many calls from your location. Like the Tim Hortens on 2nd where they had to simply stop in store dining and for awhile went to drive through only because staff members were being verbally and physically assaulted by street people. This is reality, you can’t fake it away, pretend it isn’t happening and doesn’t exist.
To ensure the feelings of hopelessness do not cease, our urban environment has been reshaped by the Broken Window Theory. As people care less and less about petty acts of vandalism and property damage because they are so drained of the energy to want to address these issues, the landscape is transformed which only enables more bold acts of criminality. Shattered glass at bus stops, gang graffiti denoting territory, abandoned stolen cars on highways, trash and debris scattered, people sleeping on the stairs of bus terminals, dirty needles scattered everywhere and anywhere, tents in public parks and the disgusting smells of smoked drugs are just a few of the contributing factors that indicate that we’ve given up hope. The criminal element sees this and they feel right at home moving on in to fill these spaces that we’ve ceded ground to as a society.
We get softer every day
Yet, as negative elements become more and more emboldened our society continues to become softer and softer, treating increased aggression with more social pressure on the victims to be kind, compassionate and caring towards people who will slit your throat if you refuse to be victimized. There is considerable social pressure directed towards non-offending persons to accept what is happening around us, that it is just part of living in a modern big city. The most egregious part is that you aren’t allowed to do anything about it yourself. Try to solve the issue without Government intervention then you are targeted and told to leave them alone. The Government and these poverty pimp non-profits take extreme exception to solutions that inconvenience the criminal element.
Businesses that lock up items are harassed for creating an unwelcoming environment and inconveniencing customers, cities that put dividers between bench seats are hurting homeless people who will sleep on them throughout the day and evening, loss prevention staff are viewed as protecting corporate profits (when really they’re keep your cost down), businesses that lock their bathrooms for “customers only” want poor people to pee themselves, people that fight back against being assaulted, robbed are told “it’s only items bro, you have insurance right?”, banks have nasty articles written denouncing them when the people who engage in regular cheque fraud aren't allowed to open an account, businesses that erect fences and use raised stones in front of their entrances are told they are hurting people by using hostile architecture. In some cities now they won’t even listen to talk that “dehumanizes and demoralizes” unhoused people when people complain about the lawlessness and threaten the complainant with punishment if they refuse to abide.
Anarcho-Tyranny
Notice that in the above examples none of the responsibility is put back on the individuals breaking the social contract. This is anarcho tyranny. This is low hanging fruit policing. This is a luxury liberal belief structure. The State and it’s clingers are more interested in policing your response to these hostile situations then resolving the situations themselves because they’ve given up.
“Your punishment for having a knife when they searched you would be very different from the thief’s. For him to have a knife was mere misbehavior, tradition, he didn’t know any better. But for you to have one was ‘terrorism.’”- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I remember being in downtown Prince Albert and I go out of my vehicle and there was a man who was obviously tweeking and may have been mentally ill on the side walk screaming and lunging at people who were walking by. There was a By-Law Officer that walked around him and began to write a ticket for an expired meter and the irony hit me like a soup can in a sock. We (that includes you, you live in a society) have given up. We are completely and utterly incapable of helping that man and nor do we want to anymore because empathy has been weaponized against us, so he is free to roam the streets unhinged until he does something egregious enough that the system has to do something with him. This is the freedom we’ve given this man, the freedom to starve and die alone in the streets, the freedom to victimize people who must show him charity and compassion, cheered on by progressives as an example of “respecting his human rights”.
As our society seems more and more utterly incapable of making any type of meaningful dent in criminal activity the pressure has been removed from the judiciary and the police to resolve crime and placed onto the normal citizen to be “kind and compassionate” by not filming or photographing criminal behavior, to ignore shoplifters and to support policing people who speak out about the criminal problems in their communities. Law and order style policing is fine if it is policing mean words, protestors that the Government of the day disagrees with or normal working class people with everything to lose. This sends very mixed signals. Every day working people see their workplaces policing their social media use, airport screening measures get more intrusive, the laws that guard social behavior become more complex, being nice and conformist to corporations lest you get de-banked and other examples of tightening social and moral behavior for the “normies”. Yet while this is occurring the people who make these rules enrich themselves, refuse to investigate their own bad behavior and live excellent lives of luxury while snubbing their noses at their lessers (you and I). Yet the every day person continues to abide by this social contract that’s been changed without our permission and is not collaborative but punitive in every sense. A new modern social serfdom.
Dead Cops, Dead Social Contract
All of these issues have come to a head now with one of the deadliest years in Canadian History for Police Officer line of duty deaths. Police are given the state monopoly on violence to take the pressure off of the rest of society. This is supposed to be a symbiotic relationship. Robert Peel famously said “the police are the public, and the public are the police”. An attack on a Police Officer is an attack on everyone who believes in the fundamental theory of law and order in Canada. At one point in time in Canada a Police Officer dying in the line of duty was news coverage for at least a month, dignitaries attended the funerals and the funerals in some occasions were televised for the public to mourn as well. Now Police Officer’s dying is in and out of the news cycle in less then two weeks. This marks a significant departure from our societal norms and the social contract. One could theorize that some of this has been a result of the over policing of people during COVID, some pretty egregious uses of force and the Police Officers who brutalized non-violent protestors outside of Parliament during the Freedom Convoy then bragged about being “jackboots on the ground” in a private text group. Criticism of Police is always warranted in these situations but this extends far beyond these issues.
It used to be that gangs focused on profit, there’s little profit in murdering cops and that used to bring an insane amount of heat onto criminal activities which interfered with the number one priority, profit. That isn’t the case anymore. Gang members have moved past a profit based illicit business and are now in a violence based economy. It’s not about how much product you can move, it’s about how much street cred can you muster. Their currency is “respect” and you want it and you’ll get it however you need too. This is why gang members turn on each other and kill each other all the time now. Shootings in Toronto happen daily in turf wars between warring neighborhoods, just because someone was born in one neighborhood they’re automatically recruited into the lifestyle because their enemies won’t give them leniency. This isn’t the mafia, there’s no real loyalty. As 50cent would say, it’s all about “get rich or die trying”.
These young men (but increasingly women) feel disenfranchised by society and they resent the society they live in. For a gang member nothing could be more humiliating then to be a wage slave working at McDonalds, to them that fate is worse then death itself and they know that there is far more profit to be made selling drugs in one night or pimping our women then two months of being a “wagie”. So in this new criminal culture hurting people is not only ok, it’s encouraged. Why is it in a modern home invasion it’s increasingly reported that the criminal(s) tie up the homeowners and torture them now? Why not just take the valuables and go? It’s because they hate the homeowners, the homeowners represent the lie to them. The lie that people can life in harmony with one another, the lie that people can love each other and build a family unit. They resent that wealth is usually built up slowly with hard work and dedication, along with support from a family structure. They see their favorite idols getting quick money and spending it on hedonistic simple pleasures.
For so many of these dysfunctional people, their lives are tumultuous cycles of situationally based wealth from crime followed often by drug induced withering. It’s been like that forever for them, from childhood witnessing horrors inflicted onto them by the people who are supposed to love them and it will be carried on to the next generation as they enact similar horrors on their own children. There are quite a few criminals who would score high on the Hare Psychopathy Test as well. Remember when you graduated from University or got married? That was a peak life event for you, there’s a huge dopamine discharge and you get a small bump whenever you remember it later on. Violent criminals get the same high when they are enacting violence against people. The idea of stomping someone’s head in may cause you to be horrified or uneasy whereas the violent criminal gets a high from it, it’s a release similar to a peak moment.
Now to put all of this into context with Cop killing. The Police Officer represents everything they hate about society. Control, orderliness and authority. The Police Officer is trained to enact violence on behalf of the State in place of the People doing it themselves. This used to work but it isn’t anymore. Sentences for killing Civilians have reduced further and further as the years have gone by. With the import of some Americanized elements of gangsterism into our criminal culture, the ultimate street credit that can be gained by a criminal now is by killing a cop. Killing someone who is armed and trained to defend themselves and other people will garner a gang member the ultimate level of respect amongst his peers. It isn’t about turning a profit for these gangs, it’s about sending a message that you are the boss of the streets.
Randall McKenzie arrived at the hospital after allegedly killing an OPP Officer and told the media “Fuck you goof!” while his mother tried to get him and his sister(?) to stop making a scene. This is the attitude that these criminalized young men have about society. Randall was on bail and skipped it already, he was a fugitive who got into a shootout with police. Allegedly killing a cop was Graduation day for Randall. Do you think he’ll hesitate to do the same to you if you mildly inconvenienced him?
In Conclusion
As September comes closer the media continues to report violent interactions between suspects and police, recently it was reported that a female police officer was recovering after being beaten about the head. The emboldened criminal element knows that they have little to fear from our justice system and even less to fear in from our penal system. We live in a society now where the bounds of the social contract only apply to the law abiding citizenry. Our trust in the Institution of policing has been shattered from COVID over policing which puts the peelian principles at risk. The police are no longer the people and the people are no longer the police. Yet within that sphere our justice system seems content to continue to dole out ideologically based lenient sentences for heinous crimes, yet these repeat and violent criminals are coming back out of prison more violent then ever. They’re empowered and it’s only to our detriment.
Something has to change soon before the social contract breaks completely. Thanks for reading. Please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment below!
Wow. Great article. You nailed it.
Great piece!