MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut’s population is barely growing (only 0.1 percent in 2022) and its economy growing very slowly, but its elected officials are as busy as ever deploring the awful things happening elsewhere in the country, and they may be thankful for the distraction. In recent days mass shootings in California and murderous misconduct by police in Tennessee have prompted Connecticut's leaders to issue proclamation after proclamation deploring the incidents, as if their constituents had any doubt about their feelings, or thought that those feelings might make any difference.
Connecticut's leaders seemed to feel the need to strike a pose -- to gain publicity for their self-righteousness.
The people who do the hiring for the Memphis Police Department may have a lot to answer for, but then Connecticut has enough of its own police misconduct to answer for, misconduct captured on body-camera video just as it was captured the other day in Memphis.
A Connecticut state trooper is facing a charge of manslaughter for repeatedly shooting a young man, Mubarek Soulemane, three years ago as he sat quietly in a car that had been stopped on a highway in West Haven after a wild chase.
Five New Haven officers are facing charges of reckless endangerment and cruelty for dragging and dumping Randy Cox, whose neck had been broken during an abrupt stop in a police van last June.
The execution in West Haven and the rough treatment of the man in police custody in New Haven evoked from Connecticut's leaders only a fraction of the indignation they have mustered for the police misconduct a thousand miles away in Tennessee.
And while elected officials should avoid prejudicing proceedings in criminal justice, Connecticut's elected officials might do well to show more awareness of the social disintegration that police officers confront every day -- social disintegration that has made recruiting officers critically difficult, especially in the cities, which have the worst crime.
As Connecticut's elected officials were fulminating about the mass shootings in California and the police riot in Memphis, two 16-year-olds were shot on the streets of Hartford. The incident passed without official comment and nearly without any notice at all by news organizations, this kind of thing long having become typical of Connecticut's cities, too common to deplore. Besides, any elected official who deplored what has become so common might be obliged to fix responsibility for it, a search that would lead him to some of his own constituents.
Better to deplore California and Tennessee, since nobody there votes here.
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Afghanistan and especially its women are getting sympathy around the world as the theocratic fascists again ruling the benighted place, the Taliban, are banning women from education and service with the international charitable organizations that are trying to prevent starvation and disease in the country.
But disgraceful as the Taliban regime is, sympathy for the Afghans is misplaced. For Afghanistan's men and women alike had their chance during the Western world's 20-year attempt at nation building there.
While some Afghans showed courage in pursuit of a more democratic society, most Afghans, including most Afghan women, were indifferent. Many Afghan women now realize that they won't have much of a future without education, but they can do nothing about it -- unless, of course, they want to pick up a gun, learn how to use it, and fight a revolution.
Few want to do that. Instead many will try to leave the country. Some will head for the United States, and a few may deserve consideration.
But most Afghans now deserve to live under the oppression they refused to fight, and the United States should not make that oppression any easier for the oppressors with financial or material assistance of any kind. Neither should the United States intervene to help overthrow the Taliban. No, Afghanistan should be left in peace to evolve gradually in its misery.
If Afghan women want a better life, they will have to contend for it themselves over the long term, just as women in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other women-oppressing theocracies will have to.
No one will be liberating them but themselves.
Chris Powell (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com) is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester.
