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How would she know? “I will not be slienced.” (Greta Thunberg in Bristol)
How would she know? Indeed, how would we know? It savours less of English understatement that of pointed irony to say that noone has tried to silence her. So it seems to me that we and she lack data on this point.
Greta has Asbergers Syndrome. Fans of ‘The Big Bang Theory’ know how many of the jokes depend on the impossibility of silencing the asbergian Sheldon by the gentle methods of social cues and hints, and the ease of doing so when to speak or to act requires that he move outside his idiosyncratic comfort zone. If Greta ever goes to China (obviously required by her proclaimed cause but AFAIK not even hinted at by her handlers or herself) then we may learn how far her ability not to be silenced extends beyond her condition. Meanwhile, we are entitled to reply to her, “How do you know?”
The question could also be put to her about other matters.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Who is trying to silence her? As far as I can see there are people queueing up to give her a platform for her misinformed rantings. Funny seeing her standing in the pouring rain telling the faithful that the world is on fire.
As far as I know, the team of “the big bang theory” has denid that shaldon cooper is a asberger at all.
Is Greta in Japan know? Do anybody care about her movement?
If we looks at china, we all know that this country is not a open society. Civil activism has no chance.
I undertand that. To my knowledge Greate is only known in Sweden and Germany.
She was rather huge here in the USA for about four weeks. You would see her several times per day on news programs, etc. Then, she quietly disappeared.
C’mon, Greta, give us names, dates, emails, texts, videos, transcripts. Something falsifiable, please.
Did you notice the picture of Greta and the crying girl in the linked article? Why is that girl crying? She seems too young to understand what’s going on (like Greta).
Is Greta being nice to that little girl? If what Greta says is true (world ending soon because we won’t adopt 18th Century technology and Socialism), then that’s not a nice thing to tell a small child. If what Greta has been saying is not true, then again, not nice. IMHO, Greta is not being nice. Of course, someone brought that little girl to the rally; they’re not being nice either!
Greta is a sock puppet for her parents and a wider class of watermelon “handlers”.
What she needs is to have a normal life, go back to school and find a boyfriend.
I don’t think she’s a sock puppet – she talked her mom into largely quitting her career. And let’s be honest, is it actually hard to imagine that a socially maladjusted teenager might have overly strong political views and a poor understanding of tradeoffs? (I say that as someone who was almost as bad at her age)
But no, she will not be silenced. Mocked, probably, but it won’t be silent.
@Alsadius – How deluded are you to believe the propaganda bullshit coming out of Team Greta?
I suppose you think your mate Adolf was cheated out of war at Munich as well?
“I don’t think she’s a sock puppet…”
The evidence isn’t absolutely conclusive, but it is at least suggestive…
https://pjmedia.com/trending/oops-it-turns-out-greta-thunbergs-social-media-posts-arent-necessarily-her-own/
“I will not be silenced.” Begs the question: has anyone tried to silence her? She’s got to have the biggest megaphone of any teenage dropout on earth!
Yes – contrary to the lies of Michael Bloomberg, the People’s Republic of China dictatorship is the largest producer of C02 emissions – and its emissions have been going up (not down – like the emissions of the United States) over the years.
If the people who control Greta Thunberg (a mentally ill child – who is the victim of being used, of horrible brainwashing emotional child abuse) were serious about reducing C02 emissions – then Greta would have be directed to denounce the PRC dictatorship, but there have been no Greta protests in China (none). Greta has already been “silenced”.
Whatever this is all about (perhaps diverting attention from the real threats facing Sweden, Britain and other Western countries) – it is clearly NOT about C02 emissions.
Perhaps it’s just a warning.
Considering the comedic contrasts of Greta’s pronouncements about stolen childhood with the pictures of her eating piles of junk food in a first class compartment on a train and living in (comparative) luxury in a western society, and considering how much people in general don’t like being lectured to by the privileged, isn’t it at least as possible that “Greta” is a psyop creation of anti-Progressive funsters (4chan?) as that she is a Progressive sock puppet?
I would argue that the net effect of The Greta Show™ has been more climate skepticism rather than less, and less regard for Watermelon policies rather than more.
No, because (1) the 4Chan psyops have to be essentially effort driven, ideally code driven since they are mostly basement dwelling NEETS with no social skills outside of internet trolling. The 4Chan trolls have no money to speak of, whereas everything that Greta does costs a bundle. This is especially true of the handlers that surround Greta at all times. Guess who pays for them? (Hint: It ain’t a bunch of losers on 4Chan)
(2) We know the background to Greta’s origin story and it is bogus. She was essentially selected by watermelons in the Swedish green movement and her “School Strike for Climate Change” was totally engineered for it’s potential PR value from day one.
@John Galt: Jesus, buddy. The fuck did I do that you feel like calling me a Nazi was a reasonable response?
@Nullius in Verba: Yeah, most famous people have social media minions. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s there now. And it doesn’t surprise me that she might lie about a ghostwriter, either. A lot of people do that too. She seems to be a true believer, but true believers often get assistance from people who know how to play the game, and she’s been getting more than most. It doesn’t make her fake (though it would make her a liar about writing her own content), it just makes her important. I’ve known a lot of people in the political realm, including some who get a ton of negative press coverage – hiring a PR firm is hardly unheard of, nor is having a buddy come in to help out.
@Paul Marks: It’s all about CO2 emissions. Remember, she actually believes what she says. She’s a frigging lunatic, and her claims are ridiculous, but just because we know they’re wrong does not mean that she knows they’re wrong. (Now, the people publishing stories about her? Harder to say what they believe.)
@Ferox: A lot of things are theoretically possible. But I see no reason to assume it. Is it really so hard to believe that a teenager might be overly passionate, kind of dumb about the issues, and then go viral? We don’t need to assume any conspiracy bigger than “dumb teenager + news outlets who want a quirky story that makes them feel good and gets a lot of clicks = annoying media sensation”.
“She seems to be a true believer, but true believers often get assistance from people who know how to play the game, and she’s been getting more than most. It doesn’t make her fake…”
“Sock puppet” doesn’t precisely mean “fake”, and it doesn’t mean insincere. It’s named after the practice of a blogger commenting on their own site under a different name to give themselves support/praise. Generically, it is the practice of using a proxy identity to disguise what would be seen as blatant propaganda operations coming from oneself as independent/impartial/innocent support. Related to terms like “astroturf” (marketing professionals creating the illusion of being a “grass-roots” organisation/campaign) and “figurehead”.
She’s not an independent schoolgirl who just upped and started a campaign. You might get a brief mention, but you don’t get the consistent, persistent and widespread coordinated global media attention and invited to talk to government heads if you are. She’s the front for a major campaigning organisation with lots of connections and lots of money. She’s been connected with Antifa. (She claimed she borrowed the Antifa T-shirt off a friend, and wasn’t herself aware they were a terrorist organisation. At the least, that says she has friends in those circles. Both her parents got T-shirts, too.) Her speeches are well-written, her media operation is slick, she gets to borrow million dollar yachts and speak with authority to Princes and Potentates, and somebody is paying the bills. She’s not just a random teenage schoolgirl on a homegrown mission. However, it is quite possible she is sincere in her beliefs.
Further to the definitions above, I suggest “poster child” comes nearest to capturing Greta’s role. The poster child can sincerely utter the most insolent propaganda because they are young and ignorant, so can be got to believe it. As the child’s youth lets their personal sincerity be combined with extremely dishonest propaganda, so Greta’s asbergers lets her be a little older than the true poster child and do this for months without (perhaps) yet picking up even slightly on those subtle clues about her handlers that a normal teenager would by now be beginning to notice.
Every conman knows the mark’s pride is his greatest asset. Selling the young on socialism, environmentalism or whatever means that when the first hint of reality comes knocking, their own pride will tempt them to build a wall against it. When the next, stronger hint presents itself, that first course of the wall is a base for building a next course. For many, the wall crumbles after a while and reality seeps (sometimes slowly) through. For others, that first turning away from the hint is the start of building the revolting reality-defying character of the mature lefty.
However Greta, as an asbergers, is a bit of a lusus naturae. We lack data on whether and when she will grow beyond being an easily-handled poster child.
Aside: John Galt, your response to Alsadius’ comment in this thread did strike me, as it did him, as very strange. Nullius, I felt your response to JuliaM (prior thread) needed the two smileys you gave it. As the SNP think I’m “no true Scotsman” so I’m aware you think some here are “no true libertarians”. Have two smileys. 🙂 😆
“I will not be Scienced.”
There…I fixed it for you!
“As the child’s youth lets their personal sincerity be combined with extremely dishonest propaganda, so Greta’s asbergers lets her be a little older than the true poster child and do this for months without (perhaps) yet picking up even slightly on those subtle clues about her handlers that a normal teenager would by now be beginning to notice.”
Maybe. I think there are many people with fully normal mental faculties who remain entirely oblivious throughout their adult lives. Indeed, I’ve often seen it suggested that the more intelligent people are, the more easily they are fooled, precisely because of their belief that they are too smart to be fooled that way.
“Nullius, I felt your response to JuliaM (prior thread) needed the two smileys you gave it. As the SNP think I’m “no true Scotsman” so I’m aware you think some here are “no true libertarians”.”
As always, it depends on where you draw the lines, and what you compare things to. I’m well aware that I’m a very ‘purist’ libertarian. There are other people who call themselves ‘libertarian’ meaning something like ‘more libertarian than anything else’ or ‘more libertarian than most of their conservative friends’. There are a lot of conservatives who have swung libertarian as a reaction to losses in the culture war – people see the benefits of freedom more clearly when they’re losing it, when they find society’s norms being imposed on them. I don’t disagree with them using the label. But there are usually points where they compromise on libertarian purity when it bumps up against conservative principles to which they are deeply attached.
It’s noticeable that most of my longest-lasting, most passion-arousing arguments with others here are on precisely those topics where libertarianism conflicts most strongly with conservatism. It’s hardly a surprise. And commenting on it wasn’t intended as any more of a criticism than Julia’s “Glory be”. It wasn’t a value-judgement, just an observation.
I’m just saying that the root of the conflict between me and others is that we stand on different parts of the Nolan chart. Like everyone, I’m using the terms ‘libertarian’ and ‘conservative’ here in a relative sense, it’s just that I’m comparing a different pair of groups.
🙂 🙂
Well, that is the claim I was suggesting that you should smile (you should smiley 🙂 ) when saying, around here. You may be ‘aware’ that yours is a very pure libertarianism – so pure that those who dissent from you are likely te be ‘impure’ compromising libertarians rather than simply disagreeing with you over matters of fact, interpretation or logic. But of course others are just as ‘aware’ of the reverse.
As regards specifics, this old comment of JuliaM’s isn’t the most obvious remark for someone to make if their conservatism is hostile to, rather than complementary to, their libertarianism. Evidence of her several times disagreeing with you may be evidence to the contrary if one is “aware” of being “a very ‘purist’ libertarian”, but to others the claim I quote at the head of this comment is more likely to give rise to different thoughts – thoughts appropriately terminated with 🙂 .
“You may be ‘aware’ that yours is a very pure libertarianism – so pure that those who dissent from you are likely te be ‘impure’ compromising libertarians rather than simply disagreeing with you over matters of fact, interpretation or logic.”
Sure. Take one of our recent arguments – does the right to Free Speech in the absence of harm apply to everyone, or can we exclude certain groups? Like the police recording ‘hate incidents’?
Is that a disagreement about fact, interpretation, or logic?
Or the ‘Group A Group B Trick’ that I keep going on about – you can all see the logic clearly when the Trick is used against a conservative-favoured group. You fail utterly to see the logic if it’s applied to Muslims or immigrants.
The rules of ‘fact, interpretation, and logic’ seem to change depending on which group is being attacked or defended, and I simply don’t accept that.
Libertarian principles must apply equally to everyone. Even people and ideas we despise and oppose, or think false, mad, or dangerous to society. Because there are other people who think the same about us, who from time to time gain the upper hand, and will apply the same rules to us. There is a very general symmetry between “them” and “us” – the situation looks exactly the same from the other side of the dividing line. So any general rule you propose to protect “us” and suppress “them” would, if generally accepted, be applied in a reflected symmetry by “them” against “us”. Thus, a general rule applicable to the whole of society must logically treat “us” and “them” the same. It must be agnostic to all dividing lines. As Kant explained it, we have to “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”
And the majority of the more ‘passionate’ arguments I have here are to do with the various ‘us’/’them’ dividing lines, and the question of symmetry.
“As regards specifics, this old comment of JuliaM’s isn’t the most obvious remark for someone to make if their conservatism is hostile to, rather than complementary to, their libertarianism.”
It’s also a comment I agree with, so perhaps not a representative test of our differences. Julia didn’t specify how her views differed, and I can’t recall that she ever took a particularly active part in arguing with me, so it’s hard to tell if it’s the same issue. But I’d note that the linked comment is expressed in the abstract, and it’s usually only when we get to concrete cases that we disagree.
If I simply asked you out of the blue whether you believed that the right to free speech should be universal, with no context, I suspect you too would express enthusiatic agreement. The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. “Any member of a civilized community” obviously implies anyone. It even applies to politically-incorrect people being rude, offensive, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise controversial on Twitter. But does that apply to state employees too? No, apparently not. They’re not ‘us’. They’re ‘them’.
And I guess you could call that a disagreement over ‘interpretation and logic’, but it’s still rooted in the difference between conservatism (for which ‘us’/’them’ is about right/left) and libertarianism (for which ‘us’/’them’ is about libertarians/authoritarians).
“… but to others the claim I quote at the head of this comment is more likely to give rise to different thoughts – thoughts appropriately terminated with 🙂 .”
No doubt! 🙂
May I offer a (only very slightly) different interpretation?
I don’t think it’s necessarily about right/left, but more purely about tolerance vs intolerance (which you do note).
I have my own intolerances, but they happen to line up with those, stereotypically, considered to be the on the “left”.
Like many people, I consider myself to be intolerant of those that are intolerant – pick a “-phobia” or an “ism” out of thin air, and I’m probably not keen on it.
But many people on the “right” would consider themselves to be on the receiving end of intolerance. It’s what anti-PC sentiment is rooted in – the idea that the PC are intolerant of genuine concerns (about many different subjects). So the “right” also consider themselves to be intolerant “merely”of intolerance.
Muslims? They’re intolerant of western society and norms.
LGBT+? They’re intolerant of traditional families.
The PC? They’re intolerant of unmoderated speech.
Immigrants? They’re intolerant of…etc etc.
I think it’s more that everyone feels that they’re only intolerant of the intolerant – it’s just that none of us can agree on who is the most intolerant.
Meanwhile, it’s really bloody difficult to accept or to even understand the “other side’s” narrative. Understanding why people feel certain things about group A, that seem obviously bigoted to a person in group A, is really hard, and it’s easier just to write them off and ignore them.
I certainly don’t think it’s limited to conservatism – whilst my focus tends to be more on keeping an eye on, say, the alt-right rather than antifa, I’m certainly looking askance at Blue Labour in the UK (I think Chapo is an imperfect but reasonably close analogy in the US?) for many of the same reasons.
Should I do a smiley now?
😉
“I think it’s more that everyone feels that they’re only intolerant of the intolerant”
Yes, because the other side’s intolerance of our intolerance is obviously unreasonable and unjustifiable, while *our* intolerance of *their* intolerance is just plain common sense, and not really intolerance at all…
And that’s exactly what the *other* side believes, too. We are perfectly symmetric in our perception of asymmetry.
It’s a cognitive blindspot – and very similar to our visual blindspot in that you can’t actually see that you’re blind there. (The human blind spot is about 6 degrees across. That’s roughly the same size as a 10 cm disc at 1 metre range. Or the palm of your hand at arms length. Shut one eye 😉 – can you see the huge hole in your world?) It’s certainly not limited to conservatism – it’s a characteristic of all humanity.
Smileys are our one remaining hope for peace and sanity. 🙂
Exactly, and most of that comes from personal experience.
I don’t *think* (off the top of my head) I’ve ever been harmed by lefty PC-types (my view on PC-laws is very very different to my view on people who interpret PC to mean moderating private speech of your own volition). So I pay it less mind than others.
I have, on the other hand, been harmed by, uh, views that could be considered non-PC, and by some laws along those lines, so that’s naturally where my focus falls. And my sympathies naturally lie with others that feel the same, albeit for different reasons.
I try to understand that others feel the same, whilst their focus is in the other direction – I just don’t think I’m very good at “understanding”, and I think the same statement would hold true for those “others” in the other direction. We can only try to understand the other point of view.
Yes (obviously).
Senior civil servants’ speech is restricted – for example, they are not allowed to brief against their ministers. Your discussion of Rutnam did not seem to see a problem with that. But when the empowered state employees are less elevated, you seem less clear.
“We speak, you listen” is not free speech: a maoist diversity lesson meets that requirement! Where the state teacher has the formal power to compel attendance and attention, where the state policeman has the formal power to arrest you for what you say, then defending their unqualified right, e.g. to speak while you are silenced or to subject you to the legal disability of a record at their absolute whim, is no obvious ‘purist’ defence of their free speech but very open to challenges of fact, interpretation and logic. That pre-crime record can have consequences – it could indeed bring harm you – so while one might prefer some laws not exist at all, while they do, one might prefer even-handed legality to the arbitrariness of the anointed.
Just as I dislike the present power of the state, but would dislike even more the unvoted arbitrariness of uncontrolled civil ‘servants’, so I dislike the current anti-free speech laws but would dislike even more the vehmic arbitrariness of lower-level state servants-become-masters writing their whimsical denunciations.
I touch on why arbitrariness is the greater evil in this post.
“Your discussion of Rutnam did not seem to see a problem with that.”
That’s right, it didn’t, because as I explained in the previous discussion, there is a contractual basis for that. Mill’s Harm Principle has a get-out in the case of informed consent. If you voluntarily choose to restrict your speech in exchange for someone else paying you, that’s an obligation you need to keep. And everywhere the contract is silent, the right to free speech remains. But this gives rise to no special distinction for public servants. Anyone working for a private company is under exactly the same sort of restrictions.
The question was on what basis was you demanding to restrict the police’s speech in the absence of any contractual relationship with you obliging them to do so? A policeman’s contract is with the police authorities, and contractually they are obliged by policy to record non-crime hate incidents (but being non-crimes, cannot take any enforcement action based on them). On what basis are we saying “No, you can’t, this is wrong”?
“Where the state teacher has the formal power to compel attendance and attention, where the state policeman has the formal power to arrest you for what you say, then defending their unqualified right to speak freely while you are legally silenced is no ‘purist’ defence of free speech but very open to challenges of fact, interpretation and logic.”
Yes, of course. But the challenge has to be to the power to compel silence, not to their speech. They should be able to speak, and we should be able to reply. That we can’t reply is one wrong. To forbid them to speak too would be two wrongs.
In any case, there are many circumstances where private citizens can also say things we cannot avoid hearing. When you go to the shops and find someone stood on a soapbox ranting about the Second Coming, or advertising, or singing to music, by the time you realise what they’re doing it’s already too late. You’ve heard what they said. There is no issue with not being able to avoid hearing – the issue is solely with *anyone* telling *anyone else* they have to shut up. Not asking them to do so, not paying them to do so, but forcing them. This alone is the problem.
Nor is it solely a problem because the state can use force. Criminals can use force, too. When racists or homophobes or anti-semites or antifa or whatever attack their victims in the street, or in clubs and bars, it inspires terror. And then hateful words are seen as a precursor to violence. They insult you. If you answer back, that is seen as an escalation, an attack, a justification for violence. So people are silenced by the threat. Does the fact that hate speech is widely seen as an implicit threat mean that society has the right to silence it in turn? No of course not! That would be two wrongs. A criminal may be rightly chastised for their crimes, but in respect of their legal behaviour, they still have the same rights everyone else does. You can only object to their use of violence, and hate speech that does not credibly threaten violence, even from people prepared to use it, is free speech. Nasty, unpleasant, immoral it may be, but it should be allowed.
And again, being a public servant or a private citizen makes absolutely no difference. Restricting free speech (without consent, except to prevent harm to others) is wrong.
This is what the judge said. The police are perfectly entitled to write it down. They are *not* entitled to act on it. They cannot arrest the guy, or even threaten to arrest him if he continues, because it is not a crime. Arrests and credible threats of arrest are a use of force. Making a record is not.
The judge said *both* have free speech rights. At the time, you guys seemed to be arguing that only the citizen did – the policeman’s speech was contrained purely because he worked for the state, and separately from what was required of him by contract as an employee. It was being argued that it was wrong for the judge to give free speech to the police or the policeman too.
The principles have to be universal, or they’re not principles. Free speech applies by default to everyone, and can only be constrained by informed consent or to prevent harm to others. No excuses. No exceptions. Society sometimes does us wrong by enforcing our silence. We do just as much wrong, by symmetry, by universality, if we do the same back.
Does that help? Do you see what I mean, now? 🙂
Nullius in Verba (March 4, 2020 at 12:34 am), so (IIUC) you agree with me that (for example) if Priti Patel ever gains control of her department from the Rutnams, and if Boris’ administration then is influenced by polls of likely Tory voters to reign in the Rutnams’ eagerness to expand the hate speech laws, then the exiguous “free speech right” of the police that you have been defending (to spend on-duty time recording un-PC remarks that don’t – yet – rise to a prosecutable level) will fade away like the morning dew, legitimately (“contractually”) replaced with orders that they spend that time instead on e.g. stopping violent crime.
It seems all you are telling me is what I already knew – that I (and the rest of us here) have no power to refocus police priorities of ourselves but must use as best we can what I called the cluncky mechanism of the state back when this discussion started.
I continue to think your claim to exceptional purity of libertarianism will read best when accompanied by multiple smileys. I suggest we let readers decide for themselves.
(Getting back on-topic) did you know that the US is a worse place to bring up children than Saudi Arabia? So says
Apparently the weighting factors are high for “sustainability” – or at least, for the government’s talking about it – and the US scored very low for that.
I’m sure Greta agrees. After all, a place you can only get to or from by sailing in a yacht while relieving yourself in a bucket probably did not feel so great to her.
“so (IIUC) you agree with me that (for example) if…”
Hypothetically, yes, if the government decided to change the policy, no doubt that would change the amount of time the police spend on it. But so far as I know, the policy’s got nothing to do with civil service preferences, it was a recommendation out of the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry that has been enacted for political reasons and with widespread public backing, and I’ve no idea what the polling looks like among likely Tory voters on support or opposition for hate incident recording. Do you? If you’ve got any links to actual statistics, I’d be very interested!
“then the exiguous “free speech right” of the police that you have been defending […] will fade away like the morning dew”
I’m not defending the scare-quotes-“free speech right” of the police, I’m defending free speech, full stop. “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” The moment you find yourself thinking up excuses for denying free speech to *anyone*, even people who are rightly despised, alarm bells should ring.
And no, the *right* will not fade away. Even if they’re not required to record them, they can still do so if they find it useful.
“…replaced with orders that they spend that time instead on e.g. stopping violent crime.”
These measures *are* aimed at stopping violent crime! They’re trying to address the relatively high levels of violent assaults against minorities, and public riots and violent protests erupting when controversies blow up. (Like the frequent fights between radical feminists and trans-activists that the case mentioned in evidence.) The point of recording non-criminal conflict is so that if/when a violent criminal conflict eventually occurs, they know the background to it. They know who’s who in the community. They know who to talk to, and what their positions are, and what the history of the dispute is. It’s called background criminal intelligence.
They also know things like the dates of big football matches for the local teams, and the addresses and phone numbers of all the local pawnbrokers, and how heavy the traffic is today, and where the worst traffic delays and accident blackspots are, they know how the weather affects crime, and how an economic downturn affects crime, and they know who knows the gossip on the gangs and the villains and the nutters. They know when politicians and celebrities come to town. They know when people organise protests, and meetings, and fetes, and political rallies, and speeches, and car boot sales. The police record lots of things besides actual crime reports; anything that they think might be useful to the job. If they didn’t know what was going on in the community, they’d be a lot worse than they are at preventing/solving crime. Making notes of things is not unusual.
“(Getting back on-topic) did you know that the US is a worse place to bring up children than Saudi Arabia?”
I know that many people think so! But that’s freedom of belief. 🙂 Chacun à son goût.