[Minnesota State Senator Jeff ] Howe attended the visitation, and at around 10:30, he and 75 to 100 others entered the church to await the start of the funeral. His prediction was wrong: Tim Walz did show up, a little later, accompanied by the Secret Service. Howe observed that once they arrived, the Secret Service agents began wanding those who entered the church. But they never did anything about the 75 to 100 who were already inside the church when they showed up. No effort whatsoever was made to assure security with respect to those people.
This was particularly striking to Senator Howe because he was carrying [a gun] at the time. Given the location, it is likely that others who attended the funeral, and were already inside the church when the Secret Service arrived, were also armed.
This is the kind of absurd failure of security that typified the Secret Service’s actions in Butler, Pennsylvania: the most obvious security precautions were not taken. This time, the protectee was a Democrat.
It seems to me that, on the evidence of the last few months, Secret Service agents are in some cases–many cases, it looks like–just going through the motions. This agency, like a number of federal agencies, needs a thorough shakeup.
— John Hinderaker in A Secret Service Story
I’ll let you in a secret nobody really talks about and nobody wants to believe:
Most everyone in every profession at all levels is half-assing it and there are no true masters or experts of anything.
Occasionally a moment and a person may meet in such a way that expertise or mastery is apparent but that is just a moment. More about dumb luck than anything else.
Think about that at your next checkup or next time you have to follow some order that puts your wellbeing at risk.
The key is to remember our own half-assing, they days we just phone it in. Even if that’s only an hour a day, or an hour a week, how many people do we meet every day? How many of them are in their weekly half-assing hour?
Exactly…400,000 patients die every year from medical malpractice and mistakes. I just read an article a few days ago about a doctor who took out a man’s liver and he died. The doctors was supposed to take out his spleen.
As my mother used to say: Some people just Do At things and don’t really do a good/acceptable job.
There is a difference between doing At something and actually doing something.
This is a reminder that we cannot count on government employees to protect us. Are some government protection employees honorable and do a good job? Sure! And several are NOT honorable and do NOT do a good job. The problem is that we will never know, in advance, whether a government protector sent to help us will do an excellent job or a poor job.
If I am looking for assistance choosing an interior paint for my living room, I can live with the results if the paint employee blows it–and it is fine to roll the proverbial dice. If a government protector for me blows it, I will not survive the results and I am most certainly NOT fine with rolling the proverbial dice.
Maybe they think Walz is such a loser that he’s no threat, ain’t worth a plugged nickel, and therefore isn’t in any danger? If that was his regular detail, they likely know by now.
In contrast, almost sadly, I was never that way. So many people, with shoddy leadership, just go through the motions.