The Meek Sheepdog

Or, the ramblings of someone experiencing grief for the death of their childhood, and the perspective he used to have.

Introduction

The past week was devastating for me. If I’m really honest, I’ve been devastated since our current president’s first assassination attempt. Maybe even before that too, since i discovered that politicians and friends that I’d “backed” to that point were deliberately lying in their various posts, speeches, and articles. I recall when people I knew were upset about a supreme court outcome that they didn’t like. I initially believed what they told me – threat to democracy type of stuff – and decided that I would read the case in an attempt to be equipped well enough to speak out against it. Turns out that I agreed with the decision and it wasn’t anywhere close to what those I’d agreed with told me it was, but I digress.

I think I’ve been mourning the loss of identity, or maybe the loss of friends. See, I was fairly liberal prior to this event. I believed, and I suppose in some ways I still do believe, that people are generally Good, though sometimes quite misguided. I’m not sure that this is true. Maybe the Judeo-Christian description of humanity as “fallen” is True. I’m feeling rather disheartened.

The first major inkling that I might be on the wrong side.

I, with the rest of the world, watched a front running political candidate be shot through the ear – by the bullets that did actually take the life of a crowd member. That crowd member died shielding his family. He was also a firefighter. 

This would-be assassin was, in fact, ridiculed by “my side” (liberals), but for poor aim. This isn’t to say that “most” people thought this, but many people close to me did, which I found reprehensible. What’s more is they blamed the president for getting shot at, and they blamed the dead man for being at that rally. That week, I left the Democrat party and became independent.

Donald Trump is a divisive figure, to be sure. He is alleged to have done plenty of bad in his life – adultery, paying pornography actresses to have sex with him, refusing to pay contractors who complete work for him, and say rather despicable things – “Grab’em by the pussy”. While he was accused of sexual misconduct, he was found innocent, and that is exactly as we should see him, if we are to believe in the concept of the presumption of innocence (an absolute miracle of a legal concept at the foundation of the best legal system ever devised by Man). All this to say, Donald Trump was not found guilty of any crime, he simply had policies that many did not agree with, and spoke like a fourteen-year-old boy in a locker room. He did not deserve to be murdered. The biggest issue people seem to have with his current policies is immigration, and, in my humble opinion, directing law enforcement agencies to enforce the laws written and voted into law by congress is not unreasonable. Certainly, it does not excuse murder.

In response to this heinous act, and the excuses made by those I knew and those I looked up to, I almost immediately left the democrat party of Florida and re-registered to vote as an independent. I didn’t hate democrats, but I certainly lost an immense amount of trust in them, to include nearly all of the democrats in my life.

Iryna

On August 22nd of this year, a Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, was murdered on public transit in cold blood for being white. She was 23 years old. Her brutal murder was not covered adequately or appropriately by the mainstream media. The suspect, scum of the Earth, had fourteen prior arrests. The judges failed Iryna. The murder was senseless and evil. She deserved better. The scum stated that he “got that white girl” after. I blame the judges for not putting him to death (or at least holding him in prison), and I blame the mainstream media for stoking racist flames. The scum did not murder her because he was black, that’s not what I’m saying nor what I believe, but he did murder her because she was white. 

She fled a warzone for the chance at a better life. She and her family became refugees and sought shelter in the United States of America. They lived in North Carolina for three years.

I watched the full video of the murder. Iryna sat in her seat and was looking at her phone. She did not look up. She did not engage in conversations with anyone. She was not wearing the “provocative” red hat (which would not be an adequate excuse). She sat, and waited as the train brought her closer to her destination. Scum then decided that he would stand up, and stab her multiple times in her torso. He walked away, without being confronted by other passengers. Iryna looked shocked. She covered her face with her hands, and appeared to begin to cry. Did she know that she was dying? Was she hurting? All I know is that she eventually slumped to the floor, and died. A minute and a half passed and then one passenger went to check on her.

After she was initially stabbed, the camera showed other passengers to seem to look the other way intentionally. Maybe they didn’t know, but maybe they did. I don’t directly blame them for her death – those injuries are devastating. She probably would have died no matter what in this situation, not preventable – at least on the train. No one held her hand, no one prayed with her as she died. She died scared and alone in a foreign country, and no one tried to help her.

What if the judges had done their jobs though? What if they had sentenced Scum to prison time, would Iryna have died? I don’t think so. I understand mercy, I practice mercy in my own life, but when someone routinely shows you that they are evil, you have a duty to believe them. A judge, much like a law enforcement officer, has a duty to the people they serve to protect them from Scum. If I observe a person stab another person, and I do not act, I, as a Deputy Sheriff, go to prison. As it should be. Perhaps, if a judge is given a case where there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt where a person committed a crime and has a track record of committing crimes, and they choose “mercy” (weakness in this case), they should be held accountable for the following crime Scum commits.

Charlie Kirk.

Then, on September 10th of 2025, while at a free speech event where he invited those who disagreed with his political stances to speak their beliefs into a microphone, Charlie Kirk was murdered by a radical leftist. The scum shot him with a .30-06 rifle in the neck from 200 yards, then fled. This was because Charlie was a conservative minded Christian, whose beliefs were set in fact and logically consistent, and he was better at expressing his beliefs than many of those he spoke to. He tried to have open dialogue with young voters, prayed for those he disagreed with, and loved his family and faith, and he was murdered for it. I saw people who I once called friends celebrate and/or mock his murder. One awful person posted a deliberately chopped up quote of Charlie stating that gun violence is a fact of life in an armed society, then typed her own, awful take, “ironic, isn’t it?” If she were an honest, decent person, she would have watched his full statement, which did not actually say that these deaths were okay, but that it is inevitable that Scum (like the one who murdered Iryna) would abuse his/their freedom to violate the natural rights of others.

Charlie Kirk didn’t hate anyone. He made good, coherent, effective arguments and sought out common ground. He routinely demanded that the crowd that gathered in his support act respectfully towards the opposition. He gave opposition the opportunity to say their piece. He was murdered for it. That’s what happened.

Changing Perspectives

This comes as I’ve really been thinking about the relationships that I do have, and relatively recent events in my own life. In 2022, I became a Deputy Sheriff – a street cop colloquially. I lost “friends” for this fact alone. I didn’t make any political statements, I simply saw many problems in my community and decided to stop saying “somebody should do something about this” and tried to actually be the guy who did “something about this”. I wanted to make my community safer, and for that, “friends” abandoned me. Too, many “friends” continued to say around me and to me, the phrase “ACAB” – “All Cops Are Bastards”. I laughed it off, saying to myself “they don’t really mean that” or “one day they’ll mature and realize they were silly and wrong”. They were the same age as me, and they continued to believe it. 

In November of 2024, I made a simple Facebook post trying to remind people that the person “the other side” voted for was not actually evil, and the people that voted for this person were not evil either. I was speaking to both democrats and republicans, and I was very clear about this. Donald Trump then proceeded to earn the country’s electoral college vote and the country’s popular vote. Many “friends” proceeded to comment their distaste with my post, some even labeling me with unsavory epithets, one being a fascist sympathizer. Another reached out via messenger to call me “pig”. She then, presumably after “strengthening” her insult while re-arguing with me in her head while in the shower, edited the message to call me a “self-righteous pig”. I thought the edit was pretty funny.

Immediately following this, many “friends” (and their parents, I want to add) would post about how the position I took could only be due to “privilege”. These people failed to see the irony in their own posts because they were actually some of the most privileged people I’ve met – husband and wife both retired fairly early, spending their days at the beach and at bars and traveling. Another literally moved countries on a whim because they did not like the outcome of many elections (one of which was the abortion restrictions in their home state. Ironically, this person moved to a country that outright criminalized abortion, but I digress). These people don’t do anything for their respective communities, they don’t go out and risk anything for their beliefs. They just hold some popular politician’s opinion in their heads, and yell about how other people should be better.

The same people who do nothing to help their communities in any way, who only work for their own financial betterment, or to serve their own superficial desires are the people who criticize the people who are actively engaging with their communities to do their best to put their little corner of the world in order. For example, one person whose “friendship” I lost because she did not agree with how I was working to try and make my community better is a subpar artist. That is not to discredit artists in any way, I think that art is uniquely Human, and can be more real than reality – shouting out its inherent goodness – but to pretend that this person had a leg to stand on or was in any position to criticize my service (or my friends’ services) is asinine. That’s also not to disparage anyone who does not wish to serve their communities – you don’t have to, each of us have our own paths and have no obligation to engage in public service, but if you want to be seen as more than a petulant child complaining about the food their parent made them, you have to put your money where your mouth is. You have to work to make your community better, not just drink and do drugs with your friends, disparaging people with real jobs who manufacture the cups you drink from, build the bar you drink in, and do their damnedest to make sure you make it home without Scum preying on you.

The Point 

All of this to get to the actual point of this lengthy article. I do not want my son to know these people, and I do not want my son to be known by these people. 

When I see and hear these people, I think about myself, my wife, my son, my family, and my actual friends. What if one of them expressed the opinion that “people who migrate to the United States illegally, and who commit crimes in the United States while here illegally should be removed from the county”? What if they said something like, “a woman is an adult human female”? Would these people celebrate or write off their murders because they held the wrong opinion? Would they write off my murder saying “well, he is a cop”? If my father said, “I don’t see the evidence that Donald Trump is a fascist, please feel free to try to change my mind”, would they post shitty things about him if he was murdered? Would THEY be the ones to pick up a rifle?

Do I deserve to die because I don’t think that republicans are Nazis? People might say that I’m being dramatic, but the evidence is that they do believe this, or at least they don’t think it’s inherently wrong. 

A man was murdered for things that he said. Many people are happy about it. He did not hurt anyone. He prayed for people he debated and disagreed with. He offered a platform for people to explain their positions. He was murdered for it. His wife and children watched it. His daughter ran to him because the noise scared her. 

His daughter ran to him because the noise scared her. 

I don’t want my son to know these people. But that’s hard, soon he will, or at least he’ll know his own versions. What’s harder, is I’m not so sure that I’m better in any real way. I lie by omitting what I know to be true in my personal life – and I do it often! How often do I let this or that slide because it’s easier than having a fight? Don’t I fight enough people at work? Why should I have to fight for 12 hours a day at work, then come home and fight with those I love unnecessarily? Then that begs the question, what is love? Do I really love them if I know something to be true but I do not tell them? Do I really love them if I don’t tell them that what they are saying, thinking, or doing is wrong and will hurt them – physically, spiritually, or psychologically? Maybe so, then again, maybe not. 

Dr. Jordan B Peterson has spoken extensively about saying what you have to say, and telling the truth. His sentiment, from my perspective, is that having something to say and not saying it is akin to lying. When someone says something despicable like “If only Thomas Matthew Crook spent more time practicing”, and I don’t tell them that they are behaving reprehensibly, I am allowing this kind of evil to seep its way into my life. I should endeavor to tell the truth.

Am I partly responsible for Charlie Kirk’s murder, and for Donald Trump’s attempted murder? Am I partly responsible for the murder of John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette Hoffman? Am I partly responsible for the murder of Iryna? What role did I play in each of these events? How can I sit on my high horse complaining about the actions and words of others when I myself could be to blame? Should I be held accountable like Scum’s judges for the breach of the duty to act because I did not stop those around me from lying, and I myself did not tell the truth when I knew what the truth was? I don’t know, but I do feel responsible in some way. Maybe that sets me and my actual friends apart from all these crazy people – that we are introspective, but maybe not. Maybe that’s not good enough.

I don’t really know what I can do, I don’t know if there is really anything that anybody can do. Maybe we’re all hapless, agent-less victims, thrust into the world, and all we can do is survive and then die. 

Then again, maybe not. 

I guess I should start where I can. Before anything “real”, maybe I should clean up my “room”.

First, I’ll start writing publicly. I won’t post it directly, or “force” anyone to read it, but I shouldn’t stay silent. Maybe if I wasn’t silent about the things which inevitably lead to violence, then they wouldn’t have happened. Maybe not, but I’ll do my best to minimize the “what if?”.

Second, I’ll do my part, however small, however insignificant, to put my little corner of the world in order. I will be a consummate professional, putting together good, coherent cases, and do my best to develop proof beyond a reasonable doubt to hold people accountable for their actions. While I do believe ultimately in mercy and in my privilege (duty?) to utilize discretion when enforcing the law, I will endeavor to ensure that people who routinely violate the natural rights of others are held accountable. I believe that I do that already, but there are plenty of improvements that I can make. I have directly or been a helping hand in the apprehension of murders, drug dealers, rapists, and career criminals. I am directly responsible for saving the life of probably a couple dozen people, and dozens more indirectly. It’s good, but there’s always more work to do. I will live by the mantra:

”Do not be afraid of work that has no end”, Avot d’Rabbi Natan 

Third, I will be a Good father and Good husband. I will treat my wife the way she deserves, because she is beautiful and kind, and supportive, and caring, and because I love her more than anyone on this earth. I will show my son, and God willing other children, how to treat his future wife, or how my daughter should be treated by a man, should I be so lucky as to have a daughter of my own. I will teach them the ways of the world, and show them how they can survive and thrive, and do what we were put on earth by God to do – make our homes just a little bit better. I will teach my children how to spot liars and thieves, and know how to set clear and good boundaries, and how to stand up for what is Good and True. 

Fourth, I will get back into shape. I cannot be a professional, cops who are fat just cannot do the job as well as they could if they were in shape. If I were in shape I would be worlds better and more effective. That’s the way of the world. I cannot teach my children how to care for themselves if I cannot care for myself. In fact, I cannot teach my children anything if I die young from a heart attack. 

Fifth, I will accept responsibility for my shortcomings whenever I’m given the opportunity. I try my best to own up when I can, but one can always be more honest. I will do my very best to follow Dr. Jordan Peterson’s 8th Rule for Life – “Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie”.