Thursday, May 28, 2026

Flock O' Worries

Flock, of ubiquitous camera fame, is an interesting phenomenon sitting at the intersection of technology, demographics and politics. Politics of the left, especially the "defund the police" movement, dramatically improved Flock's prospects allowing them to body-surf on the wave of political virtue signalling, a poorly understood, but virulent characteristic of the left. Flock gave the DtP pols cover. They could claim they support the police, but market Orwellian surveillance as a safety measure. All for the greater good, eh? Especially when you could watch PDs waste away due to attrition. A win-win for the left. 

The market is huge, and quite concentrated, as the left who embraced and marketed the technology tend to dominate urban areas with dense populations and lots o' crime. And Flock played the collaboration card, as their technology allowed bad guys to be tracked across geo-political borders. No criminal, nor anyone else for that matter, can escape Sauron's never-blinking eye. The technology was sold as "license plate readers" simply tracking plates that the "good guys" told them to watch out for. Then it was gun shot tracking. And next? Who knows.

But all was going well until... 

...along came Trump.

The left fled their Maid Cafés, where they had been gorging on the empty calories of their word salads, to enlist-in-resist. They all did. And that is all they had...all they have. That is their dilemma and our entertainment as it is always fun to see the haughty hoisted on their own petard. Locally, the left pivoted very quickly, very anti-Flock, and suddenly anti-surveillance-state, as if the U.S. Constitution is a new-found friend. A friendship that will not long endure. Or, we would not have Flock in the first place. 

The left does have a real issue, at least in their mind, and it isn't just that they hate Trump, or that the score is Bad Orange Man two, Pant Suits zero. About the only thing they've had as a real, non-knee-jerk, policy position in the last 20 years has been "open borders." That's the real issue, and they dare not say it out loud. They gag at the current administration's enforcement of federal law, and their possible access to Flock's capabilities to do that job. The left's sanctimonious idealization of any and all who "ain't from 'round here," lawfully or not, resulted in serious atrophy in the reasoning parts of the human brain, so they cannot see the logical contradictions of their words and actions. They are also ignorant of how cartels are now into migrant trafficking and their business relationship is not transactional, it is recurring. These migrants will do the cartels' bidding lest the family they've left back home should suffer. Many are not the saints of the left's imagination---they are cartel operatives embedded in our society. But they prefer that over having this administration gain access to Flock services they somehow feel is theirs. 

It will be amusing to see if the left embraces their surveillance state or maintains their "resist" posture.