Why didn't you stop?

Why don't YOU stop?

I got my first traffic ticket almost immediately upon receiving my driver’s license at 16 years old. As I approached a stop sign, I slowed down to a 2 mile an hour crawl and rolled through it. A cop was hiding in his patrol car behind some suburban shrubbery and pulled me over, lights, siren and all. My heart raced instinctively. He asked me why I didn’t stop at the sign. I replied that I could clearly see that there were no other cars, people or animals anywhere near the intersection, so I thought it was safe to drive slowly through the sign. “You Thought!!!???” “It’s the law!!!!” He bellowed.

I swear he wanted to beat the shit out of me. Cops in Suffolk County, New York are notoriously corrupt, felonious and violent, so I sheepishly apologized and he let me go with a stern warning, a pompous lecture and a moving violation. Welcome to adulting.

To me, stop signs are like dog training tools for humans. I wonder what percentage of people would stop at a stop sign even if the intersection was in the middle of the desert and there were no visible cars or people around for miles. It would be an interesting social experiment. I’d be in the no-fucking-way-am-I going-to stop category.

I recently had a similar experience a half century after my first unpleasant encounter with traffic police. I have been going through some personal shit lately and was just not really thinking as I rolled through another suburban stop sign at two miles an hour. Another cop was hiding behind some bushes and pulled me over. No siren, just lights, which took me a while to notice in my rearview mirror. He did not like that. He approached the car and was clearly agitated. “This won’t go well.”’ I thought as I grabbed my papers like a good boy. I know the drill by now.

“Why didn’t you stop at the sign?!” I dunno officer.” "You don’t know?!” “Nope… Sorry?”

He gave me a ticket and was magnanimous enough to let me live. In that moment I was thinking about how corrupt this police force is and that there are thousands of gangbangers on Long Island within 5 miles of where we stood who are no doubt committing serious crimes. But I am the sheep who needs to be sheared to pay his salary and make his quota. I know the drill. My son asks me why I am subservient to cops. “They have all the cards”, I reply. You won’t win.

I had to go to the spiritual wasteland known as the DMV to pay my 500 dollar ticket. There were about 100 people waiting to be tried ahead of me. Most of them were Blue Collar workers who probably broke their backs for a week to pay that $500 dollar fine.

I was called to the bench after an hour and was greeted by a friendly public defender. I’m pretty sure she never dreamed her life would be spent in this dreary Army green room while attending law school. This is the lowest rung I know of for lawyers. Not too many Perry Mason moments in her career.

She reminded me of nurse Ratchet in both appearance and manner. A battled hardened bureaucrat. She asked me that same question that everyone seems to be so perplexed about. “Why didn’t you stop at the sign?” I was feeling a bit cheeky after sitting on hard plastic chair for an hour and replied “I’m a bad person. I throw myself on the mercy of the court.” She was not amused. “This is not funny! You could have killed someone!” Not really, I thought. She was clearly venting her frustrations about her soul-killing job by administering the petty power she held over me. I felt like she wanted to emasculate me. Whatever. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I felt like she was the one being punished for having to stay in this Godforsaken place and I was lucky for the fact that I’d be free in a few minutes. (After I paid the 500 bucks so they would not revoke my driver’s license.)

I have thought a lot about the stop sign as a symbol of Pavlovian societal control. It’s about public safety about as much as those life-saving Covid masks. It’s security theatre. Command and control.

The symbolism is revealing:

The Octagon as symbolic control: The stop sign’s octagonal shape is not arbitrary. The number 8 and the octagon are seen in occult traditions as connected to Saturn, the Roman god of restriction, law, and control. Saturn worship is a recurring theme of societal institutions.

Red color and fear: The color red is used for its psychological association with danger, blood, and urgency, triggering a fight-or-flight response. This is a subtle form of psychological conditioning.

Command language: The word “STOP” is an authoritarian directive—not a suggestion, but a command. This is an example of how symbols are used to condition obedience and submission to external authority.

The stop sign might be seen as a literal command backed by an occult metaphysical structure, using color, shape, and language to manipulate behavior and perception.

I. Don’t. Like. Stop. Signs.

Never did, never will.

Full stop.