American police-state

Miscellaneous General
1

I can only take Will Grigg in small doses. My blood begins to boil within minutes of beginning one of his articles. I can’t read him more frequently than once or twice a month. Anyway, I was reading today’s LRC article by Grigg where he links to this Bloomberg article discussing a new Indiana law that explicitly states what used to be obvious, namely, that you could use deadly force to defend yourself against a police officer who is breaking the law and putting you or someone else in danger.

What is particularly concerning to me about this article and the zillions of others like it on related topics is the abysmal journalism, absymal failure to apply even elementary logic, and gaping holes in elementary moral reasoning.

Predictably, the police have met the law with screeching, hyperbolical protests. “It’s just a recipe for disaster,” said Downs, chief of the Lake County police in northwest Indiana. “It just puts a bounty on our heads.” Yes, that’s precisely what it does, it puts a dollars-and-cents bounty on your heads. Good God.

But even non-police parrot the same puerile nonsense:

Really? Is it really that risky? The police go on to explain why it’s so dangerous:

So a law that says that people may lawfully defend themselves from unlawful invasions by police threatening deadly force is the ceteris paribus condition that will cause intoxicated or “emotional” people to attack?? Seriously?

What I can’t understand is how people are so woodenly dense and rock-headed that they can’t figure out any potential problems with “the system.” Consider this 2005 crime, for example. Or this. There are countless similar examples. Now, just because someone shouts “Police!” (if they even do that) before knocking your front door down with a battering-ram provides no reasonable basis to conclude that these are in fact the police. That’s the whole point of requiring search warrants.

And that’s leaving aside the whole issue of whether being the police - in itself - is actually a moral justification for entry over the objections of the resident. I think a very cogent argument can be made that the permission of the resident should be unconditionally required - so what that some judge wrote something on some piece of paper?

But that’s a legal issue. Returning to the operational problem, it seems to me that the legal burden of proof is automatically on the police if they forcibly enter someone’s home, announced or unannounced. As far as I’m concerned, they’re taking their lives in their own hands and that risk is there law or no law, intoxication or no intoxication, emotion or no emotion. A masked intruder is a masked intruder, whether he screams the “Police! Get down!” or not.

What is really at issue here is whether we want to return to being a society besieged by King George’s Redcoats. And it’s looking to me that this is what we’re going towards. I guess the most disheartening part, to me, is that most people not only don’t mind, they actually positively support the twisted logic of the State’s goons.

Clayton -

2

People are so mindlessly obedient to the “authorities” and “public officials” that anybody in a uniform can do no wrong, and only criminals and neanderthals would dare question any of their activities.

Many years ago I received a call (I live here in Indiana) from a friend of mine who was in jail. He had a diabetic insulin reaction while driving and went off the road. He wound up getting arrested and I had to bail him out and pick him up. When he came out, he was a mess, having clearly been beaten severely. When we went to pick up his car the arresting officer showed up and I spoke to him. He claimed my friend appeared intoxicated, and when they got him to open the door he lunged at him and started throwing punches. “Attacked” was the word the officer used.

I didn’t know what to think at the time. And then, someone who worked at county who still had some remnants of a soul, secretly sent my friend a copy of the video from the squad car. It showed my friend opening the door to get out at the request of the thugs, and then immediately being grabbed and thrown to the ground. Other officers piled on, and were throwing punches to his face, his stomach, etc…my friend was helpless, didn’t know what was going on, and was trying to cover up to protect himself. This was “resisting arrest.”

Of course, the police statements all said my friend attacked them, but the video showed clearly this was a lie. To make matters worse, they even learned he was diabetic thanks to an ID card he had in his wallet. They still took him to jail rather than call an ambulance or take him to a hospital.

So, in court (and more to your point) the jury heard the police statements of the thug on trial, which blatantly contradicted his deposition which then blatantly contradicted his testimony on the stand. They saw the video, heard all the facts, and then after 20 minutes of deliberation found in favor of the defense. After the trial my friend’s attorney shook his head and said to me, “you absolutely cannot win against the police.”

They can do no wrong in the eyes of most Americans. This simple fact means it’s rapidly getting more dangerous in this country than it was in Germany in the 1930s.

3

No doubt.

As an aside, this is related to my posts on my conspiracy theories on WWI/WWII/9-11 - there are people in the highest echelons of power who understand human nature intricately and they know how to “unleash” dark social forces and they’ve been doing so within the United States for quite some time but at a breakneck pace since 9/11. If I were in a position where I could leave, I would. I guess the best I can do is just keep my head down and hope for the best.

Clayton -

4

Oh, come on, really now? We can find these incidents, but I find it dishonest to claim it’s worse than 1930s Germany.

5

All I’ve said are that the same dynamics are at work and I believe that is no accident. Whether it’s as bad, better or worse at this point I don’t think that really matters because it’s going to get a lot worse unless there is a full-stop-and-reversal of the decade-long trend we’ve been on since 9/11.

Watch Alex Jones’ Endgame. It’s a bit hyperbolic in places but it captures the general gist. They’ve been at this not for years, not for decades but for at least a century and probably more. As it stands, the short-run prospects of economic prosperity and freedom within the US are very bleak.

Clayton -

6

It’s not the incidents in and of themselves I’m talking about, but people’s quiet acquiescence and unthinking submissiveness that poses the real danger. That’s the foundation that’s being built and it’s reflected in the virtual indifference that people have to police state actions.

We’ve talked on this forum before how the TSA ball-grabbing scam has nothing to do with security. It has to do with compliance and the state’s objective to condition people to accept such intrusions as part of daily life. If they can cultivate a society where people readily surrender themselves and their property without question or objection then they will eventually be able to do anything they want in the name of security. They’re succeeding.

7

Similarly, I was in a discussion about the drug cartels in Mexico and how they’ve been expanding their “protection services” throughout the country. One person explained that what the cartels are doing is essentially collecting taxes on businesses; however, I pointed out that this is no different that what the government does. Someone else replied that the government won’t kill you for not paying taxes. So, I went on: I asked, what happens if you don’t pay taxes to government? Reply: You get sent to jail. I then asked, what happens if you forcefully resist going to jail. Reply: You’ll be shot. I finally asked, how is this different than with the cartels?

Many people have stopped seeing the state for what it is, I think, because they’ve given up resisting it.

8

That’s certainly a huge part and that’s the purpose of compulsory schooling. Getting them from pre-school till graduate school for almost all of their day and inserting pro state content into their education produces minds that become submissive to the state. Just look at a school day and you can see for how long the state has them: 24 hours in a day - 8 hours of sleep - 7 hours of in-classroom schooling - 2 hours of tutoring - 1 hour of practice of pro state sports or arts - 1 hour of transportation - 4 hours of homework = 1 hour of time with friends and family.

9

So true. And to come full circle back to the Germany reference, there was nowhere in the world where the people were as well-schooled as in Germany for the fifty years prior to the rise of Nazism. Germany, and Prussia in particular, perfected the indoctrination practices to such a degree that submission to the state became an integral part of German political culture.

In Omnipotent Government Mises complained that German liberalism was all but gone by the turn of the twentieth century. While it was certainly dying everywhere, it would be foolish not to take note that educationists in Germany throughout the nineteenth century were dedicated to stamping out dissent among teachers. Educators who would not tow the line were systematically removed from the system. It takes time to see the results, though. To paraphrase Gatto, what a surprise the well-schooled German political and military machine would unleash on the world in the 30s. Hyperbolic? Perhaps, a bit, yet difficult to ignore.

History shows there are two ways to secure the legitimacy of the political state. One is to use brute force, but this doesn’t last in the long run. The second is to control and manipulate the minds and hearts of those who are ruled, either by aligning the state with popular belief, or by cultivating a common belief (Rousseau’s civil religion) through state education and propaganda. Both planks of this second strategy can be done simultaneously. Politicians align themselves with positions of their consituencies and pander to petty issues which distract people from the state machinery which molds their values and attitudes, distorts their traditions, enabling the state and its collaborators to pick them clean. Cue up a George Carlin video.

EDIT: And why the $%*#! does my font size change inexplicably?!

10

You’re absolutely right. I think a lot of people understand essentially what the State is, in the back of their mind, but because it’s better to be a slave while living in blissful ignorance of that fact than to be a slave while being fully aware of it, they are actually making a rational choice to suppress thinking about the true nature of the State.

But I don’t think these people are actually the foundation of the State’s power in the masses. The granite foundation can be found in the Bible, the book of Romans chapter 13. The decent, church-going people with their “no-nonsense” civil morality fully support “zero tolerance” drug policies, “zero tolerance” tax policies, “zero tolerance” of every variety. Noam Chomsky calls them the “responsible people”, the “technocrats”. They don’t just acquiesce to government policy out of exasperation, they actively believe in and support it. If Democracy is the new religion, these are the true believers that will stand by the Church authorities in the cosmic struggle to stamp out heresy.

Clayton -

11

I’ll expand: After people leave school and enter the workforce, they now consume pro state entertainment. In television there’re a bunch of pro state cop shows, there’s CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: Las Vegas, CSI: NY, CIS: LA, Law & Order, NCIS, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Rookie Blues, Person of Interest, Blue Bloods, Hawaii Five-O, The Mentalist, NYC 22, Alcatraz, Bones, Cops, not to mention all of the recent cops shows that have ended their run and are now in syndication. Oh, and all of the medical dramas are pro state as well. The reality games shows are about being thrown into a situation we’re the only way to win is by screwing everyone else; in other words, playing politics.

In cinema in the past 6 months, there were Haywire, Safehouse, This Means War, Act of Valor, 21 Jump Street (yes it is!), Wrath of the Titans, Lockout, Safe (because he was a forger state agent), Battleship, Men in Black 3.

12

Hollywood has been just about unbearable for the last 10 years. There have been a couple blockbuster movies that could be considered subversive on at least some level despite their general conformability to statist methods of propaganda (300, Clash of the Titans, Hunger Games, etc.) Epics, good-versus-evil dramas, etc. are all forms of propaganda in the sense that they reduce the entire Universe into two binary categories: us and them. This reinforces the narrative of tribal loyalty to the government, that is, the tribal chief which has a face but isn’t a person (e.g. the Presidency or Prime Ministership).

And don’t even get me started on television.

Clayton -

13

@Daniel

I think you are largely right regarding these kind of masturbatory cop shows. I would just like to add another point to what you said that is like a double edged sword: Many of these cop shows have the main characters go outside the law on occasion. This is good in that it shows the audience that the state’s laws are not perfect. It is bad because it is almost always the cops who break the law in order to enforce justice. So the audience ends up sympathizing with the state’s enforces even more than before.

I also would not include Person of Interest in your list. It is almost exclusively about someone going outside the law in order to resolve conflicts. And these conflicts are largely with the state. It is a massive conspiracy show with the state almost always being the bad guys. It’s not a libertarian show by any means, but it is most certainly not statist propaganda.

14

In Person of Interest, Reese and Finch use The Machine and the surveilence system for good. So, although the rogue elements in the government are using the system for evil, the system can be used for good as well. But the reason why I included it in the list is because this is analogous to the poltical system: There are bad people who use government for evil, but the government can be used for good as well. However, we know this to be a naive view, so we interpret the show differently than the majority of people.

Most people will interpret the show in a way in which they see the surveilence system as a necessary evil. They don’t see themselves ever being involved in a complex plot by rogue elements to take over the criminal underworld because they are not involved in the criminal underworld. But what they don’t realize is that they criminal overworld (is that the antonym?) is taking over their lives.

Then there are Carter and Fusco. Carter is the strong independant woman of color with courage, valor, and other virtues. She is the Olivia Benson and the Rebecca Madsen. She is the cop that is simply trying to do her job: To protect and serve the people. Which is complete crap because the enforces the state. Fusco is the average Joe that made mistakes and is now trying to rectify his mistakes by joinging the guys who are fighting the rogue elements and the criminal underworld. How could the average Joe not sympathize with him?

But yeah, I agree with you that the show exposes the surveilence state for what it is, but that’s because we were looking for it. We analyze the shows differently than most people and my point is that the most people will interpret the shows in a manner that is directly or indirectly sympathetic to the state.

P.S. Reese is a bad ass.

15

@Clayton

I re-watched Lawrence of Arabia last week. Going on with the my point about how the shows/movies are interpreted, I [extremely] love that movie. I finally noticed that what occured in the movie is exactly what is occurring in the Middle East now. Military advisors are directing and funding these rebel groups in order to expand the empires to which they have given loyalty. Also, the leaders of all these tribes go along because they too expand their power and overtake their neighbors and loot the cities. The journalist was a government agent sent to be with Lawrence to curate a story that could be sold to the American people, which is what happens nowadays too.

However, most people will interpret movie as showing how democracy civilizes barbarian tribes. They’ll sypathize with Lawrence as man who went in with the intention of doing the bidding of the crown, but went native and helped liberate the tribes.

However, it was obvious to me that Lawrence never really renounced his loyalty and never really went native. He was great actor that got the job done for the crown, like all super secret agents must be.

16

The closest thing to a mainstream critique of the surveillance system is Enemy of the State with Will Smith. But even movies/shows that expose the State’s intent yet exaggreate its capabilities can be considered intimidation propaganda. No matter what machines they employ, the government can’t watch all of us but they’ll sure be happy if they can make us feel that way. As an example of real-life disinfo, I was watching NCIS one time and they said they “lost the suspect when he switched off his cell phone so we couldn’t track his location.” The truth is that they can track you even when the cell phone is switched off. If you want to actually be safe from cell location by triangulation or even GPS, you actually have to remove the battery from your cell phone. They slip that stuff into these shows because “criminals” (i.e. people who are poor, black, take drugs or especially all of the above) watch TV too. “They said on NCIS that they can track your location from your cell phone… switch that thing off!” Oops, they can still track you, dumbass.

A genuine deconstruction of the spy-State is the German film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, subtitled). The movie depicts how “just watching” really isn’t just watching. In the plot, it ultimately leads to the needless, pointless death of a beautiful woman (in every way a nice and beautiful, innocent person). Set in East Germany immediately prior to the fall of the Berlin wall, it closes by depicting the contrast between life under the surveillance State and without it and the arbitrariness and capriciousness of appointing one man to watch others.

Clayton -

17

Yep. This is one point where Chomsky is especially strong, he contextualizes European/UK/American history in terms of Euro-Anglo-American colonization of the globe because there’s really no other way to understand it. Starting around the time of the Renaissance, Europe began to reach further and further into Africa, India, Asia and eventually the Americas. When Europeans or the British or Americans landed on new soil, it was always bad news for the darker-skinned people who were living there. At home, it was always propagandized as a “mission” of “civilized peoples” to reach out to the “barbaric” people from dark, “heathen” cultures.

Along with Jared Diamond, I think a most of the success of the Euro-centric powers is down to chance factors (guns, germs, steel, etc.) But no matter, the real point is that nothing has fundamentally changed. The wars of the 19th and 20th centuries were internecine battles over how the global pie gets sliced and who will be King of the Whole World, the Universe and Everything That Is, Was or Will Be. We really need more scholarship along these lines because the genuine history of what the ruling Elite have been up to for the last 150 years is actually very murky. Sure, we have lots of video footage of WWII battles and Vietnam battles and what happened on the ground in Iraq, etc. etc. But I don’t thie we understand who was really behind what and why. So Brzezinski is right that the world is a giant chessboard. But it’s not George Bush and Vladimir Putin who are the grandmasters. Those are the public faces we’re supposed to see. Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain said, “The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

Clayton -

18

In the good ole days, we had shows like A-Team and Knight Rider in which nearly all cops were crooked. But of course those shows were never meant to be taken seriously.

19

If you want to really piss off the anti-capitalists, then ask them why all these rebels groups and movements are being led by white people. There was Lawrence in Arabia. Castro and Che in Cuba. Kony 2012: White dude. Then there is Subcomandante Marcos in Chiapas, Mexico, who leads the EZLN and whose parents, just like Castro and Che, happen to be Spaniards.

I’ll go on the conspiratorial road and claim that TPTB helped put Subcomandante Marcos get into power to get the last of the Mayans that were hiding in the mountains of Chiapas to become “civilized”. After all, when Marcos explained the revolution to the people in the mountains, they replied by saying, “those are urban people problems.”

Seriously, dude, we need more scholarship on these topics.

I’ve been trying to investigate seemingly unrelated revolutions that occurred around the same time period. Specifically, the Russian Revolution and the Mexican Revolution. I’ve been looking into who the intellectual influences of the revolutionaries were. We know who were the intellectual influences of the Russian revolutionaries, but what about the Mexicans? Emiliano Zapata was influenced by an anarcho-commies Ricardo Flores Magon and Peter Kropotkin; Ricardo Flores Magon was influenced by Prouhdon, Kropotkin, Marx and others; Francisco I. Madero was influenced by Annie Besant, a commie; Pascual Orozco was influenced by Magon; I haven’t found anything on Pancho Villa, but he supported them.

Also, the USA supported the counter-revolution while Germany supported the revolution and, btw, the Mexican Revolution overlaps WWI. For all we know, the Mexican Revolution could have been a proxy war.

20

@Muffinburg: Indeed. I think some of the praxeological criteria we can apply to sort through the vacuum of solid information and/or flood of irrelevant historical minutia is to ask the following simple questions:

  • Does the orthodox historical narrative of this war involve a powerful figure (especially a King, Royal House or lesser nobility) simply shrugging his shoulders and saying “oh well, I guess I lost that one”?
  • Does the orthodox historical narrative of this war involve very dissipated interests defeating very concentrated interests by deus ex machina, by spontaneous leaders, and without the aid or involvement of concentrated antagonistic interests?
  • Does the orthodox historical narrative treat national governments as the ultimate units of power? Does it acknowledge the existence of the royal houses, the merchant class, the Church, the nobility?

The orthodox historical narratives of several wars fail these criteria completely. The British lost the American war of secession and then I guess King George just shrugged his shoulders. WTF? The French masses during the French Revolution just magically self-organized into a politically savvy, regicidal machine by drawing spontaneously from the rabble in its own ranks. Huh? And we’re supposed to believe that the French, Russian and American Revolutions, WWI and WWII all happened in an absolute vacuum of royal involvement or even interest. The royalty were so out-to-lunch they couldn’t even conceive of the possibility of revolution. I guess the criterion for becoming royalty is to be amazingly stupid and out-of-touch with the vagaries of ruling.

Clayton -