ODE TO IGNORANCE

Dennis comments ♦ March 25, 2015 ♦ 1 Comment

THE REIGN OF THE SIMPLE MIND

We have been bombarded with videos of police brutality and stupidity lately.  This is not new, but the extent of the violence is much worse than previously.  There has been some proposals to rectify the situation with legislation.  Various lawmakers and officials have proposed that police be required to wear video devices to record their activities.  This, somehow is supposed to make the problem disappear.  Amazing how the simple mind has taken over the running of this country.  We don’t need to recognize complex problems and work out solutions.  Like Nancy Reagan’s solution to the drug problem, our officials are taking a similar approach.  Nancy’s solution?  “Just say no.”  Current officials?  Put cameras on police.

It’s not like cameras won’t work, it’s that the simple-minded solution doesn’t address the real problems, which is rooted in the modern police culture based upon a military model.  Only young prosecutors and judges don’t know that the police manipulate the wires and scenarios of filmed operations.  It is easy if one party knows the camera is rolling and the other doesn’t.  A look at some of the Funny Videos TV shows demonstrate that fact.  The flat-earthers want people to believe that the epidemic of murders by police is an individual failing, rather than a systemic one.  They deny that we are a collective and a society.  We are not a collections of individuals existing in a state of nature.  Thus, when police have cameras, the behavior will not change as long as there is an on-off switch on the camera.

As a society, we take no responsibility for what we have created.  The cause of all bad, errant or criminal behavior is the individual, according to the ignorant conventional beliefs.  People don’t realize or they deny that the reality of police is constructed by the society in which the police exists.  Over the years, police have been conditioned to operate as warriors, using military tactics against then enemy.  Additionally, the degree of ignorance about war makes the warrior class believe that we have lost most conflicts because we didn’t have the will or not allowed to win.  Winning is all that really matters in their reality.  The police go into battle with a determination to win.  However, the enemy in this case is the American public.  As long as that remains the paradigm, we are in trouble.  The belief that there must be a winner, who is the good guy, and a loser, who is a bad guy, rationalizes the destruction of the Constitution, empathy, sympathy and common sense.  “We must conquer the enemy or die trying” is the police warrior creed.  The problem is that the enemy is the people themselves whom they are supposed to protect.

In the process, morality and sense of proportion is destroyed.  No difference is made between regulation, ordinance, rule, statute, or Constitution.  There is no hierarchy, only law and non-law.  Enforcement justifies everything.  Like the simple minded cops, in response to a police homicide in New York stated, “If you obey the law, you have nothing to fear.”  (The antithesis is “if you break the law, we can kill you.”  Like a dumbass District Court judge said when I objecting to police using a stun grenade in the bedroom where a 6 month old baby was sleeping, “Well, Mr. Blewitt, you clients should have thought of that before they used marijuana.”  In other words, since they were breaking the law, police were justified in using all forms of force and violence.  Canon makers, rejoice, mice tremble, society slowly dies.

Unfortunately, this former prosecutor, ascending to the bench, was no Solomon.  His reality was that of the police, whom he believed he represented (not the public) who were at war against drugs.  Of course there will be some casualties, but law and order must be the first priority.  Like the Fascists during the McCarthy era, who screamed that the “fifth Amendment” was not necessary if someone had nothing to hide, the modern Fascists believe that collateral damage in the war on drugs is necessary to win.

My younger brother was in special operations at Hurlbert AFB in Ft Walton Beach, Florida.  He used to give an occasional speech to some vet groups.  He used logic and was adamantly against police militarization.  He told audiences that he had been to all continents but one.  He trained with Brits, Italians, Germans, and some other counterterrorist groups, including the group that raided Entebbe airport.  He maintained that in all the countries that he visited, when the military did law enforcement, the State was a totalitarian dictatorship.  This was against everything he believed in.  There was one quote that I will always remember.  “Anyone who puts a person like me in law enforcement is a damned idiot.  I am trained to kill, not make arrests.”  Yet, that is what we are turning our police into.  It might be cool for police to dress up like soldiers, if one is stupid or a trained chimp.  Other, who think, should think hard about militarization of police.  It is against everything that our country stands for.

When cops are armed with cameras, which can be manipulated, it is still based upon the premise of fear.  If the police are caught on camera, they will be punished (maybe).  This will keep them from harming citizens.  Bull shit!!!  We need prosecutors that truly represent the people in the community rather than the police.  We need judges who have the fortitude to go against public opinion and reign in the police.  We need a public that doesn’t accept that an incident followed procedures or was justified.  We need to ask if the action was necessary or prudent.  If, not, then rectify the situation.  If the police are too cowardly to respond like humans, then we should replace them.  Their jobs are tough, yes.  That should not excuse sadism, ignorance or pure stupidity.  More importantly, we should examine the police culture, discuss it and try to change.  Police should be integrated into humanity, not placed without or above it.

The Nancy Reagan solution does not work.  We have tried ignorance, now let’s try something else.  Realize that humans and society are much more complex than rockets or space stations.  There are several things not understood and warehousing or killing problems is not a solution.  IT doesn’t work.  It just defers problems until later generations.  The simple minds must be voted from office.  The good old days are not coming back because they never existed in the first place.  There should be research comparing what police think is wrong with that of the citizenry.  Realistic assessment of danger must be made.  Marketing fear must cease.  It is time that we stopped living under the mushroom shaped cloud and its progeny.  The world is not going to end and the odds of a police killing a person is greater than that of being killed by a terrorist.  It is time to GET REAL!!!!!