The Rationalist Cafe: July 2016

The question posed in the title of this essay is, perhaps, not so hard to answer if we imagine a citizen of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or North Korea. In many ways we view the citizens of these countries to be prisoners of their governments and while we may hold the police and military accountable, we forgive the citizens because we consider them to be powerless to make changes in these regimes. Dictators, among other things, are notorious for not seeking citizen input before taking decisions that have far reaching consequences, both locally and globally.

Americans are so understanding about this, our leaders often craft awkwardly worded statements stating that, for example, and I paraphrase 'we are not at war with the Iraqi people, we are at war with Saddam Hussein and his military.' Oddly, these lovely words rarely prevent the death of average citizens who we openly recognize as being completely powerless to affect change. In the case of Iraq, the Iraq Body Count project (IBC) has documented 155,923 -- 174,355 civilian deaths from violence as of March 2016. For not being at war with the Iraqi people, America sure killed a lot of Iraqis.

Now it's time to step into the mirror and look out from the other side. Unlike the above mentioned countries, America is not a dictatorship or a strongly authoritarian country. In fact Americans usually boast about the greatness of American democracy and point proudly to "one man/woman, one vote" to indicate that Americans shape their destiny not their elected government. Americans work hard for most, if not all, of their lives and the IRS is omnipresent to take their cut to fund the America that Americans love so much.

This brings us to that rather horrific number regarding civilian deaths in Iraq. What is the average American's culpability for each of those deaths? If Americans set their own destiny through their democracy and fund their destiny through their tax dollars, then the responsibility for these civilian deaths would seem to fall at the feet of every American. As would the 26,000 deaths in Afghanistan, the 14,000 -- 18,000 deaths in Libya, the 280,000 deaths in Syria, and the 60 - 212 civilian Syrians killed on July 19, 2016 (numbers come from different agencies).

Civilians are killed each and every day. They include women, children, men, the young, the old, and the handicapped. They are nurses, doctors, teachers, students, bakers, and every other occupation. They are killed by day and by night, but most noticeably, they are killed by America's freely and democratically elected government. The military machine that carries out the killing is funded by American tax dollars, and therefore, by American tax payers.

Americans are going to have to face a brutal reality. We are going to have to acknowledge that our country and government is, in some ways, similar to North Korea, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia and we that we as citizens are virtually powerless to affect our county's destiny or we must accept that we control our destiny and that red stuff on our hands is the blood of thousands of innocent lives that were killed on our behalf. We can claim to be impotent sheep herded about by our government, or we can claim to be democratic citizens of a county that routinely elects and funds a government that carries out crimes against humanity.

Admittedly, not much of a choice. I wish I saw a third option, but for now, I only see these two. And while you may say that you oppose such killings, I don't think it will make much difference to those who seek to avenge the death of their friends and family by trying to kill you or your friends and family.

The Sane Progressive: The lesser of two evils.

On July 17, 2016 Obama walked, with his normal arrogant stride, into the White House briefing room and deliver a short speech on the shootings in Baton Rouge. The parts I wish to address are shown below, while the whole text, video and other useful links are provided in the reference section.

Regardless of motive, the death of these three brave officers underscores the danger that police across the country confront every single day. Obama, 2016

Americans are living under a horribly broken and corrupt justice system, and this extends specially to include the police. I think Obama’s remark that the police confront danger every single day was nothing but sensational rhetoric designed to emote feelings of sympathy for an institution the deserves little. For those killed, sympathy should be abundant, but not for the institution. Don’t confuse acts of bravery, heroism and service by individual police, with the overall institution of police; they are not the same. Good people can always be found in the worst institutions.

Obama failed to mention all the other occupations that risk life and limb for our society and in the process, rarely if ever shoot unarmed citizens or seek to deprive others of liberty and justice through systematic and selective incarceration.

In 2014, 51 officers died in the line of duty, another 46 died on duty, i.e., had fatal accidents while on duty. These numbers made policing the 15th most dangerous job in America. Nonetheless, policing was safer than landscaping and grounds-keeping, safer than being a construction worker, or a taxi driver, safer than being a truck driver, or a farmer, safer than working in refuse removal, being a roofer or a fisherman, and many, many times safer than working in the most dangerous occupation of them all, the logging industry. It would appear that America is full of workers who put their life on the line each day when they go to work. However, I don’t recall Obama mentioning them, of course, they weren’t really the topic were they? I also don’t recall any grounds-keepers targeting blacks and other minorities for stop-and-frisk. I don’t recall any truck drivers shooting 12-year-old black kids, and I don’t recall any roofers pulling over cars and then shooting the driver to death. I don’t recall any fisherman patrolling poor neighborhood in an effort to extort money from poor citizens. I certainly don’t remember any loggers being able to kill with impunity and without fear of prosecution. These omissions by Obama, were relevant and his failure to even mention them suggest a peculiar agenda.

And we as a nation have to be loud and clear that nothing justifies violence against law enforcement. Obama, 2016

What Obama should have said was that we as a nation have to be loud and clear than nothing justifies unprovoked violence against our citizens and we will not stand silently by as the police become an extrajudicial force use to intimidate and incarcerate the innocent. In every revolution in which freedom stood against oppression, liberty stood against subjugation, democracy stood against totalitarianism, or good stood against evil, the first people that had to be fought were the police. Whether it was the Pretorian guard or the Gestapo, every government has been able to surround itself with a ring of protection that was heralded as providing safety, peace, law, and order. There is never a shortage of those with overly flexible morals who are willing to secure a better life for themselves by suppressing their fellow citizens and serving as thugs for the establishment. The primary objective of all police forces worldwide is to protect the establishment, to protect those with power, and protect the status quo.

We should never forget that Jim Crow laws were enforced by the police, student protests against the Vietnam war were broken up, violently, by the police. It was the police that shot and killed 2 students and injured 12 at Jackson State Univ., in 1970; it was the police that turned dogs lose on protestors marching in the Civil Rights movement; it was the police that carried out mass arrests in 1971, 2002, 2011, 2012, and 2016 (totaling almost 15,000 people); it was the police that bought us Cointelpro, and there are no numbers that accurately reflect how many Blacks were brutalized, tortured, and disappeared by the police since the 1860s. And long before George Bush gave us waterboarding, US police departments were using it, with its peak coming between 1910 and 1940.

Wrongful incarceration is such a problem that America needs the "Innocence Project," which devotes its time to trying to free those who were railroaded by the American justice system.

At every step in American history when the people cried out for change, the police were there to protect the government and implement its will when the government said “NO!” Luckily, change slowly happened anyway, but not with the help of the police, instead it was in spite of the police. Don’t ever forget this.

The police are not the defenders of peace, justice and liberty, they are defenders of what the establishment calls peace, justice and liberty. When a corrupt government feels threatened it turns the police loose on society. The black-shirts make mass arrests, much like we have seen at recent US demonstrations. In exchange for their freedom, those arrested citizens are forced to denounce their constitutional rights, as we so often saw with “occupy” protesters.

Under Obama, American police forces have mutated into paramilitary organizations, a trend that would have gone unabated and unnoticed if not for the events in Ferguson. American police can operate outside the law and outside of accountability. All this being the case, Obama's strong, unequivocal support for the police was a knife in the back of American citizens, in particular, minorities who are preyed upon daily by American police forces. Obama's speech could just as easily have been written by Erdogan, Putin, Assad, el-Sisi, or King Salman of Saudi Arabia. It was the speech of an authoritarian, rallying the brown- and black-shirted minions to coalesce and to serve and protect America’s powerful elite.

Attacks on police are an attack on all of us and the rule of law that makes society possible. Obama 2016

That both political parties brag about their ‘law and order’ credentials should be a chilling wake-up call about the future of America. Phrases like ‘law and order’ and ‘rule of law’ is poorly disguised code for authoritarianism and neo-fascism. Study after study has revealed the disintegration of both of these noble ideas as the police have transformed into what they are today. Today police are predators on the weakest and most helpless members of our society. Moreover, the police have now become the enforcement arm for the prison-industrial complex. Every day activities are criminalized so that more and more people can be forced into slave labor or for ‘heads-on-beds’ profit.

Obama’s vision is that of a dystopian society in which militarized police forces enforce a capitalist version of Sharia law. A society where minorities live under constant threat of random incarceration and swat teams of pseudo-patriots stalk the poor areas of town to fill their daily fine and arrest quotas to make sure that America’s prison system is operating at fully capacity and the American court system is reaping its just rewards.

Obama is articulate, charismatic, with a charming demeanor. However, his actions, betray his words.
Obama’s vision of America is not my vision, and hopefully, it’s not your vision either. Regrettably, considering the two presidential candidates, the future appears bleak, at best.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to acknowledge Tim Black for providing inspiration for this essay.

References:

FBI study on Police Abusive Police Practices in America

Text of Obama's Speech

Video of Obama's Speech

Jackson State Shootings

Cointelpro

Police Mass Arrests

Innocence Project

Waterboarding and US Police