john locke, meet john yoo
Several nights over the last month, I've climbed into bed around dawn after watching police abuse videos on YouTube all night long. (Ann now wakes up briefly, squints at me, and says, "police abuse videos again?" And then sighs, and goes back to sleep.) (And the cats don't get it at all, and make pitiful noises.) Love the one of the city cop beating the shit out of a city councilman while the city councilman is pinned down on the ground. Love the one of the piece of shit in Arkansas choking and otherwise hurting some children who he caught skateboarding. Love the one of the small-town cop who told the guy in the parking lot that he would make some shit up so he could arrest him, if he felt like it.And, finally, I love the latest one that shows the Utah state trooper losing his shit because a driver -- who obviously, ended up getting tased -- asked why he was getting a ticket. And yes, that driver was obnoxious, and made choices I wouldn't have made. But the cop was Eric Cartman come to life, instantly enraged because someone resisted his authority to the slightest degree.
Oh, right: And the one of the loudmouth kid in Florida who asked John Kerry if he was a member of Skull and Bones, prompting six university cops to beat him and tase him. Which reminds me of the video of the elderly minister being thrown on the ground by the Capitol Police because he'd tried to enter a Senate hearing room wearing an anti-war button. A tip of the stormtrooper cap to the Capitol Police for keeping an eye on the nation's lapel pins, huzzah! (If elderly ministers are allowed to wear anti-war buttons, the Islamoterrorfascists will put their global caliphate on us!)
And...uh... Where the fuck was I?
Right! So here's the question: Does anyone still buy the idea that the state embodies a social contract in which we're governed by people who exercise a power that derives from our own consent? Because fuck that, is what I'm thinking. I don't consent, and the state hasn't called to free me from the contract. No flowers, either, the bastards. A box of candy? How about a little effort, here?
The sociologist Charles Tilly argues, in the greatest essay EVUHR, that states develop their sovereign identity and ability to apply notionally legitimate power by delivering violence more consistently and credibly than competitors. Many warlords compete for power, and then one prevails, and becomes "the state." Tilly compares the process of state formation to the dynamics of organized crime, forever winning whatever's left of my cold dead heart.
Then we have Zygmunt Baumann, who argues that the Holocaust was merely the normal activity of the modern state taken to its natural and inevitable extreme: Assign a task to the state apparatus, and watch it assemble the puzzle. Would you like a block quote? Bam, you got it, with emphasis helpfully added:
Once effectively dehumanized, and hence cancelled as potential subjects of moral demands, human objects of bureaucratic task-performance are viewed with ethical indifference, which soon turns into disapprobation and censure when their resistance, or lack of cooperation, slows down the smooth flow of bureaucratic routine.And so on. That was from page 103, if you're following along at home. In the book, see especially pages 105 (from "But bureaucracy made the Holocaust...") to the end of page 106. In short:
Driver: Uh, why are you giving me a ticket?You must obey, instantly and absolutely, or force will be used. Talk to a police officer? Ask questions of a police officer? It is not appropriate to question a police officer's authority.
Cop: Are you QUESTIONING ME? STEP OUT OF THE VEHICLE!
Driver: Well, all right, but I'm just wondering...
(BZZZTTT)
Driver: AAARRRRGGGHHH!!! ARRRGGGHHHH!!!
Cop: Stop resisting! Stop resisting!
There are a hell of a lot of great police officers out there, and the few direct experiences I've had with the police around Los Angeles have been good ones. But it's a personal choice, not the institutional requirement, and if they feel like tasing you, you're going to lose. A government uniform means that you are right, your choices are valid, and you will be supported. There are awfully few exceptions. And we're headed in the wrong direction. Once effectively dehumanized...
posted by Chris Bray @ 2:31 AM
11 Comments:
Eustice Tilly's much less famous brother, no doubt?
Yep, that's the family: Eustice, Charles, Meg, and Jennifer. Charles thinks of the other three as "show people."
It is true: I'm more nervous around police than I've ever been.
I wonder how much of the "don't question me" attitude comes from years of cop shows with police of unerring instincts who get away with all kinds of shit because they're always right.
So um, why did you join the army again? :)
Seriously... yeah. Nothing much to add here, except for a creeping suspicion that "the consent of the governed" became a sick joke probably less than 20 minutes after the Declaration of Independence.
Well, that's a good question, and I joined the army because... Wait, ARE YOU QUESTIONING ME?!?!?
(BZZZTTT.)
It's been awhile since I've studied the history, but didn't the occurrence and ultimate resolution of the Civil War basically disprove the notion that the power of the U.S. Government derives from the consent of the governed? Not that I'm saying I'm sorry the North won... I just think it raises the issue that "consent of the governed" is a tricky subject and is perhaps much more complicated in practice.
If I declare today that I do not consent to the rule of the U.S. government, what are my options? Do I declare myself a sovereign nation and continue to live and work here? Can I refuse to pay income taxes based on my fundamental disagreements with the way the U.S. government operates? Should I be forced to move out of the country because everyone else who lives here DOES consent? How many people does it take to transition from just being a dickhead trying to get out of having to pay taxes and follow the same rules as everyone else to being a legitimate rejection of the current government? Going back to the Civil War analogy, shouldn't the South have been allowed to leave the Union since they no longer wanted to be governed by the federal government? Or were they still just being dickheads trying to get out following the same rules as everyone else?
And the occurrence and ultimate resolution of Shay's rebellion, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, the Hartford convention, the nullification crisis, the enforcement in northern states of the Fugitive Slave Act, and probably some other examples we could come up with. The "we're in this because we all agree to it" posture didn't last very long at all. But it stubbornly persists in political rhetoric.
"Consent of the governed" only applies if you look at it collectively. We, as a group, consent (through majority agreement or, in the case of changing or eliminating the Constitution, failure of 2/3 to disagree.) Evidence that this hasn't completely broken down is everywhere. Participation in government through the franchise would be ever more restricted if force (physical, economic or other) was the main driving force but it has been steadily increasing through our history instead. Cops continue to use unnecessary force to exert their authority but the trend through my lifetime has been a very large overall decrease in that behavior. Tasing is bad but shootings are down, mass beatings or sicking the dogs on crowds are virtually unheard of, and we generally limit fire bombing large groups of people in their homes (Philadelphia, Waco, etc.) to once a generation or so. Members of Congress, far from being a protected oligarchy, are dropping like flies. Maybe it's because I grew up in Arizona, land of Miranda, in the 60s and 70s that I still see a few positive signs among the no-knock warrants and Gtmos. And, sad to say, those evils are with the consent of the governed.
All very well said, and much appreciated. One thing I'd put on the other side of the scale: I think there's a growing formalization and legitimization of state power that closes some avenues of response.
One of the research projects I'm working on has to do with armed self-defense by black citizens in the Jim Crow South, and I've found several instances in which black men killed white police officers -- after which southern state courts upheld their right to do so in self-defense. Very, very difficult to picture a court coming to that sort of conclusion now. Imagine if what's-his-name, in Florida, had beat the crap out of the police officers who arrested him for being obnoxious in public during the John Kerry Q&A. Or imagine someone tarring and feathering a government official, now.
State violence against citizens is arguably in decline, but so is the available range of responses.
Second, some state violence has just gone quieter: A plane ride to Syria, a taser in the back seat of the patrol car. Why set the dogs on a protester when you can use electricity without leaving a mark?
In much the same way, I think it's possible that state surveillance has just gone quieter: The data collection room at AT+T, rather than the anti-hippie squad at the LAPD busting into the local SDS office.
Anyway, I think there's a degree to which forms are changing in a way that masks some of The Bad. But you're entirely right in observing that police violence and state force in general aren't new, and the post I wrote is a little too decline-and-fallish on second reading.
"Rigidifying." That's the word I was looking for, a rigidifying of state violence. Poop.
I think there's a growing formalization and legitimization of state power that closes some avenues of response?
Absolutely.
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