A Weimar-y Vibe (Updated)

Well, the cops are also in the midst of labor negotiations with the city..this could as easily be pure opportunistic negotiation . See The Rude One .

Yup, “pure opportunistic negotiation” on the part of the PBA explains *part* of the response.

Busting the PBA is perhaps the only union busting I’d support. Perhaps the mayor should invite the Manhattan Institute to join him in busting the police union? Surely that’s something they might support. They can turn their anti-teacher union forces on the PBA.

Imho this is a little overwrought – but my scattered thoughts here probably aren’t any more enlightening.

First of all, hardly everyone is claiming that we should blame the Mayor for the murders:

From The New York Times:

Even Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican and former mayor, offered a measure of cover to Mr. de Blasio, telling Fox News that it “goes too far” to blame the mayor for the deaths. But, he added, Mr. de Blasio “did not properly police the protests” by allowing them to block city streets.

Second, more importantly, the bigger problem is the way you and others have framed the issue: one as taking on the police. That’s not what any of this should be about. Better community relations is in the interests of everyone, including the police department. As soon as you frame the issue as “us against the police” you pointlessly create enemies, alienate potential allies, and tie yourself to that idiotic section of the protesters who scream about “pigs” and generally make themselves nuisances (by doing things like throwing trash cans off bridges and picking fights with cops). Most protesters don’t fall into this category.

Third, the underlying problem with these protests is that they’re driven on a symbolic level by two very different homicides and neither is really emblematic of the actual problems. One appears likely to be a justified shooting. The other is more problematic, in that an officer’s negligent conduct (the apparent application of a chokehold for several seconds while attempting to restrain Garner) may have contributed to the cardiac arrest which resulted in Garner’s death. Both cases are complicated – and in neither case is it clear that race played any role. I don’t think Garner would have been treated any differently were he white.

Yet the protesters, to judge them by their slogans and chants, seem to think the issues are that cops choke and shoot people, and in particular black males, to death with impunity. It makes for easy slogans and easy outrage and easy demonization of cops, but it doesn’t come close to getting at the actual problems – in fact it makes those problems worse.

I would love to see a truly constructive approach that doesn’t witlessly fan outrage and reward finger-in-the-wind leadership. I do think de Blasio made some effort at reaching for that approach, and give him credit for that, but – whether due to a lack of vision or a lack of will – his leadership was weak in strength and appeared unshaped by any strategy other than a purely political one (that is to say, unshaped by any policy concerns).

Or perhaps we simply see things differently Corey. I managed to read your post comparing NYC 2014 to the falling darkness of Weimar Germany without thinking you to be a troll, or insulting you by calling you one. I think it’s telling that someone like Giuliani is actually criticizing the very rhetoric you claim to be indicative of a “cop coup.” If that rhetoric is too extreme even for Giuliani, it’s unlikely that it has much credibility or power with anyone else, notwithstanding the histrionics of Lynch.

In any event, while I apologize if anything in my comment was offensive or insulting, I don’t think the points of disagreement are on issues quite as settled as the roundness of the earth. But, we can agree to disagree – enjoy your dances, and happy holidays. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts over the past year, and look forward to more.

Andrew F. : “But, we can agree to disagree – enjoy your dances, and happy holidays. I’ve enjoyed reading your posts over the past year, and look forward to more.”

Ah, the wonders of civility. Andrew F. is an ideal CT commenter. If only I too could master this slightly oily flattery.

I think that Cranky Observer has the right connection here. In Iraq, when additional troops were needed, contractors / mercenaries were offered a basically lawless intervention (which certainly did not exist for official U.S. armed forces). One Blackwater official even threatened to kill a State Department investigator. As always, you can’t give more and more power to security services and have them not end up with overt political power.

Of course everyone is sympathetic to the families and comrades of the two police officers who were killed. And it’s understandable that police officers who’ve seen two of their own shot down would be angry. But that anger shouldn’t be allowed to affect treatment of peaceful protest and police policy generally.

Logically, the police should be angry at those of their colleagues who have shot (or choked, or raped, or whatever) so many Black people, Hispanics, poor people. The demonstrations which supposedly excited Mr. Brinsley to homicide could hardly have taken place without that inspiration.

However, having new victims and new atrocity stories form too good a political opportunity to pass up; no one that matters is going to rain any logic on that parade. I think that it is questionable, though, how far the Police Party will want to take their political cause onto new ground. They have done pretty well by mostly applying their energies to limited, local privileges over the lower orders. Those who cherished and nurtured stab-in-the-back had larger aims.

I thought that De Blaisio hit exactly the right tone, and he took the Fox News questions head on and didn’t flinch.

He asked *both* the cops and the protesters to cool things off, which is completely reasonable under the circumstances. He didn’t attack the protests at all – and fiercely defended them in questions from reporters.

What on Earth did you want him to do instead?

I daresay Corey – and a number of commenters here – would have preferred de Blasio to explicitly attack the police instead of playing neutral patrician.

The police can’t really have it both ways – either they’re civilians and have to accept the Peelian norms of civilian policing, or they’re soldiers and therefore should have exactly nil role in democratic policymaking and should be totally subservient to civilian government, however insulting that may be.

So de Blasio could have escalated by accusing them of violating those principles. But really he’s not the Prime Minister of Weimar Germany, or even the President of Ecuador – the response to sense of events spiraling out of control is not a rally-to-the-flag sense of unity behind an executive (any executive) asserting itself, but a state govt annexing power by declaring martial law. Wishing for a Latin American Jacobin politics is a nonstarter.

They behave like death squads.

Weimar is taking it too far (which is not to endorse Andrew f’s apologetics). We had something similar here in Australia, in Victoria, when the police union conspired with the conservative opposition to undermine a reforming police commissioner. The tone – as seems to be increasingly usual in US politics – is over the top, but the substance the same.

Without at all disagreeing with the sentiment, I wonder what it is about the current NYPD that has you more worried about fascism in the US than pretty much the entire past 70 years of history relevant to the question?

Confining the discussion to just the US police, we had a whole series of police riots in the 60s and 70s that got written off by the mainstream as “race riots” that showed the need for even more aggressive policing. A good bit of the movement towards putting more of our citizens in jail for ever longer periods of time traces back to the “Law and Order” sentiment fed by these “race riots”. An NYPD union leader mouthing off is Sunday School in comparison. This union leader could go much further down the line of undercutting civilian authority, to the point of supplanting the mayor in office, and he would still only be eating Frank Rizzo’s dust, not blazing a trail.

“I do think that some folks want him to attack the police. What he actually did is, to my mind, both a hell of a lot more effective and wiser.”

I hope you are right. I don’t know who would “want him to attack the police”, except for the wannabe putschists themselves. The point wouldn’t be to “attack to police” but to push back against those police leaders (and former leaders, like Kelly) who have shown contempt for their elected government.

Is it necessary for protests to have the Mayor’s endorsement? All this has shown is that this mayor is not as reliably progressive as certain progressives might wish, it doesn’t suggest that it’s suddenly illegal to protest.

Who on earth is ‘determining’ when protests should happen or not? Again, why is having de Blasio’s specific endorsement of protest action seen as necessary?

The entire New York City establishment—not just De Blasio, but political, cultural, and economic elites—is terrified . . . . It’s not that these men and women are spineless or gutless in a psychological or personal sense. It’s worse: They’re politically frightened, which is far more dangerous. Because they have no sense of an alternative base or source of power.

An interesting thesis, which could be applied pretty much across the board in national politics, to explain the increasingly apparent weakness of the Democratic Party and what little remains of a centre-left establishment.

Are you really surprised that a union can demand undue attention to its own workplace safety issues, even at the expense of other political priorities?

Any union primarily made out of men accustomed to (1) physical work (2) under unsafe conditions that enforce cohesive, hierarchical, hypermasculine norms, and (3) a sense of a non-negotiable place in national purpose, will exercise outsized power – miner’s, railworker’s, and longshoremen’s unions have historically also been prone to militarized behaviour and rhetoric. If you think that labour unions historically avoided revolutionary rhetoric, well, I’m not sure what alternate universe you’re from.

Comparing it to teacher’s unions is misleading – industrial action by teachers requires the genteel cooperation of parents, students, etc. whereas unions of angry men can subtly or unsubtly threaten physical force. That doesn’t mean that they actually have that power, even if they sincerely think they do – there’s a reason British miners were dealt such a terrible psychological blow when Thatcher denounced them as the enemy within rather than as a pillar of British industrial life and then didn’t suffer for the insult – but it does mean that this is, and is always, their mode of labour organization.

Liberal democracy has always rewarded organized and escalating physically-obstructive activity, it is its longstanding failure mode and is why it is vulnerable to slides into fascism to begin with – fascists pursue organized and escalating physical presence as an end in itself. So there’s certainly a danger whenever physical force is implied. But unions also pursue organized physically-obstructive activity as their primary threat to employers. The bright line is whether they begin defying rules on what unions may say or do, rules intended to strangle power grabs. In this case, it hasn’t happened yet.

As creepy as I find the statements by the PBA and the NYPost et al’s hysteria, like most Nazi (or in this case pre-nazi) analogies I don’t find Weimar as a point of reference particularly helpful here.
Political violence in Weimar was at the hand of non-state actors, not at the hand of the police. The idea of a Dolchstoß resonated with a populace who had been subject to typically triumphant wartime propaganda until shortly before the armistice–I’m not really clear what the analogue here is. And just as odd as “Weimar without WWI” is “Weimar without the Great Depression.”
And what is the danger that the Weimar analogy is supposed to warn against? Is the collapse of democratic institutions and an ensuing fascist dictatorship really what we’re worried about?

Again, none of this is to minimize any of the truly disturbing rhetoric. But no, it’s not a Weimar-y vibe. As Glen Tomkins points out at #21 above, you really don’t have to leave the US (nor the post-war period) on the search for (much more) similar events.

But, adam.smith, what else do we have with the paramilitaries in other states and their connection to the weapons makers and the Republican Party? It is worth reviewing Neiwert’s Rise of Pseudo-Fascism, now ten years old, in this connection; much of what concerned Neiwert in 2004 has now come to pass. New York City, I think—I hope—is something else, but the Presidential legitimacy and betrayal rhetoric (Kenyan! Communist! Muslim! Benghazi!) is fascist, as is its bigotries, misogyny, warmongering, and power-worship.

“Third, the underlying problem with these protests is that they’re driven on a symbolic level by two very different homicides and neither is really emblematic of the actual problems. One appears likely to be a justified shooting.” [Andrew F above] Thus doth the python devour clarity. The Brown shooting is now “justified,” particularly compared to the video of the Garner snuff. Never mind the kangaroo court that came to that oblique conclusion.

@ 38 At least the standard schoolbook account – i cant claim any deaper knowledge on the subject – is at odds with your version. The standard account is that public servants (including the military as a major player) were deaply anti democratic on their own and systematically threating right wing violance far more favourable if not supportive. So definitly police interfearing with politics in a major way along with judges etc. . Most prominent and also representative case being Hitler, who should have served a life sentence by any reasonalbe standard instead of a year or so.

“…policing is among the safer occupations in the US.”

The fascists would say, of course, that that’s only the case because we let them shoot whoever makes them the least bit nervous. “Peace through superior firepower”, and so forth.

Not to derail the thread, but the above comment is just too egregiously false: Police is most assuredly not among the safer occupations in the US. The Jacobin article (somewhat speciously, in my opinion) points out that police is not among the MOST dangerous occupations in the US on a fatality basis. But police officers still have a comparatively high fatality rate, even if it’s not, say, in the top 5% or whatever of all possible occupations. They are not at all like our CIA torturers, bureaucrats sheltered from actual situations of risk and violence. The occupational fatality rate for all full-time workers in the US was 3.4 per 100,000 in 2012, so it’s almost five times that for police officers. And unlike loggers or fishermen, police work tends to be more of a continuous lifelong career, so the chance of dying on the job over the course of one’s working life becomes higher vis-a-vis the more ephemeral nature of the highly dangerous manual labor jobs the Jacobin article lists. Plus, it’s silly to consider police officers as a demographic whole. It’s worth breaking it up among those more often on the street vs in the office and those in higher crime areas vs lower crime. There is no single job “US police officer”.

The police in NY at the moment are acting in an unacceptably authoritarian and exclusionary manner, but it doesn’t do anyone any favors to pretend they have a safe job analogous to someone working in retail or white collar sectors. It’s quite easy to entertain the two thoughts “Police officers have a hazardous job that can take a psychological toll” and “Police officers behave in racially discriminatory ways that lead to far too many black deaths and are way out of line about this most recent situation” at the same time.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm

Yes, but the military has an ethos of respecting the office even if you don’t respect the man. Apparently, a lot of the NYPD leadership does not. This is one way the cops could stand to be more militarized.

I think that the “police officers don’t have the most dangerous jobs” thing, while it’s useful in countering some kinds of propaganda, doesn’t really address the core issue. What’s important in my opinion is not so much the absolute fatality as it is that police officers have to face on a day-by-day basis, as part of their job, the chance of deliberate, violent resistance that they have to overpower. That’s a different kind of stress than a logger faces, even if the logger has a higher absolute chance of dying on the job. Without good training, it’s easy for all of the familiar defenses to take over: police as a sort of tribe that looks after each other, police wanting to have more and more powerful arms and armor, etc.

Where this dynamic intersects particularly badly with conservative politics in America is around race. As any number of people have pointed out, protestors associated with Clive Bundy shot two police officers and then themselves in a similar way to the New York case. But they were white, and so it was “senseless violence”.

Further to 49, the issue is really not primarily what certain police union leaders say. The issue is the extent of support they can count on among the reactionary elites, and that is huge and that is what makes it Weimar-y.

I feel like the United States is suffering, in the past 20 or so years, from an increasingly serious conflict between what people assumed was true, and turns out not to be so. What causes it, I don’t know. Examples of this include:

– that the political game in Washington had certain limits, and that both parties shared ideological commonalities (fell apart in Clinton’s administration).
– that the integration of black people into public life was an obvious necessity (went too far for a lot of people in 2008).
– that voting was a basic civic good that wouldn’t be fucked with (everything that’s happened since 2000).
– basic security, benignity of government, safety of Americans (Katrina)
– a constant problem with enforcing oversight of violence, which is the theme running through all of the killings by police and vigilantes in the past few years, as well as the torturing, Guantanamo, Iraq War, border policing, etc., the inability to develop robust, independent oversight. This is basically the root of the cop’s revolt in New York City, a rejection of any form of criticism on their use of violence.

All of these things make a government and civil society that is fearful and uncertain that there are legal recourses to control any form of power that’s exerted. As an American who emigrated to Canada, I really feel that there’s a tension in American public life that is lacking up north. For example, the cops in Montreal rioted a few months back — it wasn’t about oversight, it was about contract negotiations, and in one sense can be looked at as an expression of the strength of unionization. Some of them were fired. The cop who shot a guy with a knife on a Toronto streetcar last year is on trial (for murder, I think). Harper’s weird proroguing of Parliament (which I don’t really understand) is the nearest Canadian equivalent to the breakdown of political behaviour that’s happened in the U.S. — but unlike in the States, there is strong Conservative pushback in the media when standards are abandoned, you don’t see the same partisan cultural landscape.

I guess I’m arguing that Canadians mostly agree on the political and social rules that control how they fight each other, and Americans don’t any more. (Whether they ever did is another question.)

Here’s what changed. We now have black journalists and citizens with camera phones. The Rodney King “riots” might have looked different under current media realities. Back then, we still trusted 5 or 6 white men to decide what the news was.

What makes evil in American policing more necessary than in other developed nations? Other nations have regulations and taxes on cigarette sales too but they don’t kill so many citizens in the course of enforcing the laws. You can blame some of it on (justified) fear that American criminals are far more likely to have guns than in other developed nations, but then you see the police killing someone who is already restrained and you wonder WTF is wrong with them. And WTF is wrong with all the “good cops” who manage to avoid arresting, testifying against, or noticing the bad apples they work alongside.

Doh, got carried away! That’s more than two!

Nobody tell Thornton about Brazil.

That’s just hogwash about the racial diversity (which just means skin colour, a serious answer would use ethnic diversity) — how about the Caribbean nations that have large proportions of people from Europe, South Asia, and Africa? How about Papua New Guinea? How about India? Canada? Australia? Mexico?

there is no single way to measure racial or ethnic diversity, different approaches will get you very different results (think – how do you score certain ethnic divisions in Africa where the distinctions was magnified and accentuated by colonialism? i don’t see an easy answer to this). both of the concepts – race and ethnicity – are somewhat endogenous to the society in question, and as such there is a real challenge making comparisons. this is why social scientists tend to talk about ‘ethnic fractionalization’ morso than ‘diversity’ – this way of measuring it situates it more squarely within the society’s own framework of understanding than ‘diversity’, which suggests something more abstract/universal.

i don’t think the US will score highest by any measure. but if you got rid of the middle of the country, looking only at the coasts and the urban areas, you can’t deny that the US is very diverse. At least for most national groups, the US has flourishing communities from all over the world in some city or another. So much so that this was a game we used to play in college

the US also has a long history of segmenting people based on race (whether through white supremacy or in the immigration restrictions over the centuries), all at the same time as being a huge magnet for immigrants.

superlatives aside, the US does have a significant element of racial diversity that must be grappled with when thinking about proper policing tactics, and its situation/history in this regard is distinctive compared to those other societies typically considered the US’s peers in other contexts

In general, Europe is the worst at dealing with diversity. The Weimar-y country these days is Germany. Seven Algerians show up in Paris and they ban burkas. The UKIP in the UK is both worse than the Tea Party and far more organized.

Countries that have done well we’re generally colonized by the Spanish. In those places the Jesuitits consistently argued on behalf of indigenous peoples. And the Brits weren’t importing slaves.

Carribean countries where the slave race is the majority is obviously different. Nonetheless, if you want to meet cops that snuff out human life w/o a second thought, leave the resort on Jamaica or Antigua.

But don’t let my overstatement hijack my point: however you measure racial diversity, it’s presence helps explain what our cops appear worse than those in, Europe for example.

@22: I don’t think de Blasio is acting out of fear of assassination, either, but I would be surprised indeed if the Moscone precedent hasn’t at least crossed his mind.

@76 I’m not suggesting that Mexico is peaceful. I’m saying that racial division is less violent than in the United states. Mestizos are not treated like mulattos. But there is a great distance between treating someone like Americans treated mulattos and treating someone like a human being.

I think it is a fair generalization to say that the English Empire left a legacy of race hate that no other Empire can compete with. Australia is as bad or worse than the States.

Obviously various pedants will point out that the world is filled with examples of “the other”. And that’s true. But the Confederacy was 40% African slave. When Germany is 40% anything it won’t be Germany any more.

In countries like Mexico, the pure indigenous went from 99% of the population to 5% in a generation. The legacy lives on. But it’s not the same.

In North Carolina, the best predictor of whether a white person would vote for Obama is what percentage slave that voter’s county was in 1860:
http://thorntonhalldesign.com/philosophy/2014/11/14/wither-the-white-working-class

@Ronan
By the by, the author of the book review you link to does not know his immigration history. The doors of the U.S. were not thrown open at the request of Industry. Open was the default position. The Declaration of Independence complains that George III was anti-immigration!

Until the 1920s there was only one rule: no Chinese. And that rule only dates to the 1880s.

It’s actually the 20th Century that’s the anomaly in US immigration history.

Thornton – I meant to link to the book rather than the review. There are bits in the review specifically I don’t necessarily agree with (not that I’d really know tbh) It’s been a while since I read Steinberg’s book, it was written 3 decades ago and mainly (afaicr) argues against the idea that there was something specific in the cultures of immigrant ethnic groups that led to their mobility into the middle classes, more that their ‘success’ can be explained by things like self selecting migration, skills they brought with them, their easier assimilation into mainstream society (leaving cultural baggage behind) etc .. I was offering it more in support of your idea that things are differen’t for the black working class than other minority (immigrant ) groups historically. I was agreeing with you, more than anything. (with a caveat or two)
Afaicr Steinberg does stress the racialised nature of US immigration policy (particularly towards the Chinese) but argues that open door immigration was primarily due to economic neccesity rather than a commitment to ethnic plurality.

I was only spitballing really, though. I’m not American and generally my semi theories arent (rightly) given much credence, so I’m not claiming to have anything novel to say here. (my main point was only that Im not really buying your ‘ethnic diversity’ as the cause of US police dysfunction argument, there are simpler more plausible answers – historical racism being one – but I’m open to correction as always ;) )

#16
A fair number of readers want to hear exactly that, much like Christians who see every problem in the world as a sign that the Apocalypse is nigh. But since the “I don’t want him at my funeral” crap has been thrown at many previous mayors, including Giuliani himself when he dared to investigate corruption in the PBA, I think a bit of perspective is in order.

Just out of curiosity, how many CT readers are cops, have been cops, have cops as family members, or have friends or neighbors who are cops?

If I know none, want to know none, and I’m not ready to put on the shield, then maybe I’m not the best qualified to offer an informed opinion about the work police people do, the rewards and challenges of the job, and whether individual police people are performing at the job I’m so determined to know so little about or do.

The criminals I’d like to see in jail: rogue bankers, are celebrating Christmas with a record-breaking DOW. The WH tells us everyone is doing better because the rich are getting richer. So, if your paycheck is shrinking, and your jobs prospects are dim, you can take solace from the fact that the rich people’s recovery continues to thrive.

My favorite police drama is the Wire. Wonderful writing and superb acting made the Wire what it is. I use scenes from the Wire in my classes. The Wire, of course, confirms just how entrenched rape culture is in modern American life, as in the rape culture in America’s prisons. Course, most of the people in prison today are disproportionally people of color and/poor, so that rape culture and the other abuse will have to remain a topic of entertainment. Was there a season when our favorite cop heroes didn’t use the threat of torture at the hands of other prisoners as a tool to frighten or intimidate suspects? ‘Twas the current Dem president’s favorite show, as I recall.

The poor need help, they’re not getting it, and the folks we pay to keep the mob at bay are paying the price. Are some cops racist? Absolutely. But they’re not the problem. Cops are the flashpoint and the lightening rod. After getting elected, Dems fattened the purses of Big Pharma, Goldman Sachs, and Big Insurance. Extending UI benefits instead of making jobs the priority, over climate change, over getting Chicago the Olympics, over getting UBL, over expanding Drone strikes, and over fundraising, helped create a permanent underclass. Conditions are worse for just about everybody, except the rich, after 6 years of Dem rule. People are pissed, they’re right to be, as long as they stay mad at the cops.

Right?

@kidneystones
1) any theories on why I pass 4 or 5 kidney stones a year (seriously)?

2) a good friend of mine from college is a precinct captain in the Bronx. Ivy League, ROTC Army officer, he’s by no means typical. But I also know some cop families from Chicago. And I’ve been arrested.

Look. Are cops the problem? Not really. But they sure as hell aren’t the solution. And far too many people think they are. It’s those people who need to see that the cops are a necessary evil. If vigilance is the price of liberty, it’s the cops we should be watching, not the Iraqis or Russians.

Thornton Hall.
“Until the 1920’s there was only one rule: no Chinese. And that rule dates to the 1920’s.”
Took about 30 seconds to locate this: http://www.indiana.edu/~kdhist/H105-documents-web/week08/naturalization1790.html
“That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof .” 1790, amended and confirmed in 1795.
“That any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States, or any of them, on the following conditions, and not otherwise: –”

In the light of your unfounded and wrongheaded claims about US immigration and citizenship laws, we shouldn’t be too surprised to encounter your unsupported assertion that the “majority” of cops are bullies. Changes in state and federal law in the early 19th century targeted successful Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese farmers in the west, btw.

You are correct, in my view, about the generally improved standards of policing, for what that’s worth. However, this positive trends is offset by the now common practice of offloading military hardware to police departments.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

kidneystones @ 85:

Since you ask, my sister is in the police (in the UK suburbs, so possibly not very closely comparable).

@kidneystones
Majority is debatable. Prosecutors would probably say the cops are 30% bullies and 60% lazy working stiffs.

@AH
I do think it’s important to confront the idea that the forces of reaction are “winning”.

A majority of state legislatures? Perhaps. But representing what? 1/4 of the population? 1/3?

The presidency of Barack Obama has seen the rise of reactionary public rhetoric, not because the reactionaries are winning. Rather, because they are clearly losing. If hanging people from trees would prevent GA from going blue in 2020, they’d be doing it and you’d have an argument. Because that sort of thing used to happen all the time.

Seriously, the cops are better than ever. The militarization is a problem, but wind down the wars on drugs and terrorism and they’ll have far fewer occasions to roll out the tanks.

Incarceration is dropping year after year. http://www.samefacts.com/2014/12/crime-incarceration/the-proportion-of-americans-under-criminal-justice-supervision-is-at-an-18-year-low/

The death throes of “Real America” defined as white, Protestant and rural are not pretty, but they are death throes nonetheless.

I’ve been a liberal all my life, and not only have I never sneered at “flyover country” I’ve never heard another liberal do it either. Is this something that actually exists, or another conservative fantasy?

I grew up in flyover country and I’m certainly not sneering at it. I was merely pointing out that counting states is not a good way to count Americans.

Certainly Brett’s statistics are important. But do they suggest, as AH does, that

It’s a time to be afraid.

I don’t think so. We are at the nadir. Push any further on abortion and those state legislatures will lose the votes of a lot of suburban women who are too young to know what happens when you actually ban abortion. Absent mandatory carry laws, it can’t get worse than “stand your ground” on guns. The state houses can’t do anything about satanic shrines next to nativity scenes in the public square. Wisconsin’s economy can only lag behind Minnesota’s for so long before Packer fans start to get pissed. Oklahoma has banned sharia law. Is Brett excited to see if Nebraska will be next?

Seriously, you cannot get these people more politically active than the 8 years when a black family is living in the White House. This is the peak of their rage. If it means some loathsome cops declare a bunch of racist nonsense in the NY Post, then we’ll have to put up with that.

“Normal” in America will very soon be off-white. There’s nothing state house denizens can do about it.

Could it be that US cops have a lower social status than european ones, or at least German ones? I mean specifically status, not income. If yes, is that due to a general lower status of public sector workers or specific to cops?

Brett @96:
47.8% of Americans now live in states where the GOP controls the legislature and the statehouse. 15.6% live in states where Democrats control the legislature and the statehouse. … 36.6% live in states where the two parties share power.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states):
As of October 2014, Gallup polling found that 43% of Americans identified as Democrats and 39% as Republicans, when party “leaners” were included; those figures changed to 41% Democratic and 42% Republican after the November 2014 elections.

1) How come the Republicans control a large majority of legislatures with only a 1 percent plurality of voters?

2) If, in such a situation, the Democrats tried to amend the Constitution, what would be the reaction of the Republicans?

geo #103

1) How come the Republicans control a large majority of legislatures with only a 1 percent plurality of voters?

largely because they’ve been much better in getting people to vote in “unimportant” elections. Secondly, because of the well-known asymmetry that (generally speaking) Democratic voters favor compromise whereas Republican voters favor sticking to principles. Thirdly, because so-called “independents (who for the most part really aren’t, but that’s a different story) voted massively Republican in recent, especially by-year, election, though this is arguably just a sub-set of 1).

(None of that is meant to support Brett’s fantasies of a GOP constitutional coup. Both because of what TH says and because he conveniently omits the fact that 2/3 of state legislatures just get you a convention. You need 3/4 to ratify.)

Could you enumerate some of those possible amendments Brett? The ones that you think would be political poison to reject? I’m genuinely interested (not looking to point-score).

Possible amendments it would be political poison for Democrats to vote against in mixed states:

1. Overturn Kelo, with teeth.
2. Term limits.
3. Balanced budget amendment.

I’d also like to see:

4. The House of Repeal.
5. Restored federalism amendment.
6. Compel Congress to live under it’s own laws amendment.

“(By the way, you’ve left out 4 — voter suppression by Republicans.)”

Left it out because there hasn’t been any. They’ve done some awfully mild things that Democrats have attacked as “voter suppression”, but are only too glad to completely overlook where they’re doing it themselves. Seriously, it’s hilarious to attack N.C. for voter suppression for reducing early voting to barely a month, and shrug off all those states that don’t have early voting AT ALL. When’s Holder going to go after N.Y. for the rampant voter suppression it’s engaging in?

“and it also seems obvious that it should count for more. ”

I think that it’s a bad idea to have a political system where representatives elected by a minority of the electorate can pass laws. I also think it’s a bad idea to have a political system where these people over here can pass laws applicable to those people over there who opposed them, just because the people over here outnumber the people over there.

Not enough subsidiarity in our system anymore, and I think that’s a bigger problem.

Term limits? Would involve politicians voting against their own interests, so probably not going to happen.

Overturn Kelo? Would involve the Republicans going against the moneyed interests, so probably not going to happen.

Balanced budget amendment could happen, but will have a loophole for wartime expenditures, and given the fact that the country is now on a permanent wartime footing, probably won’t make a difference. Also a serious balanced budget amendment would require tax increases, which would cool Republican ardor.

It would involve state legislators voting against the interests of federal legislators, so maybe not such a stretch.

“Also a serious balanced budget amendment would require tax increases, which would cool Republican ardor.”

Or spending cuts, which would horrify Democrats to the point where the possibility might not even occur to them. ;)

TH is saying that the reactionary streak in American politics can’t get any worse. “We are at the nadir.” From now on it has to go back in the other direction. The arguments he presents for this thesis are weak. “Incarceration is dropping year after year.” Come on, it has dropped once or twice so far. It mighty drop further or it might stabilize at a level that still hands down exceeds that of any other country including some nasty dictatorships. There is precious little evidence that the war on drugs and the war on terror will end any time soon. Some of his other arguments allege that American voters just won’t stand for any further movement to the right. That seems delusional in several respects. First, we thought the same thing in the past – voters won’t possible give Bush a second term, they won’t possibly hand Congress to the Republicans after everything they did in the past years. Nonsense. Voters told the 2014 midterm exit polls that they wanted exactly the opposite of what the Republicans stood for yet a majority voted for them. In any case, TH must be assuming that the American political system is actually representative which it obviously isn’t. He doesn’t seem to care about how reactionary the ruling elites have become. They have done extremely well these past decades and they have a lot to lose if things were starting to go in the other direction. TH writes something about the “death throes” of the white protestant hegemony over America. But the “death throes” of obsolete social arrangements can be pretty frightening. Such death throes have in other historical circumstances given rise to fascism.

TH’s “don’t worry it can’t p0ssibly get any worse” mantra is foolish and delusional. It is not impossible of course that things do turn around in the near future but the opposite is equally possible. It seems to me that American liberals are increasingly delusional about the political reality in this country. Their inability to fight back against the vicious right wing extremism that has been ascendant for at least a decade is a result of that delusional world view. They have somehow convinced themselves that nothing really really bad can ever happen here but not only have plenty of really really bad things already happened, there is also no good reason to assume that more and possibly worse things won’t happen.

Re: End of the World, and other Fantasies.

First, on the utility of using cable news viewership as a metric of future political trends: From the Wire May 2014. ” the median ages for the three cable networks in May were 62.5 (MSNBC), 62.8 (CNN), and 68.8 (Fox News).”

Second, on votes counted don’t match exit polls. Takeaway? People don’t tell exit pollsters the truth. Or, exit poll designers can’t/won’t design accurate tests.

The media is morphing. People? Not so much. Demographics are changing, and Dems must maintain the fiction that their methods work, whilst Republicans promote their fiction that they care just as much about the poor and disenfranchised as Dems.

The only/big success of the last six years is expanding health care coverage to poor people. My own sense is that the overwhelming majority of Americans will take a good job over government-mandated healthcare any day of the week. Balanced against this success is the collapse of the African-American middle class and a host of other preventable woes.

Will the Republicans do a better job? Many Americans believe the current crop of Dems blew their chance. Course, I’m so old I can remember all the way back to 2008, when brand R stunk so bad that Dem bigwigs were predicting the permanent Dem majority, over at the TNR as it happens. Team blue zealots tell themselves Koch Konspiracy Tales rather than consider the possibility that two years of Dem control of the WH and Congress convinced voters to go back to Team red. Had Republicans come out for Romney, we’d be having a different conversation. I can’t believe Americans are ready for a Mormon president, but I’ve been wrong plenty already.

In the political science of kidneystones there are Redskins fans, Cowboy fans, and then a significant set of (in my city) DC residents who are football fans, paying attention to the season and choosing to support one or the other team depending on their records after week ten.

In the real world there are a set of people who don’t want to be on the same team as black and brown people. In the past that was no big deal because black and brown people weren’t allowed the in league. Jack Kent Cooke and all that.

Now, it turns out, appealing to the anti-black and brown folks requires language that is rapidly going out of fashion. God doesn’t hate fags after all. Women’s bodies don’t just shut that down. If a black man says he can’t breathe, that’s not the punchline to a joke about choosing a brand of rope.

Out of fashion? some ask. But Saint Ronald won his great victory by saying all those things! If you lose, it’s because you didn’t say them.

Meanwhile, “the Democrats methods don’t work”. Right. Social security no longer prevents destitution among the elderly. And Medicare no longer prevents needless death? And the EPA no longer brings lakes and rivers back from “death”. And on and on and on.

Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Well ok. You’re right. No job creation under Obama. I cannot tell a lie.

You want big programs, not just ending rampant medically caused bankruptcy (around 30 to 50% of ALL Bankrupcy!)? That happens when people are on the same team. It’s not leadership or creativity or GOTV or balls or “real liberals” or whatever nonsense you have in mind. Scandinavians: generous welfare, plenty of jobs, every last person is white.

That’s why America is so freaking awesome. It’s not easy. It’s not all the time. But sometimes we are all on the same team. And that team has never been all anything. Never.

To get to where we both want to go, we need to get to an America where black kids in gray hoodies are allowed in the league. It’s painful, but we’re getting there. But then we have to get rural whites to want to be not just in that league, but on the same team. Frankly, some of them just have to die. That’s happening. Some states are never going to come along. Mississippi? Not in our lifetimes. But NC and Ga: happening. Kansas? Crazy things afoot. The white suburbs of Milwaukee and Detroit? It’s complicated, but not impossible.

In 2016 California will have anothe MJ referendum. What kind of pants do you wear? Jeans. Where are your movies made?

We can make things move faster if we ease up on the shame of failed Reconstruction and remember that Rock and Roll is down to Southern whites and blacks. Who doesn’t want to be on team rock and roll?

Too facile? Perhaps. But remember me when CA passes that referendum.

I think it’s necessary for both the Democratic party AND the Republican party, as they are presently constituted, to disappear. The problem is that they don’t want to disappear, and they control the election machinery.

I used to be a Libertarian party activist, starting back in the ’70’s. We always knew that the American election system didn’t permit more than two parties to be stable, that to be successful we’d have to displace one of the existing parties. For a while it looked like we might have had a shot, but “the empire struck back”, they started changing election and campaign rules to prevent it. Locked us out of the debates, instituted the election news service to unify election day coverage with 3rd party results disappeared, made any fund raising method that started to work for us illegal, raised barriers to ballot access.

The wars about campaign ‘reform’ look like a fight between the major parties, and they are, but they started out as a successful joint effort to foreclose 3rd party success, and they remain that.

I think both major parties are aware at the top that to some extent they are occupying armies, and the populace is restive. The GOP leadership certainly know that, they seem to view the Tea Party with more hatred than Democrats do. (For all that they need its aid, their own troops being unmotivated.)

@Brett
I am quite happy to say that I provoked a purely non-trolling comment on your part.

The failure of spatial metaphors to explain politics is easily seen in the endless debated over the “so called liberal media”. Yes, reporters vote for Democrats. But the post-war objective media is defined not by policy preference but by its thorough going contempt for institutions. This is exemplified at every turn by the odious Bob Woodward. When the economy succeeds, it’s down to the brilliant “Maestro”, not workers and management. When the country embarks on a foreign adventure, it’s not the enormous foreign policy establishment but one man, “Bush At War.” Empirical studies reveal the media is neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestinian, but pro-peace. This is manifested by being anti-whichever side (government/institution) is seen as being the obstacle of the moment.

Are urban elites put off by anti-institutional bias? They should be, because it destroys the ability of government to solve problems. But elites are too smart to see this, spending their lives being pedantic about all the petty failures of both the government and the Democratic Party.

Rural whites are not pedantic. Anti-institutional bias feels like anti-rural white bias to people whose identity is defined by an institution like a church. And, they are correct. The objective media believes that democracy requires them to destroy institutions.

But you know who wins when we imagine Americans as individuals, each succeeding on their merits in the great marketplace? Not poor people. And that’s why the media is not “liberal”.

People’s policy preferences and political self-identity are not spatially related.

If you want to argue that “republican” and “democratic” labels are more about culture and tradition — ethnicity, essentially — than policies, that’s fine and I’d even agree, but in that case you’d probably want to support some of the electoral and political systems designed for heavy ethnic stresses, like the forced-power-sharing in northern ireland.

[it’s probably worth noting that the nominal basis of the divide in northern ireland politics is a political question — unionist or republican — not religious.]

But you’re not going to get a sensible debate about what the US political system should look like if you’ve got people who insist that the basic structure of government is untouchable and no fundamental issues need looking at but also that the current system produces illegitimate results. It’s one or the other, guys.

[I’ve got a particular peeve about people who want change they don’t want to own: “restoration” is a change and needs to be justified on pragmatic grounds, but far too often you get people who seem to think “it originally worked like that” is all the argument you need.]

A quick response to Corey’s link to the “change” in tone. Political beasts are just that. All elected officials fear an unhappy electorate. Ms. Mark-Viverito is particularly vulnerable. And her close ties to the mayor make him vulnerable, too.

The fundamental’s have not changed, however. Anti-police bigotry is accepted at CT, and viewed as perfectly “normal.” Case in point: TH’s “I hate the cops” switch after earlier claiming friendship with a Bronx police captain. We can assume that TH hates cops because 9/10 is racist or lazy, or both. The difference is TH, I suppose, isn’t spewing his anti-cop venom as broadly as Ms. Mark-Viverito. At CT, anti-cop bigotry goes largely unchallenged perhaps because TH is a “good guy,” a “fellow-liberal,” or simply “one of us.”

Ms. M-V is engaged in some serious politicking coupled with some very sensible CYA, cause there are still plenty of lunatics out there ready to hang their homicide on the rank bigotry of the politically and morally self-satisfied.

Happy New Year!

#128 TH

Now that you’ve explained, I see that you are saying something so subtle it’s very hard for me to repeat it back in my own words. Subtle complex ideas. But I’ll try.

First you complain about journalism. I think you’re saying that the dominant approach has been to try to tell both sides, with the result that even when one side is obviously true then you tell the other side’s lies as if they aren’t obvious lies. This supports the government and other important institutions because if you say things they don’t like then they will refuse to communicate with you, and then you can’t tell their side.

The alternative is that you find informers inside an institution who will tell you secrets. You publish the secrets but protect the source. An unethical journalist could just make up stuff, except what he makes up has to sound plausible or people won’t believe it. Ideally he gets real documents and not just secret professional opinions. The institution will refuse to communicate with him but that doesn’t matter because he has The Secret Truth.

(It occurs to me that an organization like CIA or KGB etc would try to acquire moles in institutions anyway. Once they have one that can convince a journalist that he’s a bona fide member of the institution who could somehow get access to secrets, they could pass him fake documents to get published. The institution would *particularly* want to identify this whistle-blower.)

You are saying that “movement conservatism” arose at the same time as this weird form of journalism, and you think it might be partly because of the journalism. When journalists print conservative lies beside the truth, it helps the movement spread. (To me this idea plays right into the conservative mindset. Like there used to be an entirely liberal media that only printed liberal lies, but then they started showing both sides. But to my own way of thinking it’s more like they used to print random plausible lies that occasionally happened to be true by accident, and then they started giving equal time to often-less-plausible conservative lies that occasionally happen to be true by accident.)

Your second paragraph says that voters mostly don’t fit simple philosophies. They follow leaders (who sometimes talk like they fit simple philosophies). They also watch their own self-interest. They care about their tribes. Sometimes they’re irrational and sometimes they’re mean. Add it all together and their stands on individual issues will vary in ways that don’t fit some simple one-or-two-dimensional doctrine.

So one of your main points is that people don’t (no longer?) fit any simple conservative/liberal spectrum.

Another is that they’re paying less attention to the media, which has traditionally been trying to tear down institutions. The institutions need watching, but the media was not doing that adequately but instead just attacking them.

A third is that people join teams, and racism (and “classism”) has affected the teams and will affect them less. We are paying less attention to whether people are black, but still pretty much if they are black and poor.

You are not gloomy. EPA still works despite GOP. Medicare still works. SS still works. To a large extent government works and solves problems. Some of our intractable problems caused by politics and media will no longer be intractable.

Am I getting closer?

I think people are actually paying more attention to the media. Because the Internet has broken the old monopolies, millennials have news sources that speak to their interests. The old guard wrings their hands about how Twitter doesn’t have a correspondent in Ukraine and you must pay to support such thinks. But Twitter doesn’t have one correspondent in Ukraine, it has thousands. And it turns out that it doesn’t take a masters degree to do good journalism.

I don’t think Twitter, per se, is the future of news, but it’s an early version.

@kidneystones
You need more experience with human beings if you think it isn’t possible to like many cops individually and yet hate them generally. And I started with the idea that they are a necessary evil. Do you like necessary evil? I don’t.

Two more quick points…

The change in NYC from 1990 to today is truly remarkable:

Murder: down 85%
Rape: down 55%
Robbery: down 80%
etc.

Last year NYC recorded the fewest murders (333) since it began keeping reliable statistics. This year may be even better.

While the extent to which these improvements can be attributed to changes in police strategy is arguable, most NYers attribute a significant effect to the police.

And so while a politician in NYC can become associated with arguing for more fair policing strategies, or more effective policing strategies, she won’t last long as an elected official if she’s perceived as simply anti-police.

It’s arguable as well as to the extent to which the media accurately portrayed the tone and emphasis of de Blasio’s comments, or that of others. Viewed in full, they appear far more balanced than when viewed through the narrow lens of a media intent on hyping controversy. But that narrow lens matters, and so de Blasio had to act dramatically to counter a growing narrative (enthusiastically pushed by the union) in which he was associated with being simply anti-police.

So one needn’t stretch nearly a century back and an ocean away to Weimar Germany to understand the political dynamics. The relevant history is far more recent and very local.

From a less widely accepted vantage, and purely IMHO, I found the protests often veered into bizarre territory. There are good and reasonable criticisms to make of certain policing strategies, and there are good and reasonable approaches to improving them. But the pretense that the biggest obstacle facing anyone living in Bed-Stuy or Brownsville is the NYPD, or that the prime worry of anyone sending his child to school is a cop, is absurd. It’s almost offensively false.

Let me give an example. Two years ago the head of NYPD’s Juvenile Justice Division gave parents the following advice: don’t tell your kids not to join a gang. Essentially the dilemma faced by children in certain neighborhoods is to either join a crew, and almost certainly develop a criminal record (with all that entails), or refuse to join a crew and thereby place oneself in physical jeopardy. That kind of dilemma is far more important, and relevant, and harmful, than the risk of dying in an encounter with the police.

While I understand, and respect, protests as a peaceful method of expressing disagreement with a particular outcome of the justice system, they have advocated no intelligent policy prescriptions, they have failed to indicate an accurate understanding of challenges we face, and they have distracted energy and focus from policies that might make a real difference. Angrily chanting at police officers might feel good to the protesters, but it’s not remotely constructive or helpful. It’s reactionary, self-indulgent, and promotes a radically distorted picture of the socioeconomic issues confronting poorer urban neighborhoods in NYC. Intelligent policy rarely fits neatly into slogans and chants, or into the simplistic cognitive schema so adored and abused by issue entrepreneurs, pundits, and ambitious politicians.

Andrew, the changes in many, if not most big cities in the USA are radical.

“While I understand, and respect, protests as a peaceful method of expressing disagreement with a particular outcome of the justice system, they have advocated no intelligent policy prescriptions, they have failed to indicate an accurate understanding of challenges we face, and they have distracted energy and focus from policies that might make a real difference. ”

Sure they have. Don’t criminalize stupid shit. Don’t make stupid arrests for misdemeanors (see especially status crimes). Don’t make escalation the default police value. Don’t make interactions with black people so confrontational by stopping and searching them without very good cause. Don’t make deadly force an early go to option. Do punish it when appropriate. Take a cop who kills somebody off the street for a long time even if you can’t criminally prosecute him.

Ronan @138: I haven’t read it either yet, but I appreciate the link to that article.

Barry @139: Andrew, the changes in many, if not most big cities in the USA are radical.

I’m aware, and that’s in part why I noted that the extent to which the change can be attributed to policing strategies is arguable. But the puzzle of NYC’s drop in crime isn’t resolved simply by comparing it to the general trend either. As the author at Ronan’s link points out:

What sets New York apart from this general pattern is that its decline was twice as large as the national trend and lasted twice as long.

That article is from 2012, and the trend in NYC continues apace.

Sebastian H @141: I appreciate the substantive reply. I agree with many of the things you’ve listed, but I also don’t think they’ve been the focus of the protests. But that’s just my impression.

Don’t criminalize stupid shit.

If we’re talking about possession of small amounts of marijuana, I agree with you. But if this is meant as a general indictment of broken windows policing, I have to disagree.

Don’t make stupid arrests for misdemeanors (see especially status crimes).

With respect to marijuana arrests, I agree that the law should be changed. Did you have other things in mind?

Don’t make escalation the default police value.

I agree, and perhaps additional training in this regard would be useful, although where possible that’s already preferred. Of course, where an individual is resisting arrest or himself using force against an officer, escalation is probably necessary to ensure the officer’s control of the situation and his or her own safety.

Don’t make interactions with black people so confrontational by stopping and searching them without very good cause.

I think that tensions here are an unintended consequence of flooding high-crime areas with officers. And I’d include interactions short of a frisk, such as stopping someone and asking questions (which occurs more frequently than frisks). Reducing the extent to which these are confrontational, so far as feasible, would be excellent. Measures taken, though, should be consistent with allowing police in these areas to act effectively to reduce crime.

Don’t make deadly force an early go to option.

I don’t think it is. Is there any evidence for thinking so?

Do punish it when appropriate. Take a cop who kills somebody off the street for a long time even if you can’t criminally prosecute him.

I’d say take a cop whose judgment fell short of professional standards off the street until he exhibits sufficient improvement to allow him to safely resume his previous duties. Obviously, if the matter is more serious, then disciplinary action beyond simply reassignment should be taken.

I don’t hate all cops, for instance the chief of the Nashville police:
http://gawker.com/police-chief-respecting-cops-means-respecting-protesto-1675787560

But is there any winning here for the police? Let’s say they don’t flood high crime areas with police. Won’t they just be raked over the coals for wasting police resources in areas where crime isn’t happening, and neglecting minority neighborhoods?

It seems to me you can’t avoid devoting more police to areas where the crimes are actually happening. You need to find a way to do it that doesn’t cause problems. But, “problems” are a result of interactions between police and the local population, and I don’t think we can assume a priori that the source of the problems is just the police, rather than the local population.

We are, after all, talking about local population in areas where the crime rate is very high. Are we to suppose that crime rate doesn’t have anything to do with the people living there, like it’s weather or something?

Do citizens need to ask themselves, “Is committing this crime worth the risk of getting shot?” Or is it only police who need to make these sorts of judgments?

Love it all you like. If you’re talking about an area with a high crime rate, you have to assume it’s not something in the water, or radiation from outer space, it’s the people living there. They’re the ones committing the crimes, after all, does the crime rate have nothing at all to do with them?

Sigh.

No, Brett, because the crime rate is a product of:
+ what the people in the locality do
+ what the people who run the law-enforcement apparatus write the laws to define
+ what the people who run the law-enforcement apparatus

It’s partially a result of the actions of the people, yes, but — 2 out of 3 — it’s a result of law-enforcement decisions. Crime rate’s a good measure of the extent of disagreement between “police” and “population”, but it’s not more than that: you cannot assume that a high crime rate is entirely the result of problematic populations because you can only do that if you assume that the police have no agency and exert no control over the crime rate… which in a debate about the potential responsibility of police officers for worsening the situation is the exact and precise definition of question-begging.

[as I’ve set out before, question-begging is something you can do accidentally pretty easilly and you have to be trained out of. It’s training and education, not talent: that you can’t — this is far from the only time you’ve done things like this — is how we can tell that you’re not very well educated. Your education was done badly: maybe your teachers were shit, maybe you weren’t paying attention, maybe whatever. We don’t know, but the results — that you can’t structure a decent argument for shit — are pretty undeniable.]

If you’re talking about an area with a high crime rate, you have to assume it’s not something in the water, or radiation from outer space, it’s the people living there.

Because in America no one ever leaves the area they live in.

“But, “problems” are a result of interactions between police and the local population, and I don’t think we can assume a priori that the source of the problems is just the police, rather than the local population.”

No we don’t have to assume that. We’ve seen it.

I’m old. The first time I saw “Serve and Protect” on a police vehicle, in the sixties (LA?), I knew that it was an imperative directed at us, not a description of their job.

It’s a little better. Now we’re noticing they shoot black people with impunity. Another half century or so, we may get around to doing something about it.

City police, in particular, exist to enforce social norms, protect property, protect people, and prevent crime, in that order.

Drug laws, as TH notes, are an excellent example of this in practice. Liberal elites demand and expect selective enforcement of drug statutes to ensure they and their offspring do not face the grosser injustices of America’s penal system. Judges frequently sympathize with the defense if the defendant happens to be white, well-educated, employed, a property owner, and demonstrably (not sincerely) contrite.

Yes, some cops are racist, some are bullies, some are lazy, and some are a combination of all three. One flaw may forgiven. Two are tolerated. Three earn the police person promotion. Just kidding. The system has built-in biases compounded by the conditions of the job. The police are no doubt aware that anti-police bigotry is accepted and even deemed a virtue in some circles. Incarceration is not the answer, but neither is blaming the people we pay to enforce social norms.

Uniform enforcement of the law irrespective of income, color, or social class is something very few want to see, unless, you’re keen to have many of your students tagged with a criminal record, fined, and/or forced to spend a few weeks/months/years locked-up. If you think you want to see people of color treated equally with people of privilege, imagine your son, daughter, nephew, niece, is arrested this weekend for a drug crime.

Do you want your relative charged, tried, sentenced, and fined/incarcerated, or given a break?

Cops know the answer, and behave accordingly.

Yes, we have the resources.

The richest 400 Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 60% of the country combined. Just the six Walmart heirs hold more than the bottom 40% of the country combined. Raising taxes on the rich is very popular, and is only countered by propaganda by the rich.

The richest 1% gobbles up nearly 24% of all income right now, and we Americans totaled roughly 13 trillion last year. The vast majority of the 1%’s income isn’t taxed at all, and FICA cuts off Social Security taxes at roughly 110K. Get the effective tax rate for the rich back up to 50% — where it was during our one and only Middle Class boom (1947-1973) — initiate a Robin Hood Tax of .1% on all financial transactions, and remove the ceiling on FICA, and we’re golden.

We could afford the following:

Free public universities and training programs
Free public trade/artisan schools
Social Security as full pension, instead of supplement
Transition to Medicare for All/Single Payer.

That last on the list would eventually fund itself, and then some.

Norwegian Guy: yup. You will observe phenomena such as Mr. Bellmore speaking sympathetically of MOVE in one thread and referring to “thugs” (or “Chicago thugs”) in another thread running in parallel. At SameFacts it became s bit of a sport to track those self-contradictions and respond to them, but as noted doing so contributed to the demise of the RBC comments section.

Cranky

Brett,

Do you think Wilson had the “right” to shoot and kill Brown for his alleged “crimes”? If you added them all up, and if he were convicted of all of them, that might get him a few years tops in jail. Maybe. But certainly not the death penalty. And that’s if we take Wilson’s word for everything, which is crazy, judging from what he said.

If Brown had finally been arrested for everything he was accused of doing . . . . and if he had been convicted of everything . . . he might have done a few years, tops.

Do you think cops should kill unarmed citizens?

#164 Norwegian Guy

Is the Brett Bellmore of this thread the same person as the one in the Sandy Hook and Peshawar-thread? Their attitudes to the police seems to be diametrically opposed.

They seem opposed from your point of view, but not from his.

In one case the agents of oppression are oppressing innocent people who only want to exercise their constitutional rights.

In the other case the protectors of the community are trying to enforce the laws against thugs who intend to kill them for their attempts to protect the community.

See, no similarity at all between the two different circumstances, except that somebody gets killed.

Of course it’s completely understandable if you don’t see it his way, and to you it looks like a contradiction. People don’t always see things the same way.

“Wilson should be in jail right now for murder, and he never should have been a police officer in the first place. If he doesn’t know how to deescalate with an unarmed teen, he has no business being on the street.”

A million times this.

J Thomas 130

“There appear to be many more people ready to do suicide-by-cop, when you look at the number of people who make suspicious moves when a policeman is watching.

There are suicidal people who try to make cops nervous, because they don’t have the nerve to just kill themselves by jumping off a building or something. They deserve our pity.”

And now watch this, and explain why almost all those “suicidal” people intentionally making the police nervous because they “don’t have the nerve to jump” are young black men:

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/watch-what-happens-when-police-confront-white-open-carry-gun-nut

“What self defense? Where? Brown was unarmed, a teen, already severely wounded by 12 shots fired by Wilson at a distance of 35 feet. ”

Always this “teen” stuff, for Trayvon Martin, too. He was 18. Old enough to vote, drive, to drink in some places. But you’ll call him a teen, to imply he was some kid too young to be responsible. Just like they circulated dated photos of Martin, to pretend HE was some kid.

And, so what if he was “unarmed”? Are you under the impression that you can’t injure people without weapons?

And forensics says a majority of ‘witnesses’ lied. Quite likely about being witnesses.

Always this “teen” stuff, for Trayvon Martin, too. He was 18.

Trayvon Martin had turned 17 earlier in the month he was shot.

Brett,

The question is, how much danger are you in from an unarmed person 35 feet away? Are you “fire several bullets and kill him” danger? Really? I believe your answer is, “Yes, really. Or at least, Wilson’s subjective belief that he was in danger is enough.”

That is where the disconnect happens. One, because most of us don’t buy that Wilson’s subjective belief; two, because if it was his belief, it was likely fueled by racist stereotypes of black super-criminals (in this case, literally superhuman); three, maybe subjective belief shouldn’t be the standard in evaluating the use of lethal force in self-defense.

BB: “And forensics says a majority of ‘witnesses’ lied. Quite likely about being witnesses.”

The only witness who seemed to mostly support Wilson’s story is now known to have lied and to have never been there. Furthermore, it is now known that the “prosecutor” knew she had lied and still presented her to the jury, of course without them having any chance to know that she lied (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/19/1353047/-Ferguson-Prosecutor-McCulloch-Admits-Sandra-Witness-40-McElroy-Lied-Under-Oath). In most places with civilized justice system, a prosecutor who does that (and of course the lying witness) would by now be charged with serious crimes. Not so in the US.

I don’t know why you BB continue to push this racist BS. We do not conclusively know if any part of Wilson’s story is true (we know that parts of it are false, for example he claimed the victim had only moved about 50 feet from the car when in fact it was at least three times). We do not know if there is any shred of truth in his description of him being scared of a man dozens of feet away. But what we do know, and there can be no dispute about it, is that he stay in his car and wait for reinforcement instead of intentionally putting himself in danger whether real or imagined. Wilson is either a murderer or acted in the highest degree unprofessional. You know that and you keep defending him. That’s all anybody needs to know about your fake Libertarianism.

Btw BB I’m disappointed you didn’t inform us how misleading it is to label 12 year old Tamir Rice a teenager. The correct descriptor for blacks any age is “a threatening, dangerous looking black man”.

Also some links I posted earlier are in moderation – what the – ?

I used to think you folks had fun debating Brett, so go to it. But contradicting him reinforces his beliefs. By interacting with him, you are complicit in the hateful, racist, useless piece of human garbage that he has become. I doubt he was this bad before comment sections.

Check out the research of Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College if you doubt that you are making the world a worse place by engaging with him.

@BB I know exactly where you come from. I know who you are. I know your excuses. They aren’t sufficient. Life presents us with a challenge. You failed. And it’s too late to try again.

Seriously, TM, you’re disappointed I didn’t live down to your prejudiced conception of my views?

Plume: ” I also know that the potential threat of injury doesn’t give anyone the right to shoot to kill someone else. ”

A matter of opinion, and not even a widely held opinion.

Castle doctrine laws were put into effect basically to carve out exceptions to the rule that a person should first try to deescalate a dangerous situation, and if they can’t, they have a duty to retreat. Once in their own homes, they no longer are required to retreat. In most states, “self defense” in the home includes deadly force. But they also stipulate, in most cases, that the potential harm is to a person, not a thing. Some states eliminate that distinction, which is barbaric. Making it legitimate to kill a human being for stealing a TV, for instance. That’s barbaric.

Stand your ground laws (which ALEC rammed down the nation’s throats) pretty much throw out legal precedents going back centuries, and give legal sanction to those who do not wish to retreat or deescalate, even far away from their homes. And if they kill the only other witness, then it’s their word against the prosecution’s, and the killer has been winning those cases more often than not. Again, that’s barbaric.

A cop should be held to a higher standard, given that he or she is tasked to “serve and protect” all citizens, including the Michael Browns, Tamar Rices and Eric Garners. And, given the fact that they have the resources to make a tactical retreat wise, they should always do so, if it’s a matter of saving lives. Retreat. Use the radio. Call for backup. In the case of Brown, he was unarmed, severely wounded already, no threat to anyone who didn’t see him as Wolverine, and he wasn’t going to escape the radio.

As it was, he was left dead on the street for six hours, while Wilson handled the murder weapon himself, bagged it without supervision, his initial interview wasn’t even recorded, the crime scene wasn’t measured right away, etc. etc.

And then, to add insult to tragedy, the grand jury didn’t send it to trial. Out of 162,000 cases in 2010, grand juries decided not to send it to trial all of 11 times. It’s true. Prosecutors could get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich, if they want to.

A couple of quick points: Firing a handgun with a six-inch barrel at a moving target even 5 yards away isn’t as easy as some here assume. Once the weapon is fired, especially after the first recoil, bullets are as likely to miss as to hit the target. Cops are generally taught to aim for center-mass so that they at least stand a chance of hitting the target. So, forget about aiming to wound, or any other similar “I learned it from the TeeVee” foolishness.

Second, the Brandeis student who declared publicly that she had “no sympathy” for the two police people executed by that imbalanced individual has resigned. A short summary worth a read, much more than dross from the “new TNR”
http://www.thejustice.org/article/2014/12/lynch-resigns-from-udr-position-after-social-media-backlash

“How can self defense and pursuit not be fundamentally inconsistent?”

Easy. All that requires is that they not be simultaneous.

So, Brown assaults Daniels in his car, gets shot, runs away. At this point Daniels is perfectly justified in pursuing a man who has committed a serious crime in his presence. Doing things like that is his job. At some point Brown notices Daniels is following him, turns and charges at Daniels, and gets shot dead while doing so.

In both instances, Brown is the aggressor, and Daniels fires in self defense.

Re: Wilson. From the autopsy report: Weight: 289 pounds Body Length 77 inches. Age 18. That makes Brown 11 lbs shy of 300 lbs and 6.5 inches tall, old enough and big enough to compete for a place as an offensive lineman for a college team. (He’d need to add 10-20 pounds, depending on the team.) So, forget the idea that this individual unarmed was incapable of inflicting serious physical damage. Clearly, Brown had already demonstrated some poor decision-making in robbing the store, relying on his physical size and intimidating presence to walk out of a store with a handful of cigars. Virtually nobody wants anyone to end up dead over a convenience store robbery. Enough physical evidence exists to confirm that some kind of altercation took place inside Wilson’s car. Anytime a solitary police person finds herself (himself) physically fighting off a suspect, things have already gone badly out of control. Could Wilson have simply allowed Brown to walk away after the altercation, and then radio for help? Yes. But that’s not what Wilson is charged to do. Wilson is charged to control the suspect and is, if I understand the statutes, permitted to draw his weapon in support of his demand that the suspect comply. I’ve been instructed to comply with police instructions I deem silly, but I don’t attack the police person issuing the instructions. Once I do, all bets are off.

It’s always a mistake for an unarmed person to attack someone clearly carrying a gun. If I’ve robbed a store and the policeman I’m attacking is trying to arrest me for that crime, then I’m placing myself in acute danger. It’s easy to Monday morning our way to an outcome in which Brown survives his assault on Wilson.

However, if there is any truth to the account that Brown refused to comply with Wilson’s instructions to stop, and then turned to resume his attack on Wilson, I can’t personally see how this was going to end any other way, more’s the pity.

The physical evidence of an altercation is Brown’s blood found on the inside of Wilson’s car and “FBI forensics reports” confirming Wilson’s weapon discharged twice inside his vehicle. I assume these would be powder burns and soot indicating two discharges.

This isn’t in any way similar to the Martin case, except that they are both tragedies. Wilson is a police officer charged with enforcing the law, even jaywalking laws.

The critical issue is what happens after the initial altercation at Wilson’s car. Once Wilson’s weapon has been fired, the exchange ceases to be a case of “hassling” anyone, or even of a simple robbery. Brown’s actions, his willingness to physically resist/attack an armed police officer, effectively demands Wilson control the suspect. Wilson’s account of Brown’s aggression is supported by the convenience store video. Brown made the same error 196 makes, believing that an attack by a civilian on another civilian is the same as a civilian physically resisting/attacking a police officer. They’re not.

Once the police person’s weapon has been fired during an altercation, the police person is right to judge the situation to be life-threatening. My guess is that most police people would then attempt to control the situation using the threat of force.

kidneystones @197

Um, no. As Plume @ 196 points out, the critical issues are that 1) it is extremely unlikely that Officer Wilson would have tried to stop two young white men who were jaywalking, 2) it is very unlikely that had white kids mouthed off to Wilson when he berated them for jaywalking, that Wilson would have accosted them and 3) that even if you believe Wilson that Brown just decided to spontaneously attack, that he could simultaneously so ineffective at fighting so as to hardly (if at all) injure Wilson but also be such a threat that the only recourse is to shoot, to chase and then kill, is rather hard to believe.

If you read the testimonies of Wilson and of Brown’s friend, one is on the whole eminently more believable than the other. But you for some reason use Wilson’s obviously altered and partially fabricated account as your starting point. The fact that you have complained on a number of occasions about “anti-police bigotry” on this thread is a bit laughable, but you or someone close to you is probably a cop so I can see being defensive in the face of some over-the-top rhetoric about police officers. But the fact that you seem to think that the most important thing about the Ferguson travesty is what happens after the altercation starts (most likely by Wilson) means you’re missing the entire point.

@kidneystones
I apologize if my sweeping rhetoric pushed you toward some of your more regrettable comments.

I hope at some point, when agitators like me aren’t pushing you, you do a better job of thinking through what we should expect from the meeting of two men–one a trained, professional, armed, well-compensated (better than either prosecutors or public defenders) public servant and the other a young black man who has been repeatedly told that he is a threat to society since the day he was born.

Re: TH@198. Free speech on campuses and its limits is an important issue, and pressure to constrain/shape discussion of police behavior is very much the topic of this thread.

Re:Bufflars@199. I’ll break it down for you.
My initial question @85 attempted to gauge the knowledge level of thread commenters about population X. The response suggests the CT commenters know very little, or do not want to display first or secondhand expertise. If I claim repeatedly that 90 percent of population group X are bullies, lazy, and or racist, as TH does, then neutral observers can reasonably deduce that TH is a bigot.

Very few CT commenters on this thread appear to know anything at all about policing. Some are anti-police bigots, and proudly so it seems. Police people are, in fact, charged with enforcing statutes. Wilson does not need to explain or justify asking two youths to walk on the sidewalk. Ignoring a lawful instruction is not normally a legal option. Brown’s death is a tragedy. In my opinion the greater preventable tragedies occur in America’s prisons, where right this moment millions of Michael Brown’s are being dehumanized, perpetually intimidated by fellow convicts and guards, and sometimes tortured.

As for my personal experience, a number of people I knew in high school lost their lives whilst engaged in illegal activities. Some years after graduating, a close relative met the same fate. I have a number of close friends with children in the prison system, some for extremely serious crimes. Some years ago, I worked with people helping former convicts rebuild their lives.

@204 Do you dispute the bigotry of 90 percent of population X are racist, lazy, or bullies?
Do you dispute the statements existence of these statements on this thread?

I completely agree that all authority must be questioned at all times. I’m directing my questions at the authority of claims about population X by the uninformed and the bigoted.

Get it? If I generalize that 90% of x are racists, lazy, or bullies, as TH does, then I’m a bigot. If I note that some cops are racist, lazy, and or bullies, as I have down repeatedly in this thread, I’m making observations that can be supported.

Please do not put words into my mouth and misrepresent my statements. The authority I question here is that of the uninformed, the bigoted, and the self-satisfied.

I’m not at all surprised you don’t much like finding yourself in one,or all three categories.

Sorry, about the repetition. Real work beckons.

For the close-minded and the smug, enjoy the bubble. To others, with luck we may all make learning something really new about the world we share a priority. I’ve a copy of Malthus on my desk. I tell my students that the most important thing Darwin ever did was allow facts to change his most deeply held convictions. Wallace played his part as well.

Happy 2015!

Kidneystones @205,

You’re very amusing. Presenting conclusions as your premise. Drawing conclusions from false premises, etc. etc.

Given that I don’t agree with anything you’ve said, it’s not a matter of me not liking that I supposedly fall into any of your categories. I couldn’t care less about them. They’re meaningless. You’re just some anonymous guy on the Internet with yet another opinion about stuff. Stick people into categories all you want. Go for it.

a: > all authority needs to be questioned.

does not fit with

b: > Wilson does not need to explain or justify asking two youths to walk on the sidewalk.

@kidneystones
After practicing criminal law for seven years, six as a public defender, no professor of anything but criminal law is going to call me uninformed and smug and not obviously be projecting.

Gimme a break. Lazy covers a lot of people in most professions. Ten percent good cops always trying to do the right thing? Many of my public defender colleagues would call me a naive defender of people who don’t deserve it.

And you are a professor who thinks all extreme claims are false by virtue of being extreme? And the you cite Darwin favorably? Yet more proof that economists are insane to start their reasoning with the idea that people are rational. I’m sure your father the cop is a great guy. I hope he had a Merry Christmas.

My bad. Humboldt, not Guggenheim.

I’m not in their league, but my work is earns accolades. Hard to believe!

Peace

Val.

Merry Christmas.
TH@86 “…In every society it is a job that attracts some good people, but the majority are bullies.”
TH@96 “Prosecutors would probably say the cops are 30% bullies and 60% lazy working stiffs.”
TH@102 “…I hate the cops…racist cops are as American as apple pie.”
TH struggles to recover some equilibrium here and there, but it’s hard not to get the sense that TH really does “hate the cops.”

Re: Your points about bullying. Yes, I’m familiar with the phenomena, but not the statistics. The critical point you rightly make is that it doesn’t take many to create an extremely hostile climate. My own view is that, yes, some cops are racist, bullies, lazy. But the problems that really disturb me re: authority, occur in prisons. Glen Loury and Josh Cohen address the justice/prison system and the damage it does to people of color and the poor. http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/31711
Cohen’s sound quality is poor, but it’s still worth a listen.

Plume @208: There is no evidence that Brown tried to take Wilson’s gun. Wilson handled the murder weapon himself after the deed, put it in the evidence bag himself, without supervision. We know they later tested for DNA evidence, but declined to present it to the grand jury. Why? It’s highly likely they found no evidence of Brown on the gun.

This is also incorrect. The nature of one of Brown’s gunshot wounds on his arm indicated that the gun had been fired extremely close to it. And Brown’s DNA was in fact found on the gun, and testimony as to that fact was presented to the grand jury.

I have no reason to assume that Wilson is telling the truth. His entire story is ludicrous from start to finish. I don’t need to try to look at it from your vision of his view, because his comments and his actions suggest he’s an idiot — a very dangerous idiot — and never belonged on the street in the first place.

Since you haven’t looked at the evidence, perhaps you should do so with a more open mind and then reform your conclusions.

And Brown might have taken hostages? Really? How does that follow? From his shoplifting of a box of cigarillos and his jaywalking? And because he was seriously injured with four bullets already in him? So you think he was Wolverine too?

You’re not following. Assume you had no knowledge of Brown other than what Wilson, assuming his account to be true, had. Your picture of him changes from a nice kid to a very dangerous individual. Given that, pursuing Brown was appropriate.

A sane society would lock up Wilson for the murder of an unarmed teen. We don’t have a sane society.

The evidence doesn’t line up with the narrative of events that has lodged quite firmly in your head. I really suggest looking at it again, attempting to take the perspective of someone who questions that narrative.

Plume @220: I looked at the evidence. You obviously haven’t. Or you’d know they didn’t present DNA evidence from the gun to the grand jury.

Plume, please see Volume 19, page 180 and following, in which evidence is presented concerning swabs taken from Wilson’s firearm, and the results of DNA testing.

Here’s a link to Volume 19 for you: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1370532-grand-jury-volume-19.html

I’ll be interested to know what you think. Is this a fake Volume 19?

Thanks, and Happy New Year.