Police Reform

Stop Reacting. Start Thinking.

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Earlier today, I got myself into trouble on Twitter: I had suggested that we shouldn’t immediately dismiss an idea because it conforms in some to what BLM might want. I got a pretty consistent explosion of outrage directed my way. And, I understand it and am sympathetic to it. But it was difficult to try and explain myself in a series of Tweets…so, here is a larger exposition of my ideas.

Our opponents aren’t a rag-tag bunch of Bolshevik wannabees: they are a well-funded and tightly organized Ruling Class which is determined to have its way. The rag-tag rioters out there shouting to kill the police and such are just the bought and paid for operatives of this Ruling Class. And the key is that the rioters don’t know it.

Some of them don’t know, simply: in other words, they are just ignorant fools following along with whatever seems cool at the moment. But others have a level of sincerity against injustice and simply think they are fighting the Establishment when what they are doing is the Establishment’s bidding. You’ll note how quickly “Defund the Police” got discarded…and even when it has advanced a bit, as in Minneapolis, the big shots are merely hiring private security details (on the taxpayer dime, of course). The target of the mob is, what? It is Trump. It is religion. It is you and me. It isn’t Nike and Hollywood. It isn’t Pelosi. It isn’t Yale’s gigantic endowment. It isn’t the actual system of control: the government bureaucracies; the intelligence agencies; the megacorporations; popular culture manufacturers.

My idea is that there is, indeed, a great deal of injustice out there – and a great deal of this is visited on the poorest Americans, who are disproportionately minority. I’ve talked about this before: poor people simply ground up in a legal system they can’t navigate their way out of. Some times, of course, because they are incompetent…but some times simply because once you get caught in it, there’s no way out unless you have a bucket of money. From the perspective of such a person, it seems at times like things are stacked against them…and then they see us, on our side, backing the blue…the same blue which the Establishment set up and which goes lightly where it can get burned (ie, rich and middle class neighborhoods) and drops like a hammer where it can (ie, poor neighborhoods). It can seem to such a person that you and I are the problem…that we set this up.

We know we didn’t. We back the blue not because we’re bastards, but because we know that law is a must. But even our side has been a little blind here: what if the laws, themselves, are insane? Shouldn’t the blue we back have gone, at some point, and said “I won’t enforce this insane law. Fire me if you want, but I became a cop to make sure justice and peace prevail.” Never a peep like that – and, finally, we got our taste of it with the lockdowns: we were finally the people being targeted for the enforcement of insane decrees of government. And the ground shifted and we were prepared for deep reforms of the police…which also entailed a willingness for deep reforms of all government and how it interacts with the people. Hey, presto!, riots…and we’re all back to “back the blue” and lets crack some heads. We’re forgetting that the same people who sent the cops out to arrest kids in a playground also let the rioters run wild…and in both the arresting of kids and the allowing of riots the police did as they were told.

How about we stop being suckers, at least for a bit?

We really have to start thinking and stop reacting. The riots do need to stop. The police do need to enforce the laws. But the laws have to be sane – and we can’t get sane laws until we get power and we won’t get power until the overwhelming mass of the people swing in line behind us. 51% won’t do it. That’ll just lead to our eventual political defeat or civil war…or both. We need 60 and 65%. We need to convince huge masses of people who ostensibly hate us to come over to us. This means we must talk to them – and talk to them about what they think is important. And do things they would like to have done. Not the Bolshevik stuff (the Establishment tolerates the odd Bolshy in the realms of power…but keeps them on a leash: eg, Bernie). But stuff like reforming the police. Instituting neighborhood militia for routine patrols. Pouring in buckets of money confiscated from liberal moneybags (Yale’s endowment would be a good place to start).

It comes down to this: what are you trying to conserve? A theory, or a civilization? The institutions are corrupt to the bone. Our Ruling Class is un-American and merely interested in keeping its wealth and privilege; and to do so it feels it must destroy family, property and religion. I think it is time we thought anew and acted anew…that we cease to fall into the categories the Ruling Class has provided for us and start to reach out to all. Some will spit on us. That’s ok. But some will come over if we show that we want justice…and if we show them who their real enemies are.

No More Racist Syrup Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

They cancelled Aunt Jemima. Why? Who the F knows or really cares? Because the picture is of a black woman and that’s racist, or some drivel. From what I’ve been able to learn, the original subject of the picture was a lady born into slavery who actually made a pretty good life for herself…but, she’s out. And Uncle Ben is on the chopping block, as is Mrs Butterworth. I guess black people can’t appear in advertisements…because Black Lives Matter or some such.

Meanwhile, the cop who killed that guy in Atlanta is being charged with capital murder: which is utterly ridiculous. Even if the use of force wasn’t justified, he still didn’t intend to murder someone. Why should a cop do his duty at this point? I can understand why a police officer would quit – and a lot have; but I can also see why they’d just become time-servers until they can collect a pension. Just look the other way and clean up the bodies. And there’s no way any sane person would want to become a police officer at this point.

Senator Durbin (D-IL) insults Senator Scott (R-SC): but there won’t be riots about this even though its a white guy using racially-charged terms against a black guy…because only some black lives really matter.

Trump shows once again why we love him: he’s saying that Kaepernick should get another shot in the NFL. This is grand-master level trolling. Gonna miss the guy when he’s out of office. Some team is going to have to take him – he was a flash in the pan who had serious accuracy problems, and he’s been out of the game for years…but some NFL team is going to have to offer him an iron-clad, golden contract. In the end, Kaep will suffer an “injury” during practice…because there’s no way he is going to subject himself to a choke-athon in front of a national audience. As for me: I won’t even watch a game this year: the NFL has decided that being woke to please a few jerks is more important than me. Cool. I’ve got other things to do on Sunday.

NBC and Google got caught doing what we already knew they were doing: working together to censor dissident voices. I am completely done with protecting large corporations: in fact, I want them severely punished…driven out of existence, actually. Tax and regulate these bastards into bankruptcy and then let something else emerge…something which will be wary of engaging in politics.

The SCOTUS decision on transgender rights was…a little surprising, but only a little. Gorsuch merely joins a long line of people whom we pour out blood and sweat to get on to the SC only to betray us at the first opportunity. Gorsuch is another one of the libertarian Judges that we became familiar with in Justice Kennedy. So while we might get a favorable religious liberty ruling out of him from time to time, on the really crucial issues of the times, he’s going to side with the far left because libertarians always side with the far left when push comes to shove…because they are far leftists who merely want low taxes. We can’t rely on the Courts – we’re going to have to do this legislatively and simply assert that Congress’ ability to regulate how cases come before the federal courts means we can simply exclude cases about certain issues. That and simply insist that Justices we appoint commit to voting how we want.

Don Surber notes that we no longer have a debate in the United States – it is all about the raw exercise of power. Either we have it, or they do – and if we do have it, we’d better just ram through what we want because we can rely on the Left doing that if they have power. I agree with this: I don’t debate liberals any more. If they decide to comment on my social media posts, I block them. There is no point. They won’t convince me (because I’m not stupid) and I can’t convince them (because they are stupid). All I want to know is how do we obtain power and then how do we quite ruthlessly use whatever power we have. Anything else is a waste of time.

Back the Blue?

Mark Noonan14 Comments

We’ve all done that – almost reflexively taking the side of the police when they get into a dispute about an action. And, truth be told, very often it turns out the cop either acted correctly or had extenuating circumstances. But, not always. We have come across those cases where the officer was clearly in the wrong – and to our credit, we didn’t try to defend the indefensible. We’re not, after all, #MeToo Liberals urging a vote for Joe “Fingers” Biden. But I also think that we got a little too far in defending the police.

Over the past few days, I think we’ve all seen police officers using ridiculous actions to enforce closures and social distancing. I think the most egregious example is a Texas SWAT team (a rather chubby SWAT team, now dubbed “Meal Team Six” on social media) shutting down a bar which had opened in defiance of Coronavirus orders. But that is just one of scores – and it is starting to break into the Conservative mind that these police officers are “just obeying orders”…but insane, anti-human and likely unconstitutional orders. And if they’ll do that now, when won’t they do it?

It has been a rule since 1945 that obedience to orders is not exculpatory. The Nazis tried to get themselves off the hook by claiming they were just following orders but the ruling has been – and it is correct – that no human being is obligated to obey obviously illegal orders. Our police don’t seem to have that institutional belief: they appear to be willing to obey any order from on high…and this is disturbing us on the Right because we always assumed that most law enforcement people are, well, part of us. That when faced with an order to arrest us for political dissent, they’d refuse. Now we know different – when faced with a choice between enforcing an unconstitutional order and risking their pension, they’ll enforce the unconstitutional order.

This is just writing large what we’ve seen out of the FBI for the past few years. Even President Trump still couches his criticism of the FBI in terms of “most of the agents are good people”…just a few bad apples, right? But if they are good agents, why haven’t they come forward to inform on the bad apples? Right – doing so risks their career. And this makes them not good…in fact, it makes them bad; as bad as the actual bad actors. After all, Eichmann merely scheduled the trains…it took tens of thousands of German railway employees to actually get the trains from point A to point B.

Readers here know I’ve long been in favor of major reforms of the police and the abolition of the FBI…but now I think there is an urgency which was previously lacking. Those charged with enforcing the laws of the United States are showing themselves to be enemies of freedom. That their corporate identity (and fat pensions) are their biggest concern…and if that means they have to throw innocent people in jail, so be it.

On the whole, “back the blue” still makes sense – the police do a job most of us can’t and they deal with the seamy underside of civilization. But if we are to back the blue, then the blue had better be worth backing. They had better, that is, be dedicated to truth and justice above all. And it is we, the people, who will have to make sure that those we have delegated to enforces laws to are worthy of our trust.