Our country is completely effed up. Remember when the job of the police was to help the public, not impose behavioral controls? This tasering craze is completely out of control and now any display of emotion or asking a question that somebody doesn't want to answer is taken as reason enough to administer a punishment without knowing all the facts. If some minimum wage nitwit starts to accuse me of stealing my own credit card, my voice is going to get loud and my arms are going to wave. If cops are so afraid of everyone that they have to either shoot or electrocute in order to "control" a situation, maybe the current crop of shoot first and ask questions later cops should find another job and there should be personality tests administered to prospective recruits that would reduce the testosterone response and increase the ability to think. But that would defeat the goal of a police state, now wouldn't it?
A new low of shameful has once again been reached. The Demowienies are again doing what they do best and it isn't working for the benefit of their constituents. Rage and cave. Over 300 million people in this country and we get the weak ones to represent us. They leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of office and once they get there, a wet noodle has more backbone.
Some members of the "chattering class" have more insight than others, though I still doubt the the crew without a clue has any intention of leaving office. Quietly or otherwise.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
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Good afternoon, Deb.
ReplyDeleteThe instantaneous escalation to overwhelming, disproportionate, appalling, responsive violence is, of course, not new: a great example is provided in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, when the fellow is executed for picking up a teapot.
In the current, American cycle of state-constructed violence, the entire "zero tolerance" meme has been used in elementary and secondary schools for a number of years, now, and it has created a regime of cowed-into-silence fear among millions of children, all while we bawl about "child abuse" in the broadest of brushstrokes to keep parents in fear of the state's power over them.
In law enforcement, the idea of "in-your-face" treatment of protesting motorists stopped for traffic offenses has been operational among highway patrolmen for quite some time, too.
The importance of wide-spread knowledge of these tactics cannot be overstated, and I don't mean that in a positive way. The more pervasive the understanding of officials' willingness to rapidly escalate situations to excess, the more docilized the general population becomes, and this is important for broad social control. No one wants to rock the boat, and no one wants a situation to get ugly; therefore, any deviant behavior is quickly suppressed both within people and within social groups and settings just so the environment will stay normal.
This, of course, is how perpetrators of domestic violence work their most pernicious damage: everyone in the household—spouse, kids, even pets—will walk on eggshells just so the verbal, physical, or emotional batterer will not have reason to blow up.
Now, we are becoming a nation of victims of domestic violence: some of us get our heads smashed in, while the rest of us blame the victims to a large extent and personally just try to keep out of the way of the trouble; and just like with the young who are victims of such violence in the household, we are spawning generations that will, themselves, come of age knowing nothing other than a culture of predation and victimization. They will become the leaders and the followers in a deepening spiral of domestic violence in which our nation will indulge, even as it quietly plunges into the oblivion of exhausted, spent empire.
The Dark Wraith has spoken.
How we went from question authority to question authority, are you nuts?, really saddens me. Righties go on and on about how the students should have fought back during the Virgina Tech shootings and don't understand that since people have been trained to sit and wait for someone in a uniform to tell them what to do, they are no longer capable of thinking for themselves or of taking the initiative in a crisis.
ReplyDeleteI never thought my old age would suck more than my youth, but I'm likely to spend it in jail.