|
CelestialScribe posted:I’m not dealing with this post because you clearly haven’t read what I’ve suggested be done with law enforcement much earlier in the thread, and you’ve misrepresented my views here. So do that, then come back. Engage or stop posting in this thread this is incredibly tedious.
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 02:51
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 08:29 |
|
|
https://twitter.com/tmorello/status/1347357368095444992
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:18
|
|
|
At the risk of sounding a bit inflammatory, I'm going to argue that the people calling yesterday's police response a failure are only correct when seen through the lens of consistency. They: 1. Ensured that the government workers are safe. 2. Did the absolute strict minimum to minimize physical damage while hurting as few people as possible, for the most part. 3. Are, hopefully, prosecuting the poo poo out of the offenders in the weeks to come, they are not going to be hard to track for the most part, so there's no rush to arrest them on site. Even from that angle, their response wasn't great, and the verdict is still out on whether or not the offenders will be prosecuted, but this combo of immediate damage mitigation and delayed "justice" really would be a massive improvement over the current system. If it wasn't for the fact that this is not what they are expected to do, and the fact that this specific crowd got preferential treatment, it's pretty close to a great example of how these types of events could be unfolding.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:26
|
|
|
And yet even that apparent display of capability as far as preserving human life by sacrificing property is absolutely a failure because it was only god and providence that meant the people breaking into the building were mostly doing it to take selfies. If the police are going to uphold a state that produces actual fascists who want to overturn an election and are only capable of ensuring they do not do that because the fascists were extremely disorganized and think tweeting is the primary form of effecting change, that is a problem, because the minute they get more organized what happens then? You have charlottesville, and you now have this, both times the only mitigating factor has been the lack of coherent organization among the fascists, how long until they learn? What would you do when the police are not only ignoring but siding with an organized coup attempt? Saying it is not a failure only makes sense if you assume they could have responded differently, but the fact that they had to call in significant numbers of out of state reinforcements suggests they absolutely could not have responded more effectively to a more organized force. Because yes, I agree that they displayed much better crowd management techniques appropriate for a peaceful protest, but I think they did that in no small part because they didn't have the capability on site to do otherwise. There is a lot of footage of very small numbers of cops giving ground to very large numbers of protesters, and that to me suggests an absolute failure of capability to oppose them, not just an unwillingness to. The unwillingness may be part of why they were not capable, but that is no less of an indictment of their competence. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:32
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:And yet even that apparent display of capability as far as preserving human life by sacrificing property is absolutely a failure because it was only god and providence that meant the people breaking into the building were mostly doing it to take selfies. I'd say that whatever needs to be done to protect us against fascism, it certainly shouldn't be done by the police (or whatever takes its place), because a) The role that the police should be filling doesn't need the tools required to handle fascists, and providing it to them is inviting them to use excessive force. b) As you point out, the people in charge of enforcement cannot be trusted to not be part of the fascists. In my opinion the real answer to preventing fascism involves systemic changes that go waaaaaaaay beyond the scope of this conversation.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:38
|
|
|
Aramis posted:In my opinion the real answer to preventing fascism involves systemic changes that go waaaaaaaay beyond the scope of this conversation. Actually, I would say that is indeed within the scope of the conversation. What did you have in mind?
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:40
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:Actually, I would say that is indeed within the scope of the conversation. It's not like I have a concrete plan in mind, but, fundamentally, it involves addressing the core anxieties that are leveraged by Fascists to recruit from the population. The big one for me is getting rid of the concept of having to work and toil in order to be allowed to live a fulfilling life. Aramis fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:51
|
|
|
The Oldest Man posted:Shot: FYI, your first link doesn't work because you pasted a shortened display of it, it's https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-police-union-president-defends-those-who-stormed-us-capitol/6842fa80-3b83-4396-af05-a5f15f4ac740 also, nice to see celestialscribe is the same here as he is in the auspol thread lol crepeface fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 07:30
|
|
|
crepeface posted:FYI, your first link doesn't work because you pasted a shortened display of it, it's https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-police-union-president-defends-those-who-stormed-us-capitol/6842fa80-3b83-4396-af05-a5f15f4ac740 And that's after he got kicked out of uspol.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 08:23
|
|
|
Aramis posted:At the risk of sounding a bit inflammatory, I'm going to argue that the people calling yesterday's police response a failure are only correct when seen through the lens of consistency. I would call it an object lesson that "bad people exist and want to hurt us" is about as relevant a counterargument to police abolition as "unemployment tho" is a counterargument to slavery abolition. It's a nonsense given weight by the sheer number of people that believe that poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 08:44
|
|
|
Aramis posted:At the risk of sounding a bit inflammatory, I'm going to argue that the people calling yesterday's police response a failure are only correct when seen through the lens of consistency. The problem is that the police are a pretty lovely response unit we've hoped to make into quasi military outfit, and is unfit to do a bunch of the functions people THINK they can do, like defend the capitol. We also foolishly believe simultaneously that they are the only thing between us and total lawlessness and chaos. It's straight up befuddling. What was shown yesterday is that our police apparatus is the one creating and abetting lawlessness and chaos, not stopping it. In any world where these police performed as we have armed them to do, they would have taken control of this situation and no one would have gotten inside the capitol. They have riot gear and tanks, tear gas, and high powered rifles and no one would have blinked an eye if they would have used a lot of force as soon as the capitol was breached - a bunch of A felonies were being committed and the lives of our elected representatives (AND VP) were in danger. Seeing how they responded to peaceful protests, dragging people in wheelchairs out by force, blinding people with rubber bullets, and running over them with their vehicles shows that they have NO problem being that aggressive, they just chose not to respond in that fashion; It's because the factions that subvert the power structure of the police are the types of people that were at the capitol. The police think of themselves as a different class of people with different rules and all of that blue lives matter bullshit and these folks are among their ranks. It's why you don't see Clark Kent and Superman in the same room. So this boils down to the fact that everyone's favorite anti abolition argument is that they "keep the peace" but in reality they do nothing like that at all. Police respond to *purported and reported/alleged* crime, and are not much of a deterrent of crime - especially when the largest cohort of people in the US (white people) straight up do not fear your ability to enforce the law. This is abjectly true, as I've seen my own white wife respond to being pulled over with fervor towards the cop in a way where I'd be shot in sight if I did the same. Our police exist to terrorize minority communities at the State's will, and yesterday was a loud and clear showing of that fact. There's a strata of who the police will "police" and it's along racial lines. If they are supposed to be the "protect and serve" institution in our government, but refuse to do either....well, they are not necessary then, are they? Yuzenn fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 13:56
|
|
|
I wanted to sleep on a more substantive response to these posts, because it's a somewhat popular leftist take right now.Aramis posted:At the risk of sounding a bit inflammatory, I'm going to argue that the people calling yesterday's police response a failure are only correct when seen through the lens of consistency. So let's just take a pause for a moment and think about this. https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1347011413101998080?s=20 https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1347289098697003008?s=20 At least three men, one who is confirmed ex-military, entered the Senate chamber carrying zip cuffs and side arms less than two minutes after members of Congress evacuated. It's a fair bet that they intended to take and possibly execute hostages had the crowd pushed security back from the doors into the room a few seconds earlier. The police were not in control of this situation at all. We could have seen AOC or Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar or Pramila Jayapal dragged onto the capitol steps and shot on Wednesday. Now read this: quote:it's pretty close to a great example of how these types of events could be unfolding. What you're saying right now is that the way this went down - it's really a good outcome! This take is dangerously, dangerously naďve - that you can give ground to fascists and that's the right thing to do because it "de-escalates" the situation. And that naivety is a theme in these posts. I want you to think about what it would be like to come within seconds of having armed ex-military officers break into your place of work, put you in zip cuffs, and publicly execute you in front of a crowd of thousands of screaming fascists, because that scenario was a plausible outcome from Wednesday. You give them ground and they'll take it and use it hurt people and kill people, and the fact that no one other than fascists got hurt this time is pure loving luck. You want people to be OK with that? Absolutely not. No one should have to be OK with armed fascists coming to kill them and meeting that with de-escalatory tactics, and no one will be OK with that for what should be obvious reasons. Aramis posted:It's not like I have a concrete plan in mind, but, fundamentally, it involves addressing the core anxieties that are leveraged by Fascists to recruit from the population. Many of the people who broke into the capitol building are current or former government employees including cops and military. They aren't being "recruited from the population" and this notion that the fascist vanguard is comprised of the anxious rather than ethnic majoritarian nationalists and janissary class reactionaries is dangerously naďve as well. You're not going to address the "core anxieties" of the people breaking into the capitol yesterday because their "anxiety" is that they might not sit at the top of a white supremacist, militarized state that needs to be dismantled. And the more it's dismantled, the more fiercely the forces of reaction will fight. The more violence they will do. "Give up the ground to the fascists and let them have it" is not a strategy for dealing with fascists unless you don't care about the people who live and work on that ground at all. Because this time, the fascists weren't ready and the people in the building got out unharmed with pure luck and because of the sheer number of doors around them that their state privileges afforded them that fascists had to get through to get to them. Other people attacked by fascists this week weren't so lucky. quote:The big one for me is getting rid of the concept of having to work and toil in order to be allowed to live a fulfilling life. And speaking of dangerously naďve, this is literally the "to combat fascism, we just need to institute fully automated luxury space communism and then they won't want to hurt us anymore!" take I was alluding to in my earlier post. This is dangerously hopeless a position as the anarchoprimitivist idea that we must simply end industrial society and then we'll be all set on the fascism front as well. Fighting fascism and protecting people from it cannot wait for utopia. It has to be done now, in the dirty shithole of industrial capitalism, if we ever want a better future to be possible. Fortunately there's already a pretty well understood solution to the problem of fascist violence or threats of violence that is operant in the here-and-now. 
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 18:03
|
|
|
The Oldest Man posted:And speaking of dangerously naďve, this is literally the "to combat fascism, we just need to institute fully automated luxury space communism and then they won't want to hurt us anymore!" take I was alluding to in my earlier post. This is dangerously hopeless a position as the anarchoprimitivist idea that we must simply end industrial society and then we'll be all set on the fascism front as well. Fighting fascism and protecting people from it cannot wait for utopia. It has to be done now, in the dirty shithole of industrial capitalism, if we ever want a better future to be possible. I have no doubt whatsoever that there are a lot of people who believe this, but this is an extremely disingenuous reading of what I've said. I said that any real solution to fascism must involves measures to tackle the issue at its root, and this makes it beyond the scope of the discussion. By no means did I say this would stop the active fascists today dead in their tracks. When prompted into what these "out-of-scope" measures policies would entail, I gave a sample of a systemic change that I'd like to see that would help setting up a system that puts some kind of negative pressure against the rise of Fascism at its root. And I thought it was kind of implied that I did not think this was enough by itself. I'm sure there are leftists out there who think that magical space communism will make Fascism go away, but that's certainly not what I'm espousing here.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 18:53
|
|
|
Aramis posted:I have no doubt whatsoever that there are a lot of people who believe this, but this is an extremely disingenuous reading of what I've said. You did say this about what went down on Wednesday: quote:it's pretty close to a great example of how these types of events could be unfolding. What measures did you have in mind that would stop the fascists from just walking in wherever they want and beating or murdering people who can't get out of their way fast enough?
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 18:55
|
|
|
Yeah, re-reading my post, I will admit that "could" is doing a huge amount of heavy lifting in expressing what I had in mind. It's obvious that the whole thing was a huge mess, and that there was an insane amount of luck involved, particularly considering that the police are simply not trained to handle things this way. But a coordinated, planned and intentional approach that focuses on damage mitigation in the short term and delegates enforcement to later is something that would be applicable to a myriad of scenarios. There was an incredible amount of luck involved on Wednesday, but actually planning to have things unfold the way they accidentally did is something I would like to see in general across the board. *Edit*: The Oldest Man posted:What measures did you have in mind that would stop the fascists from just walking in wherever they want and beating or murdering people who can't get out of their way fast enough? Honestly, since this was known to be a Fascist thing, I think the military should simply have been there in the first place. The police can't be trusted to not be Fascists in the first place, and if they have the military, then it's ball game already. Aramis fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 19:06
|
|
|
Aramis posted:It's obvious that the whole thing was a huge mess, and that there was an insane amount of luck involved, particularly considering that the police are simply not trained to handle things this way. quote:But a coordinated, planned and intentional approach that focuses on damage mitigation in the short term and delegates enforcement to later is something that would be applicable to a myriad of scenarios. quote:There was an incredible amount of luck involved on Wednesday, but actually planning to have things unfold the way they accidentally did is something I would like to see. Aramis posted:Honestly, since this was known to be a Fascist thing, I think the military should simply have been there in the first place. The police can't be trusted to not be Fascists in the first place, and if they have the military, then it's ball game already. The people in those photographs are at least partially ex-military. Should we trust their active duty successors to push them back? Because "if they already have the military" we should just give up and go home and accept fascism? E: I'm detecting a bit of vacillation between de-escalation being the move here vs force response from a more trustworthy group of enforcers as the two possible answers here; it should be pretty clear that I don't consider either one of those as The Oldest Man fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 19:13
|
|
|
The Oldest Man posted:E: To clarify the vacillation: As far as systemic means go: I believe that planned and organized de-escalation and human-pain prevention would have been the ideal way to tackle this specific crowd, instead of the chicken-with-its-head-cut-off nonsense we had. This was never going to happen because the training, infrastructure, planning and organization required for this is years away at best. Barring that, having the military take care of this was probably the only realistic means at our disposal to handle the situation. Non-systemic means of handling this like Antifa and the like are good and valid, but I personally believe that there has to be something encoded within the system capable of dealing with this. Aramis fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 19:43
|
|
|
Aramis posted:To clarify the vacillation: I get your overall point as far as de-escalation and human-pain prevention, but just one thing: They let them in. They were the escalators essentially and then lost control of the bull they thought they could have by the horns; wielded as a militia type arm of wildly supremacist police structure. Dealing with specific crowd should have been like the previous MAGA style "protests" (michigan not withstanding), let them have their protests and their insanity and keep them away from counter protestors. The issue is that they don't treat BLM or other non supremacist peaceful protests like this, and show no deference to them vs the buddy buddy approach they take with the maga idiots. What happened because of that obvious difference in treatment is that the less the cops intervene the more they emboldened these supremacists to push the envelope more and more (for example, Michigan, Kenosha). If you think about it, what happened at the capitol isn't a totally isolated incident, the police have been blowing a pretty huge dog whistle that they would allow this, if you look at the timeline of the escalation of these groups. The FBI knew that there was a calendar marked Jan 6th gathering coming and warned DHS about it and DHS straight up said they weren't worried about it and that they were not a threat. They handed them the keys to the capitol, figuratively and literally. Back to your overall point though, almost all situations involving the police need retooling to be more de-escalation and human-pain prevention, BUT the current apparatus of police are an instant escalation every time they are injected into a situation just by being untrained, armed, and very trigger happy without much of any consequence for the suffering that often happens because of their reactions. The vast majority of interpersonal interaction is solved by the time they show up, guns blazing...it's just not a tenable system. Yuzenn fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jan 8, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 19:58
|
|
|
Aramis posted:Barring that, having the military take care of this was probably the only realistic means at our disposal to handle the situation. I think that if you give the military the duties of the police officers, they will gradually transform into the same police force we have today. This is only partially a personnel problem, it is a structural problem about the roles of police officers to enforce poverty and white supremacy. I think your earlier solution of radical economic reform is really the only way forward out of this mess, however unlikely. To put it another way: The lovely things that cops do are a symptom of a larger disease, capitalism in general and private property specifically. If everyone owned their own house and a piece of their own workplace then the cops wouldn't be needed to protect the property of the ultra wealthy because everyone would have enough resources such that 'crime' (i.e. stealing enough bread to eat) would be minimal.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 22:46
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:I think that if you give the military the duties of the police officers, they will gradually transform into the same police force we have today. This is only partially a personnel problem, it is a structural problem about the roles of police officers to enforce poverty and white supremacy. I think your earlier solution of radical economic reform is really the only way forward out of this mess, however unlikely. I'm not disagreeing with any of that. That specific statement you are replying to is about what should have happened last Wednesday given the current state of affairs. I'm certainly not saying that bringing the military should be SOP in these cases, but what else could have been done?
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 22:53
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:To put it another way: The lovely things that cops do are a symptom of a larger disease, capitalism in general and private property specifically. If everyone owned their own house and a piece of their own workplace then the cops wouldn't be needed to protect the property of the ultra wealthy because everyone would have enough resources such that 'crime' (i.e. stealing enough bread to eat) would be minimal. I think this makes sense for quite a lot of crime, but does it hold up for terrorism and politically motivated crime? People didn't storm the capitol to feed themselves, they did it to advance their own political aims. Even in full service luxury space communism, there's going to be people who are going to want changes to the system and are willing to use violence to achieve those aims.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 23:17
|
|
|
Aramis posted:I'm not disagreeing with any of that. That specific statement you are replying to is about what should have happened last Wednesday given the current state of affairs. I'm certainly not saying that bringing the military should be SOP in these cases, but what else could have been done? OIC I would say that there was nothing to be done. The military was under control of the man supporting the riots, so unless he was deposed that was never really an option. If these events had occurred on January 21st, military assistance would have temporarily prevented this specific event. However, the material conditions that created the necessary environment for this event still exist: the shrinking middle class, worldwide plague/economic collapse, globalization and automation devaluing the power of labor, etc. In other words, if they stopped this from happening on January 6th 2021, I believe it would inevitably happen in 2022, or 2032, or 2052, and so on. enki42 posted:I think this makes sense for quite a lot of crime, but does it hold up for terrorism and politically motivated crime? People didn't storm the capitol to feed themselves, they did it to advance their own political aims. Even in full service luxury space communism, there's going to be people who are going to want changes to the system and are willing to use violence to achieve those aims. Here's the difference IMO: the structural apparatus that they use to hurt people won't exist. Without a police force to organize, train, and arm such an insurrection, it wouldn't work. I think we forget that a not insignificant number of cops that not only acted as rioters but were also complicit/aided the insurrection on duty as well. Also, the number of people desiring to commit violence would be FAR lower.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 23:29
|
|
|
It's a weird conception of "political aims" that seemingly bears no relation to material circumstances. As if politics just fall out of space and into people's heads without making contact with the earth at any point. It is bizzare to look at politics in 2020 and not think that it has anything to do with capitalism.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 23:31
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:OIC I won't link the video but the woman who died was shot once the cops protecting the door between the terrorists and the congress people just...walked away from what they were supposed to protect. The capitol police on protection detail were put in a real poo poo position vs the dudes who likely were complicit/aiding the insurrection. This should have been far less violent, but i'm still shocked it wasn't way more violent (when it probably should have been)
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 00:14
|
|
|
OwlFancier posted:It's a weird conception of "political aims" that seemingly bears no relation to material circumstances. As if politics just fall out of space and into people's heads without making contact with the earth at any point. This feels like it comes dangerously close to the old "economic anxiety" canard. Obviously to some degree riots are always going to be influenced by people's material conditions, but I don't think it's a fair assumption to say that improving those conditions will completely eliminate any and all unrest in a society. Even in a society where people's needs are largely being met, it seems completely reasonable to me to assume that agitators will exist that will try to convince people that they would be better off under another system - it doesn't even particularly matter if it's true, just that people can be convinced of it. And as long as that exists, there's going to be the potential for unrest. On top of that, I think there's plenty of examples of unrest, protests, riots and violence that aren't 100% tied to the economic welfare of the rioters, even if many are. Pro-life demonstrations, religiously motivated extremism, racially charged violence all have at best a tenuous link to capitalism.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 11:50
|
|
|
They have extremely clear links to capitalism because they are all prime vehicles by which one of the ultracapitalist political parties campaigns. Capitalism isn't just immiserating, it is also about dominance and control by those with money, which is why people with some money are encouraged to act like assholes to people with no money, because that feeling of power over others is what they are being sold, it is an integral part of how the system perpetuates itself, and thus you get a significant portion of the middle class who are obsessed with maintaining racial, economic, and religious superiority over others, or people who wish they were in that position, because they both live in and idolize a society built on domination and rather than changing that, they just want to be the ones with the power over others, that being the entire point of capitalism as a system, that being what it encourages. The cruelty is not arbitrary, it is an expression of the founational principles of our society. Which is also part of why cops are structurally predisposed to act the way they do. You can not be the enforcers of such a society without reflecting its true values, because your ability to enforce the norms of that society is contingent on you reflecting them. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Jan 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 14:12
|
|
|
I don't necessarily disagree with that, I don't think that it serves as a 100% complete explanation. Tribalism predates capitalism or even notions of private ownership.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 14:21
|
|
|
Yuzenn posted:I won't link the video but the woman who died was shot once the cops protecting the door between the terrorists and the congress people just...walked away from what they were supposed to protect. The capitol police on protection detail were put in a real poo poo position vs the dudes who likely were complicit/aiding the insurrection. I'm not entirely sure I know how to parse this. I'm reading this as you saying it should have been both more violent and less so.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 14:46
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:I'm not entirely sure I know how to parse this. I'm reading this as you saying it should have been both more violent and less so. My point is that if this was handled properly there probably would have been 0 loss of life or property damage, but once the capital itself was breached there should have been lethal force used to protect the members of congress. There's an inflection point in de-escalation that was intentionally missed here and the people who entered the capitol were there to take hostages and likely injure or kill congressional members.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 15:52
|
|
|
Oh, definitely. If the cops had handled this group like they handled the BLM protests, they would have either chased them off with tear gas and rubber bullets or shot them in the halls of congress.
|
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 17:09
|
|
|
Cpt_Obvious posted:Oh, definitely. If the cops had handled this group like they handled the BLM protests, they would have either chased them off with tear gas and rubber bullets or shot them in the halls of congress. Probably the biggest, difference-making division would have been the number of cops there. They would have had hundreds or thousands of cops and NG already geared up and ready to bash faces rather than a hundred or so guys and no ready backup if the protest was a leftist or racial justice one rather than a far right mob stirred up by the president. But it's never too late to ramp the violence as far as the militarized state is concerned. quote:WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense leaders are reviewing restrictions on the use of force by National Guard members and could allow troops to carry batons or guns in Washington, D.C., as they brace for more protests and possible violence around the Jan. 20 inaugural, The Associated Press has learned. Getting some Guard with M4s and live ammo stuck in with a fascist mob: a plan that would definitely not have far reaching consequences of any kind. This is probably a good jumping off point to talk about what the durable consequences and government reactions to the 6th could look like. Before I start taking about actual legislation, I think it's important to detour a little bit into why I think the government reacts in the way that it does (more forces, less accountability, more sweeping and discretionary authority) to threats to the public order. As in, the government already had thousands of cops and thousands of NG on hot standby with all you can eat tear gas and a barge of impact munitions, and breaking into Congress is already going to land you in the carceral state if you get charged with the million or so crimes already on that book that constitutes so why the gently caress would they need to pass new laws about this? Why would they increase cop budgets? What was already in place didn't fail because it was insufficient, it failed because it wasn't used, and it wasn't used because the fascists at the controls didn't see the attack coming as a threat. Why, in short, does the government inevitably react to the failure of its law and security apparatus by doubling down on those things with more funding and authority for them rather than trying new strategies that do not foster more and larger right-wing reactionary breeding grounds while simultaneously being turned against minorities and the left? So the motivation to do something is pretty clear: events like '93 WTC bombing or 9/11 or Jan 6th are massive, scary failures of the neoliberal order to maintain itself. Strikes at the imperial core scare the poo poo out of imperial functionaries and everyone who lives off the spoils of the empire, no matter how effective or ineffective the attack was at actually damaging the empire's ability to operate. And clearly, if you see planes flying into buildings or masked men with guns and zip cuffs charging into the Senate looking for people to take hostage, you're going to demand that Something Be Done About This. I'm right there with the normies on this count. But if you're invested in American hegemony, the Something can only fall within the bounds of things that don't challenge the economic and political order, and that order is based on liberal ideology. I think this death spiral to see the failure of the security state and do something about it stems from the root of liberal philosophy on the nature of universal rights, which stem from property rights and negative freedoms (freedom from someone else doing x to you). The basic issue is that in the liberal conception of rights, the state should guarantee not that it will provide positive freedom but that it will not abrogate negative freedom. Look at the bill of rights: it's a list of things that the US government will not do. They will not infringe on the freedom of speech or assembly, they will not search your house without a warrant, they will not take away your guns, etc. There's no integral concept in liberalism of a right to have food, or shelter, or medicine much less more nebulous and harder to define needs such as meaningful work, and that's reflected in our legal tradition. Even the more aspirational declaration of independence only got as far as "the pursuit of happiness," which might as well by the 1700s' version of "access to healthcare." The way that bleeds into the fight against fascism is that under liberal legal philosophy you can't fight against fascism itself as an ideology with public power. Speech is speech and to ban it prejudicially would be to abrogate negative freedoms. If you put a Nazi and a Jewish guy next to each other, and the Nazi shouts, "Kill all Jews!" and the Jewish guy shouts, "Kill all Nazis!" then they're equivalent in the eye of baseline liberal jurisprudence. But if the Jewish guy shouts, "I'm going to kill this Nazi prick!" then the Jewish guy is in the wrong because he made a specific threat against that individual. He crossed the line and started making threats against the Nazi's body property. There is a very real opposition to the idea that the law can and should discriminate between offensive ("Kill all Jews!") and defensive violent political speech ("Kill all Nazis!") and between offensive and defensive violence outside of immediate self defense. To do otherwise would be to abrogate negative freedoms, and that's Bad. You can't trust the state to discriminate in that way. There are exceptions to this rule (like Germany's blanket ban on Nazi speech and iconography, or the thoroughly classist British libel laws) but those are exceptions because they're illiberal; they don't square with the rest of liberal philosophy and typically exist by some quirk of history rather than because they're natural outgrowths of the legal tradition created by everyday liberal jurisprudence. There's a big potential tangent here into why liberals are not fine with the government banning fascist speech and fascist organizations but are fine with a dozen or so tech CEOs shutting down fascist speech (or really anyone who dissents) on tech platforms because liberals see private ownership of the public square as completely compatible with their negative freedoms. Many actually prefer private ownership of all public spaces because then private owners can shut out bad people without the government needing to use legal authority to do that. Nevermind that that, as always, puts control of the public discourse into the hands of a few defacto oligarchs. It's the same philosophy that says Jack Dorsey can kick all of the Nazis off his platform (yay) and that says that Mall of America can kick people with BLM signs out of their town-sized mall (hm.) That tangent is irrelevant to the anti-terrorism laws I'm about to talk about but it needs to be noted since it explains how liberals reconcile the negative freedom of speech with the obvious harm that offensive political speech causes. So where does that leave the public power and the government? They have to do something to respond to fascists. The answer is predictable: if you can't deal with fascism's root causes (and here it should be obvious from my earlier posts about who exactly is in the fascist vanguard I'm talking about people being radicalized with hate ideologies and not 'economic anxiety') because doing so it outside your legal comfort zone, then you're pretty much limited in what you can do to criminalizing more types of actions more heavily on the theory that if you can't fight fascism ideologically with the state then you can at least grab the fascists once they start acting out their ideology and lock 'em away forever. The problem with that, obviously, is that an ideologically blind criminalization plan can be used to kill or imprison people trying to defend themselves just as it can be to used to do the same to Nazis, and the people making the decisions about how to apply the law are still going to be fascists or fascist sympathizers. You can probably see where this is going. We don't know exactly what kind of domestic terrorism law/funding increase Biden and the newly-empowered Dems are going to take up, but it's a pretty sure bet they're going to pass something. I think a good place to start is HR 4192 ('Confronting Domestic Terrorism Act'), a house bill introduced in the House a little over a year ago by Adam Schiff: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4192/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr+4192%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1 The general outline of HR 4192 is to create a federal criminal definition for domestic terrorism, which is: quote:“(1) OFFENSES.—Whoever, in a circumstance described in subsection (b), and with the intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping— There's also a co-conspirator and accessories clause: quote:“(2) CO-CONSPIRATORS AND ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT.—Jurisdiction shall exist over all principals and co-conspirators of an offense under this section, and accessories after the fact to any offense under this section, if at least one of the circumstances described in subparagraphs (A) through (H) of paragraph (1) is applicable to at least one offender. And the 'material support' clauses of existing terrorism law are applied to the crime of domestic terrorism as well. So basically if you commit any crime of violence or property damage or conspire or threaten to commit basically any crime of violence or property damage, you fit this definition if a judge will buy that a) it created a credible threat of someone else getting hurt and b) you did it with the intent to intimidate or coerce people, influence the government, or affect the government's operation. If that sounds pretty loving broad to you, you're not alone. This would apply to basically anyone who's at a political protest where so much as a window gets broken, and thanks to the accessories and material support rules, it could potentially be applied to people who give protesters refuge in their houses or send them money for bail as well. Schiff added what he thought was a good enough check on prosecutors running buck loving wild with domestic terrorism charges with the following: quote:“(e) Limitation On Prosecution.—No prosecution for any offense described in this section shall be undertaken by the United States except on written certification of the Attorney General or the highest ranking subordinate of the Attorney General with responsibility for criminal prosecutions of the offenses in this chapter that, in the judgment of the certifying official, such offense was intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.”. I'm not going to go into a full analysis of the penalties (because under this bill they're sentenced under US Code 2332b, which is literally the existing international terrorism penalties). It shouldn't come as a surprise that being found guilty as a terrorist is across the board worse for your sentence than being found guilty of the exact same crime without the terrorism addendum, including expansion of the federal death penalty. I don't agree with the ACLU on the liberal free speech maximalism (obviously), but their analysis of this bill is pretty much dead on: quote:As the proposed legislation’s reference to existing terrorism-related statutes and penalties demonstrates, the crimes it would create largely duplicate existing laws, which cover a range of wrongful conduct as well as expansive attempt and conspiracy charges. Indeed, more than 50 federal terrorism-related statutes and additional hate crimes statutes already give law enforcement the authority necessary to investigate and prosecute domestic white supremacist violence effectively.1The Department of Justice has used these and other laws to prosecute cases that would fall under the federal definition of domestic terrorism. The net effect of bringing the existing crime of international terrorism into domestic criminal cases is that it will be a federal crime with greatly heightened punishments to dissent against the government if the AG says it is. Remember that guy who shouted, "Kill this Nazi prick?" He can be prosecuted as a domestic terrorist under this bill if the Attorney General says he is one, and just as importantly, he's not one if the Attorney General says he's not. Same deal with people at protests (or riots or coups or insurrections or whatever the preferred nomenclature is) where property damage occurs. There's really no limit to how this law could be applied, and I don't think we're going to have to wait for a Republican administration to see that happen. To give a concrete example of how I see these new authorities being used: after the Mayday protests in Seattle in 2012 that resulted in some vandalism being done to a federal courthouse (making it a federal crime), then-Obama-appointed-US Attorney (now Seattle mayor) Jenny Durkan rounded up some leftists who weren't even in Seattle at the time and threw them in solitary confinement to try to pressure them into testifying before a grand jury about the people that they may or may not have known who may or may not have participated in the protest and associated vandalism. That was highly controversial, but it was time limited; you can't hold people as non-compliant grand jury witnesses indefinitely and eventually a judge got sick of her poo poo and freed them. With this law and the right AG, she could have charged them with domestic terrorism (or threatened them with those charges to get them to testify against others) under the accessories after the fact definition assuming that they had any contact with the people she suspected of doing the vandalism. She also could have had anyone who was physically at the protest arrested and threatened or charged with domestic terrorism as co-conspirators or accessories, because that would be a federal crime under her jurisdiction as well. The policy response to fascism in this country is so utterly blinkered ideologically that there's really no button to push that isn't labeled "more cops" or "more power for cops." The Oldest Man fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Jan 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 9, 2021 20:35
|
|
|
Time to bump this thread again.quote:As of today, at least 26 sworn members of U.S. law enforcement agencies from at least 11 states have been identified by law enforcement agencies and local reporting as attendees of the Jan. 6 rally in support of President Trump that sparked a riot at the U.S. Capitol. [Update, 5:20 p.m., Eastern time: Two more law enforcement officers have been reported as having attended the Jan. 6 rally, bringing the total to 28 officers from 12 states.] Beyond that tally, several former law enforcement agents attended the rally, and still more current law enforcement officials are under investigation for making statements in support of the rally. Dats a lotta cops. One major takeaway from this list of confirmed pig attendees is that they're coming from all over the country: it doesn't matter how red or blue you think your state or city is, its police department is contributing violent fascists to the cause. Obviously cops aren't the only fascist reactionaries around, but they're definitely a component, and from the Capitol Police suspensions and the USSS agent being placed on leave, it should be pretty obvious that the fascist-dominated security services writ large can't be fully trusted when the opponent of the civilian regime is... other fascist security service officers out of their uniforms. That raises another big problem: Would you trust this person to protect the incoming president? quote:In one image, the newspaper reported Monday night, the secret service officer posted a meme on Facebook titled "Here's to the Peaceful Transition of Power" with President Donald Trump shaking hands with himself in the Oval Office. A day after the siege on the US Capitol, a comment was posted using the officer's name that criticized attempts to remove Trump from office and accused lawmakers who accepted the electoral college vote of "committing treason on live tv." I sure as gently caress wouldn't, and neither does the USSS leadership. And that's a huge problem, because the entire purpose of the USSS presidential protection details is to keep the winner of the last presidential election in the big chair and alive. They're heavily vetted, and yet even they've got fascists in their ranks. Not all of them are going to be as outspoken as this idiot. So that leaves the agents of the state (the ones that actually want a continuing liberal/neoliberal republican government) with a bit of a conundrum: 1) We can definitely expect more riots and small scale violent protests and attacks from the fascist reactionaries against the government and the public; silencing the big names on mainstream social media may inhibit their ability to organize large events and evangelize the ideology but it is in no way going to inhibit small to medium sized groups (tens to hundreds) from feeling the walls close in and start to act in more extreme ways. 2) There's no possibility either politically, culturally or legally (as discussed in my last post) for any response to this threat other than more cops and more power for cops. 3) Our current cops may not be sufficient in manpower and/or may not be fully reliable to push back this threat and protect the functioning of the civilian government. Fortunately, history provides two very popular solutions to this problem. Both of them have utterly devastating consequences, but I have no doubt that one or both will be tried if anything is tried at all. Door number 1: The military https://twitter.com/dave_brown24/status/1349395835688284160?s=20 It's a popular canard that using the military for domestic law enforcement and security purposes is bad, but why is not something people discuss that much. For the powerful, the reason basically comes down to optics. They don't want to look like they're militarily occupying their own country like its The Troubles even though there's an ever-shrinking list of differences in equipment between a modern big-city police department and a modern light infantry unit. The rifles, grenades, comms, body armor, tactical gear, light armored vehicles, and training emphasis on trigger-pulling are all there, and cops are notoriously more trigger happy than American light infantry who may face actual consequences for violating their ROE and shooting people when they weren't supposed to. The first problem with using the military is that the military formations that we have ready to go and who are legally permitted to operate domestically are weekend warriors who lack the training and practice to be ready substitutes for cops either in a law enforcement or crowd control role. That means you need a lot of them to do the job a few riot cops would, and you need to be prepared for the optics and blowback of large numbers of uniformed military on the street, worse use-of-force incidents (and potentially deadly use of force incidents; they might kill someone where a cop would deliver a serious but walk-homeable injury), and for them to get hurt and take casualties at significantly higher rates than cops would. If you want to prop up the authority of the state with a show of force without further inflaming resistance, this is a bad way to do it. The second problem, as implied by the embedded tweet above, is that the NG are also hosting quite a few actual cops and members of other domestic security services wearing a different uniform, and if you're concerned about cops being unreliable, the NG are better but not much better. Putting 20,000 guard with rifles all around Joe Biden may not be the slam dunk good idea the government thinks it is. I doubt a cop would shoot Joe Biden at this moment in history, but I'm not sure I would trust a cop wearing a national guard uniform to use live ammo on another cop who flashes a badge at him if it came down to it. The third, and largest, problem is that deploying the military in a law enforcement role subjects them to the same exact pressures and incentives as cops have. Over time, policing with the military turns the military (culturally and politically) into the police. It also weakens the political/military barrier, which has already been weakened thanks to the obliteration of the norm that military officers should not (for example) turn around and immediately serve as the civilian oversight of the military. Both of those factors will influence the military to become more explicitly political over time. It only took about 20 years to turn the cops from white supremacists loyal to the government into a political body that supports mask-off fascism and can't be counted on to thwart a fascist coup; I'd guess the military would go south on us a lot faster than that if pressed into this role on any kind of ongoing basis. So for those reasons, using the military in place of the domestic security services is not great other than as an extremely short-term stop-gap. Ed: For more Are Troops Aren't The Solution content, please check out WaHWtD's latest episode, titled Fascism? In My Forever War?, which came out the day after I wrote this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryGe9IPQr6w Door number 2: Praetorians  This isn't the first time a regime which must turn to violence against its own increasingly violent citizens to take or keep power has faced this very same issue. You need a big army to be an imperial power, you need a lot of cop muscle to keep your domestic impoverished underclass from getting any ideas, but as those forces grow in strength and develop their own institutional interests, you ultimately can't trust those assholes not to play kingmaker. The more durable answer to this problem is to build a force created for the explicit purpose of being reliable to the regime, with that as its highest goal above all others. The structure and recruitment strategy can follow a number of different models: you can use rigorous ideological purity testing and political officers, you can recruit from an ethnic/religious/cultural minority that is protected from enemies and privileged by the power of the regime, or you can simply make membership itself so lucrative and privileged that members will feel a natural loyalty to the continuity of the state that way. You can either create a brand new formalized force or you can pick an existing one, purge the poo poo out of it, and then stock it up with your favored recruits and give it defacto or dejure new powers and authority to gently caress up anybody trying to challenge the regime and its own idea of succession. Of course, an effective praetorian guard defending a regime from ever-increasing domestic threats that can draw popular support must have everything it needs to keep the regime in power under its own authority. You can't be caught out getting couped by the intelligence services when you don't have your own spy network and unchecked domestic authority to investigate and remove the treasonous. Once the military is politicized and viewed as politically self-interested and unreliable in a pinch, then things really pop off; the Republican Guard might end up sabotaging the rest of the government to make sure no one has better poo poo than they do, or doubling up very nearly every component of the MIC's spending apparatus to ensure those too are as reliable politically as they are. If you thought the Navy's Army's Airforce loving with the Joint Strike Fighter led to bad outcomes, just wait until the Secret Service needs their own version and it has to be the best one. Is the president going to turn around and start giving the Secret Service tanks? Will Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer appropriate dark money so that the Capitol Police can operate their own off-books spy network? Of course not. Not at first. But there is a chain of predictable reactions by a government to whom the only possible answers to security threats are more of the things feeding the rise of neo-fascism (more security service scope and powers that do nothing but breed more fascists, more domestic use of the military as a law enforcement apparatus that inevitably drives more politicization of the military) which has no answers to solve the legal and cultural normalization of white nationalist fascist politics and the deterioration of material conditions that will drive more and more of the unresolved contradictions in our society into open conflict with the government. And if there's anyone who is ultimately positioned to support a coup for even the slightest hint of a move or disrespect against them, it's praetorians. quote:In year 41, it was disgust and hostility of a praetorian tribune, named Cassius Chaerea – whom Caligula teased without mercy due to his squeaky voice – which led to the assassination of the emperor by officers of the guard. Conclusion Further expansion and militarization of domestic law enforcement organizations and spending (or more cops to watch the fascist ones we have now) may or may not prop up the constitutional government of this country for the remainder of our lifetimes. That depends a lot on how deep the rot in the existing security apparatus already is and how long the government keeps pretending that they can rely on it to protect them, and how ruthless they are about purging people. The only thing that's absolutely certain is that first and most frequent target of new law enforcement groups, spending, and legal authorities is reliably going to be exactly the same loving people who are harassed, jailed, beaten and murdered by cops right now. Give the USCP tanks to defend the Capitol and maybe they'll roll them out to stop a fascist mob but they'll definitely roll them out for BLM. The Oldest Man fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jan 14, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 14, 2021 02:17
|
|
|
It's clear that American police will allow their own to be murdered by white nationalists if they do not immediately comply with them.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2021 06:21
|
|
|
Ghost Leviathan posted:It's clear that American police will allow their own to be murdered by white nationalists if they do not immediately comply with them. The police ARE a white nationalist institution, all of that thin blue line dog whistling is the same messaging as confederate flags, "don't tread on me" symbols, etc. This is part and parcel the reason why they wouldn't be aggressive on the day of the insurrection, they are not willing to police their own - it's not their purpose.
|
|
#
?
Jan 19, 2021 14:40
|
|
|
Yuzenn posted:The police ARE a white nationalist institution, all of that thin blue line dog whistling is the same messaging as confederate flags, "don't tread on me" symbols, etc. Disagree. Police are a tool of the elite and the capital. The white nationalism is just part of american capital, and not in itself connected to the police.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2021 05:20
|
|
|
That still means that.. they are white nationalists though, if their job is to uphold that. And they internalize it. Like it's weird to say they defend white nationalism in capital and they are composed of people from a white nationalist society but that doesn't mean they are white nationalists. They just do white nationalism and think it is a good idea.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2021 06:05
|
|
|
That total is up to 38 officers from 16 states at the capitol riot, by the way. I think it's a bit naive to argue that the cops are merely a ~tool of capital~ when they are exceeding the mandates of the capital bosses to suppress resistance by the exploited class and are now showing up to smash poo poo in the offices of the national government under their own initiative.
The Oldest Man fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Jan 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2021 07:38
|
|
|
It can be both. Never forget why white supremacy was created in the country, to make capitalists richer. You can't untangle the two of them. So if the police exist to guard the private property of the eilte, then they must enforce white supremacy. The Oldest Man posted:Time to bump this thread again. This whole thing is a great post, but I just wanted to make a comment, specifically, about the militarized police force. Frankly, I'm not sure if the United States is capable of competently enacting it. 1. It takes a completely different mindset to fight a war in a foreign country than it does to fight a war against your own. The army is far too diverse and filled with people looking for an opportunity to get ahead from all sorts of backgrounds. I don't think you can put a guy from an impoverished background in charge of starving out his fellows without serious desertion problems. 2. We don't have the resources. Yes, the United States is the weathiest nation on Earth. But we are stretched across the entire globe fighting a territorial war that we are rapidly losing. We lost in Asia, we are losing in the Middle East, and we can't even secure our own massive borders. And as we lose these conflicts, so too will the wealth of the capitalists shrink. What's more, the cost of these wars continues to skyrocket as our looming rival, China, grows in power. And we can't win a war against them. We don't have the domestic production to fight a war against China. They build our cars, our electronics, nearly everything is made there or near there and any fight would mean we would be completely cut off from our biggest suppliers. 3. They don't pay soldiers enough to do this poo poo, and they never will. The irony of Capitalism is that it will forever seek more and more profits, meaning more and more capitalists will evade taxes (legally or otherwise) resulting in a federal budget that can only shrink. The cost will be placed on workers, but their wealth is shrinking to the point that they will no longer be able to pay for the massive military budget that the United States would need to enact this. More directly, this means that soldier pay can't go up which it desperately needs to in order to convince soldiers to stomp the boot hard enough in their home country. At least, that's how I see it.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2021 20:46
|
|
|
I agree with every one of those premises but they're arguments for why domestic military deployments for LE purposes would be a disaster, not arguments that the government won't do them. To go point by point:quote:1. It takes a completely different mindset to fight a war in a foreign country than it does to fight a war against your own. The army is far too diverse and filled with people looking for an opportunity to get ahead from all sorts of backgrounds. I don't think you can put a guy from an impoverished background in charge of starving out his fellows without serious desertion problems. We've consistently failed with our counter-insurgency strategy in every theater we've attempted it since 9/11, so "it won't work" isn't much of a deterrent by itself. "Working" just means that the area under occupation is pacified enough for the taking to continue, it doesn't mean it solves anything. Desertion might become a problem if the guys from the impoverished neighborhood end up standing on the street corner there during the new Troubles, but a) that's a problem for Future America and b) that's a problem that you can forestall for years in a number of exciting ways, including using specialist units to hunt down deserters, punishing the families of deserters (often by clawing back pay and benefits), and increasingly brutal discipline. But at the end of the day, organic desertion and mutiny rarely become an unmanageable problem in militaries unless you have a combination of a failed or immoral mission and a failure by the military to provide basic needs (food, shelter, pay) for the soldiery and a popular belief that the military authority itself may not be capable of enacting punishment. If your choice as an impoverished American is to eat grass and get shot at while you bounce in and out of homelessness vs eating military rations and living in a barracks, you'll rationalize a lot of poo poo as a cost of being able to pick the latter option. quote:2. We don't have the resources. Yes, the United States is the weathiest nation on Earth. But we are stretched across the entire globe fighting a territorial war that we are rapidly losing. We lost in Asia, we are losing in the Middle East, and we can't even secure our own massive borders. And as we lose these conflicts, so too will the wealth of the capitalists shrink. What's more, the cost of these wars continues to skyrocket as our looming rival, China, grows in power. And we can't win a war against them. We don't have the domestic production to fight a war against China. They build our cars, our electronics, nearly everything is made there or near there and any fight would mean we would be completely cut off from our biggest suppliers. The US still has all of the natural resources within its own borders that it needs to run its economy and a war machine, we're just choosing to acquire a lot of them from the imperial periphery because it's cheaper, easier, or less politically controversial. Similarly we paused the total immiseration of the domestic working class for a few decades because it was cheaper and more politically expedient to export the worst of the taking to countries that couldn't fight back, but you're dead wrong if you think those practices won't be re-imported as global rivals start to get in our way and there is so much domestic blood left to squeeze. We've already proven that every labor protection that exists can simply be ignored at will if you put the slightest tech figleaf over it. Someone could open the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in California tomorrow and they'd probably get away with it as long as the building was owned by a shell company, the internal layout was configured by WeWork, the equipment installed by a co-working company, and the seamstresses were classified as contractors. They haven't done so simply because it's still cheaper and easier to open a sweatshop in Southeast Asia. Maybe we will lose a war with China and subsequently lose access to some of our imperial periphery. Frankly, that would just accelerate this process and increase the likelihood of more extreme and novel domestic law enforcement practices to force the domestic exploited to accept the re-importation of taking practices developed on the periphery. quote:3. They don't pay soldiers enough to do this poo poo, and they never will. The irony of Capitalism is that it will forever seek more and more profits, meaning more and more capitalists will evade taxes (legally or otherwise) resulting in a federal budget that can only shrink. The cost will be placed on workers, but their wealth is shrinking to the point that they will no longer be able to pay for the massive military budget that the United States would need to enact this. More directly, this means that soldier pay can't go up which it desperately needs to in order to convince soldiers to stomp the boot hard enough in their home country. The government has no problem running at $large deficit when it suits the owning class to do that, and it will continue to do so as long as the currency doesn't collapse. The fact that this could all be potentially disastrous over the course of a few decades (and that the government might prefer more sustainable options for controlling the domestic exploited class) has absolutely no bearing on whether the government will do it. Our rulers will pull every lever they have available at the time they need to pull them in order to let the taking continue. If using military resources for domestic law enforcement is the lever they have, well, right now that means a few thousand soldiers sleeping in a parking garage and sharing a single bathroom during a pandemic. Later maybe it means returning to military service as an alternative to incarceration or only service guaranteeing citizenship. None of this is meant to be prophetic. The point I'm making is that if using the military domestically is the way the powerful see they have to stay in power, that's what will happen, consequences be damned. I'm sure the Democrats and Republicans both would prefer Super Cops, but if Super Cops either don't exist or can't trusted then well there you go.
|
|
#
?
Jan 22, 2021 23:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 08:29 |
|
|
quote:Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of Jan. 6 attack, court documents say Wonder where those messages were coming from 
|
|
#
?
Jan 23, 2021 01:27
|
|