SUBPOENA FOR MAN WHO TAPED BEATING
Los Angeles County prosecutors subpoena the man who taped the police beating of a teen as a grand jury prepares to probe the incident. [CNN]
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In a 7-11 parking lot in 1972, I witnessed a local cop punch a handcuffed white kid in the face while he was being put into a patrol car. Yeah, the kid was cursing at the cop, verbally abusing him, but he was handcuffed and physically docile and completely under control. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. Although blacks may suffer more from this kind of abuse by authority, whites suffer from it too. It's not so much a problem of racism as it is a problem of machismo, a need for physical dominance over even verbal behavior, a need to control people, society, and (the inner) self, ironically by acting out physically. Hormones rage, and cops get out of control. But there's no place for these kinds of men in modern law enforcement.
No matter what the "offender" has done prior to his being restrained, any violence on his person once he is restrained is completely inappropriate and is a violation of the individual's civil and legal rights. It's time to weed these cops out of the ranks. Adopt a one strike and you're out policy. If you can't control your emotional state, if you aren't emotionally mature (which is really what machismo is all about), then go and get a job as a security guard (the kind who don't carry guns) or a burger fryer at McDonalds. Grow up or get out. If you need therapy, get it, before it's too late for someone you encounter in the "line of duty." [And, oh yeah, while we're on the subject, stop beating your wives and girlfriends, too.]
And now, we see the heavy-handed way that the authorities are handling the witness who taped the beating in L.A. When they had the choice of asking the guy for the tape or subpoenaing him, they chose the latter. More and more, the authorities exist in a political and social atmosphere that enables over-reaction. The message is very, very clear. Don't be taping our activities or you're going to get leaned on very heavily. [Never mind that they guy was a fugitive from upstate authorities. They didn't know that at the time.] The gauntlet is being thrown. Law enforcement Neanderthals are standing up to the social challenge and threatening to drive the civilization back into the stone age, or at least into the fifties when they could get away with things that today people can inhibit them from doing via video technology. They don't want pictures taken. But they want to take pictures. They want to make it as difficult as possible on people who dare to expose them. It's time for these fascists to step aside. They should have been wasting away in an old folk's home a long time before now.
This kind of behavior exists more easily in a permissive atmosphere. Throughout the last century, society has been tightening up on this kind of thing, but not enough. The authorities exist in a kind of bubble, a vacuum of aggressive permissiveness within a larger cultural context that sees permissiveness as a different kind of thing. It's been a bubble waiting to burst, and now it has. Al Qa'ida flying planes into the World Trade Center has broken the thin outer skin.
Sometimes other people say it all so much better than I can and even quote it all so much better. The following is a direct quote from the Hardball Newsletter [This is verbatim, from beginning to end, no breaks]:
The head of the NAACP, Julian Bond, slammed Bush over the weekend...We'll play some of the sound...
Bond on Bush: "We have a president who owes his election more to a dynasty than to democracy," [sic]
"We know he was in the oil business. We just didn't know it was snake oil."
Bond on Ashcroft: "We have an attorney general who is a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and Jerry Falwell. And too often, one political party is shameless and the other is spineless." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1486111
The right-wing conspiracy is operating out of the Department of Justice and the office of White House Counsel, Julian Bond said last night in a keynote address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (The Washington Times) http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020708-89210920.htm
Bond is a harbinger of things to come. Liberal reaction is about to be unleashed. Look out. It's all about to swing the other way--finally. I've waited a long time for this.
All men are created equal--unless we're scared.
Phil Donahue
There must be a sizable contingent of American voters who, whether they are registered Republicans or Democrats, vote their "conscience" on Election Day, despite their token affiliation. What else could explain the swings between a Democratic and a Republican congress? Are there that many Independents? Maybe there are. Is voter turnout the whole answer? Maybe it is. I guess that these three reasons taken together could tip the balance one way or the other. But whatever the reason(s), it looks like the swing is about to take place, two years ahead of (my predicted) schedule. The public is more scared of Big Brother now than it is of al Qa'ida. The conservatives are more scared of external threats, but the liberals are more internal people. Conservatives tend to be repressors and liberals sensitizers; or, probably more correctly stated, repressors tend to be conservative and sensitizers tend to be liberal (or radical). This can account for the former group wanting to control everything while the latter group tends to let things be. And moderates and independents swing one way or the other, according to the political season. I guess, after all, that it's these middle-of-the-road and freewheeling contingents where our true democracy is vested. Without them, we would swing wildly to one or the other extreme.
And speaking of control...
One more time I hear (this time from Ann Coulter on Phil Donahue) that liberals control the media. It's a lame old transparent psychology. In general, I find that the media is fairly well balanced between conservative and liberal biases. (It shouldn't be biased at all, but people will be people, even if they are reporters.) The myth of liberal [or the knee-jerk liberal backlash that purports that, in fact, conservatives really control the media, because they control the purse strings] media bias is a convenient means of distracting the public away from what's really going on. Conservatives [and many purported liberals--they're not really all that liberal, are they?] just can't stand the fact that the media is relatively balanced, so they have to perpetuate this myth in order to enable the denial of their pathology as control freaks. It pisses conservatives off to no end that they themselves can't get a stranglehold on the media like they try to get a stranglehold on every facet of politics and society that they're exposed to. Given this lack of control, they have to believe that the media is in the hands of their "opponents." For example, conservatives believe that CNN has a severe liberal bias, whereas studies have shown that it presents a quite balanced point of view. Conservatives can't stand the fact that a news channel will not only broadcast conservative opinion, which they conveniently ignore, but liberal as well. FOX, on the other hand, leans far toward the right. This was an intention from its inception, to "balance" the "liberal" CNN. The accusation that CNN is liberally biased is a projection on FOX's part, an unconscious, or maybe conscious, ploy to divert attention away from the fact that it is FOX itself that is biased, to the right. And its proclamation (practically every half-hour) that it is "fair and balanced" is a ruse to fog the issue, that it is not.
FOX's right-wing agenda is only marginally modified by its recent additions of slightly left-of-center dignitaries like Geraldo and Greta. These two are liberal (if moderate) powerhouses, and it's to FOX's credit that they added these tokens, but other FOX liberals, like Alan Colmes are media jokes, patsies for the likes of Hannity, who is quite capable of shouting his "opponent" down at every turn. (Shouting is always a good replacement for the lack of a logical argument.) In short, what I'm saying is that conservatives are closed-minded Neanderthals and liberals are wussies who by their nature let their nemeses get away with their myopic antics. To be quite honest, generally, liberals are nicer people. But nice guys finish last. It's better to be quite radical instead.
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