Last Saturday afternoon, a friend had a last-minute schedule change and needed to use my incall at the same time as I had promised to sit a different friend’s dog. So I decided to take the dog to the bark park a few blocks from here, but when I arrived, I found two groups of people at the gate, arguing with one another. Apparently one person’s dog had become aggressive with the other person’s dog and in the process of trying to break them up one of them had gotten very slightly bitten (no blood) and was freaking out about it. Each of them had another person on their side and what I heard when I arrived was a lot of childish, pompous Seattle behavior. I let my friend’s dog loose to run and was about to walk away until I heard the woman who had been scratched saying, “I was assaulted and I’m calling the police”. At that point, I stopped being quiet; I told them I had no idea who was at fault, or if both were, and I didn’t care, but there was no way I was going to put up wih anybody calling the fucking cops (yes, that was the exact phrase I used). The woman whined that she had been assaulted and that SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE because what if she came there again and the guy she was arguing with was there? I replied, “Then you both act like civilized adults, say quietly to yourself ‘there’s that asshole again’, and go to a different part of the park.” Naturally her opponent now thought I was on his side, so I quickly smacked down that notion and said, “Do I really have to be the kindergarten teacher and break up this playground foolishness?” When the woman brought up the cops again, I asked, “Do you really believe this situation would be helped by calling in a bunch of thugs whose idea of ‘helping’ is to tase a few of y’all and then shoot some dogs while they’re at it?” That seemed to do the trick, and after a little more mediation on my part the woman & her boyfriend left and the other dude went and sat on a bench. The reason I’m telling this story is: reminding people that the cops are violent, unpredictable thugs who make things worse actually stopped a ninny from calling them. Remember that next time you hear someone threatening to do the same; I get that most of y’all are hesitant to intervene in a quarrel between strangers, and I usually would be as well. But it’s that attitude which results in cops showing up to tase, beat, gas or even murder people over noise complaints or other mundane tiffs bystanders could easily have handled without violence.
Peacemaker
November 7, 2019 by Maggie McNeill
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Sad to say, that’s Seattle in a nutshell…..full of snivelling, ‘triggered’ punks. It’s gonna be interesting when Beirut or Syria comes to LeninLand. I recommend a 300 yard free fire zone and a BAR for Sunset.
Thank you for your service.
That unfortunately is where we are in this society: to protect and to serve applies only to the richest 1/2 of one percent, and sscrew the rest of us.
No. Cops were never intended to “protect and serve” anyone but the government. Now that we have a fascist system, the ultra-wealthy can buy their way into the power elite, but they’re not automatically there; it takes dealmaking. Furthermore, the cops themselves are one of the three fasces that make up the system.
Sorry Maggie, I must strongly disagree. Law enforcement has always been about protecting the rich and powerful, and keeping the rest of us in our place, no matter whether it is fascism, a republic, an empire, or whatever. The cops are part of the system, and they have special privileges, but they are not a co-equal part of the system, just Orwell’s jackboot.
I don’t think you understand fascism, or else you haven’t been paying attention to the power of police unions, the way cops can write laws now and ignore the ones intended to control them (for example, mass destruction of records in California to thumb their noses at the recent transparency law, etc). Cops are indeed part of the ruling class now, whether you admit that to yourself or not.
Maggie, here’s why I don’t believe they are: because if they fuck up and injure or kill one of the power elites (without prior permission), they get sent to prison or killed. They get input on laws, but not final say. And I understand Fascism quite well. We are missing the organized paramilitary controlled only by the Party, independent of the Government, i.e., the SA, SS, and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. The police still are limited by the government, and when they fuck up big time they pay. The Gestapo, SD, Reichdienst, of Nazi Germany didn’t pay for their fuck-ups; they were ignored.
If you can’t see that cops literally get away with murder all the time, and that even secret police can’t get away with murdering those above them in the hierarchy, this interaction is pointless. You don’t want to see you live in a fascist state, so you invent reasons why it isn’t. I hope you never have to find out personally how incredibly wrong you are.
Are you familiar with deep throat Mark Felt?
This FBI agent literally took down a sitting president of the US (with no repercussions against him) because he did not receive the promotion he felt he deserved when J. Edgar died. He was able to do this because the FBI regularly carries out surveillance against politicians (up to an including sitting presidents) along with groups they want to exert social control over, which comes down to anyone who they feel threatens their power base. Does this seem like a group that is accountable to anyone, and if so whom?
That is true for the DEA, CIA, NSA and a few dozen other US alphabet paramilitary groups that are now standing in as our very own SA, SS, and Mussolini’s Black Shirts with far better surveillance tools than those groups could have dreamed of. These groups act outside the constitution with complete impunity.
As the below articles point out, these federal organizations regularly extend their extra-constitutional powers to the local cop shops that already operate with little to no public accountability and the blind full support of politicians and most judges.
https://theintercept.com/2019/11/01/fbi-joint-terrorism-san-francisco-civil-rights/
https://reason.com/2019/11/07/as-times-change-the-fbi-continues-its-snoopy-and-heavy-handed-ways/
Go on, tell me how the US police state is answerable to anyone but themselves.
I would agree we live in a near-totalitarian state, but not a fascist one. If we are able to write these missives to each other without ending up in prison, it ain’t a fascist state. Fascists tolerate dissent even less than Communists do; Communists send you to a re-education camp, Fascists kill you.
You might want to read my OpEdNews article “The Communist Takeover of America,” where i remind everyone that the establishment of a totalitarian state by big business, with the the aid of law enforcement, is nothing new: President Grover Cleveland warned of its occurring in his Fourth Annual Message to Congress in 1888, calling it “Communism” because the word Fascism had yet to be invented by Benito Mussolini. The world would have to wait 30 years for that to happen.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Communist-Takeover-of-by-Richard-Girard-110225-867.html
Diogenes–I agree with you, our entire intelligence system needs to be “shattered into a thousand pieces” as Jack Kennedy said,for the sake of the country, and the law enforcement/judiciary right along with it.
It just occurred to me what really differentiates us from a fully totalitarian state: it is that we don’t have everyone spying and informing on everyone else as they did in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, or modern Red China or North Korea.
Not that they aren’t trying.
You are confusing the clumsy Mark One version of fascism with the modern version. If you believe people aren’t informing & speech isn’t being suppressed, you are simply not paying attention…which is EXACTLY what the government wants. That’s the whole point of the improvements. Fascism isn’t a matter of degree; it’s a matter of kind.
To me Fascism is one type of totalitarian system, and whole the U.S. may be a proto-Fascist state, it doesn’t meet my criteria for fully Fascist–i.e., Germany, Italy Franco’s Spain, Peron’s Argentina.. And i never said people aren’t informing, i said that everyone is not informing. The watch on electronic media is more pervasive than the watch on the press, radio, and mail ever was in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. The U.S. is increasingly totalitarian, and heading towards the right-wing version of such a system. Marginalized Minorities, including prostitutes, are the canaries in the mines, which is one reason I wrote my OpEdNews article “Making Sex a Crime” seven-and-a-half years ago.
I’m not saying your wrong Maggie, I’m just saying we have different definitions for Fascism.
Pax.
freegirard: You make an interesting point about the different mechanisms of different police states.
Even between fascist states there are cultural difference in how say Japan, Italy and Germany implemented things, but I would argue that America has achieve the same aims within it’s given 21st century culture.
You don’t need to kill every critic to achieve a fascist state. You only need to maintain enough fear and panic in the population that the scared mob and media will cheer on whatever arbitrary state violence you inflict at your whim against your enemies. They like to use the term “setting an example” and “holding them accountable” to signal the mob and the media when it’s time to throw out the Bill of Rights and get down to business.
The Nazi’s where fond of walking into a church mid service, causing a disruption, then walking out. They didn’t need to execute everyone in that church to achieve their goal. It was enough to let them know they could arbitrarily destroy anyone they wanted at any moment with impunity. This is precisely the state of current law enforcement in the US.
Jacques Ellul gives an excellent overview of how fascism functions within American cultural in his book “Propaganda.” It was written in 1962, but much like “1984” and “Animal Farm” is only more relevant today since he could not have dreamed of the power of ISPs, Google, Facebook, electronic money companies and a dozen other private companies that collaborate with the police state to maintain the panopticon we call the US.
And just like Nazi Germany, it wasn’t something imposed on us against our will the way a totalitarian state often is. It’s something we begged for. We have worked hard at creating an endless supply of entirely unaccountable positions within our society to ensure every sociopathic authoritarian could find a full time job.
Point well taken. One of the things that we are also missing is a centralized appointment of government officials, which was the case in Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, and Argentina. In all cases, the town’s mayor–for example–was appointed by a party official, not elected. And I agree, a lot of people have been asking for the “strong man” to lead us since November 22,1963, if not before. We have way too many authoritarian-based individuals out there, scared to death of the rapidly changing world. And I don’t know what you do about them.
Very brave of you Maggie. You did a good deed — one that might not have been apparent to the participants, but one that may well have resulted in long-term change to the viewpoints of both the participants and bystanders.