Hi Joe,
I found your stories in your recent "Most Americans are afraid to feel outrage" post mostly gut-wrenching, except for the last. That was about as rich a mixture of farce and pathetic as one could mix, even with deliberation. But, it did remind me of something I have thought for some time, why are people afraid of, at least in the Anglo-centric countries, the arrival of the police state? Are they so confused they don't realise we're already in a police state?
It is patently clear we have a police state. After all, we have police. These police have the right to arrest and detain one considered to be breaking the law. Depending upon the apparent law(s) being broken, one can be held without charge for long periods (up to 42 days here in the UK), and ultimately released without any charges being brought. This doesn't sound like a state of freedom to me. It sounds like a police state.
It should be clear to everyone the criminal justice system is not about protecting citizens from the criminal acts of their fellow citizens. Nor is it about reparations for the citizen victim that suffers an act of crime. It is, in all truth, about the state asserting its power and legitimacy over the citizen. This is clearly demonstrated by noting the defendant is always named, whereas the victim is never named and the offence is always brought by the state as plaintiff. Now, I don't know about you, but it seems pretty damn clear to me the state was never raped, or beaten, or robbed, the citizen victim of the crime suffered that experience. Yet, the state both acts as victim and nemesis.
Surely if we lived in a non-police state it would be the victim prosecuting the defendant, and receiving some form of reparation directly from the defendant, if convicted. Why is it the state is not only listed as victim but also receives the "value" of the judgement against the defendant? What about the victim? In every single successful criminal prosecution the state always demands penalty and decides this penalty. What about the citizen victim? Isn't the choice of penalty their right and isn't this penalty to be "paid" to the victim by the convicted defendant?
The answer is no. The police are used to enforce the laws that represent the power of the state over the citizen. They commonly arrest and detain innocent (yes, and guilty too) citizens. Those citizens found sufficiently guilty are then prosecuted and if convicted punished by the state and not by the citizen victim. It seems the needs of the citizen victim are irrelevant in the state asserting its power and legitimacy.
I'd suggest to anyone living in the Anglo-centrics to think again about the coming of the police state. The coming came and went. Now the real question is how fast and how far the rising tide of fascism, the ultimate expression of the corporate-police state, will reach into our respective flavours of governance and into the mundane of our daily lives.
Papers please.
Jim
Surrey, England
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Jim,
What a wonderfully fundamental analysis. I suppose the defenders of such a system do so partly on the basis of the complexity of our society and its administration, etc. But here's an interesting thing I observed in Belize. A close friend had a truck accident (his own fault for passing at high speed) and killed two of his passengers. One was his grandson. The other was a neighbor's wife. The charge was manslaughter.
Now there is the law as it is written, then there is the law as it is practiced and administered. At the preliminary hearing the Belizean judge said that if the defendant could come to agreement with the other aggrieved party, be it financial or otherwise, the charges could be dropped.
To me that is eminently sensible.
In art and labor,
Joe
