Saturday, July 4, 2020

Defund - The Traffic Police...


Defund The Traffic Police

OFF THE WIRE

The culture war that’s boiled in America the last three weeks, on top of the simmering Covid plague, might be the end of the United States. It is almost certainly the end of the America that was. It might also mark the beginning of an American renaissance.
Among the radical ideas that are certain to offend a plurality of us, like the desecration of monuments portraying long dead and frequently romanticized Confederates, the beheadings of statues of  Christopher Columbus and undiminished hatred toward a symbol the Confederacy called “The Blood-Stained Banner” there is one small, radical idea that almost everyone should endorse.

Can’t Go For That

I understand those bad ideas. I don’t agree with them but I can see where they came from. You can too.
Most of the monuments to Confederate heroes were erected well after the war. They were intended to be a tribute to a dying generation from a younger one. But in most academic conversations they are interpreted as excuses for the inexcusable – as a way to “rewrite History,” as if there aren’t already dozens of histories that get rewritten every day.
I personally dread the decades when they will come for the monuments to men who fought in Vietnam. It has already happened and it will happen again. Where is the America in that? What is the America in that?
I understand why black Americans are offended by the Confederate flag. It is often displayed to symbolize the sentiment,”Fuck you. We white. You ain’t.” But that is hardly all it means. It is also symbolizes a military tradition.
A disproportionate number of the men who fought in Vietnam, for example, were what the Army and the Marine Corps called “MAGS,’ which was shorthand for Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. While lesser men, particularly from the north, were pretending to have bone spurs, or one leg slightly shorter than the other or to be homosexual in order to avoid service in that last terrible war, the MAGs practically never dodged the draft and often enlisted. For them the now hated Confederate flag symbolized an honor bound, warrior culture that wasn’t afraid to fight a lost cause.
One hardly knows what to say about the vilification of Columbus. Any historian should know that Europe was literally running out of trees and running out of fish in 1492. The “discovery” of America was also the discovery of the Grand Banks and, as Longfellow put it, ”the forest primeval.” Yes, everybody understands, 80 percent or more of native Americans died. But Columbus did not kill them. Feral pigs, Small Pox and Influenza did.

Vote For This

But there is, I think, at least one idea rising out of this quasi revolution that I sincerely endorse and I think you should too: The so-called “Defunding the Police.” Parts of that “Defunding,” are certain to fail: Like taking power back from the police unions, reducing the proliferation of Bearcats and machine guns, and at least accounting for Swat raids.Those reforms will be propagandized by all sides. Be prepared. A year from now a Texas Ranger will openly weep before Congress.
Nevertheless, there is one, small improvement we can make to America on which we all should be able to agree and we can do it next week. We can end traffic stops. Say it loud and say it proud. End traffic stops!
Traffic stops, everyone knows or should know, epitomize what is wrong with American policing. When they aren’t aimed at hurried mommies doing rolling stops on the way to school they are used as a pretext to hang a gun or drug charge on otherwise innocent outlaw bikers, hoodrats and whoever else the police think is an “objective enemy of the state.”

Enemies Of The State

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the term “objective enemy.’ It describes a condition one step short of criminality. It describes people who the police assume are criminals because they belong to some other identifiable category: Because they happen to belong to or associate with a motorcycle club, or they are black, or they self-identify as a neo-nazi, or they are on their way home from a mosque or a Jewish Shabbat.
I am astounded to discover that I am more in sympathy with Black Lives Matter than I ever would have thought.
I think that starting immediately all traffic stops except when necessary to prevent a clear and imminent danger to the public (like reckless driving) should be ended. Just no more traffic stops.
All traffic violations should be recorded and reported by unarmed meter maids with video cameras. If a mommy does a rolling stop mail her her ticket and include a link to the video where she can see the evidence. No more stopping rappers because their cars are too nice. No more stopping bikers because their front wheels touched a line. No more.
No more traffic stops ever. Period. No more of men with guns sauntering up beside you, demanding your papers, running your biography through the nearest fusion center, and then demanding to know why you will not acquiesce to a warrantless search.
Search why? Because some cop thinks he smells something? Or because, “based on his training and experience,” he knows that somebody who looks like you is, at least, a potential criminal.
No more traffic stops unless you are doing something like fleeing from a bank robbery. Demand that. Tell the police to stop fishing for offenses. No more traffic stops.
If America can accomplish that. then all of this noise and chaos will have been worth it and this will be a better country. Maybe the disintegration of America will even stop for a week or so.




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