Reposted from my buddy Dillon O’Brian, with whom these conversations have been going on for about 30 years….we diverge these days in some of our thinking, but it’s still an interesting topic.
Enforcment Class Rise up?
It’s my view that this will never happen, as I think that the men and women that go into these areas of work are in modern times attracted by a different motivation than is commonly thought. It’s my view that they are now joining these institutions BECAUSE of the thuggery, the criminality, the abuse of power, the right to wear a weapon, the power of the institution to validate their criminality and natural violence , and as a way to continue their schoolyard bully pattern into adulthood, but with much more lethal and permanent effects.
If you want to have the Police show up where there’s some kind of trouble, say “gun”, they’ll be there in seconds, because they want to shoot someone, want to be that cowboy swagger that only comes from getting to kill someone and call them the bad guy.
Yes, of course there’s REAL bad guys, and of course there are people in these institutions with honorable motives, of course it’s likely that they are even the norm, but there’s one thing that’s has always been true and will likely continue to be, and that is when one of their own commits one of these incredible acts the others will close ranks around them and protect them, and by doing so, they tacitly validate and support those that do these things, even if they themselves never do or would. This is at best guilt by association, and in my mind they become accessories to the criminality by allowing it without repercussions.
If someone breaks the law, they are a criminal, and should be dealt with as such, regardless if they are an Enforcement Class member or not, in fact, MORE so if they are. To NOT punish and invalidate these actions is to become little more than any common street gang, and to ignore that fact is to put ourselves in constant danger from these institutions.
Of course there are exceptions to this, the most obvious one being a Whistleblower like Snowden, whose acts are only illegal really because of laws put in place as deterrents to the act of whistleblowing itself, and not because what they are doing is a threat to the country, it’s only a threat to criminals changing the laws to support their actions. (Lacking a better document, we should ALWAYS be referring to not only the LETTER of the Constitution, but also the SPIRIT of it, which often times can be gleaned by the writings of the people involved in it’s creation, where they tend to be very specific about what their intents and fears were.) (And yes I understand that the document has as one of it’s primary functions codification of the power and rights of the rich landed class, but as I said, it’s the best map we have right now, and DOES contain a lot of good structure.)
So although I think it’s a nice thought that the insiders will “revolt” against the actions of their fellows, I see it as extremely unlikely. Change in these institutions rarely comes from the inside, it’s always pressure from the outside, and that’s going to be a long time coming with the control sector in full command these days.