UPDATE July 2013: a small measure of justice?
In some places the police were unbelievably violent in their quest to silence the Occupiers. Oakland, California was one of those places. . .This week the U.S. district court in San Francisco awarded a group of 12 protesters one million dollars after they sued the department for police brutality. The dollar amounts vary, with some protesters getting $20,000 and another getting as much as $500,000. . .
The settlement was a step in the right direction for the police department and it was a victory for the movement. The actions of law enforcement officials towards the Occupy protesters across the country were atrocious. Last year the University of California Davis offered each of the students who were pepper sprayed at close range by campus police $30,000…The monetary awards are small but at least they are an acknowledgement. The way the Occupy movement was silenced was a disgrace.
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What does it mean for armed authoritarian police in riot gear to “serve and protect” — and who is being protected from whom, for what, under what Authority? Are Thinking Citizens ready for this debate, finally?
Pregnant woman miscarries after being sprayed with pepper spray
What follows are comments JJ is making in an effort to marshal moral principle that might transcend a conservative man’s flinging his own authoritarian feces about, all while claiming to be a multicultural minority himself and more compassionate as proven by charitable donations than “liberals.”
About miscarriage following pepper spray, he said without a trace of self-mocking:
unlike many leftists, we believe in law and order and contesting within the system and established norms, and put our lives on the line fighting for it, and unlike anarchists and their fellow travelers, we dont worship killers of cops, judges and soldiers and dont automatically blame everything on police brutality.
That’s what got me trawled/trolled into the conversation, starting with a quote intended to describe the Authority Personality he seemed to fit and drawing a retort from him that he agreed with Fromm but “it goes both ways” (??):
“. . .the individual’s goal must be to become his own authority; i.e. to have a consciousness in moral issues, conviction in questions of intellect, and fidelity in emotional matters. However, the individual can only have such an inner authority if he has matured enough to understand the world with reason and love.
The development of these characteristics is the basis for one’s own authority and therefore the basis for political democracy.” — Erich Fromm, 1957, “The Authoritarian Personality”
If the “it” that goes both ways, is maturing in reason and love (so that we can transcend animal authority and become Real Boys and Girls) then certainly I agree.
Pregnant women are a very specialized “minority” btw. Even those of us who have been one know primarily how to live as NOT one, because it can’t last long. It might be interesting for us to think about that.
First, no one is born that way or stays that way, although Mrs. Duggar comes close.. 😉
And second, the whole community has a stake in pregnant women, both literally and emotionally: she biologically holds the power within her own body (corpor-al personhood?) to bring forth life and continue the human race, yet to do it, she becomes at her most vulnerable, and is often mistreated for it both by authoritarian individuals and authoritarian society’s rules, laws and cultural hierarchies.
Pregnant women — would it help to rebrand them as citizen creators? — tend to be stunned/shocked/struck (all violent weaponized police control concepts, think about THAT!) by just how dramatically their status change brings out the “authoritarian” in personalities! People get proprietary, want to touch us and tell us what to do and not do, where to be or not be, what to ingest or not, etc etc etc. They call it protection the same way cities and campuses are claiming police violence against peaceful citizens is protection. The same way America’s war-waging is called the defense department . . .
We could have our own reasonable and loving mature debate on, say,
RESOLVED: This culture is more authoritarian toward citizen creators and their corpor-al personhood than toward job creators and corporate personhood.
What’s in the Words “Red Meat”?
21 09 2011Today we bring you Fightin’ Mad White Women in a Meat Locker. Like Rocky Balboa . . .
Remember tough GOP campaigner Sarah Palin chirping on about family holidays in front of turkey slaughter in what looked like a wood chipper, body still twitching and blood flying? The joke then was “pro-life, huh?”
But the image fit and she didn’t seem as bothered by it as even her own team was, much less the rest of us. It vividly showed her to be one tough force to be reckoned with, a warrior not merely of culture but blood and guts, bullets and guns, spoiling for a fight, a warrior unconstrained by truth and unable to tolerate (much less create and sustain) peace, according to (most recently) the Palin portrait painted in the new Joe McGinniss book aptly titled The Rogue.
I haven’t read the book, only heard several interviews with the author. What I heard in his storyline about HER storyline, is that that she’s ruthlessly competitive, so much so that she (and her father and her husband) are insidiously, intentionally menacing for effect, to demoralize and destroy not just enemies but opponents, folks across the country and the guy next door — even those few individuals close to her who dare to feel friendly to her much less try to work with her. (No wonder her own high school basketball teammates called her Sarah Barracuda.)
This all once upon a more innocent time, made me think of her as a somewhat sympathetic Scarlett O’Hara but now it seems more like Lou Gossett Jr. except unfortunately she’s in my real life whether I buy a ticket to keep watching or not, and her competitive power of story is only about winners and losers, just to beat everyone else down and step over their bodies, not to teach and raise them up, not to make us all better for the greater good:
Now presidential candidate Michele Bachmann is manhandling some red meat for the Red Vote. To prove what a tough competitor she is? — but it seems to me what’s really tough in ways both fair and unfair, is believing she can be so tenderly concerned about our “little girls” when she opposes American society working effectively together to help them stay healthy! — she very publicly opposed a cancer-preventing vaccine last week, and this week stands in a meat locker calling for an end to food inspection, unconcerned about e.coli (which disproportionately threatens young children) . . .
Like Gene Hackman in another movie, I “feel like I’m going insane.” Or from the same power of story:
Finally, it put me in mind of this, remember?
Oh shoot! (pun intended.)
Federal control with licenses and training and stuff?? Can’t we just open it up for free market sport, this constitutional freedom to pursue happiness by killing, Read the rest of this entry »
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Tags: Authority, Crazy mean, Dog Whistling, Intentional Offense
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