Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Okay, I really don't have the time tonight to parse all that. So I'm just gonna label that last sentence 'utterly fucking repulsive' and call it a night. Maybe it won't look quite so loathsome in the mornin'.

Please take my word for it - there is no time of day when that last sentence will be less loathsome.

Michael, you point out that it's ridiculous to have to choose between cops and child molesters, and then... you wind up saying that when pressed, you kind of prefer child molesters. It's as if you said that we should not be Walter Mitty and then proceeded to argue that, although we aren't currently running the nuclear reactors, on balance, we should prefer Three Mile Island to Chernobyl. Something like that; I'm obviously not mixing my metaphors thoroughly enough.

It inspires interesting further questions, for those of a "hypothetical public policy" bent:
would it be even better if there were three times as many child molesters as at present and but a third of the current number of cops? What will the ideal ratio of cops:child molesters be under socialism?

No, his point is really simple, if you are listening: it's just that, if the total number of police violations against people are so much greater that the total violations committed by "molesters," than, on balance, we would have less harm to society even my doubling the number of child molesters.

Saying that is not actually an argument FOR child molesting, it simply tries to put some realistic scale to the actual threat. In this respect, he is right. If you had any real experience of inner city policing, you would understand WHY children there see the police as the greater threat.

For a couple of decades now, we have been subject to fear mongering on a tremendous scale regarding sex crimes, witness the Mcmartin case and others, that amounts to hysteria. Add the drug war, terr'ist fear-mongering et al, and you have a formula for state propaganda controlling public imagination in a way that serves only to divert attention to trumped-up threats, while enabling the surveillance state to proceed without serious opposition.

Any violation of any person, adult or child, is a tragedy, and should be addressed. But the attention of the entire nation on this trivia? I don't think so.

Get it?

The number of seeming liberals who have said, essentially, "Roman Polanski raped a thirteen year old girl, so whatever he gets is too good for him!" just fucking astounds me.

Guantanamo and Bagram hold the worst of the worst, hardened killers who have murdered scores of innocent men, women and children, so they deserve everything they get, just like Polanski, right?

Judicial misconduct -which there was a substantial amount of in the Polanski case- is never okay, not even if you're really, really super sure the guy is guilty.

I'd think that this would be fucking liberal politics 101, but apparently child rape just short circuits something in the American liberal brain in a way that, say, killing thousands of people in the World Trade Center attacks doesn't.

"Guantanamo and Bagram hold the worst of the worst, hardened killers who have murdered scores of innocent men, women and children"

No.

They hold a few hardened killers and a lot of poor slobs who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But I will give you this. Americans seem a lot more upset by a decadent European film maker raping a 13 year old girl than they are by those Blackwater mercenaries who got blowjobs from underage girls shipped to Iraq from Eastern Europe or by the idea of fat American tourists mounting 12 year olds in Thailand.

"Blackwater mercenaries .. got blowjobs from underage girls shipped to Iraq from Eastern Europe ...fat American tourists mounting 12 year olds in Thailand"

nice tableaux

revulsion is a bronco
you love best
when it throws u off

"Personally, I'm a creature of my time, and I find the idea of an old guy having sex with a 13-year-old pretty repellent. I'm not filing a brief here for the child molesters "

recall the Lolita hugger mugger

the author of that comic master work
of course
shared father mike's present plight
oh the trials of the ...innocent

i on the other hand
as a charter member
of the block
of lesser wheel maoists and namba-ites
deserve every calumny i induce

oh the ignorance of the "leftist" mind! the rank ignorance!

whence arrives this ignorance?

non-thinking, emoting. repulsion at child molestation.

but not at police brutality?

not at police procedural abuse?

not at a loss of civil rights?

yeah... Smith is "endorsing" child molestation...

...and the internet is reality.

grow up you whiny, emotion-is-everything lefties. y'all need to group together and create the 51st State -- Victim Valhalla.

Charlie:

Who here is really endorsing police brutality? Or even procedural malfeasance? Nobody here is even claiming that Smith is "endorsing" child molestation (perhaps some are claiming that he is downplaying it...but endorsing it?) Since we are manufacturing horrifc puns, I might suggest your own lovely nation state would be The Principality of Mindless Self-Righteouss Anarchism with the capital city of Strawmanopolis.

I would throw in again that one can rail against police brutality and abuse without claiming that ALL police actions are wrong, all prosecutions are unjust, all laws are evil. Are you a true blue believer in the Stateless society, the society of no laws and no police?

Police and laws, no matter how corrupted, are a necessary evil. But still necessary. There is no perfect society and no perfect social institution. While acknowledging the mindset and behavior of the police, I'm not sure a lawless, police-less urban society would be better or even possible.

Certainly criticize the abuses, even the social structure that facilitates said abuses. But to claim that we would be better off with more criminals....not sure I buy that. Color me naive.

I would throw in again that one can rail against police brutality and abuse without claiming that ALL police actions are wrong, all prosecutions are unjust, all laws are evil. Are you a true blue believer in the Stateless society, the society of no laws and no police?

Police and laws, no matter how corrupted, are a necessary evil. But still necessary. There is no perfect society and no perfect social institution. While acknowledging the mindset and behavior of the police, I'm not sure a lawless, police-less urban society would be better or even possible.

I'm persistently misread as advocating libertarianism, anarchism, or whatever.

But to say that the actual cops I confront routinely are a bigger menace than child molesters -- an observation I stand by -- doesn't imply that I'm advocating a "stateless society" or anything else.

As I've said many times before, it's the besetting sin of political people to think that they can design society -- or that they can or should choose among various entirely theoretical options for society.

This particular sin may in fact be the only one I never commit.

"Oh you don't like cops, I guess you'd prefer anarchy" is a sophomorism of precisely the same kind as "Oh, you don't like the Democrats, you must really like Bush."

No, MJS...you are not just making descriptive statements. You may deny it, but there are implicit and explicit PREscriptions in your arguments as well. Sure, this is just a argument on a blog and ultimately meaningless, (Ioz: BLAWG), but:

If ALL police are bad, ALL "justice" in modern cpaitalist States suspect, rapists ARE better than the police, then such beliefs have prescriptive consequences as well. Such a belief system does parallel rather closely the arguments of right libertarianism. It is not "sophomoric" (aren't ad hominem attacks also sophomoric, by the way?) to note that, to ask that question.

I have no delusions that our debates here result in any substantive changes in the real world, anyway. But, to dismiss the consequences of arguments taken to implementation means that we should discuss nothing at any time. Heck, if I wrote "rape should be a celebrated part of our culture" I should not be dismissive if people call me on it, even if my statement is ultimately meaningless.

It's curious how we can't get away from the notion that making observations about existing society implies designing an alternative.

Not the least bit curious when you're talking to lib-wools and pwoggies who pretend at being "leftists."

What they want is to be in charge of the state's power, and they want to use that power to eliminate every "ugly" thing they encounter in human society. They'll begin by outlawing the Republican Party and mass-murdering all who refuse to renounce the Elephantine Crew. Next they'll attack churches. Then they'll attack people who oppose stem cell research and cloning, because we all deserve a chance at eternal life.

When they're finished, everyone will be on the same Ivory Pinnacle of Propriety, perfect progressivism, under Donkey, with liberals and leftists for all.

--------------

bk, I find it interesting that you're engaged in massive strawman construction & destruction whilst you accuse me of that thing. I present you with an E made of iron. enjoy that gift, would you please?

Wow, Mr. Foxtrot. The future you present is one of horror. Your political enemies are the locus of ALL evil. Every "liberal" (whatever that means) is just chomping at the bit to burn churches and put republicans in the gulag. I tremble before your Nostradamus-like prescience.

Only a world of pure anarchy, with no "The Man" and no laws and no police and no capitalism, can save us! Help me, Swami Foxtrot, in learning your vision, in a world with no coercion, where we will only live freely, in peace, like the best hippie communes.

For you, Mr. Foxtrot, may I present a gift as well, a kilo of the best ORGANIC, cooperative-produced bud. Enjoy, my anarchist friend, although be warned - after partaking your interest in joining your fellow free spirits in smashing The State may be reduced!

bk, your sense of humor works! I appreciate the chuckles.

bk:

If ALL police are bad, ALL "justice" in modern cpaitalist States suspect, rapists ARE better than the police, then such beliefs have prescriptive consequences as well.

-- Well, point 2 maybe, or something like it, though this formulation is a little broad-brush.

Stuff with ALL in caps like that never sounds quite right to me. The "justice system" in many individual cases may come up with a reasonable answer, but 'suspect' is not a bad term for it, perhaps even a mild one, when you look at its systemic function.

And yes, this observation does have consequences, one of which (I think) is that you shouldn't be betrayed by righteous indignation into rah-rah-ing for prosecutors and cops. To put it aphoristically, they are not our friend, and if they're going after a Bad Guy today, they've got somebody in the back room at the same time reading our mail.

The idea that we can scorecard 'em -- give 'em a gold star when they go after a Bad Guy, like Polanski, and a spanky when they gun down an unarmed man in Harlem -- is fatuously grandiose. They're not paying attention to our gold stars or spankies.