[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: Eric Yost <Mr.Eric.Yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 15:44:29 -0400
Phil: The point of the court action was to discern whether the police
were empowered, that is had the right, to do what they did. If they had
'absolutely no right to do that' then they would have been found guilty
because they did not have the power to act as they did.
Eric: And underscore "court action" in Phil's first sentence. Because
there are all kinds of actions that are tacitly empowered but formally
shunned. Two competing sets of empowerment rules here.
Take "fragging" bad officers in wartime. In earlier wars of the 20th
century, an incompetent officer might endanger the lives of all his men.
Often someone would pitch a grenade into that officer's tent at night.
The ultimate "no vote" on the officer's leadership ability.
Or take the unfortunate shooting of innocent civilians during a war, a
characteristic of all wars since the introduction of firearms. The
"rules of war" are a quaint throwback to the days when Pierre could
watch the Battle of Borodino from a hilltop. Technology, by increasing
the lethality of combat, has created two parallel tracks of action--what
is legally accountable and what actually happens.
Punitive measures, therefore, like court actions, serve to reign in the
empowered actions of actual warfare, by making them seem to apply to the
Geneva Convention and other legal codes.
It's very much like driving on an interstate. The sign says 65 mph, or
in some cases, 55 mph, but the empowered reality is that people safely
drive at 72 mph or 62 mph. There are two codes at work here: what people
actually do and feel empowered to do, and what the legal authorities
have determined is the restraint on speed.
Because technology has allowed us (a new phenomena) to see the first
code in action--Rodney King beating, military prison abuse, civilian
casualties--it creates two strands of dissent: (1) Why can't we abide by
the formal rules? [the shocked and outraged civilian or bystander] (2)
Why can't we understand that those rules don't apply to real world
situations? [the seasoned soldier, cop, or driver]
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