THE COPS THERE DON'T NEED YOU

A video on the web shows police officers tasing an old man who has a heart condition, in the man's own home. They wanted to take him in for observation (he had been reported as saying suicidal things). He gave the officers the finger. You cannot do that, even in your own home, so the old man found out. That this incident occurred in ultra-liberal Marin Country, and that the video survived to circulate, is disturbing. Equally disturbing is the obvious fact that the officers knew the tasers had cameras, and so did their supervisors. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that police administrators allow, even encourage, tasing as a first resort.
Citizens of a republic rely on the police for security and protection, from each other and from themselves. It is understood that police officers can use injurious or even deadly force, as part of their everyday routine. Since this authority is deemed vital to the greater good, officers are given the benefit of the doubt in their use of force. Their job can be dangerous, and there are infinite unforeseen variables to influence or hinder the decisions they must make, often without time for rational deliberation.
Nevertheless, with the broad-ranging authority given the police, they are expected to use reasonable discretion where possible. When they do not, citizens have a right to know what went wrong, and to insist that elected representatives make needed corrections.
From the video it is evident that the old man was no longer, if ever he was, a threat to anyone or himself. He was back inside his house, dazed but quiet. The time and expense required to take him in for observation was obviously not justified. But he defied their authority. So they tased him.
The taser is a marvelous invention, disabling a living target as effectively at close range as a gun, without causing visible wounds or (usually) death. The victim is reduced to writhing, terrified helplessness. He will be intimidated. Although the effect of electric shock on someone with a bad heart is unpredictable, in this case the old man lived. Since tasing is rarely fatal, seeming to solve temporary problems without permanent solutions, there is no doubt a strong temptation to employ tasers in all difficult situations. Police tend to use this new technology without much concern for the situation, the victim, or public opinion.
The victim and his family have sued. We know how these things usually go: there is a quiet settlement, on condition of eternal silence afterward. It's as if the incident never occurred, but for some missing taxpayers' money. The unfortunate deputies (they too are victims) will be thereafter assigned to restroom patrol and quietly hounded from the force, not for the tasing itself, but for causing problems for management. In due time there will be further police tasings, also recorded on video. Once people know this sort of thing has become routine, average citizens will be frightened away from any contact with police. Authority will be respected, order maintained. There is a built-in inertia in all corporate organizations that seeks to avoid difficulties, and police departments are no exception. They rarely change from within, unless there is considerable pressure to change from without.
Citizens of a free society have every right to trouble authorities with legitimate concerns, such as random electro-shocks on fellow citizens. Police have the benefit of the doubt, not free rein. Regulations dealing with officers' use of guns should be applied to tasers as well. Police, like all public servants, work for us. When they work against us, we can and should make changes. This video assures us that what happened to that sick old man can happen to anyone.

THE CUMBERLAND GAP

How can we follow the reasoning of all these old white folks who claim the solution to all their problems will come from making their elected government go away? These people came of age in a time when government was more active than at any period in American history. At the same time they have enjoyed more economic stability and success than anyone, ever. Yet they hate their government and vote for people avowed to destroy it. They hang teabags from their hats and threaten violence if elections do not go their way. They threaten secession, and plan to repeal Constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal rights to all Americans. What has made them so upset with a world where they have come out quite well? What would they replace it with?
These old white Americans claim to want their country back, yet are unable to explain where it might have gone. So distraught are they that they would see their own comfortable lifestyles destroyed, believing perhaps that they achieved their success without any help from anybody, and they can certainly do it again. Many others will be on the brink of destitution, but these comfortable Americans in latter years will be just fine. Their goals are not conservative. Conservatism seeks the preservation of the status quo, which is just what these old white people intend to destroy.
As to what will replace the status quo, they vaguely hint at a distant and golden past. After all, they want their country "back." These well-off citizens of the dominant ethnic culture hail a time before government tyranny and taxes restricted the right of everyman to seek and find his full potential. In our history, there has never been a time when such a utopia actually existed. in our own time, to do away with government would be disastrous for us all, starting with the old and fairly prosperous, whose paper assets would be stolen by the ultra-rich, and whose personal possessions would be brutally taken by younger, crueler neighbours.
The romantic vision of a future utopia based on a halcyon past persists, however. The only time we ever came close to complete freedom from society was right after our Revolution, on the Appalachian frontier. British authority had been rejected, American authority had not yet been fully established, and beyond a thick tall veil of seemingly endless forest, a continent loomed, full of resources. Load your wagon and your long rifle, and leave your problems and past behind. No need for social security, health insurance, or unemployment compensation when there is always work to do, killing Indians and felling trees, finding everything you need right there in the wilderness. No government agents to tell a man he cannot trap or hunt, or hold slaves or shoot strangers...it was paradise on a permanent camping trip.
Of course, for these aging, comfortable Americans to imagine themselves tough enough to make it in such a world indicates a large disconnect from reality. Nor can we forget that even in that woodsy beginning of our manifest destiny, the urge to form societies and government was irresistible. That elusive true freedom was always just that.
In reality, freedom has a chance to flourish only when people guarantee it for one another, and it has little, if anything to do with tax policy or social programs, when such things are openly discussed and fairly administered. But for some reason our tea party patriots feel strongly that America needs no social contract whatever, that all taxes are theft, all government despotic. The Cumberland Gap, in its days of discovery, leading us down through the forest into the boundless West, seems to be the ideal that tea baggers hunger for. If not, it would be helpful if they would come forth with a terse description of what they want. Then the rest of us could decide for ourselves whether the idea makes any sense.