All in the name of “officer safety,” of course:
LEHIGH COUNTY, PA — A man may never walk again after he was shot in his driveway by a constable who had showed up to his home regarding unpaid parking tickets.
Kevin McCullers, 38, was just about to make a trip to go buy some morning doughnuts when his life changed forever. Around 7:30 a.m. on July 17th, McCullers got into his car, opened his garage door, and put his car into reverse gear. As he backed out of the driveway, his girlfriend abruptly heard gunshots ring out.
Two strange men were outside, and one had just shot Mr. McCullers while in the driver’s seat of his car.
“They never knocked on the door! No nothing! I just heard the gunshots! He pulled the car out of the garage and all I heard were gunshots,” Hafeezah Muhammad told NBC 10 Philadelphia. She was inside the house during the attack.
The shooter turned out to be a Pennsylvania State Constable, performing an early morning warrant service over unpaid parking tickets. The unnamed constable claimed that he feared for his life by Mr. McCullers backing out of his driveway — so he opened fire.
“For someone to get shot, on the way to Dunkin’ Donuts, unarmed, for parking tickets? For tickets?! Its insane,” said Ms. Muhammad.
Mr. McCullers was shot in the back. The bullet struck his spine, and he is now paralyzed from the waist down. He may never regain the ability to walk.
The shooter has been allowed to remain anonymous. There has been no word on any discipline or criminal charges that he may face, if any.
I paid a heavy price to spread the ericpetersautos.com message this evening.
I rode my bicycle up to the local watering hole.
I got two peopl;e to promise me they’d check this website out, and one person wrote down the addy.
On the way back I had a cop spotlight me.
I remember mentioning that happening to me before, to my friend in Japan, and that person was aghast.
Such didn’t happen in s0-called, ‘free countries’ was the consensus.
So I’m riding my bike down this “public” bike path which is closed after dusk, when I see the furious pull-in of the cops in the nearby parking-lot as they flipped on their spot-lights.
You know? It’s unmistakable.
So I went the other way.
It was dark.
I didn’t want to give them a bunch of money.
Without using headlights to give me away, I crashed half-way.
Ouch.
I got up and kept going.
I could see their headlights in the distance.
They were following me down the damn bike path!
I doubled my effort.
I have a couple of extra cuts and bruises.
My shoulder feels like a linebacker took me down the hard way.
…But I am still free. ..And those cops are still alive.
[Yes, Jean, I know that’s a negative to some].
…HowEver; at least three other people know of a Freedomista website.
Two of them listen to Rush Limbaugh.
I know Rush Limbaugh basically fears us.
He said just that, once that I know of.
We’re All the bunch that says, “They are Alll crazy!”.
Omg, I type with my right hand and my right shoulder is killing me.
…They Got me! Ha!
Just nevermind my bent spokes, I’m glad to be here. … But at the same time, not.
In a strange way [maybe this is what Jean feels?] I almost would prefer to be Shot Down in Flames.
…But then, that’s what being married is all about? They use what you love against you . .. I’m glad I made it home. …Crap! Even my big toe is bleeding! Ha!
Being an ambassador to liberty Is Not Easy.
Anyway, fuck the empire, and the bitches who love it!
Morning, Helot –
Damn. Sorry to hear that, but glad you escaped them (if not the bruises).
I’ve got another radio gig on deck; maybe Clover will come on and debate me!
Dear helot,
To paraphrase RMN, “We are helots now.”
The Amerikanischen Polizeistaat really is getting ridiculous. It’s more and more palpable in our everyday lives.
I’m getting that impression, and I’m not even in Amerika at the moment.
* Sorry, “We are all helots now.”
Well, on the plus side, I talked to a couple of conservatives about the issue of police abuse and such yesterday, and progress definitely seems to be being made.
They don’t completely see through the “the law is the law” excuse (if they did, they’d be libertarians;)) but they’re definitely moving in the right direction. I think the unconditional love affair with police is definitely going away in some elements of conservatism.
Mind you, these are the more moderate conservatives, certainly closer to Rand Paul than to John McCain. I have no hope for the neocons, short of flat out getting one to wake up (which did happen in my case.)
Welcome to the U.S. police state. Where you can be arrested and charged with DUI when you are not driving and now you can be shot for the greivous offense of unpaid parking tickets. If that cop/constable was so much in fear for his life he shouldn’t have been doing the cop/constable job. He should have been riding shotgun on a garbage truck. Nothing will happen to Constable Xxxxx, because he came out with the lame cop excuse that he was in fear for his life. What bullshit! The felonious parking ticket perpetrator didn’t know he was out there in his driveway and the “hero” constable was in street clothes???? It all seems fishey to me, it looks like the cop/constable was out to shoot someone just for the hell of it. Perhaps his wife told him he was a bum f**k and she was leaving him for the milk man.
Hi Bob,
Incidents such as this – which are increasingly common – threaten to become typical, routine.
This is what Clover can’t see, much less comprehend.
Dear Bob, Eric,
The morbidly fascinating aspect about this “surprising” explosion in LEO brutality is what it represents. It does NOT represent some sort of bizarre and inexplicable aberration. It most assuredly does NOT represent a “betrayal of democracy.”
Rather it represents a democratic dictatorship belatedly reverting to its natural state and revealing its true character.
Think of one of those psychological thrillers, in which a naive young woman with a Cinderella Complex marries an abusive sociopath in Prince Charming outer garb. A fairy tale romance is followed by a fairy tale wedding and a fairy tale honeymoon. But once the honeymoon is over, Prince Charming gradually begins to revert to his true nature.
Examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_with_the_Enemy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enough_%28film%29
The relationship between American tax slaves and their masters in the ruling class is a macrocosmic version of this sort of exploitative and abusive relationship.
The only solution is a “divorce.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MvtcrT9YA
Watch the last few minutes.
Don’t Take My Sunshine Away – Trouble With The Curve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR16iVnpV9c
Father Daughter Reality – Trouble With The Curve
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApKNGEcxUiU
Are we an autonomist multitude seeking a political Exodus. Seeking only the right of otherness. Of left-aloneness.
I found some useful concepts, ideas and tactics in these links. Though also much of no concern. I don’t have scores to settle with bosses or the rich, nor consider myself so useless as to only seek to appropriate the means of production from the possession of my betters.
I have no interest in fighting for workers rights within wage earning organizations. Rather I seek only to attain the right to take things or leave them. To break down the walls keeping the masses out of the wilds and uninhabited commons. To fight off those who seek to invade the autonomes or extinguish the burgeoning flames of spontaneisms I hold so dear.
I seek enough power and skill to free up a multitude, not to change the world at large, rather only myself and some allied others and our immediate environment.
exodus
http://www.generation-online.org/c/cexodus.htm
multitude
http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcmultitude.htm
action, work, intellect
http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcmultitude2.html
grammar of the multitude
http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcmultitude3.htm
What is exciting, actually, Empire, is the question that arises as the continuing globalization of the multitude continues.
It is not a war against “the productive force that sustains Empire and calls for and makes necessary its destruction.” This war is purely mythical, and so is the destruction of capital. That’s why their confrontation quickly takes on an allegorical dimension, a war between two principles.
The multitude being as immaterial as the work it produces, it is dressed, in simplicity, and also innocence. It is prophetic and productive, an absolutely positive force capable of being changed into an absolute productive power.
Even its will to destruction would eventually become “love and community.” Evil Empire, on the other hand, is just an “empty shell,” a giant with clay-feet, vicious, abusive, controlling, a predator always engaged in “an operation of absolute violence” (principles are necessarily absolute).
Imperial command is nothing but an “abstract and empty unification,” a “parasitical machine” that only lives off the vitality of the multitude and constitutes “the negative residue, the fallback” of its operation. “A parasite that saps the strength of its host, however, can endanger its own existence. The functioning of imperial power,is ineluctably linked to its decline.
Why call for a counter-power then? Because History can’t wait. There is a question that keeps coming up again and again, and it is the irreducibility of the moment of decision.
There is always the risk of getting caught in the sophisms of the bad infinite: an infinite that dilutes the intensity of the decision. Without a telos, a big narrative, a decision would mean nothing anyway.
Empire involves an original kind of class struggle: a struggle looking for a class. A class looking for a struggle. But Hardt and Negri already know what kind of class they
The prophet produces its own people. We will produce our own multitude, though we’re not yet sure how it will work.
The usual violent revolution is not an option. Anyone who cares for the multitude should first figure out what it is about and what could be expected from it, not derive its mode of being from some revolutionary essence.
The ultimate goal of taking our inventive inventory is “rescuing political action from its current paralysis.” Empire is trying that too, but a straw fight won’t do.
We now live under Post-Fordism, which is to say the communism of capital. It’s not that there are no more fights in sight.
Post-Fordism brought us “communism.” Fights should be expected, but not a war that would allegedly destroy the enemy. A combat rather, meant to strengthen some forces present in capital, and join them voluntarist multitudinal ensemble.
We must describe the territory, then map our “attack.” The description of a combat, a cartography of virtualities made possible by post-Fordism, elements in contemporary life that could eventually be mobilized. The problem is not to destroy capital or Empire but rather to bolster one’s own power. And one’s multitude/phyle. To learn what is a body capable of?
Post-Fordism therefore can only satisfy the demands of a virtual communality of generalized intellect without material equality.
The existing powers claim only to create people living in a freer “multitude”? This is what Empire is claiming to achieve, but the multitude isn’t exactly thriving beyond the First World, or below.
This is no reason for disenchantment. One of the virtues of Autonomia is that it was never afraid of claiming out loud: Only those who are free from slavery can dare imagine what being really free would be.
The idea of a multitude is part of this on-going project. It is a luxury that we should be able to afford: the luxury of imagining a future that would actively bring together everything we are capable of.
These virtualities are present within capital in ambivalent and reversible features that are just waiting to be liberated. Immaterial workers are mobile and detached, adaptable, curious, opportunistic and cynical, also toward institutions; they are inventive and share knowledge through communication and language; they are mostly de-politicized, also disobedient.
The multitude is an “amphibious” category that can veer toward “opposing developments,” or come to nothing, so a combat is constantly raging — not with Empire, within itself.
A combat that first “defines the composition of forces in the combatant,” not its victory over an exterior enemy.
Capital affords us means to project ahead, to work from within, knowing all too well that the PTB will be quick to instrumentalize any creative move, turning it into binary oppositions, however radical thay claim to be, proven recipes that failed repeatedly because they have become inadaquate to think the complexity of the contemporary reality.
The paradoxical positions autonomists have assumed in relation to work, are part of a luxury of thinking ahead, unimpeded, which has become such a precious commodity in a world squeezed between mediocrity and self-satisfied gloom.
So no one could reproach them for thinking that, only for not thinking enough, falling back too soon on the quick revolutionary fix that will please everyone and just reinforce a cozy feeling of powerlessness.
The non-voluntary aspects of Capital don’t have to be “destroyed.” This tyranny is self-destructive enough, because it never stops provoking resistance to its own rule. “It is doubtful that the joys of capitalism are enough to liberate the people,” Those who keep invoking the bloody failure of socialism don’t seem to consider as a failure the present state of the global capitalist market, with the bloody inequalities it involves, the populations pushed off the market, etc. It’s been a long time since the American `revolution’ has failed, even before the Soviet’s did.
The situations and revolutionary attempts are generated by oligarchical capitalism itself and they are not going to disappear.” Oligarchical Capitalism itself is revolutionary because it keeps fomenting inequality and provoking unrest. It also keeps providing its own kind of “communism” both as a vaccine, preventing further escalation, and an incentive to go beyond its own limitations.
The multitude responds to both and can go either way, absorbing the shocks or multiplying the fractures that will occur in unpredictable ways. A specter still haunts the world and it is the specter of oligarchical capital.
Semiotics and Ideology
A rose is a symbol of love or passion not because a rose looks like love or passion or even because the flower causes it. It is just that members of some cultures have over the years used the rose in certain circumstances to mean love.
Just as in the ad campaign for gold we are invited to connect gold with love; and in cigarette ads, cool, refreshing things like mountain streams or fresh-looking and tasting foods, are made to symbolize cigarettes.
In some militarized society ads, people like judges, policemen or nurses are used to mobilize feelings associated with jobs or professions.
http://www.generation-online.org/c/fcformalism.htm
The Book of Pleasures
Toilers for order, toilers for chaos, for inhibition or psychic lib., the auto-destructive process of trade programmes the curriculum vitae of inexistence.
Death grabs and you stumble from life, wom out with keeping the books and balance-sheets of daily misery, or with strutting your stuff like a ham politician because of the wonderful way you are managing to die.
Though you loathe power you revere it nonetheless, for from it you have borrowed that arrogant attitude of rejection which endorses all your contemptible acts. But life mocks those even with the most wonderful theories.
Only from pleasures is born audacity and laughter, which rings out at orders and laws and limits; it will fall upon all who still judge, repress, calculate and govern, with the innocence of a child.
While intellectuals devise ingenious methods of slipping through the keyhole, those with a world of desires to achieve are breaking down the door, an act of particularly gross behaviour for those fastidious mechanics in social engineering who think they see light at the end of the tunnel.
But it is life itself seeking fulfilment. The increasing abstraction of the commercial process has turned our heads into the last place left to hide; but even there all that remains is the shadow of power in a tower of skulls.
The scars of age, source of so much nostalgic reminiscence, are the wounds of self-renunciation, pleasure mutilated and bled to death by a mania for appearances, a need to dominate, and the will to power.
Your truths have little but the bitterness which has sown them, their edge honed on generations who learned to accept things only if accompanied by kicks, cuffs and mortification. But all arguments cut both ways and set up their own repression. What is knowledge worth when it is founded on the tacit postulate that oneself is one’s own worst enemy?
An influential person quickly discovers that though he controls others he has no real existence for them. Should he hope to safeguard this phantom self “for the good of his fellow-men”, he loses and deceives himself as well as his public.
That is why I do not intend to try to convince you: I do not care to add scorn to whatever contempt you already have for others. However rapt your attention to the various messengers of self-destruction, whom I am sure will repay your attention with interest, I prefer, rather offhandedly, to wait until sooner or later you grow deaf to everything that does not increase your pleasure.
It is much more the lack of fun which batters us than over-abundance and indulgence. Let the dead bury the living dead. My well-being does not dine upon virtue and certainly not upon revolutionary virtue. I feast upon what is alive and kicking. Dead truths are venomous, as all who give up their desires discover.
What returns each man to himself is written with the taste of plenty, not under the scourge of directives. The ‘Book of Pleasures’ is bound to be tainted with the life of intellectualism, separate thought which rules over the body and oppresses it.
But the lie that we each carry can be dissolved only by doing exactly what we want to do, without qualm or hesitation. May your desires wipe out whatever lies remain here, and efface the grand inquisitor from your brain.
In all beings, in all things, in all creation, I take what pleases and leave the rest. Keep away, serious critics! This is not for you. Why should you put up with me if you cannot stand yourselves? I don’t give a toss what you think of this book; so what you do with it is up to you. With you who live by force, I have nothing to exchange. If you know all this and better, go to it!
Whoever learns to love himself is beyond the plots and spells of shame and guilt and the fear of loving; and knows too, that despite my errors I do not veer an inch from my desire to create a society based upon the individual will to live, by globally subverting the society which has stood everything on its head.
http://www.scenewash.org/lobbies/chainthinker/situationist/vaneigem/bop/bop.html
Just another reason to be unlicensed and unregistered, so they have no record of where to find you and sneak a bullet in your back.
If you have EVER been licensed or registered, they will find you.
I went through a foreclosure process.
My father recieved notification of the process, each and every step – though I hadn’t lived at that address in about 5 years. And there’s the whole set of data, I mean – checks had the address on them, house title, tax receipts, car registration….
Now, my dad and I were named about the same – middle names differed – but still. Can’t even be bothered to, you know, SEND THE EFFING NOTICE TO THE HOUSE YOU KNOW I LIVE IN? And not there FIRST?
I don’t know if they checked every address I’d had to that time, but I would not be surprised. I just didn’t keep in touch with whomever rented my apartment when I left, nor did I find out who rented the townhouse after we moved out… 😉
Point is, they’ll go wherever you MIGHT be, and then kill whomever doesn’t roll voer and pee themselves.
So, a little of the pre-emptive Ultra-Violence is in order. And remember what happened in the Clockwork Orange – the criminals became the police… And their MO didn’t change, only the state sanction changed…
Anybody so easily frightened that any driver in a car makes him “fear for his life” probably shouldn’t be a constable.
OR we could call this what it really is: murder.
For it to be murder, the guy would have to be dead, not paralyzed.
RE: “For it to be murder, the guy would have to be dead, not paralyzed.”
Think about that.
…If it was your spouse?
…If it was your best friend?
Paralyzed.
Agreed, Rick.
Of course, it’s not that they’re frightened. It’s that they are psychopaths looking for an excuse to kill.
One transparently obvious LEO lie:
“Stop resisting!” “Stop resisting!” “Stop resisting!”
They now repeat this as a pro forma, CYA measure while beating mere mundanes to death, even when the victim is not resisting in the slightest, but instead allowing the LEO to land crippling, even lethal blows that result in brain damage or death.
Now you finally get it Eric. That is what your NAP is all about. NAP is libertarian psychopaths looking for an excuse to kill. You said it perfectly. Why else would they be stocking up on guns and ammunition and talking about bloodbaths.
“Of course, it’s not that they’re frightened. It’s that they are psychopaths looking for an excuse to kill.”
Clover,
You’re either unintelligent or are deliberately refusing to acknowledge an obvious distinction – between aggressive and defensive violence. Between giving a beating – and attempting to ward one off.
If you’re merely unintelligent, you’re too be pitied.
If you’re deliberately dishonest, you’re to be despised.
Which is it, Clover dear?
What Clover really meant to say was, ” I am a psychopath who loves to see police kill people who have committed no harm to anyone.” All in the name of control. I’m an atheist but in this case god help us all with maniacs like this in our ruling class.
I know clover has been told hundreds of times and so he’s in a special category as far as this is concerned. But you’d be amazed at how many people simply don’t understand the distinction. They really believe cops are acting defensively because they are “legally” in the right.
Morning, David!
Yup. It’s exactly that.
For Clover, aggression couched in legalism is not aggression. It is “the law” – and resisting the law (no matter what the law happens to be) is – to Clover – not defensive but the definition of aggression.
When one points out – by way of example – that Nazis also had “the law” – to show that legal and right are not necessarily synonymous he simply refuses to consider the principle just illustrated. For him, U.S. law is different (somehow) . . . immune from being wrong; its enforcers always right.
An interesting point: the Nazis DID attain power in Germany quite LEGALLY, and everything they did was cloaked in legal proceedings. Indeed, not only the dreaded “Gestapo” (Geheimestatspolizei) but also the “ORPO” (Ordnungpolizei) were bound to legal proceeds, as was even the heinous Herr Doktor Roland Freisler (himself an admirer of the infamous Soviet “hanging judge” Andrei Vishinsky) and his “People’s Court”. Judge Joseph Dredd would have been quite comfortable working in Nazi Germany…but even he found that at times “Karma’s a BITCH”..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGyPTzV3lAM
She is definitely a moron, and possibly a shill.
Dang, what would the constable have done, if confronted by a 4 year old on a tricycle!?!
Sounds like a mentally unstable person handed a gun by government – Seems the government acted STUPIDLY.
Actually, interesting line of thought:
If the cigarette manufacturers can be held liable for health ailments – when the slang term for cigarettes was “coffin nails” in the 50s?
If the gun manufacturers can be held liable for criminal actions of those who mis-use legally purchased weapons? Including those who STEAL the guns?
Then wouldn’t the municipality be immediately responsible for this, as they are proximate cause: Sending an over-egoed, armed, professionally violent individual into a situaiton, having amped up his paranoia? So he saw a car backing up and presumed it was an attack. He then did what any reasonable person would do given that frame of reference, and shot the threat.
But the municipality ensured he wasn’t in a “right state of mind” before sending him out….
Now, I think everyone here knows I like the idea of frying cops…. So I’m not on their side. But I can “understand” what happened here.
I just don’t think it’s tolerable or right. There’s a difference between a car hurtling at you, even in reverse, and a car that’s just backing out of the garage or down a driveway. If your assumption is that the person means you ill, you’ll draw and shoot; if your assumption is that the person is free to move without your Simon Says… You shouldn’t assume they’re out to get you.
Disciplinary actions (including termination “with prejudice,” I.E., no possibility of rehire, and notification of same in public database), and should be personally liable, no qualified immunity.
Also, maybe go back to “an eye for an eye” in these situaitons….
I believe most municipalities are incorporated with the state. Through some magical process they attain the same sovereign immunity as the state. Their is an even more powerful level of sovereign immunity at the federal level.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity#State_sovereign_immunity
the federal government has sovereign immunity and may not be sued unless it has waived its immunity or consented to suit. The United States has waived sovereign immunity to a limited extent, mainly through the Federal Tort Claims Act, which waives the immunity if a tortious act of a federal employee causes damage, and the Tucker Act, which waives the immunity over claims arising out of contracts to which the federal government is a party.
The United States and individual states are sovereigns immune from suit unless they unequivocally consent to being sued.
The United States Supreme Court in Price v. United States observed: “It is an axiom of our jurisprudence. The government is not liable to suit unless it consents thereto, and its liability in suit cannot be extended beyond the plain language of the statute authorizing it.”
– in mundane terms, we is da slaves and will be held accountable for da quality and quantity of the govt’s cotton we pick.
they is the massa, and as such are above reproach and are always assumed in the right, save where they say differently for some reason that suits them.
Q: What’s the difference between the government and the Mafia?
A: A flag
Q: What’s the difference between “sovereign immunity” and “made man” status?
A: There is no substantive difference. The only difference is terminological. The former is the term used by the government. The latter is the term used by the Mafia.
Sovereign Immunity
The United States and individual states are sovereigns immune from suit unless they unequivocally consent to being sued. The United States Supreme Court in Price v. United States observed: “It is an axiom of our jurisprudence. The government is not liable to suit unless it consents thereto, and its liability in suit cannot be extended beyond the plain language of the statute authorizing it.”
Made Man Status
After the ceremony the inductee is a made man and a full member of the Mafia hierarchy. Inducted as a soldier (Italian: soldato), he is given certain responsibilities and privileges. The made man now enjoys the full protection and backing of the Mafia establishment as long as he remains in favor and earns enough money, of which a percentage is passed up the hierarchy. A made man is traditionally seen as “untouchable” by fellow criminals, a man to be respected and feared. To attack, let alone kill, a made man for any reason without the permission of mafiosi higher up in the organization is a cardinal sin normally met with severe retaliation (usually death), often regardless of whether the perpetrator had a legitimate grievance.[10] A made man can, however, be killed if a good enough reason is provided and the Mafia bosses give permission.
Update: Part II of this fascinating article on JFK et al has just been uploaded.
The Hidden Life of the Kennedys : The Elite Dynasty That Got Decimated (Pt. II)
http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/hidden-life-kennedys-elite-dynasty-got-decimated-pt-ii/
This analogy would make a good graphic novel.
The Govfather I think is a good title.
“I’ll make every parent an offer for enrolling their newborns they can’t refuse.” – the founding Govfather
“Citizenship is everything. Citizenship is more than talent. It is more than the industry. It is even more than the family. – Sen Corleone”
“Great men are not born great, they are given authority that makes them grow great . . .”
“Never hate your public enemies. It affects your judgment.”
“Public Service is a dish that tastes best when served cold.”
“A taxpayer should always underestimate your virtues and a lawbreaker overestimate your faults”
“A bureaucrat with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.”
“You cannot say ‘no’ to the country you love, not often. That’s the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a ‘yes’. Or you have to make them say ‘no.’ You have to take time and trouble.”
“I don’t trust the seen government to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men I personally managed to con a block of people to vote for them. That’s what the unseen government is for.”
“A man who doesn’t spend time serving for his country can never be a real man.”
“Statists have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that’s why they have govfathers.”
“Don’t let anybody kid you. To the government it’s all personal, every bit of business.
Every piece of shit man in authority has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it governance. OK.
But it’s personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Prez. My old man. The Govfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my serving with the Marines personal. That’s what makes him great. The Great Gov. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don’t happen to centrally adminstered organizations who take accidents as a personal insult.”
“He smelled the city, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, “Governance is so beautiful.”
Yes, he thought, if I can die saying, “Government is so beautiful,” then nothing else is important.”
“Many young men started down a false path of individuality prior to seeking their true destiny as part of the collective. Time and fortune usually set them aright.”
“Keep your taxpayers close and your lawbreakers closer.”
“An inspector can steal more money with a clipboard and an inspection checklist than a thousand men with guns and masks.”
“Why should I be afraid now? Strange governments have come to try and kill me ever since I was twelve years old.”
“We are all equally dishonorable men here, we do not have to give each other false assurances as if we were mundanes.”
“You can’t hide the government thunderbolt. When it hits you, everybody can see it. Christ, man, don’t be ashamed of it, some men pray for the justice thunderbolt. You’re a very lucky fellow.”
“Behind every successful government; There is Crime.”
“It was a lie but he believed in telling lies to citiznes. Truth telling and politics just didn’t go together except in dire emergencies, if then.”
“He had long ago learned that Government imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of public servants, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful mundane. It was this knowledge that prevented the Gov from losing the humility all his friends admired in him.”
“Michael could never remember the Govfather ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Gov respected death too much to philosophize about it.”
“Time erodes a citizens gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!”
Dear Tor,
It really is amenable to extended metaphor treatment.
I think I mentioned this movie before. It was about just that — the uncanny similarity between the government and the Mafia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vETrVRzgqPY
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887966/
Storyline
An aging Brooklyn mob boss summons his nephew Robert Monte, a Wall Street whiz kid who has been shielded from the “Family” business. The Don solicits a promise that if anything happens to him, Robert will steer his wiseguy crew legit so that they will not spend the rest of their lives in jail. Robert surrenders a reluctant promise. When his uncle dies suddenly, Robert transforms the mob social club into a real estate office and struggles to navigate the mob crew into legitimate careers. Meanwhile, a gorgeous FBI agent named Julie Capp works feverishly to build RICO indictments against Robert and his crew who just can’t help reverting to their old-school hoodlum ways. In the scramble, Robert and Julie find themselves fiercely attracted to one another. Will these star crossed lovers find romance? Will Robert succeed in steering his crew legit? Will Julie’s RICO indictments fall? Written by Denis Hamil
It was a very well made film, even though it failed to point out how the government is no better than the Mafia.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887966/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
I read a bit of Youz Guys’ comments here and I had to stop.
I didn’t want the wrong thing to sink into my brain, even though I know you all meant it in jest,… it was just too much for me tonight. [And that’s odd for me.]
My brain is a sponge and my filter is clogged.
Is that another way of saying, ‘Information Overload’? …Or, something?
I’ll try another thread.
Dear helot,
Youz Guys’ ?
Too late. It’s already sunk into your brain! You are now a “made man.”
A ex-friend of mine who worked in the factories used to joke about having a target on his back. …
For the grammar Nazis, yes, I know that should have read, “An ex-friend…” It was a last minute change.
But, who am I kidding? My grammer is atrocious. I know.
The sentiment is, The Same.
…What was that new anti-empire language called, Tor?
I’m All for it.
So long as it translates well into service manuals.
Interestingly enough, Clint Eastwood, a self-identified libertarian, albeit “only” a minarchist, warned about this In Magnum Force (1973).
Dirty Harry: But how does murder fit in? When police start becoming their own executioners… where’s it gonna end, Briggs? Pretty soon, you’ll start executing people for jaywalking. And executing people for traffic violations. Then you end up executing your neighbor ’cause his dog pisses on your lawn.
That was 1973. Funny how four decades later, it turned out to be no exaggeration.
Dang, Bevin, RE: “That was 1973. Funny how four decades later, it turned out to be no exaggeration.”
I can just about imagine Clint saying about what you did just now.
Are you channeling hm? J/k, ….sortof.
I can also remember the people of that time period – every day people I knew – who thought that was foolish talk. RE: “Pretty soon, you’ll start executing people for jaywalking. And executing people for traffic violations. Then you end up executing your neighbor ’cause his dog pisses on your lawn. ”
And yet, Here “we” are.?
Somebody today (somewhere, here?) mentioned how he thought people Never change.
Oh yes!
People change.
Oh do They ever.
And I’m a first hand witness to how they do.
It’s not so much that an individual changes.
It’s that a group of people replace another group and make it seem like other groups have changed.
Is that what they call, a form of, usurpation?
The unitedstate is a nation made up mostly of usurpers?
…And power-mongers. Of course.
Dear helot,
I wouldn’t presume to channel ole Clint!
Like I said, it’s the zeitgeist, the “spirit of the times.” Everybody gets to thinking along the same lines.
The current zombie apocalypse trend for example is the concretization of anxieties about societal collapse brought upon by the failure of “Western liberal democracy.”
“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
— James Madison
The other slaves on the plantation, seeing the consequences of disobedience, are so encouraged to keep providing their labor.
Over reaction in my opinion. (to paraphrase — If the only tool one knows how to use is a gun, then every problem will look like a target.) The unpaid parking tickets were not a life/death situation. A lien could have placed against property owned by the individual. The government could have taken the money through several nonviolent methods without risking anyone’s life..
Must keep the identity of the responsible person a secret so they will not be considered a pariah by the local community.
I doubt if the individual will face any discipline or criminal charges. The individual should sue him (and the local government entities) in court (criminal and civil).
The city of chicago takes state of Illinois tax refunds and boots cars.
this is a case of timing and paranoia. Of course the clovers will never accept that the cops are acting paranoid to where everyday activities are now considered a threat to their lives.