The angry ape

[imomus]

"Man, proud man, dress'd in a little brief authority," Shakespeare said (before America even existed) "like an angry ape plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as makes the angels weep."



Something happens to an American -- a person, reputedly, given to maverick ways and deeply opposed to government, bureaucracy and regulation -- when he dons a uniform. Dressed thus in a little brief authority, the American becomes stentorian: a loud-voiced, angry ape able to speak -- or so it seems -- only in imperatives. Here are a few encounters I've had with the species over the past week or two.

I'm at the L train station at 8th Avenue. A small Asian man is scurrying across the tiled hall. Two burly cops stand by the wall, seeming, by their silhouettes, to bristle with weapons. One shouts "STOP RUNNING!", but the scurrying Asian man doesn't hear. For a second I worry that he will be shot for disobedience.

My bus on 5th Avenue has pulled a couple of feet away from the stop, but is stationary in traffic. I run up and knock gingerly on the door. The driver makes to ignore me but -- since the light is long -- eventually opens. "Next time," he scowls, "be at the stop!" I apologise and thank him profusely, despite thinking that his tone is a little off.

In this land where we might, any of us, be packing heat as a constitutional right, shouldn't this kind of encounter be a little more polite? Sure, this man is on a short fuse and has been having a bad day. But what if I am on a short fuse and have been having a bad day myself? Might his rude tone and presumptuous imperative voice be the straw that breaks the dog's back?

Explaining once why he left California and settled in Rome, Morrissey made a remark about the "fascist policemen with keys dangling from their belts" you encounter in America. And if you walk down an American street with your eyes and ears open, one thing you're sure to hear will be sirens, and one thing you're sure to see will be signs with imperatives on them. Not just the imperatives of advertising ("Learn English! Go to night school!") but the imperatives of bylaws and regulations: "No honking! Penalty $300."

Sometimes you'll see a sign with an endless list of things that are forbidden: ball games, stereos, food, bicycles, smoking, spitting, dancing, photography, loitering, skateboarding, dogs, alcohol. Oh, always alcohol! Yesterday I was at a design festival in the Meatpacking District, and there was a nice little cafe where they were handing out free vodka and beer. One foolish Scandinavian visitor made the mistake of approaching the line dividing the cafe from the sidewalk and instantly the staff pounced: "This is America, you can't take alcohol onto the street!"

Then there are the looming hulks at the door of every building, whether it's a shop or an apartment block; private security staff. In the stores they say "How you doing today?" in a tone which suggests a quo vadis, a centurion's challenge. At the apartment block door it's more definitive: if you don't pass the ID test, you can't enter. I'm listed as a guest in the Upper East Side tower where I'm staying, but there have been about eight different doormen in the time I've been staying here, and I have to establish my identity (locate my name on the registered guest list) with each one of them.

People in uniform in the other societies I know don't loom and bark this way. Japanese and German policemen are ineffectual, mild creatures. The Japanese ones sit in kobans eating noodles, or wobble around on bicycles. They're always willing to help you find your way to a nearby shop or museum. The German ones sit in cars looking bored. Occasionally you'll see them en masse confronting a squat house, but mostly the German preoccupation with not appearing Nazi or STASI-like stops them from appearing in any way fascist. That's all behind us now -- the tyranny of uniformed authority, and that arrogant, barking tone it presumes to adopt towards citizens.

My theory is that authority in America (the main topic of the American TV I grew up with, which seemed endlessly preoccupied with charismatic policemen) isn't the opposite of the maverick strain in the national character, but the result of it. People in Germany or Japan have, by and large, internalised consideration for their fellow citizens because they're more collective-minded, more socially-oriented. Americans, by and large, haven't. Hence the curbside signs ordering you not to do things, and reminding you of the exact dollar price of doing them. It's the imposition on wayward individuals of consideration by force, in a society that hasn't ever quite accepted that it is one.

Comments

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"you have to explain why bad governments treat good people like shit"

Why? Those aren't my premises.

"if you're clever enough to do that you wouldn't have made the claim that a bad government arises from a bad populace."

I didn't. I said that policing style is a product of the society. The baggage came with you.

"I don't have any idea where you got the notion that I'm an anti-Communist."

Every example you provided cast a communist regime in a negative light. The inference was only natural. Which communist governments do you support?

[zdover.livejournal.com]

Alright, I'm willing to drop the antagonistic tone if you can explain "policing style is a product of the society" without being tautological.

There are only five Communist governments left in the world (China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos), and I can't say that I support any of them. None of them seem appreciably freer than non-Communist countries. I'm pretty pissed at the US and the UK collaborating to torture people, so if you're prepared to portray me as someone sucking on an American flag while jerking off into a camouflage sock, you should try a different rhetorical strategy. I'm probably still open to the charge that my standards are unrealistically high, at least as regards the behavior of governments when respect for human rights is on the line.

Also, every example I provided cast a communist regime in a negative light because every example I provided involved a state which used a secret police force to ruin the lives of its citizens. I don't mean to constrain this criticism to only communist countries: if the last decade has taught us anything, it's that violently anti-Communist pro-capital, Jesus-blowing countries can shit all over the dignity and rights of their citizens, too!

I just don't see your claim about police as anything but tautological at best. Of course the policing style of each police force is a product of the society in which that police force developed. But that says nothing. If you were making that claim and not the claim that people get what they deserve, then I'll attenuate my criticism and say that I made a terrible error, and I took the merely inane to be the actively stupid.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"policing style is a product of the society"

unpacked:

a.) One can discover the qualities (to be expressed in terms of strengths and weaknesses if one has a particular model or ideal in mind) inherent to the paradigm of a society by observation of its laws and their enforcement. The argument being that observation of policing style is more telling than other social factors such as its education system or media.

b.) The policing style of one society would not be appropriate to another. Comparisons intended to argue that one form of policing should be adopted by another society due to its supposed standalone virtue without similarly arguing that other major aspects of that society should simultaneously be adopted are facile. NYC requires NYC cops if order is to be maintained.

"Of course the policing style of each police force is a product of the society in which that police force developed. But that says nothing."

It says that one cannot criticize the one without similarly criticizing the other. It's not simply a matter of "shitty cops". Policing is symptomatic, not causal.

As for freedom, the more license a society allows the less coordinated and successful that society will be. If one wants to both value personal license and yet maintain any functional form of society the best one can manage is a trade-off. Which do you value more: worker mobility or full employment? Personal property or social justice? Freedom from or freedom to?

[zdover.livejournal.com]

Stipulation:
Fundamentalist Muslim police beat women for appearing in public uncovered. Police elsewhere do not beat women for appearing in public uncovered.

Responses:
a. That is certainly a difference between the two societies.

b. I have to disagree with you that it would be inappropriate for one society's police to police another society, unless you mean something really special by "appropriate," which I have failed to understand. Seems like the correct measure of a society's police force is the degree to which it collaborates in the project of maintaining a just society. Appropriateness seems less useful as a measure of a police force's success than the degree to which it secures and maintains justice.

If by "NYC requires NYC cops if order is to be maintained" means "You need boots-on-the-ground lived-in generational know-how in order to successfully navigate a certain society," then we agree, but I didn't think that was what we were talking about. If you mean that there are special laws that should apply in NYC that shouldn't apply elsewhere (by this I mean general principles, not laws like 'Don't climb on the Statue of Liberty,' which obviously wouldn't apply elsewhere because there's only one Statue of Liberty and it's obviously only in New York), I think it's likely that we part ways.

It's true that you can criticize a police force without criticizing the society, and vice versa. Watch: There is much to admire in a society that would produce Charter 77, but that doesn't mean that the Czech police in the Communist period aren't a bunch of agents of injustice.

I utterly disagree with your Starship Troopers-like claim that freedom is the enemy of societal success. I also believe that you're framing false dilemmas at the end of your most recent response. Does securing personal property necessarily come at the cost of securing social justice? Doesn't the recent American bank scandal show that securing personal property would have secured social justice?

Finally, "freedom from or freedom to" is meaningless.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"Fundamentalist Muslim police beat women for appearing in public uncovered. Police elsewhere do not beat women for appearing in public uncovered."

Though laws do provide for the punishment of women in many Western cultures for appearing in public with their breasts uncovered, while not similarly punishing men. The fact that we express horror at the seeming injustice of one and not at the other is due to a disapproval of cultural differences, even when those differences are only of degree and not of kind.

"the correct measure of a society's police force is the degree to which it collaborates in the project of maintaining a just society."

The measure of a society's police force is the degree and efficiency with which it maintains order in accordance with the laws of that society. Is it inherently "better" to be detained and fined than to be beaten at the moment of offense? If Taliban officers detained and fined offenders would that make the requirement to wear the burqa in public less onerous in your eyes? More "just"? Can you meaningfully abstract a notion of justice from the legal code from which it arises? If you say yes, then what are your universals? I suspect they are tied to your notions about "freedom", but if so why do you believe them to be so? Why should they be somehow more valid than the universals held by others who disagree with you? Is the proper goal of law then not to provide order but happiness? Freedom? Certainly it would be a strange thing to say that law (a force which binds individuals to a common code of behaviour) has as its proper purpose to promote freedom (in this case meaning the individual license to act against a common code of behaviour.)

"Does securing personal property necessarily come at the cost of securing social justice?"

For me, yes, but I suspect we will disagree most strongly on the meaning of the term "social justice", and that you would define it as a preservation of individual rights from their violation by society ("civil rights", "human rights", etc) whereas I would define it as the fulfilment of the social contract inherent to the notion of government to provide for the basic needs of the governed (food, shelter, employment, order)

"Finally, 'freedom from or freedom to' is meaningless."

Hardly. Freedoms from are the rights of the governed to have their basic physiological and safety needs (in a Maslowian sense) provided for by the government in exchange for their participitory labour in support of the system. Food, water, shelter, health, employment, security, etc. Freedoms to concern themselves exclusively with the license to pursue Maslow's aesthetic needs of self-actualization in opposition to the system.

[zdover.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that it's the same thing to beat a woman with a stick because she's not wearing the burqa as it is to fine a woman because her tits are out? I don't think this is a difference of degree. Why do you think it's a difference of degree and not kind? Doesn't the fact that one of the punishments involves a corporally abusive component distinguish the two? Also, do you mean to use "kind" in the Aristotelian sense, or are you willing to admit that these legal categories were invented by us humans, for descriptive purposes?

I think both women and men should be able to be topless if they so choose. Please don't think I think anything otherwise.

"The measure of a society's police force is the degree and efficiency with which it maintains order in accordance with the laws of that society."

This position commits its holder to the claim that any Confederate police force which returned a fugitive slave is to be commended. You're welcome to hold this position, but I won't join you.

I don't know how your last two paragraphs are supposed to connect to this conversation.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"Are you saying that it's the same thing to beat a woman with a stick because she's not wearing the burqa as it is to fine a woman because her tits are out?"

I am saying that they are differing degrees of the same social phenomenon - a legal dress code based on sexual puritanism that is biased against one gender. The particular punsihment for the violation is a matter of social development and sophistication.

"Doesn't the fact that one of the punishments involves a corporally abusive component distinguish the two?"

Not significantly. Under-developed societies or those whose stability is threatened often rely more heavily on corporal punishments administered on-scene rather than more advanced and/or stable cultures who favour the offender's submission to a bureaucratic process. Similar punishments could be found in the American colonies for offenses which are still considered crimes in modern day America but which now result in a fine or jail time. The only significant difference is in the development of a bureaucracy and sufficient infrastructure to support a change from more direct punishment to one from which society may extract added benefit, whether by removal of the offender from society, financial compensation to society, or a combination of both.

"This position commits its holder to the claim that any Confederate police force which returned a fugitive slave is to be commended."

Efficiency towards a task is a quality irrespective of moral judgements about that task. Yes, a good cop ("good" in this sense meaning efficient in the pursuit of his task of policing under the law as given) will enforce bad law ("bad" in this sense meaning morally corrupt under your standards).

And the last two paragraphs of the previous response were in direct response to your own questions/statements. I agree that neither "freedom" nor "justice" directly relate to the topic at hand, but since you keep bringing them up...

[zdover.livejournal.com]

So for you, the following is true: the Confederate policeman who winks at the fugitive slave and lets the fugitive slave escape is deserving of condemnation, and the Confederate policeman who captures the fugitive slave, whips the shit out of him, and returns him to his master is deserving of thanksgiving and warm applause.

Is that a fair portrait of your view?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

You seem to keep trying to turn this issue into one of moral judgement and then score some cheap rhetorical points with it.

One can disapprove of slavery and yet admit that the quality of a law enforcement officer as a law enforcement officer is defined by the efficiency with which he/she enforces the law and not the degree to which he/she meets one's own set of moral criteria for a good person.

[zdover.livejournal.com]

It's certainly one way of assessing a cop to see how efficiently he or she enforces the laws. That seems like an uncontroversial claim. But that's a point that has nothing to do with the discussion that we were having.

We were talking about whether societies got the policing they deserve. I was of the opinion that they didn't. You were of the opinion that they did.

Do the slaves in the Confederate States of America count as members of that society? If so, did they get the laws they deserved?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"It's certainly one way of assessing a cop to see how efficiently he or she enforces the laws. That seems like an uncontroversial claim. But that's a point that has nothing to do with the discussion that we were having."

It gets tiring every time you lose a point in an argument to hear that it has nothing to do with the conversation. We have been discussing the proper measure of quality in regard to law enforcement as a tangent to my original claim that policing style is part and parcel of the society as a whole and was naturally appropriate to it. You have repeatedly attempted to interject your moral objections to slavery and the treatment of women by certain muslim fundies, commendable by all right-thinking people, I'm sure, but also completely irrelevant.

[zdover.livejournal.com]

I didn't concede any point. I said that it was uncontroversial that one way of judging police was by the degree of their efficiency in applying the laws. It's not the only way of judging a police force, nor do I think it should be. I think that if I thought that this was the only moral criterion by which a police force should be judged I should have to stand in awe at the moral stature of the Gestapo.

I still think that this is beside the point, which was about a society getting the policing it deserves.

You made the claim that each society gets the policing it deserves.

That is a very different claim than the claim you're now making, that "policing style is part and parcel of the society as a whole and was naturally appropriate to it," if the phrase "naturally appropriate" even has any meaning, which I'm inclined to doubt.

There is a moral dimension to this discussion, which is the very purpose of bringing up Islamic fundamentalist societies which enact misogynistic laws and slaveholding socieites which enact laws that protect slaveholders.

Do the female members of misogynistic Muslim socieites deserve to be beaten for going uncovered? Do the fugitive slaves of the Confederate States of America deserve to be returned to their masters, likely to be beaten to death?

These are pressing questions for someone who holds your position. If you answer "yes," then your moral position is completely bogus. If you answer "no," then you have to explain why you made the claim that each society gets the policing it deserves.

I'm not being unfair, am I?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

And I have been asserting from the very start that moral judgement was inappropriate to the discussion. I am not taking a moral position, nor was I using "deserves" in a moral sense. (IMNSHO, there is no objective "ought" to the universe and discussions of morality are a massive waste of everyone's time, because they all boil down to nothing any more meaningful than "I like this, but I don't like that.")

I have consistent in arguing that "deserves" was meant in the sense of appropriateness, of being a logical consequent given social structure. It has jack all to do with anyone's notions of morality.

Your supposedly pressing questions, expressed as they are with moral intent, are not even questions at all. Or rather, you might as well simply answer them yourself as you have only one answer that you could possibly accept and they don't pertain to anything that I am arguing or interested in discussing.

[anal-wisdom.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I honestly don't think there is a use of the English term 'deserves' that corresponds to the account you are now giving. It is a moral term, which makes your original claim a moral claim on any natural reading.

Also, I'm not sure what "logical consequent" means here: 'consequent' is a technical term referring to the 'then' part of an if-then proposition, and logical consequence relates propositions to each other, not general social structures to particular social institutions.

What, then, was your original claim? Merely that societies have police forces which are in some way the product or outgrowth of general features of those societies? But so platitudinous a claim is not even worth typing out, much less discussing; nor is it properly expressed with sentences like "societies get the policing they deserve".

The statement that there is no point in discussing morality is so facile and absurd that repeating it is as good as refuting it.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

Ah, now I see why you chose that username. It is most appropriate to you (and therefore deserved, though not in any moral sense).

[anal-wisdom.livejournal.com]

Have you simply dropped your claim that societies get the policing they deserve? I can't tell, but if you're still endorsing that claim, do you think that the victims of unjust policing always deserve what they get?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

"Have you simply dropped your claim that societies get the policing they deserve?"

Not at all.

"do you think that the victims of unjust policing always deserve what they get?"

Begging the question. By definition, victims of unjust policing get other than their just due - otherwise one wouln't call them "victims" or the policing "unjust", now would one? And you're talking in terms of the individual, not society, and likely moral desserts rather than natural and logical consequents.

[anal-wisdom.livejournal.com]

As for begging the question, all I assumed is that sometimes policing is unjust. But that assumption is not in question, is it?

As for societies versus individuals, I'm not sure how to take a claim about societies getting what they deserve if not as a claim about members of that society getting what they deserve. But perhaps you could elaborate.

As for desert, I know of no meaning for 'deserve' other than the moral meaning (and perhaps close cousins thereof). I am certainly unfamiliar with any "natural" or "logical" meaning of 'deserve'.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

Would you prefer "the form of policing in any given society is most appropriate to it, being the logical consequent of social structure and function"? A bit more of a mouthful, but a fair unpacking of "deserves". And if you read three posts down into the thred with zdover you'll see that is what was explained.

[zdover.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with anal_wisdom.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

::chuckle::

I'm sorry, could you speak into the microphone please?

[zdover.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'll repeat the question:

Do uncovered Muslim women get the policing they deserve from misogynist police serving their society's governments?

Did slaves in the pre-Civil-War USA get the government they deserve?

[gillen.livejournal.com]

No, the joke was to get you to repeat that you "agree with anal wisdom".

Y'know... for teh lulz.

As for your follow-up, how should I answer you? We've already established that you are trying to make a moral argument, whereas I am not, that our terms are incongruent, and that even if we were on the same ground your questions are loaded. (The police are misogynist now? I doubt they would agree. I suspect they would see their efforts as a defense of a woman's virtue. Not that I care much about their motivations.)

[zdover.livejournal.com]

Yes, ha ha. "Anal" is a funny word.

I'm pretty sure either you were making a moral argument. You claimed that each society got the police force it deserves. If you don't see that as a moral claim, then you don't understand the meaning of the word "moral." I regret that I have to write that sentence, because it's condescending. But I don't know what else to do, except maybe press you for your eccentric definition of the words "moral" and "deserve."

My questions remain unanswered, nor am I using loaded terms. Does Wahabist Saudi Arabia have the police force its people deserve? Did the police forces of the American South in the early 20th century provide policing that the black people who lived there deserved? Seems to me that if the answer is "no," then your position is revealed as... unconvincing and lacking in merit.

If legislation were drafted which required the rape and murder of your wife and children, would you applaud the police who efficiently carried out that statute? Seems to me that your position commits you to say "Yes, I would applaud these police, as long as they were seeing that the law was being upheld."

Am I being unfair?

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> There are only five Communist governments left in the world (China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos)

There's also Cyprus, Moldova and Nepal, but I know very little about their respective policing arrangements.