The angry ape
May. 18th, 2009 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 01:50 pm (UTC)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...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 02:55 pm (UTC)Is that a fair portrait of your view?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 03:19 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 03:31 pm (UTC)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?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 03:53 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 04:03 pm (UTC)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?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 04:30 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 04:45 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 04:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 04:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 05:01 pm (UTC)Certainly simply stating that to be the case saves you from attempting a task likely beyond the ken (a technical term relating to the companion of Barbie and clearly misused in this context) of one who cannot manage to work out "logical consequent".
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 05:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 05:30 pm (UTC)If so, then, yes. If I wanted to keep you from going into a barn and so towards that end I told you that there was a ghost in the barn and you believed me... well, it might well keep you out of the barn (as I had intended, making it useful to me) but it certainly didn't convey any true information or help you to make rational decisions about the universe you inhabited. In which sense it was a disservice and a timewaster as it led you down a false path.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 07:10 pm (UTC)If you mean to insinuate that the two are the same, then you are admitting that you can't tell the difference between meaningless rhetoric and strong moral considerations. And if you mean to claim that genuine moral discussion is akin to working up a ghost scam on some barn-curious yokel, then your claim is too absurd to be taken seriously.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-20 07:17 pm (UTC)