[FRIAM] corruption and impartiality

[Steve Smith]

uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote

> ...
> The Lerner posts seemed to echo a bit of Jon's and your objection to bureaucracy, but also evoke a larger argument I've had with several people about institutional/systemic knowledge. And Jon mentioned "jury nullification" awhile back, which is a similar subject. *Where* is "the law"? Not only where is it defined, but also where is it executed/computed? This strikes me as an unsettled question ... even a couple hundred years on in this experiment.

It seems trite but I'd say the law was *everywhere* and *nowhere* at the 
same time.   Jacob Blake was killed *by the law* because he was presumed 
to be afoul of "the law", but many felt that the "lawmen" who killed him 
were operating outside or above "the law".   When "the law" couldn't 
hold them accountable for this presumed "unlawful" action, a large 
portion of the citizenry decided to *push the law* by expressing their 
*lawful right* to demonstrate but then with some of them stepping over 
some lines of *the law* with various acts of property violence (and 
perhaps violence against police in a few cases?)   When Rittenhouse 
obtained a semi-automatic assault rifle he did so *outside the law* and 
then when he showed up on the street claiming (in his mind and after the 
fact to the jury) to be there to *enforce the law*, it seems that he is 
at least *pushing* the law as hard as the protestors on the street 
*threatening* violence with their mere presence/posture.  Carrying a (n 
apparently) loaded weapon in public (especially during civil unrest) is 
nothing less than a *threat* of violence and a strong risk of breaking 
*the law*. "Don't take your guns to town" as Glen has invoked before.

The police who drove past Rittenhouse, even offered him a bottle of 
water *after* having shot 3 people were "being the law" in some sense 
(doing their job as they understood it?)...  and then when he was 
collected (on his/family/lawyers') terms rather than hunted down (like 
the Antifa-presumed fellow in WA about the same time) and executed in 
the street (apparently within the law because the officers/shooters felt 
they saw he might have a weapon?)  The jury trial (starting with 
charges, continuing with judge assignment and jury selection) was all an 
exercise of *the law*.   The courtroom scene unfolded "according to the 
law" even if some of us might question some of the activities/postures 
the judge adopted, I don't believe he exceeded his authority or 
jurisdiction.   The jury exonerated Rittenhouse on *all counts* 
precisely as the system is designed to work, even if I am personally 
concerned about various implications of that decision.   For the most 
part, the protests in WI and across the country *after* the decision 
were executed *within the law*, but as with the initiating protests, 
have an overtone of threatening violence, threatening to break out of 
the confines of "the law", as did Rittenhouse when he swaggered down the 
street with a loaded military style assault weapon at-ready.

So, while I sympathize with Nick's ideation that "well crafted, 
executed, and defended laws" *should* yield a kind/gentle/just/healthy 
society, I think virtually everything we are seeing today indicates that 
the limits of that have been exceeded.   Unfortunately, this 
circumstance just feeds the authoritarian ideation which is that one 
*must* clamp down as hard as necessary to obtain compliance with *the 
law*.  I say unfortunately, because history indicates that such exercise 
of absolute power, even within the constraints of well-designed laws, 
becomes it's own problem pretty quickly.

Add in the "authority" of God (or similar) and it gets 
yet-more-squirrely because in fact one can justify anything under that 
kind of absolute authority.   At best, it seems we get religious wars as 
absurd as Swift's Big/Little-enders in Lilliput under the edicts of 
Lunderog and the Blundecral.

- Stir