[FRIAM] corruption and impartiality
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Tue Nov 23 09:12:51 EST 2021
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
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