[lbo-talk] not everything is getting worse...

[Gar Lipow]

On 3/10/06, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Carrol wrote:
>
>
>
> >  We ARE threatened with a move toward a police state
>
>
> aka, nation of finks:
> http://www.law.uc.edu/lawreview/uclaw73pdf/0645natapoff.pdf
>
> "The informant institution further shapes the law enforcement process
> by shifting ultimate decisions about liability away from prosecutors to
> police. Most informants are created and managed by police officers
> whose highly discretionary activities evade judicial and public scrutiny.
> Even in more formal settings, the agent's narrow investigatory goals can
> dominate the informant management process. One of Yaroshefsky's
> defense counsel interviewees described a "typical scenario" at a confidential
> proffer session: the agent believes that "Jones" was at a particular
> illegal meeting. The cooperator does not mention Jones. The agent asks
> the cooperator:
>
> Was anyone else there? The cooperator says no. Are you telling me that
> Jones was not there? At that juncture, the cooperator knows what the
> agent wants to hear. Moreover, the agent might then say, look, I know
> that Jones was there. Let's take a break. The agent then walks off with
> your client. After the break, when the client is asked again, he knows that
> Jones was there."
>
>
> from "Snitching: The Institutional and Communal
> Consequences"  by  Alexandra Natapoff    University of Cincinnati Law
> Review Vol. 73 (Fall '04)

Right. If  you are a non-citizen Muslim in this nation, odds are you
already live  in a police state. True for  other categories too. So
the problem with "Police  State" is that it does not  distinguish
between "Police State" for some, and "Police State" for all which is
the  progression feared.  (The progression struggled for, of  course,
is "Police State" for none.) So then the correct term becomes
"Completed Police State" or some such jargon - and the desirablity of
having one word that distinguishes between what we have now and what
many fear we are very close to becoming is clearer. I agree that
"fascist" carries emotional baggage that obscures meaning.  Look,
essentialists definitions are wonderful when you can get them. But to
me, what is neccesary in a definition, and cannot be lived without is
that it offer some degree of distinguishing between what you are
talking about and the rest of the Universe. "Police State" does not do
that; because we have degrees of that now. At the same time, if we get
to the point where we get a "Police State" for everybody, or even for
most, that will be a qualitiative shift, not just a quantitative one. 
I don't want to engage in Socratic childishness by diverting too much
of the discussion to definitions.  But I don't see how the conditions
under which part of our population live  (and which has expanded
greatly recently) may be called anything but a police state.  Damn it,
I *am* slipping into childishness about definitions; but this
particular narrowing of terms loses the abilty to say some stuff that
is important.

=================

<a href="http://legis.state.sd.us/sessions/2005/mbrdt128.htm">sexist
asshat</a>, Senator William M. Napoli.