[lbo-talk] further evidence that the U.S. is prosecution-mad

ravi ravi at platosbeard.org
Thu Jul 26 16:22:00 PDT 2007


On 26 Jul, 2007, at 15:58 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Ravi:
>
> (b) if we subscribe to your idea that homicides (intentional acts)
> are a more serious risk than (in your words) unavoidable pure
> accidents. But the opposite is probably true. The intentional acts, I
> would argue, are easier to predict, plan for and avoid, especially in
> an environment that valorises the person taking them on, than pure
> and unavoidable accidents.
>
> [WS:] That may be true from and individual's point of view, but not
> necessarily from that of a society as a whole. That is to say, the
> society
> as a whole can do little to affect random incidents (e.g.
> mechanical failure
> that causes death or injury), but it can significantly affect
> intentional
> acts of its members, especially the incidence i.e. overall rate of
> occurrence, if not individual acts.
>

So, I will restate the above in a manner that I can understand, and you let me know if that is faithful to your argument:

Society should consider a police officer to be "laying his life on

the line" because society can influence the risk he faces, which in

turn makes it responsible for it. Society owes this gratitude to the

cop for its part in putting his life at risk. On the other hand,

no such gratitude or phraseology is required for workers in other

areas facing risk, because society is not contributor to that risk.

If this understanding is correct, then below are my points in response:

* I have already noted that many workplace deaths are attributable not

to pure accident but very much to cost-cutting and other activities

that wilfully undervalue the life of the worker.

* In fact, it is exactly in this way that society also creates risks

for the cops i.e., the risk the cop faces is not due to societies

inability to control its freaks in a better way (as a right-wing

narrative might hold) but because society creates criminality in

multiple unjustifiable ways (now, please do not segue into a rant

about me romanticising crime, etc! The data on drugs laws, etc, alone

should suffice to underwrite my point, leaving it safe to ignore more

grey areas where we might disagree).

* And returning to the realm of the real world, the phrase itself is

used very much to mean that a person serving in the police force is

intentionally and nobly endangering his own life in the interest of

society (and more so than individuals in other occupations). That is,

I believe, incorrect both in the speculation on motivation and in

its factual basis.


> Furthermore, your point that intentional risk is easier to predict
> could
> also mean that willingly undertaking that risk may require greater
> personal
> bravery than undertaking random risk. The random risk, being more
> difficult
> to predict, is also more likely to be ignored, and a person exposed
> to it
> may be less aware of it. However, people are usually more aware of
> risk
> posed to them by intentional acts of others - and that requires the
> presence
> of coping mechanism, such as bravery.

This I called the disingenuous argument in my initial response (at that time no insult was implied, since I was of the hope that it was not one you advanced). But here you are switching back to the individual perspective from the societal one: if the person does not know, society does! And ignorance too is a coping mechanism and no worse than foolhardiness (the real attitude to substitute for "bravery" in the above). But really, I find it difficult to believe that a large part of those who enter risky professions are ignorant of the risks. It is probably more that they accept risk in a holistic sense as an outcome of their class status (from Fussell's "Class": Every year 100,000 workers are killed or die of work-related accidents or disease; 400,000 are disabled; 6 million are hurt at work. In The Working Class Majority, Andrew Levison says, "All the cliches and pleasant notions of how the old class divisions ... have disappeared are exposed as hollow phrases by the simple fact that American workers must accept serious iunjury and even death as part of their daily reality while the middle class does not").

Switching back to society, it seems clear that we should owe more (in rhetoric, in this instance ;-)) to those who face random risk (irrespective of their awareness of it) since that is objectively a greater danger and constitutes more of "putting one's life on the line" than intentional harm.


> The bottom line is that frivolous dismissing someone else's risks,
> occupational or otherwise, strikes me as cheap flippancy aiming to
> impress
> fellow hoodlums rather than a bona fide argument in a rational
> discussion.

No, Woj, the bottom-line is that cops, to a significant level are part of a system of intimidation, bullying and a host of other activities that deny respect and opportunity to individuals. That they may occasionally deter the harm caused by more vicious hoodlums is barely palliative. The bottom-line therefore is that we should not split hairs about cops and the mythology surrounding them.

--ravi



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