Clearly the big political and social shift of this year is Black Lives Matter, after centuries of systemic racism: enslavement, Jim Crow with ceremonial Klan lynchings, and lately community-sanctioned police lynchings. And Law and Order demonization, and multiple Wars on Drugs since opium in the 19th century, and all the rest, including the associated bigotry, misogyny, nativism and so on.
Now we have to root all of this out of the culture of too many police departments, too many courts, too many prisons, and too many legislatures. As I reported six years ago, we have research on this.
Monday, 10/6/2014: Grokking Republicans: The Lucifer Effect
I'm not going to repeat the whole appalling tale here. You can go read it.
[sigh] Yes, I know, most of you aren't going to, no matter how much you should. Much less can I expect you to go read the whole book, or any of the other research following up on it.
OK.
tl;dr
Put some bright but otherwise ordinary college students to playing guards and prisoners in a basement fixed up with makeshift cells at Stanford for a few days, choosing randomly who will be which. What could go wrong? Well, it's so horrific you have to cancel the experiment in the middle. Now what happens to real warders and prisoners who do it for years at a time, even for decades? What happens to a society that routinely does that to people?
The people in charge at every level go right off the rails, just like good little Nazis and Communists and terrorists, that's what happens. Very few, it turns out, can resist the social pressure and the dopamine and serotonin and whatnot. Even Philip Zimbardo, who organized the experiment and later wrote the book, got sucked in, and only stopped because of an outside intervention.
- What happens to cops who are told plainly and repeatedly that their job is to Protect and Serve White people, and keep those uppity Other People in their places—minorities, unworthy furriners, women, young people, LGBTQs, the uninsured and underinsured and those insured only as long as they have a job, peaceful demonstrators and all of the rest of us?
Why, they mostly embrace their assigned duties as Designated Lynchers with relish, and go full Lucifer.
- What happens to prosecutors and judges told that their job is to enforce Law and Order, and that the defendants do not have standing to assert human rights?
Why, they mostly embrace their assigned duties as Designated Judicial Lynchers with relish, and go full Lucifer.
- What happens to Border Patrol agents, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents assigned to bash heads at the border, or to separate children from their parents, or to teargas peaceful protesters, as in the image above?
Why, they mostly embrace their assigned duties as Designated Enforcers with relish, and go full Lucifer.
- What happens to staff in Supermax prisons and private prisons and prisons for children in cages?
Why, they mostly embrace their assigned duties as Warders with relish, and go full Lucifer.
- What happens to emergency response agencies told that what happens to Those People is not an emergency?
Why, they mostly respond Not My Job, and go full Lucifer.
And what happens to the rest of us?
Well, first, let us give thanks for the few that can resist in the vortex of the disaster, and come and tell us what has been going on.
Thus Not All Cops, etc., even if far too many sign on with the Dark Side.
A few good apples mean that the entire barrel has not gone rotten. But let us give no credence to A Few Bad Apples.
Resistance by a minority of participants is one of the lessons of the Milgram experiments reported in Obedience to Authority. When one person resists openly and visibly, it becomes easier for others to do so. We will come to that in this series soon. For now, think of the Pentagon Papers, or John Dean, or To Kill a Mockingbird, or William Wilberforce's friend, converted slave ship Captain John Newton.
Wilberforce got the English to boycott Caribbean sugar for their tea
Second,
- We organize
- And we protest in the streets
- And we sue in the courts
- And we put up progressive candidates
- And we write and we blog and we go on TV and we tear up social media
- And we point and laugh uproariously, "jeering out of season to stave off far more untimely tears". (Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, by James Branch Cabell)
for decades until something happens and even White people start listening and believing us and joining in.
Some of them. Enough to make a difference.
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
Gandhi
Yes, we have begun winning, and someday there will be so much winning that our opponents will get tired of it, and we will have the field to ourselves.
Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Winston Churchill, who, by the way, loathed and despised that uppity Gandhi,
the malignant subversive fanatic and seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace.
But that was then.
And then they tell you that it was their idea all along.
Me
You wouldn't believe how many vicious Imperialists took to praising Gandhi as the world hero the rest of us knew him to be. Why, Republicans have taken to praising Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and even MLK.
The Man Who Would Be King of the Luciferians is going to be telling you that everything was his idea all along, all of next week. He had the best ideas for The Blacks, and The Latinos, and the LGBTZOMGBBQs and The Yo-Semites. Only he can have good ideas, the best ideas, better than anybody's ideas, a lot of people are saying.
I invite you to protest and sue and so forth, and also to point and laugh, which our people are getting really good at. We are going to have a particularly target-rich environment this coming week.
I commented in Good News Roundup yesterday.
Your pointing and laughing may begin now.
Ballotpedia: Republican National Convention, 2020/Schedule and speakers
Monday, August 24: Land of Heroes
- Presidential nomination by delegates
Tuesday, August 25: Land of Promise
Speakers
Wednesday, August 26: Land of Opportunity
Speakers
Thursday, August 27: Land of Greatness
Speakers
Speakers participating in the 2020 Republican National Convention, last updated on August 21, 2020.[11][12]
Abby Johnson and Nicholas Sandmann among Catholics to speak at Republican Convention
Alice Johnson, granted clemency by Trump, to speak at GOP convention: report
Johnson, 65, previously was serving a life sentence on nonviolent drug and money laundering charges. She was released from the Aliceville Federal Correctional Institution two years ago after serving 21 years in prison.
Cocaine, to be precise.
Republican Convention To Feature Slate Of Viral Conservative Stars: St. Louis Couple, Covington Teen And More
- the St. Louis couple who pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters earlier this summer [Patricia and Mark McCloskey]
- the Convington teenager captured in a viral interaction with a Native American elder [Nicholas Sandmann]
- anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson
Andrew Pollack
American author, school safety activist, and entrepreneur whose daughter Meadow was killed in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.
Pollack is credited with helping to pass the "Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act" (Florida Senate Bill: 7026).[2] He has met with President Donald Trump and his cabinet, Florida governor Rick Scott, and many lawmakers.[3] Pollack is actively fighting to release more federal funding to increase school security in every school across the nation.[3] He believes that bulletproof glass, metal detectors, enhanced door lock systems, ID checkpoints, and "school marshals" can help prevent school shootings.[4]
The only solution to school shootings is more shooters in schools.
The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer, began asking certain questions in 1951, when the science delving into Hitler was in its infancy. It is an article of faith on the Right that the only way to oppose tyrants and fanatics, whether Nazis, Communists, or ISIS, is with tyranny and fanaticism. McCarthy, Birchers, Tea Parties, militias, Boogaloo Bois, and especially Qanon.
Republican National Convention Week Ahead
Land of Promise Key speaker: Donald Trump Jr.
I said you can start pointing and laughing.
Also, Land of Heroes will include Karen Pence and Land of Griftness—Sorry, it's supposed to be Greatness—will include Ivanka.
Here are The Young Turks to set you off.
Or, if you prefer, here is the much longer Trevor Noah version. Trevor was just so happy doing this last year...Look at those faces!
