Month: November 2011

In 1988 the crew of the US Navy missile cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iran Airlines passenger jet, an Airbus A300, with two surface-to-air missiles. All 290 people on board died. The crew of the ship claimed that the aircraft appeared to be an attacking enemy fighter plane, despite the fact that it was in Iranian airspace, climbing, and on its normal daily flight path. It was also, you know, a passenger jet. Which doesn't look much like the F-14 Tomcat that the Navy claimed to think it was.

You can read up on the incident (and its primary cause, the sociopath/Captain of the Vincennes) if you care to; an exhaustive account is not necessary here. What makes this incident interesting to me is its use as a classic example of a phenomenon called "scenario fulfillment." In highly regimented organizations like the military, individuals are a part of a larger system. In order for that system to work effectively, participants are trained extensively. They go through drills, simulations, and live exercises ad nauseum until carrying out their responsibilities becomes second nature. In the context of Iran Air 655, however, the crew of the ship were so locked into the drill that taking it to completion – fulfilling the scenario of "enemy fighter attacking" that they had probably repeated a thousand times in training – was simply the logical end.
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And "completion" in this case means shooting down the enemy plane. That's what they're trained to do, and as soon as someone said "We're being attacked!" their training took over. Of course, avoiding "mistakes" like this is the reason the military has officers who are supposed to use their judgment based on the available information, but I guess that safeguard isn't very effective when the officers are belligerent. But I digress.

The past three decades have seen unprecedented changes in American law enforcement. Among the most notable is the militarization of police. The police, despite being civilians by definition, have adopted the equipment, weapons, tactics, and attitudes of the military. We now have suburban police departments purchasing IED-proof armored vehicles designed for Afghan war zones.

Helicopters, armor, high-velocity rifle ammunition, stun grenades, "less lethal" weaponry – you name it, and cops have gotten their hands on it. Why? Well, thanks to the War on Drugs they've decided over the years that all of this is necessary. The only limit to what they require is imagination. If you can dream up a threat, you can justify more weapons, more equipment, and more paramilitary tactics to put it all to use. It doesn't matter that a coordinated terrorist attack on the Pigsknuckle County Courthouse is as likely as the second coming. In a world in which the Supreme Court is making decisions based on hypotheticals from Jack Bauer and the writers of 24, the public and political system accept just about anything police ask for at face value.

The point among all of this is simple: police essentially do what they are trained to do. The more they are trained in military-style tactics, the more options for the use of force they are given (rubber bullets, batons, chemical sprays, grenades, etc.), and the more their training focuses on the possible rather than the probable, the more likely they are to carry out their jobs in ways that contradict their mission to Serve and Protect. Cops don't break up crowds with swinging batons and CS grenades (adopted with their launcher directly from the military hardware market) because the situation calls for it. They do it because that's how they're trained to break up riots. It doesn't matter if the crowd is violent or not; every crowd becomes a riot in their minds once the training scenario begins to happen in real life. They break down doors and enter homes with weapons drawn because that's how they're trained to serve warrants. They pepper spray or tazer anyone who appears remotely aggressive (Or not, you know. Either way.) because that's how they're trained to deal with aggressive people.

The above image is of the UC-Davis police before the infamous pepper spraying incident. These are campus cops – ask any cop and he will giggle while explaining that campus police are the lowest form of life in his profession – with the full array of modern, military-style riot gear and weapons. Where is the campus on which they work? Kabul? The Sudan? Yes, campus police face the prospect of having to break up a drunken 3 AM congregation now and again, and breaking up a crowd can be dangerous. But clearing out the morons gathered in the street at bar time is not exactly going door-to-door through Normandy in 1944.

The more they are trained to apply force, the more often it will be applied. The more force they have to apply, the more they will apply. The more they are militarized, the more they will act like Delta Force operatives in Tora Bora rather than street cops in Des Moines. The farther American police go in this direction, the more ordinary citizens will get that unsettling feeling that leads your more radical friends to declare that we live in a Police State controlled by storm troopers. Because to an alarming extent, they are starting to have a point. Bearing in mind that police are public servants, why has this gone unchecked?

I think the answer is simple enough. An inattentive public isn't interested as long as it happens to someone else. The political system is fanatically eager to Get Tough on Crime. And the people who are supposed to be in charge of law enforcement, to lead it, have eschewed judgment for the indulgence of their wildest "What if?" fantasies. The scenarios for which they train might or might not be reality, but they will certainly become reality given the time. Maybe that's why the number of riots instigated by police seems to dwarf the number that they've protected society from – give a man a hammer and oddly enough all of his problems start to look like nails.

As an ideology conservatism makes sense. That's not an endorsement, merely a recognition that it is an internally consistent set of ideas. This is surprising only inasmuch as conservatives themselves – at least of the American variety – are about as logical and internally consistent as Mars Volta lyrics.

Being a modern American conservative is an exercise in holding contradictory viewpoints without an ounce of self awareness. They believe in fiscal conservatism and stratospheric levels of military spending. They believe in individual freedom and that the government should legislate Christian-approved morality. They preach about the Constitution and rights but love it when the government infringes upon them in the name of security. Yes, the contradictions are many, but none is more reliably amusing than belief that government is oppressive, nefarious, and untrustworthy combined with blind, fanatical support of the police, military, and other forms of gun-wielding authority.

Over on the ol' Gin and Tacos facebook page (which you should totally follow, if you do not already do so) I posted a picture of the UC-Davis police officer pepper spraying passive, seated students blocking a sidewalk (oh, the horror!) Since I happened to be among the first wave of people to post the picture, many G&T fans shared the post on their own Facebook walls. As a result, it was seen by a vast number of people who are…not part of my regular audience. Think of every crazy uncle and right wing knucklehead on your Facebook friend list and you'll see where this is headed.

I can't say it surprised me that people defended the cop. There are always people who will defend the cop. Believe it or not, I was taken aback by just how stupid their arguments were even though such things should not surprise me anymore. Most of all, though, it's amazing the extent to which these people who believe that government is pure evil will argue that A) the role of the citizen relative to the police is one of absolute, unquestioning obedience, B) the police are to be taken at their word at all times, and C) whatever type and amount of force the police choose to use is inherently right.

If one of the defining characteristics of government is possession of a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within its borders, then the police are government at its most elemental. They are the government's way of perpetuating itself and enforcing rules and social order. If government is evil, oppressive, or misguided then by definition the police – the muscle behind the corrupt system – must be as well. Yet rather than seeing the state using questionable (to put it charitably) levels of force against its own citizens as another sign of a brutal, corrupt, and broken system – which, for the record, is what they see when police/military are used to crush popular demonstrations in other countries – they cheer on its excesses and defend it to the last man.

Maintaining this curious set of beliefs depends on their equally curious understanding of what exactly the police are for. To the average conservative – old white people, suburbanites, the wealthy, moral traditionalists, etc. – the police are a personal valet service charged with protecting them from the brown people, the poor, the homeless, and the punk kids with their boom-boom music and bouncing cars. The rights of those groups are not an issue, you see, because they have no rights. Only "good, hard working Americans" truly have rights, and others forfeir their rights by their actions. If the police ask you to move from the sidewalk and you don't, then you no longer have any rights. They can do whatever they want and it's your own fault.

Of course that might be a more convoluted, less helpful way of restating Adorno's ideas about the authoritarian personality type: submissiveness to authority, aggression toward outgroups defined by that authority, and the unwavering belief that others should conform to one's own understanding of socially acceptable behavior. Thus we have Nixon's "Silent Majority", at once scared, angry, and aggressive, filling our social and political discourse with the mantra that the government that they worship blindly and submit to completely is inherently evil. I suppose it makes more sense if you don't understand how logic works.

The last few years have seen a bull market for Sadness Journalism – stories of foreclosures, medical bankruptcies, layoffs, homelessness, hunger, and a host of other woes that were invisible when they happened to the underclass but are now polite conversation since they're happening to middle class people. The narratives inevitably follow one of a few well established frameworks. The sad story (man loses job, descends into alcoholism, accidentally kills loved ones/ends up in prison). The downshifting story (well paid professional loses job, realizes she is happier living in a small house with a garden and no car). The it's-your-fault story (the lavish wages and benefits of a group or individuals are presented as justification for why Mr. Spacely had to move the Sprocket factory to Uttar Pradesh). And lastly, my own personal version of hell: the It's Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me story, wherein the protagonist gets a pink slip, overcomes the urge to wallow in sadness, and then (with luck, pluck, and diligence straight out of Ragged Dick) starts a new business (or more rarely, finds a new job) far better and more lucrative than the old one.

For the laid off or otherwise unemployed, optimism is a good thing.
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It can hardly help to feed them a steady diet of WASF stories in the news every day. There's nothing wrong with a Success Story to remind people who may be cast adrift that all is not necessarily lost. But success stories, like lottery winners, are useful examples only when the odds involved in their success are downplayed or ignored altogether.

This Forbes piece, while remarkably thoughtful (for a Forbes piece) in recognizing in a very non-confrontational and investor-friendly way the challenges that one might encounter when 55 and suddenly jobless, is a good example of what happens when the narrative drifts from optimism to condescending bromides.

Being the boss gives Bitter the flexibility to spend more time with her husband (a 30-year veteran of IBM), adult children and grandson. “When boomers get over the fear of losing the corporate parent and all the benefits, they may find that what’s on the other side fits them better,” she says…

Williams counsels “desperation entrepreneurs”—laid-off fiftysomethings who have finally realized they aren’t getting back into the corporate world. He advises them: Don’t waste retirement savings on lavish offices or buying an existing business or a franchise. Instead, work from home, selling a skill or a product you already know…

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Ken Proskie, 59, is a Williams client who was laid off in 2004 from his job as a health and safety manager for a large manufacturer. He spent only ,000 of nonretirement savings to buy equipment and furnish an office in his Evanston, Ill.
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home.

Perhaps the tone of this article reflects the expected audience of Forbes-reading professionals with salable skills. Maybe this is a realistic depiction of what one kind of worker can do when laid off, even if it isn't realistic for the great masses. But even with that caveat, I'd love to see some data here. Of fiftysomething corporate types who get laid off, what percentage will end up doing better as bedroom-and-garage entrepreneurs? How many will find equivalent employment elsewhere? And what share of them will end up doing much, much worse, with a low paying job that neither utilizes whatever skills they possess or supports even a downshifted lifestyle?

Some stories have happier endings than others. I doubt, however, that being over fifty and getting fired qualifies as the best thing that ever happened to anyone except corporate propagandists and uncritical journalists.