Gangsters in Blue

As I wrote in an essay a few months ago, the best way to view the imperial nature of the U.S. government is to view it as an empire controlled by the city-state of Washington instead of as a broadly American phenomenon. Indeed, the territorial U.S. differs from Iraq and Afghanistan only in the sense that our occupation is a less volatile one. This allows the resemblance of “civil society” that supports and approves of the occupation, and rules out the need for the frightening displays of force that other people around the world endure at the hands of U.S. armed forces. Generally speaking, we chalk this relative lack of open violence up to our status as a “free people”.

However, as we plunge deeper into financial crisis, that may change. Soldiers fresh from counterinsurgency operations in Iraq are deploying for missions within the U.S.. With the unrest likely upon full-blown collapse of the currency and the economy, Bush retains the prerogative to declare martial law and institute what is, in effect, military dictatorship. Essentially, the imperial managers of Earth in D.C. are deciding whether or not we need a surge - not in Iraq, but right here in the territorial United States.

Part of the process of taking back our freedom entails a sober analysis of our present political situation. There is no real difference between a free society under a government and a military occupation - each exists merely as different zones on a sliding scale of repression, which government dials up or down based on “conditions on the ground”. Until we understand that we live in occupied territory, we will always be able to say “well, we got it better than Iraq” without realizing that the same dynamics are at play, at home and abroad.

I just about threw my computer across the room when I read this article:

Twitter got a lot of attention from the various press outlets today for its value in following yesterdays rampage by anarchists and the response by police.

One aspect of the social networking service is getting less mention: Its being used to coordinate the violence.

You read that right: Twitter was used to coordinate the violence. Now, let’s set aside the absurdity of this notion that anarchist violence even registered on the same chart as police violence. Maybe they’re confused by incriminating messages, since they usually, you know, have sources for their reports?

Well, there’s this one:

sector 2 requesting backup at kellogg and wabasha, massive amounts of riot cops

And this one:

bringing in delegates at st peter and kellog WIDE OPEN

And this one:

Cops near Excel are searching people’s bags for goggles and gas masks– hide them!

Of course, none of that is violent - and I know there were no others because I monitored the feeds all week (I was a bit obsessive about it). But what are we to make of MPR’s interesting standards for what qualifies as “violence”? Apparently, it’s only ok to have a protest as long as:

• the people at the event you’re protesting don’t hear you,
• you don’t protect yourself from the chemical weapons the police deploy indiscriminately,
• you don’t show solidarity with your fellow protesters.

So what’s the point? Maybe MPR disagrees ever so slightly with Alix’s analysis of this past week’s debacle:

Were they protesting that they have no right to protest?

No, they were committing violence because they have no right to protest. If they had the right to protest, it wouldn’t have been violence!

In order for protests and civil disobedience to work, the media has to capture and disseminate to the public the evidence of the system’s brutality. It was the stories, photos, and newsreels of repression that made the struggles of Indian independence and African American civil rights successful. But if the media really is fully integrated into the authoritarian establishment, then we can expect the tactics of Ghandi and King to fail.

It’s time for us to discard a decades-old tactic that has long since been neutralized by the establishment. We need a new strategy, and many of us need an altogether new goal. We need creativity, innovation, courage, focus, but most of all we need a passion for freedom that can guide our desperation. From now on, let’s stop mourning the passing of the old order, however outraged and angered we are by it. Let us start building the organizations and structures that can move our work forward into new territory.

McCain said:

My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them.

Just don’t join it’s ranks from within the Republican party:

Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books.

They were followed, surveilled, and harassed. Indeed, even if you make it into the ranks of government, they may still try to hold you back:

Earlier Tuesday, Paul said he was told he could go to the Republican convention floor, but only under very restricted conditions.

The Republican National Committee told Paul he would have to pick up his pass at the gate and couldn’t have any guests.

“Republican congressmen should have a pass to the floor, but they said, ‘Your pass will be at the gate, and we’ll pick it up when you leave, and you can’t take anybody with you,’ ” he said on CNN’s “American Morning.”

And since they’re treating even peaceful protest and civil disobedience as terrorism, they’re leaving us with very few options. Whether we see our role in fixing problems as within, without, or against government, the response is clear: submit or suffer. Make this a better country, but a better country according to our definition, not yours. And don’t make any sudden moves while you’re working on those flaws!

Over and over again, law enforcement demonstrates that they are not only interested in forcing their alien vision of “law and order” on the people they’re supposed to “protect and serve”, but that they are actively hostile and sadistic towards the protestors. We’ve seen this before, like in Miami’s ‘06 FTAA protests:

The resentment has come out full force, now. On Democracy Now!, the arrested journalists told how the police would tighten restraints when detainees complained about how tight they were. The psychology of the human beings in law enforcement is becoming a serious menace and is being actively promoted in their training:

The police brutality that we’ve seen in Denver and St. Paul this week is the result of ongoing indoctrination of the police against protesters, especially any protesters of the left-wing stripe. Local police departments have been militarized to deal with protesters, with much of this militarization happening during the Clinton administration. After 9/11, local police were further turned into anti-terrorist organizations, with the effect that they see their work as fighting terrorists. Local police are also bringing home the terror tactics that the U.S. has been using in dozens of countries around the world for the past century.

The war on terror has escalated into an increased war on the “rabble” of America, most significantly protesters and anarchists. This doesn’t surprise us, because the U.S. government has always been at war with dissidents of many kinds.

We do not have any hope that the police will change their attitudes or their ways. The purpose of the police is to act as the violent arm of capital and the state. The only way for the people to stop the police is to stand up to them, abolish the police and build a different society which needs no police.

Indeed, this jives with my own research: police are being trained to see civil society as their zoo full of mere animals to keep in line, and many are adopting an abusive relationship with their “wards”. Witness their open sadism in St. Paul:

The sad part about all this is that these attitudes towards the public are going to make the jobs of officers who genuinely want to get along with the public much more difficult. While many officers may look forward to the police state as their chance to beat up hippies (see the end of Daniel Clowes’ Like an Velvet Glove Cast in Iron for a perfect portrayal of this attitude), I’d advise them to take a good look at Iraq. The officers there are targeted by insurgents and are never safe, on or off duty. It’s easy to be a bully when you can still go home to your family in relative safety - a police state turns street protestors from prey into predators. Moreover, it was arguably the attitudes of American soldiers (including cops in reserve units) that turned the people against them and their police. Not only are these attitudes quite similar to those displayed by cops in the twin cities, the attitudes may even be brought back by soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan to new careers in domestic law enforcement.

If cops want to militarize their jobs, they need to consider the down side for themselves, their families, and their communities. There’s a lot more civilians than soldiers and officers, and continuing abuse - including the branding of activists as terrorists - just threatens to push Americans over the edge the same way Iraqis were pushed. If civil society is lost, cops may look back fondly on the days when the public merely committed minor property damage.

Although the Monty Python skit resemblance is more than a function of the accents (the timing is amazing), this is an honest-to-God a believable portrayal of a typical politician here. Are these the people we need to worry about? Part of me feels like the way you deal with a police state is by ignoring the politicians, who after all never lift a finger to do anything, and attacking the apparatus: the police. Whether politically, legally, or extra-legally, it seems to me that if we’ve genuinely passed the point of no return, it’s not the politicians we need to bring in line but the people who execute their will.

UPDATE: This is not a real interview. Hat tip to Roderick Long for the smooth catch. Serves me right for just parroting what a friend wrote in an email forward!

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve been witnessing a huge leap forward towards a police state over the past week. In addition to the preemptive raids, extralegal break-ins, illegal detentions, disappearing citizens, news media harassment, and general displays of unprovoked violence by law enforcement, we’ve witnessed a very aggressive strategy of mass arrests. Here’s some choice documentation on their strategy for trapping and processing as many people as possible - protestors or not.

While apologists for cops may represent indiscriminate arrests as necessary, it’s actually incredibly sloppy police work. They just declare a “national security event” and suddenly there is no need for self-discipline or judgement whatsoever. Why should people take cops’ authority seriously when they prosecute their jobs so carelessly? If national security is truly at stake, why sweat a few broken windows?

Imagine if this was their response to any suspected crime: just arrest everybody near the scene! Why not just arrest everybody in the city, or the state - surely if everybody’s under arrest, there’s nobody to get in the way of the convention. Cities are a lot safer if you get rid of the people, law enforcement seems to think.

Yet isn’t this the modus operandi of any totalitarian state? By denying everybody freedom and granting police maximum prerogatives to detain, surveil, and otherwise harass citizens, a government blurs the distinction between being under arrest or being free. People under despotic governance experience a sliding scale of captivity, to be moved up or down at the discretion of unaccountable bureaucrat/captors.

It is important to correctly recognize this trend towards a police state. The myths of freedom, civil rights, and the rule of law must be maintained. So instead, the government institutes the police state on demand - invoking it when necessary, and then dispersing it without a trace and shrugging, “what fascism?” You’re never free, really - you just enjoy perpetual probation until the next time the government flips the switch. Under arrest? That’s a relative term; just check the threat level.

This is exactly how police states arrive historically - in easily ignored, irregular spurts. Those are perfect opportunities to train officers in their new attitudes towards citizens, gather data on the effectiveness of tactics, and experiment with new strategies for oppression. The trick is always for the people to wake up before the slow metamorphosis passes the point of no return.

Sadly, it’s clear to me that we’ve probably missed our last chances to reverse these trends. With the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act granting the legal cover for whatever our rulers want to label as “terrorism” and impenetrable secrecy about anything else, there’s no recourse in “the system” for citizens to air legitimate grievances. Meanwhile, any direct action is dealt with in the most brutal manner possible (yes, they could be more brutal - but that would impact the efficiency of their actions).

So if we’re in a police state now, what do we do? Obviously, there was a point at which the citizens of Germany in the ’30s gave up on speaking out. There was a point at which the Soviet citizens stopped protesting the Bolshevik treachery. Throughout history, people who found themselves under a totalitarian government had to face a terrible fact: that the modes of democratic society were no longer tenable.

But to admit to yourself the horrible truth, that we have lost our country, that is the truly difficult thing. Keep in mind, however, that it has always been through denial, self-deception, and lack of honesty on the part of the people that totalitarianism has gained a foothold. We must be courageous, pragmatic, and most of all careful. The rules have changed, and if we’re going to play this game we do well to use our time-outs to strategize, not simply to feel sorry for ourselves. In other words, as much as I hate to say it, we’re going to have to unlearn the bad habits of citizenship in a democratic republic.

The silver lining in the police brutality at the RNC this week is really that the activist movement might finally see themselves on the other side of the rubicon. As John Robb explains:

Very cool demonstration from Minnesota of how police forces have been militarized. In addition to the five fold growth in SWAT forces since the 90’s, there’s been a shift in attitude. All likely due to a misdirection of GWOT Homeland security $$ and thinking towards domestic protest. The side effect: the heavy handed approach here will cause a quick shift protest to the open source/disruption model if things deteriorate. Protest is dead. (my emphasis)

It’s time for the activist movement to modify their tactics to reflect the new environment. Flaunting our outrage in the hopes of media attention and citizen backlash has failed. Throwing our bodies on the gears of the machine has not slowed it, let alone stopped it. Protesting every violation of our rights just demonstrates in spades how vulnerable and dependent we are. Demonstrating and organizing just provide easy targets for agent provocateurs, infiltration, and extralegal, preemptive harassment.

Protest doesn’t work in a totalitarian police state. Acknowledging that condition is the first step towards fixing it. Whatever we’re going to do, it’s time to start doing it underground. It doesn’t have to be violent, but it does have to be realistic about the threat.

Here’s how you don’t fight injustice occurring right before your eyes:

…the crowd of 50 or 60 students, outraged at the police’s ongoing assault, and doing nothing about it other than yelling at the cops and indignantly demanding their badge numbers—apparently in the fantastical belief that a The Law is somehow going to protect them from violence at the hands of its own rampaging hired goons.

Luckily, there are some heroes in the twin cities who are willing to take things into their own hands:

You could argue that I don’t know the full story, but by now police have simply discredited themselves in my eyes. When in doubt, I go with the non-professionals.

Well, I’m sure you’ve heard about the preemptive raids on groups planning to protest at the Republican convention in Minneapolis. I don’t really have much to add to what’s being said elsewhere on the net. It’s an outrage and it breaks my heart that I can’t stand with them, but my place was definitely in Louisville this weekend. And with the convention being toned way down, I wonder if the protests will have the same effect.

It’s therefore important that, as much as I hate to repeat news better reported elsewhere, we all talk about the horror that’s occurring in Minneapolis on our own outlets. Better yet, call the jail where many are held to demand their release; the number is (651) 266 - 9350. Don’t be silent - bring this up in conversations, and let people know exactly how free we are in this country! The police are going to keep pushing the envelope of oppressiveness unless we can build a broad consensus that their actions are simply wrong.

If you’ve been following this story then you know just how frightening this passage is:

A jury verdict that cleared a police officer in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed woman will allow other officers to do their job without hesitation, police union officials said.

Because, clearly, unloading a hailstorm of bullets into a closed bedroom door in a house you know ahead of time has a family with children present is not something about which you should have the slightest hesitation whatsoever. And hesitation (in other words taking a moment to think about what you’re doing) is something that cops have been told for years gets them killed; therefore, end of story, no possible competing interests worthy of consideration from a public policy perspective at all, period. Don’t worry about that, officer; it’s just a flesh wound, and you’re just doing your job.

If only we understood the unique, existential dilemma of police officers, doing a difficult, dangerous job day in and day out with so little appreciation! Why can’t the pussified public suck it up and understand that officers are professionals who are trained to do, well, whatever they feel like doing at any particular moment, which is by definition “professional” and “heroic” and goddamnit who are you to question them, anyway? And we can’t have any breaks in the thin blue line, so any officers who might disagree with Lima’s professional law enforcement standards will dutifully shut up and let the press frame the entire profession’s reaction to the verdict as “cheering”.

I’ll say it again: if the only way you can do your job safely is by endangering others, don’t act like you’re doing the rest of us any favors. If you’re going to frame this issue in a way that pits cops against citizens, don’t be surprised when you lose public support.

It takes a deep historical awareness to recognize the legacy of revolution in this country. Modern American society worships at the feet of a god called Stability, and both American revolutions are painted as quaint relics of a time before antibiotics, mass production, and automobiles. The idea of people like you and me standing up to the greatest empire in the history of the world, let alone successfully seceding from their dominion, is a frightening thought for most people.

But it’s also a very confusing concept, given that at the start of the 21st century it is “us” who are the world power, the globe-trotting empire on which the sun never sets. With a military deployed in hundreds of countries throughout the world, ultimate control over international finance, and a culture of images, packages, and plastics that is readily exportable, it’s hard to reconcile our agrarian, decentralist beginnings with what we’ve become. Now that U.S. foreign policy has expanded from mere internationalism to preemptive warfare, the myths of American exceptionalism and goodwill are becoming more hollow, which causes the blowhards of national politics to bellow them with ever increasing shrillness. It’s as if a country founded on individual liberty and restricted government has paid its dues and is now allowed to be what Britain in the 18th century couldn’t pull off.

And yet, our national story is still strong enough to pay tribute to that humble but bold spirit of 1776. At least, that’s the story when it serves the purposes of the politicians in Washington, D.C. It’s as if, contrary to the warnings of the founders, the now safely distant revolution already worked, and that’s the end of any of this revolution nonsense. An ancient event bequeathed upon us a constitutional government and guaranteed us rights; to many, that’s the end of the story. Any serious talk of independence in this day and age is likely to get you a ticket to Guantanamo Bay amid vague references to “national security”.

What is the nature of this supposedly free, sovereign nation in which we find ourselves? What relationship does this government have to that desperate compact of gentlemen who were willing to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor? And how do we reconcile our foreign policy with our domestic heritage? Or does our whole approach to this dissonant national endeavor need retooling?

I think it does. Is the lobbyist-driven agenda of corporations, special interests, and political culture really any less distant than U.S. foreign policy? Do we have any authentic control over the decisions in our society that affect us? Or are we just treated as fungible units of polity that have only to be deftly mobilized by public relations wizards in pursuit of an agenda fundamentally alien to us? What, in other words, is the difference between our powerlessness within the borders of the U.S. and the powerlessness endured by the residents of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Instead of contrasting our experience under our government with that of its foreign victims, we might do well to compare the experiences. We’ve been taught from a very young age to distinguish American citizenship from that enjoyed by citizens of other countries, chiefly by virtue of our unique institutions of governance. But it is these same institutions that are being built in Iraq: a democratic, constitutional government with corporate control and obedience to international capital, with an established U.S. military presence to ensure “stability in the region”. These features are proving just as confounding to their freedom as their American counterparts are for us.</p

Through overwhelming military force, claims of moral privilege, and alleged threats - not unlike the P.R. which allowed the U.S. to conquer the west and the south in the 19th century and frame it as “liberation” - the U.S. government is imposing a democratic government and a market economy on an unwilling people. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is also continuing to ratchet up the police state at home even as it practices martial law in Iraq. Just as there were Tories and other people loyal to the crown during the American Revolution, the federal government finds plenty of lackeys in the fifty states, Iraq, Afghanistan, and indeed throughout the world to do their dirty military or paramilitary (law enforcement) work. Legislative creep and sheer audacity constantly expand the scope of lawful authority, defining down the degree of liberty an individual can expect to enjoy. Participation in the decisions that affect us is framed as a set of predetermined choices provided by the establishment rather than a direct say at the local level. And all of these features bring more and more of the world under direct control of Washington - both the world within U.S. borders and the world outside them.

For it is into Washington, in the District of Columbia, that all the spoils of these policies flow. The D.C. metro area is among the fastest growing in the nation, despite having no productive civilian industry to speak of (except perhaps I.T., but no more than any other city if you discount government contracting). Not only is it the seat of governance for the country, it is the clearing house for the international policy of most nations. By enticing Americans to “work within the system” to influence policy, citizens legitimate the process by which power and authority are steadily concentrated. An entire lobbying industry has sprung up from the need to have some say in this process; doing business in the empire has a high cost of entry, and once you get a seat at the table it’s plunder or be plundered. As more people see D.C. as the place where decisions are made, rather than local governments or foreign capitals, the amount of money and people pouring into the city will continue to grow, while localities and other countries become bureaucratic appendages of D.C. policy.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t people outside D.C. who cannot benefit from its decisions; in fact, plenty of people throughout the world ally themselves with federal policy for their own particular advantage. But to that extent they are not really citizens of the localities they just happen to occupy, but favored subjects, emissaries of the Washington government. They think of their interests in terms of, and as dependent upon, the federal government. Local consequences of national policies are of secondary concern. This political class of policy wonks, politicians, media chumps, businesspeople, military leaders, etc. have internalized D.C.’s political mechanics so deeply that they intuitively behave in ways consonant with its bureaucratic worldview. Even their disagreements with the status quo are framed in terms which never undermine the primacy of the federal government’s authority. These people, disconnected from the human-scale, particular communities that used to be the picture of America, are merely the functionaries of imperial control in their regions. They serve national institutions, assemble their interests according to federal politics, and benefit accordingly from the growth of Washingtonian power.

This dynamic is exceptionally interesting for a country that claims to be a constitutionally limited republic. The parallel trends of stronger government and centralizing government dovetail with other imperial powers in history. In all cases, these successful empires of yore succeeded in building a hierarchical but distributed system of decision making while maintaining the chief prerogative to exercise power at the top. As power continues to aggregate in the spaces between Virginia and Maryland, one must begin to wonder whether D.C. is the capital city of a federation of states or, rather, a city-state that controls a vast empire.

But it’s not just that Washingtonians rule over an overseas empire; it’s that domestic U.S. territory is increasingly treated as part of the conquered territory, rather than as the source of state legitimacy. Sure, we have elected representatives we send to D.C. from all over the country, but experience shows that only in the rarest of occasions do they not adopt the Beltway outlook of going along to get along with the system. Instead, they “play the game” to bring home as much of the spoils of empire (taxation and government contracts for further imperialism) as possible. In the process, they cease to represent their constituents in D.C., preferring to represent the Washingtonian agenda in their respective localities. They become little Paul Brehmers, advocating policies that promote the more effective rule of the domestic and foreign empire. They measure success in terms of how they can coax or coerce the locals into compliance with necessarily foreign interests.

If it is policies in Washington, D.C. that are changing this country into an empire, it is inaccurate to label the empire “American”. Clearly, the vast majority of Americans are not participating in it, but are merely “preferred subjects” in territory as occupied as that in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are magnanimously allowed to have self-rule to the extent that it does not conflict substantively with the imperial agenda, similar to Palestine under Roman (and, arguably, Israeli) control - indeed the organization of states, congressional districts, counties, etc. constitute a ready-made hierarchy for imperial governance. D.C. can even be quite generous in granting autonomy once the locals internalize the imperial identity and start seeing themselves as citizens of the empire. But all of our local governing institutions are as enmeshed in federal money and authority as the Iraqis’.

If the decision-making bureaucracy, military might, and economic clout are all based in Washington, doesn’t it make sense to call this system the Washingtonian empire, rather than conflating it with the disenfranchised subjects in the fifty states? It’s no more an American empire than it is an Iraqi or Afghan one. By labelling this as an empire based in the city-state of Washington, D.C. rather than in America, we can tacitly establish several arguments:

• America is a subjugated land, regardless of institutions of self-governance. The outrage of rights violations is to be expected, not to be wondered at.
• Federal policy is that of a rogue state, and not the result of any sort of legitimate assent from the American people.
• American domestic territory differs from foreign conquered land only by degree, not by any essential or special feature. Institutions of self-governance are only allowed to the extent they reinforce foreign control.
• One’s identity as an American is finally and completely severed from obedience to the government in D.C. Resistance to empire becomes a matter of the same patriotism the federal government has been promoting for its own uses.
• Resistance to empire abroad is unified with resistance to domestic tyranny, instead of attacking foreign policy and domestic policy on different grounds. Examples of abuses abroad are directly applicable to the day-to-day lives of Americans.
• A foreign occupation makes resistance to D.C. rule more urgent without the necessity to articulate exactly what the alternative would be, which is a common rejoinder to libertarian critiques of government.
• This urgency also promotes broad, inter-ideological cooperation among a variety of movements, groups, and people (see Iraq for an example of how such a resistance has potential to build coalitions out of disparate political tendencies).

The Washingtonian Empire is the largest, richest, most powerful, most hierarchically distributed, and most subtly maintained in history. It is so successful that it has even managed to proceed with its agenda without much notice as to its true nature. We should stop trying to get people to take responsibility for the decisions of a foreign city-state, because this only encourages the conflation of their American identity with an alien one.

By drawing on our revolutionary, anti-colonial legacy, we can frame the American political experience as one of historically consistent subjugation. We can then find common ground with other victims of American imperialism while articulating an authentically decentralist agenda. While we need not achieve the full independence we originally sought from the crown, no reconciliation can occur without a large degree of autonomy and an end to Washington’s imperial designs. The sooner we adopt an approach to our political condition that treats our country as occupied territory, rather than unwillingly benefiting from occupation elsewhere, the sooner we can build a radical, populist, extra-electoral American movement that works against the system rather than feeding it.

So let’s stop arguing whether or not America is an empire,and start figuring out what we’re going to do about the city-state of Washington, D.C. and it’s worldwide dominion.