Broad police immunity for bad actions

St. Paul. MN, police officer Officer Heather Weyker 

The New York Times reports on a conservative federal court trend to further expand police immunity to their illegal and harmful actions. In my opinion, this is more evidence of the inherently fascist, or at least authoritarian, intent of the Republican Party and its hostility to civil liberties and the rule of law. The NYT writes in an article entitled, If the Police Lie, Should They Be Held Liable? Often the Answer Is No.:

In 2010, Officer Heather Weyker of the St. Paul Police Department in Minnesota had the biggest case of her career: a child sex-trafficking ring said to have spanned four states and involved girls as young as 12. Thirty people, almost all of them Somali refugees, were charged and sent to jail, many of them for years.

Then the case fell apart. It turned out, the trial judge found, that Officer Weyker had fabricated or misstated facts, lied to a grand jury and lied during a detention hearing. When three young women unwittingly got in the way of her investigation, according to their court filings, she had them locked up on false charges.

“She took my life away,” said one of the women, Hamdi Mohamud, who was a senior in high school at the time.

But there is little Ms. Mohamud can do. For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have declined to close the many legal loopholes, like qualified immunity, that protect the police from accountability. Now legal advocates say that an increasingly conservative Supreme Court has emboldened lower courts to close off the few avenues that plaintiffs once had to seek redress.

“If a federal law enforcement officer lies, manipulates witnesses, and falsifies evidence, should the officer be liable for damages?” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit wrote of Officer Weyker, whose investigation ultimately resulted in no convictions. The answer was no. 

More than 20 civil lawsuits have been filed against Officer Weyker, a former vice officer who is still the subject of an internal department investigation. Some of the suits failed because she was granted qualified immunity, a doctrine created by the courts that shields officers from lawsuits unless they violate a “clearly established” right.  

Locked up for over a year, Ms. Mohamud said she was kept in a cell 23 hours a day. “I would cry all night, sleep all day,” she said.  

“I don’t know whose life I’m living right now,” she said, “but this is not my life.”

What on Earth is a “clearly established” right? Isn’t it clearly established that we have a right to not be locked up and our lives ruined based on false evidence and false charges? 

The NYT article goes on to point out that although she did violate people’s rights, another form of immunity that extends to federal law enforcement officers shielded Officer Weyker in other lawsuits. Those courts gave her the broader federal officer immunity even though she was not a federal law enforcement officer.

In Weyker’s case, she got federal law enforcement immunity because she was part of a joint task force with some federal agents. According to that legal reasoning, if that is what one can call it, the federal immunity just sort of slops over onto non-federal law officers on joint task forces. In theory, federal law allows state and local officers, but not federal agents, to be sued for rights violations, even when their actions are the same. 

Based on that, a federal judge told the Black Lives Matter organization that it could sue the local — but not the federal — police officers who violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Square in Washington in June 2020.

Whether the federal immunity law applies to state or local law enforcement officers is arbitrary. The NYT makes the government’s irrational, rule of law mocking caprice crystal clear: “In a case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court last year, James King, a college student walking to work in Grand Rapids, Mich., was mistaken for a suspect by two plainclothes members of a fugitive task force — one federal, one local — who beat him so savagely that bystanders called 911. The government contends that he should not be able to sue either officer.”

Questions: Would Officer Weyker have been given federal immunity if she was a non-White person, and the people she lied about were White? Are calls to reform police departments to get rid of this kind of law enforcement warranted or not? Is this evidence of fascism in the form of hostility to civil liberties, or is this just a case of one bad apple in the cracker barrel? Or, was the apple not a bad one at all? Is it reasonable to suspect that this kind of policing reflects the ideology and mindset of Christian nationalism?

Some observations on the role of Christian nationalism in the 1/6 coup attempt

Treasonous Christian nationalists in the US Senate, praying to God

for thanks in helping them attack the US Capitol on 1/6 and restoring 

America as the Christian nation God intended

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” -- ascribed to the old fashioned Republican conservative, Barry Goldwater, presumably said in the 1960s (today, Goldwater would have been RINO hunted out of the FRP as a radical liberal)

A July 28, 2021 article by Andrew Seidel writing for Religion Dispatches, THE JANUARY 6 SELECT COMMITTEE CANNOT IGNORE THIS CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT, discusses the overarching role of Christian nationalism (CN) movement in the attack on the capitol.  RD writes:

Yesterday, for the first time, we heard about Christian Nationalism in a government conversation about the January 6 insurrection. The conversation some of us had been having about Christian Nationalism may have entered the mainstream in the wake of that attack, but politicians—even those promising to get to the bottom of the attacks—ignored the role this political theology played in the attack. They can ignore it no longer.

Christian Nationalism is an identity based around the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, that we’re based on Judeo-Christian principles, and, most importantly, that we’ve strayed from that foundation. It’s a political identity based on lies and myths. It’s a permission structure that uses the language of return, of getting back to our godly roots, to justify all manner of hateful public policy—and even attacks on our democracy.

Every day I learn more about how the permission structures within Christian Nationalism motivated the terrorists and how it cuts across the other motivations and identities we saw that day, including the absurd Qanon conspiracy. They believed that they were fighting for God’s chosen one. And if God was on their side, who could be against them?

Trump’s second impeachment featured the first full airing of the January 6 attacks. But, despite the conversation entering the mainstream, nothing was said about the Christian Nationalist aspect of this assault. I feared—and still fear—that the January 6 Select Committee would do the same. When Rep. Cheney trotted out in her opening statement the Christian Nationalist war cry frequently heard in the lead up to January 6, “One Nation, Under God,” I was worried all over again that they were going to ignore, or cover for, Christian Nationalism.

 
Officer Hodges, who was the officer trapped and nearly crushed to death between the doors as the mob surged through the Capitol, spoke about the Christian Nationalist aspect of this assault, though not in those terms: “It was clear the terrorists perceived themselves to be Christians. I saw the Christian flag directly to my front. Another read ‘Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.’ Another, ‘Jesus is King'”

That Christian flag was carried into battle against America—carried alongside the Confederate flag.  

The idea that “the United States of America [should] be reborn” and reborn “in Christ’s holy name,” which is how the prayer concluded, is central to Christian Nationalism. We cannot understand what happened on January 6 without understanding Christian Nationalism.

Seidel’s description raises two aspects of CN that most Americans, probably ~85%, are mostly or completely unaware of. First, is the degree to which CN ideology is integrated into the fascist Republican Party (FRP) and controls it. The only other overarching influential in FRP ideology is the capitalist profit motive. That influence billionaires and multi-millionaire elites who dictate policy and tactics. They pay to buy that power. Probably most of those elite influencers, i.e., rich anti-government radical conservatives, are themselves Christian nationalists or allied to the movement. The two main influences in the FRP are inextricably intertwined and overlapping. 

This lack of understanding of the radical fundamentalist nature and influence of CN on the FRP is why Officer Hodges didn't refer the Christian symbolism in terms of CN influence. He just thought they were regular garden variety Christians. He did not understand that he was facing radical Christian fundamentalists intent on overthrowing secular government and replacing it with White male-dominated Christian Sharia. He probably still does not understand it.

The second, equally important point that Seidel’s article raises is that probably most rank and file FRP voters and supporters honestly believe that God really is on their side, and/or God chose Lyin' Donnie (the ex-president) to restore America to its fundamentalist, anti-secular, pro-White race Christian roots. The CN movement opposes secular public education and desegregated public schools. The White race is seen by God as superior and destined to rule above all others. At least, that's a core CN belief. It is a key lynchpin underlying the core CN myths (lies) that (i) America was founded as a religious nation, (ii) the US Constitution is a religious document, not secular, and (iii) American secularist society and government constitutes severe persecution of peaceful, humble Christians who just want to live and worship as they wish in peace. That is how radical and inherently anti-democratic, authoritarian, theocratic and autocratic the CN movement really is. That is why Goldwater would be RINO hunted out of the modern FRP.

Thus, more than influence from QAnon, anti-vaxxers, and other secular influences in the FRP, CN is simply bigger and more unifying than all the rest. It easily sweeps in racism and bigotry because those influences are quite compatible with the ideology. It also easily accommodates the current FRP assault on voting by rigging elections (God destined morally superior wealthy White males to run the country) and by suppressing votes, including Democratic, racial minority and LGBQT community votes (God destined White race heterosexual Christians to dominate). In my opinion, CN ideology and beliefs are the single most dominant influence in the modern FRP.

Question: Are CN ideology and beliefs the most dominant influence in the modern FRP, i.e., even more important than special interest money and rich donor money? Or, is the money, or something else, the main influence?

Burying the past…

I can understand reverence for and paying tribute to the dead.  We all have passed loved ones that we will never forget.  And our love for them lives on as long as we can take a breath.

But… for the last several days, maybe more, media watchers have had to visually relive the horrors of 911.  On and on and on, a constant barrage, in movies, in documentaries, in flashbacks.  Come on!  Do people who lost loved ones (for that matter does anyone?) really need to be re-dragged through that kind of memorable torment?  I expect many who were directly affected by 911 don’t even watch, to avoid going into another depression.

Yes, we all remember where we were at the time.  Yes, we all feel terribly sad about the deadly event. And if the media really had any understanding, they’d be more sensitive to the still grieving. 

But no, that’s the media for you.  Milk news cycles for all they’re worth, go for the big ratings, then move on to the next sensationalism (btw, “it’s coming to a media theater near you,” on Sept 18… Capital Riot 2.0).  So get ready!

Maybe it’s just me (that scorns this kind of thing) but, other than al Qaida, does anyone really get anything (any pleasure, any consolation) out of reliving 911?  Grieving people don’t need to have maybe still festering wounds reopened, do they?  

Okay, that was my opinion.  Now...

Question: What are your feelings, your opinions, about the media’s current coverage of the 20^th anniversary of 911?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Why it's (almost) impossible to argue with the right

 

The right only debates with itself: their view and their version of the left. Fighting with that is near impossible

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/18/why-its-almost-impossible-to-argue-with-the-right/

By SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN

Not long after the attacks of September 11, 2001, my mom accused me of hating my country. By then she had fully fallen into the Fox News world, having married a far-right man late in life. But her position still surprised me. I was, after all, her own daughter. Didn't she have a basic idea of what I thought?

I explained that being against the war in Iraq, opposed to invading Afghanistan and all-out critical of just about everything the Bush administration did was not akin to hating my country. We went around in circles. But there was no convincing her that she held the wrong premise and that critique was not hatred.

That wasn't the only time in those years that I dealt with being told that I hated my country, but it certainly was the most frustrating. Again and again, then as now, those of us who make critical arguments about the United States, those of us who question conservative policies, those of us who point out examples of right-wing hypocrisies, aggressions, abuses and lies find ourselves in the strange position of having to argue against a warped understanding of what we advocate.

My mom and I never discussed what I actually thought about the United States, because the entire conversation was framed by her assertion that I hated it and my efforts to explain that I didn't.

I don't think I fully captured the core of the problem until I recently read an essay in The Atlantic by Ibram X. Kendi on how there is no debate over critical race theory. As Kendi puts it:

The Republican operatives, who dismiss the expositions of critical race theorists and anti-racists in order to define critical race theory and anti-racism, and then attack those definitions, are effectively debating themselves. They have conjured an imagined monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation's defenders from that fictional monster.

Kendi brilliantly lays bare that which many of us have been ensnared in for ages — that pundits and politicians create their own version of many progressive, liberal and leftist views, and then they fight with their version. There is no real debate and certainly no dialogue, because the entire game is to offer up a distorted version of a position, then freak out about it.

Once the pattern is recognized it can be seen everywhere. Kendi refers to the way it has been used with Black Lives Matter, the New York Times' 1619 Project, cancel culture, and critical race theory, but we can see the same play made with almost all progressive political positions. Professors are trying to brainwash students to become socialists, feminists think all men are rapists, abortion rights defenders don't care about life, the gay community doesn't respect marriage, and so on. We can even see it in claims that young people are snowflake whiners.

They distort from the start and then take up all of your bandwidth in fighting their distortion. They don't just set the terms; they singlehandedly define them — for both sides.

It isn't just that the right argues with itself. It is also that they do it really loudly.

There is little question that the vituperative, bullying nature of the right's so-called debating is also a core part of the problem. First, they misrepresent you, then they spin up into an incoherent meltdown. Think for a moment of how we now have such a high-profile chorus of right-wing gasbags, all of whom make their illogical points really loudly. Sometimes, as in the case of Alex Jones, they do so while shouting so intensely that they seem to spit into the microphone.

Take, for example, the recent scare over President Joe Biden's door-to-door vaccine strategy. The White House has noted that there is a growing disparity in communities receiving the vaccine. So, Biden proposes the notion that in some communities it might be beneficial to go door-to-door to spread information about vaccine safety and efficacy in order to encourage more people to get vaccinated.

Yet, that's not what the GOP hears. Instead they turn this plan into a sinister strategy, which according to GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), could be used to take all manner of items away from citizens: "They could then go door to door and take your guns. They could go door to door and take your Bibles."

So, what should the White House do? Refute these loony claims? Doing so only allows the right an ongoing platform to repeat them and forces the White House to engage in an exhausting repeat loop of trying to explain themselves. Yet leaving these unfounded accusations out there unchallenged has the real risk of costing lives. It's an impossible situation because it shuts down any form of reasonable exchange.

You can't debate with someone who isn't even listening to your point.

The rub, as Kendi makes clear, is that one simply can't argue with someone who won't even listen. "How should thinkers respond to monstrous lies?" he asks. "[T]alking with people who have created a monologue with two points of view, theirs and what they impute to you, gets old."

But what doesn't get old is finding a way to expose the rhetorical games played by the right. You might not want to bother trying to debate them, but there is much to be said for finding ways to reveal the faulty logic, hubris and bluster that so often characterizes their manufactured outrage.

This, of course, is why irony and satire do a better job of diving into the fray than reasoned critical discourse. Satire can take the absurdity of these right-wing faux debates and expose their spectacle. Think, for example, of how Desi Lydic Foxsplains for "The Daily Show." Even better, check out her takedown of the fake debates staged on cable news. Or consider how Samantha Bee drives home Kendi's point in her bit, " What Are Conservatives Screaming About today?" where she dissects the irrationality of the critical race theory backlash. Trevor Noah underscores the point the right has manufactured their version of CRT with a segment called, "Do Any Republicans Know What Critical Race Theory Actually Is?"

What this critical satire does is both refuse to debate with someone incoherent and irrational, while also refusing to let their claims remain unchallenged. Using irony is often the only way to fight the illogically absurd.