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.

The impeachment howitzer: The new normal

Lindsey Graham: Impeach Joe Biden

Salon writes on potential upcoming festivities in Washington in an article entitled, Joe Biden will be impeached — because Democrats have forgotten how to fight:

In 2015, I publicly warned that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election. My prediction was dismissed as "crazy" and "hysterical."

We were again slurred as suffering from "Trump derangement syndrome" and exaggerating the dangers that Trump and his regime represented to American democracy and society, somehow for our own personal gain. The political class and the hope-peddlers kept on insisting that the "institutions" were "strong" and that the "rule of law" would shut down Trump and his fascist movement if they went too far.

Once again, our warnings were proven correct. If anything, those who repeatedly sounded the alarm about the existential danger that Donald Trump and his movement represent were too careful and restrained.

Pro-democracy voices and other patriots repeatedly warned that Trump would attempt a coup in order to remain in power. Again, the professional smart people and others invested in "normalcy" dismissed such warnings. In their collective mind, because America was a "democracy" that had always seen an orderly transfer of power between administrations, it would always remain so. On Jan. 6 of this year, they and the world learned that fictions and fables of American exceptionalism offer no real protection against the rising tide of neofascism. Some eight months later, the Trump movement's coup against democracy continues.

Democrats have been unable to marshal an adequate defense, and are at dire risk of being routed without even putting up a fight. Which leads to one more warning and prediction. The Trump-controlled Republican Party will in all likelihood impeach President Joe Biden if they win control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections. They will not be able to convict Biden in the Senate and remove him from office — just as Democrats were unable to convict Trump — but that's largely beside the point. 

There are many conditional qualifiers to that prediction, but given the Republican Party's escalating embrace of fascism, Biden's impeachment is more likely than not.

What I possess, however, is a willingness to accept the evidence and what it reveals about the health of American democracy. I am also not hobbled by a faith in American exceptionalism or a belief that democracy is inherent to this country and will endure forever. I am also not so naïve as to believe that America's democratic experiment is destined to end positively — in reality, America's multiracial democracy is very much a work in progress.[1]

As evidence of the possibility of an impeachment, the author cites the fact that in the closed epistemology of far right internet blither and lies, it is already taken for granted that Biden will be impeached. Also cited is the argument that there won't be significant consequences if the fascist Republican Party (FRP) does take the House in the upcoming, likely rigged and fraudulent election of 2022 and then impeaches Biden. The FRP base will roar in approval! 

The author also points out that decades of FRP propaganda and disinformation have convinced most rank and file Republicans and other conservatives that the Democratic Party is illegitimate and does not reflect real American values. That rings true. The rhetoric from the right for at least the last 20 years has been mostly (~95% ?) rage and hate tinged with a lot of fear, horror and smug, self-righteous fundamentalist Christian moral judgment. Elitist radical right Christian nationalist moral judgments against Democrats comes across loud, clear and undeniable. It is driven by raw lust for revenge for imagined horrors such as the terrible, terrible persecution of Christians at the hands of evil, socialist, cannibal pedophile Democrats. 

According to current Christian nationalist mythology, humble, innocent Christians in America are now severely persecuted for merely wanting to worship their God as they are commanded by their morally righteous elites. That God demands revenge good and hard. Impeaching Biden would be a nice gesture on the long road to Christianizing America by imposing Christian Sharia and resetting the governmental, social and economic clock to ~1850 or thereabouts.

There probably will be an impeachment of Biden (~75% chance?) if the House flips back to FRP control after the rigged elections. Impeached for what? That doesn't matter. Just impeach him. Use the final withdrawal from Afghanistan as the excuse. Impeach him for criticizing the use of horse medicine to treat COVID. Just use whatever excuse that looks at least remotely plausible to the rabid FRP base.

Questions: Is it more likely than not that if the FRP gains control of the House, they will impeach Biden? Is Lyin' Donnie (the ex-president) really the leader of an American fascist movement as the author shockingly claims?

Footnote: 

1. The Salon article also includes these light-hearted thoughts for consideration:

Gregory Wallance writes at The Hill that "a remarkably broad range of Republicans," from Marjorie Taylor Greene to Lindsey Graham, "are turning the Constitution's impeachment clause into a negative branding howitzer aimed at the White House":

Under total war rules, it's irrelevant that Biden did not commit an impeachable offense, unlike Trump, who committed two, ....

Yes, under total war rules, neither truth nor democracy matters. Winning matters.

Political party affiliation based on educational differences

In a puzzling article, How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift, the New York Times reports that people with a four year college degree have moved into the Democratic Party in large numbers, while a roughly equal number of people without college degrees have moved to the Republican Party. Several assertions in the article do not seem to make much sense, maybe unless one believes that there is a massive disconnect in perceptions of reality and self-interest between the two groups.

The article asserts that it is not universities and colleges that have converted students to be liberal. Instead, they come to post high school education already liberal. The article also asserts that the liberal values of this group has pushed the Democratic Party (DP) to the left, which inherently alienates some people. That tends to move them into the Republican Party (RP). The strange thing is that some of the alienating liberal values benefit all people, including Republicans. The NYT writes:

College graduates attribute racial inequality, crime and poverty to complex structural and systemic problems, while voters without a degree tend to focus on individualist and parochial explanations. It is easier for college graduates, with their higher levels of affluence, to vote on their values, not simply on economic self-interest. They are likelier to have high levels of social trust and to be open to new experiences. They are less likely to believe in God.

As college graduates increased their share of the electorate, they gradually began to force the Democrats to accommodate their interests and values. They punched above their electoral weight, since they make up a disproportionate number of the journalists, politicians, activists and poll respondents who most directly influence the political process.

At the same time, the party’s old industrial working-class base was in decline, as were the unions and machine bosses who once had the power to connect the party’s politicians to its rank and file. The party had little choice but to broaden its appeal, and it adopted the views of college-educated voters on nearly every issue, slowly if fitfully alienating its old working-class base.

The reasons for white working-class alienation with the Democrats have shifted from decade to decade. At times, nearly every major issue area — race, religion, war, environmentalism, guns, trade, immigration, sexuality, crime, social welfare programs — has been a source of Democratic woes.

What the Democratic Party’s positions on these very different issues have had in common is that they reflected the views of college-educated liberals, even when in conflict with the apparent interests of working-class voters — and that they alienated some number of white voters without a degree. Environmentalists demanded regulations on the coal industry; coal miners bolted from the Democrats. Suburban voters supported an assault gun ban; gun owners shifted to the Republicans. Business interests supported free trade agreements; old manufacturing towns broke for Mr. Trump.

Either I misunderstand it, or there are some significant contradictions and/or incomplete analysis and context. Other than possibly liberal policy on the environment, trade and immigration, of the 10 major issues listed, it isn't clear that any of them are significantly damaging to the interests of most average people. For example, some data indicates that illegal immigration can hold local wages down, so that is a real but limited effect. Some other data indicates that major trade deals tend to lead to mixed results with some job losses in one area and some gains in others. But one can argue that (i) regarding these issues, government has failed to protect adversely affected people, while at the same time, (ii) the RP is the main obstacle to protecting them. Thus, by moving to the RP, some people damage their own interests. 

Regarding old manufacturing towns and jobs, the RP has not been able to significantly change the economic forces that cause economic distress in areas in economic decline. RP opposition to domestic spending for social welfare programs is also arguably damaging to the interests of adversely affected people. On every major issue, the RP has built a false reality over the decades that leads a lot of people to support them, while they have not delivered much of serious substance on issues like jobs and wages.

The article refers to some liberal policy preferences as in apparent conflict with working class voter interests. That is baffling. What seriously meaningful interests would be burdened if the liberal policies went into effect? In the case of an assault gun ban, those guns would be banned. Although that is a tangible impact, what effect on an affected person’s life would that amount to? As far as I know, there has never been many or any situations where someone needed an assault rifle for self-defense. Hand guns work just fine and so do regular hunting rifles.

Similarly, in the case of a right to same-sex marriage, religious people screamed that they would be persecuted, silenced and forced to perform same-sex marriages. That is standard RP propaganda built on lies. In commerce, how much of a burden on a person’s religious freedom is it to bake a cake  and decorate it for a same-sex couple? Just about none. Nonetheless, the RP propaganda is that it is a horrible religious freedom burden, socialist tyranny and other hyperbolic nonsense. 

All in all, the disconnect between reality and people fleeing the bad DP and flocking to the good RP looks to be built mostly on vaporware, or dark free speech, maybe about 80% illusion and ~20% reality. 

The DP is not perfect here. It is the case that the DP has walked away from many average people in some plausible ways. But one has to look at what the alternative RP has to offer. What does the RP offer that is different and better? A lot of promises, but whatever they do does not trickle down much. They are laser focused on establishing a Christian theocratic world view for government, society and commerce. The RP wants everyone to carry concealed weapons. The RP wants to deregulate businesses, deny climate change, and get rid of abortions, secular public schools and elections. How the hell is any of that that going to solve the real world problems of average people in distress? It might be good for gun companies, church operations and the rise of fascism, but that does not help distressed people or the climate.

Questions: It is reasonable to level any criticism at all on people who flee from the DP based on RP propaganda and lies, or are the two parties too much alike for such criticism to hold much water? Is there a lot of false reality and propaganda in the reasons people move from the DP to the RP, or vice versa? How alienating are proposed DP policies and rhetoric compared to proposed RP policies and rhetoric? If the RP is the party of big capitalists and the DP the party of little capitalists, does America need a socialist or some other kind of party to be the party of the workers and/or the middle and lower classes?