Our Lives Don’t Matter

Guest Post by Eric Peters

George Floyd didn’t get a knee because his killer was a racist. He got it because his killer is an armed government worker.

An authoritarian.

The distinction is important.

Daniel Shaver wasn’t black – and the AGW (Philip Brailsford) who got away with killing this unarmed white man who was crawling on the floor begging for his life wasn’t motivated by racism, either.

He was motivated by something far worse than racism – because authoritarianism is policy.

AGWs – the term is used not in a derogatory but in a literal sense – are not in the business of protecting rights. They are in the business of enforcing laws (they use exactly this term to describe themselves). To the nth degree, submission to the law being the fundamental thing.

Including, implicitly, submission to them.

Think carefully about that – about what it means. As opposed to what it used to mean to be a peace officer, whose business was protecting people’s rights.

The AGW who killed Shaver didn’t get away with killing him because of white privilege, either. He had something infinitely more potent because codified:

AGW privilege.

This isn’t a rhetorical device, like the other (political) use of the term. It is literally true. Armed government workers – all colors, both sexes – have legal privileges unique to their class. Among the most dangerous is qualified immunity, which limits the extent to which they can be held accountable for the harm they cause.

This includes personal civil liability.

Even when they’re found guilty of some heinous offense – they don’t pay. We do. Taxpayers finance the settlements handed out to the victims of AGWs – including (soon) the family of George Floyd.

Similarly, the $1.6 million taxpayers paid out to 54-year-old David Eckert (incidentally white) of New Mexico, who was subjected to “multiple digital penetrations” and “three forced enemas” by an AGW who abused him not because he was white but just because.

Also, Johnny Wheatcroft  – also incidentally white – repeatedly Tazered in the testicles (by incidentally white AGWs) while lying prone on the ground and helpless  . . . just because.

Do you suppose being able to abuse people just because – and not be held accountable, personally – makes AGWs more or less likely to abuse people just because?

If you shot someone who was unarmed, lying on the ground and begging for his life – or choked the life out of a man using your knee – you’d not only go to prison for many years, you’d be sued personally – into the poorhouse. Your family would lose everything. Your kids would be destitute.

Do you suppose that knowledge makes it more or less likely that you’ll shoot someone who is unarmed, lying on the ground and begging you not to shoot him?

Are you more – or less – likely to attack someone who hasn’t attacked you – and who has the legal right to defend himself?

You have no legal right to defend yourself against the attack of an AGW – even if you’ve done nothing to provoke the attack. You are required to submit and obey and hope you survive. If you do, maybe your neighbors will be forced to pay your medical bills.

The Shaver incident (more here) is one of many involving white victims of AGWs, but the point being missed – deliberately – isn’t the color of the victims of AGWs but rather that all of us – regardless of color the color of our skin – are literally at the mercy of anyone with a badge and a gun.

We have an authoritarian problem. Not a race problem – though race is being used to distract us from that fact.

Racist AGWs do exist, of course. Just like the WuFlu. But in both cases the reality has been grossly exaggerated to manipulate, terrify and divide and demoralize us. The threat presented by Wuflu was – is – incidental. The harm imposed by the government using WuFlu as the excuse has been catastrophic.

Similarly, while there are racist AGWs, it is the AGW as such that’s the inherently dangerous creature – like the rattlesnake some backwoods people dance with in order to test their faith.

Whether the AGW dislikes you on account of your skin is far less relevant than what the AGW can do to you, regardless of your skin – because of his (or her) almost limitless authority.

Even in a best-case scenario – an AGW who isn’t an outright sadist looking to hurt/kill you – the essence of the threat is the same. All AGWs have effectively unlimited power to do as they like to any of us, anytime they like. The law doesn’t protect us.

It shields them.

This ugly reality hangs over every interaction between an AGW and a “civilian.”

We all know it. Who feels “safe” when they look in the rearview and see an AGW behind them? It is because we know that at any moment – at the whim of the AGW behind the wheel – those lights might come on and we’ll be forced to “pull over” – even if we haven’t violated any law – because AGWs have the power to make us and we are required to defer to their authority.

This ought to tell people something.

The “good cop” is like the Social Security “contribution” – an oxymoron. He is “good” to the extent that he doesn’t use the essentially unlimited authority he has; that he refrains from enforcing the myriad petty and not-so-petty laws he has at his disposal to ruin your day, empty your wallet and perhaps end your life.   

That he won’t scream at you to get on the ground, now! for hesitating to obey his order to hand over your ID, just because he demanded it. That he won’t just take the $5,000 in cash he found in the glovebox of your car, which you had planned to use to buy the motorcycle you were on your way to check out when you got “pulled over” for not wearing a seatbelt.

Nothing restrains AGWs but themselves.

That kind of power is dangerous, intoxicating and corrupting. It is very hard to resist the rip tide of an unequal balance of power when it tilts your way.

That it is not abused more often is the wonder.

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