Sunday Sermon

Arthur Silber has written a long, bitter, funny post that younz oughta read, and not only cause he links me an' 'at. As usual, he's pretty exhaustive, so I have only a parenthetical note to add.

The subject is the University of Florida taser incident. In short: a student asked an impolitic question at a John Kerry forum--and by impolitic, reader, we mean: the only relevant question of the evening--and was in due course hauled to the back of the auditorium by a gang of univeristy cops and repeatedly tasered while a gaggle of pussified, useless students and professors sat around meekly, doing nothing. That, friends, is the triumph of incipient totalitarianism. It's not the pursuit of foreign wars; it's not the spying; it's not the secret prisons; it's not the most vicious of secret tortures; it's not one-party rule; it's not the sorta sub rosa elimination of habeas protections and Constitutional gurantees. Authoritarianism is in evident triumph when hundreds of people have so internalized "the way to act" that they sit by idly while a small handful of under-trained and out-of-shape pseudo-cops torture and abuse a boy right in front of them for no reason at all.

If but one in ten of that audience had simply stood up, walked in a group to the back of the auditorium, and interposed themselves between those cops and their victim, they would have arrested the whole sordid, brutal scene. Instead, everyone sat on their hands, or whined plaintively "Stop!" or "Why are you doing that?" Why were they doing it? Because they could. Because they can. Because the beastly human animal, when the structures of authority allow it to act with impunity, acts.

Deference to constituted authority is vice. A concerted effort at noncooperation is the duty of every free-thinking person. I advocate no orthodoxy in this approach. Some of you don't pay income tax, and some don't pay parking tickets. These are equally valid. Avoid cops, and when they're unavoidable, answer only in yesses and nos. Drive slowly in the passing lane (as recently advocated by my friends at SMBIVA). Underreport your income. Disobey as many laws as you reasonably can. Commit minor crimes against public property. Buy drugs. Live your fucking lives.