|
it seems to me that you can find this goofball law problematic without having to find oneself in the junior high school debate team-style rhetorical pit that ustwo seems to confuse with an interesting counter-argument. the problem with this law is that it exists. it should be repealed and the sooner the better. folk imagine that cowboy george would use it. maybe he would. the notion of a far-right dictatorship seems plausible to some and not others--but that is not the debate, really, is it? the debate is about the law--to derail it onto speculation about what cowboy george might or might not do with it is secondary. tho it wont be if he acts on its basis. but that is equally true of any president that would act on its basis.
one of the few things that the united states has managed that is definitely a good thing is that it has maintained a separation between police and military functions.
of course the national guard was kind of a constant potential exception.
when i was a kid i thought the armories and playing soldier were kinda cool, protecting "us" from some enemy. later, i realized that i was that enemy (as somone who might participate in left politics, which is by definition "civil unrest" in reactionaryland), and so the national guard did not seem so cool any more.
but since the reagan period, they have been used in military operations, in order to circumvent laws restricting the use of the real military (go conservatives!) and now that use has been routinized and so by doing that the national guard was shifted pretty definitely into the purview of the military. i dont know what status they have legally, though.
and even before reagan, i am not entirely sure what they were. cops that dressed like soldiers? soldiers that did cop things?
anyway, the military did not perform police functions, did not suppress protest etc., and that seems to me a very good thing indeed.
i sometimes wonder if the bush people are preparing for some massive breakdown in civil order in the states. i ask myself what they are afraid of and why they seem to be preparing for it.
but i dont know the answers to that, so i wonder some more.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|