The Power of the Shield

It’s hard being a cop these days.

Part of me wants to be sympathetic.  The Boys in Blue are expected to uphold Law and Order in a society that celebrates License and Orgy.  On the one side, they’ve got the journalistic classes and the fattened masses, cowards and malcontents, who are utterly incapable of judging their actions.  On the other, they have the Untermenschen, those half-tamed barbarians, egged on by debauched culture and lobbyists, who speak nothing but the language of violence.

If the media starts yelling about “Excessive force,” it’s dollars-to-donuts that some degenerate was refusing to comply.

But these times being what they are, I know I can’t mistake a Uniform for Officer Friendly.  Nine times out of ten, I’ll be safer providing my own security, than trusting the Gears of Justice.  As Bukowski said in Barfly, “I don’t [hate the police], but I seem to feel better when they’re not around.”

Enter the latest in a long series of Exhibit As: (H/T Blazing Cat Fur)

As the couple stayed huddled in the hallway, Goldsberry still clutching her weapon, watched in horror as the unidentified man pushed open the front door, which they swore had been locked.

A man crept around the corner aiming his weapon at them both and shouted, “Drop the f—- gun or I’ll f—- shoot you,” he ordered.

Goldsberry’s screams heightened, but Dorris studied the man who was now standing inside the apartment. He observed him holding a tactical shield for protection and decided he appeared to be well equipped enough to be police.

This is nothing new to anyone who’s been paying attention: no-knock warrants, shot-up dogs, endangered children – it’s getting to the point where somebody needs to do a Bayesian Analysis to determine where the balance lies between P(Banging and swearing at the front door|Rape and Murder) and P(Banging and swearing at the front door|No-Knock Warrant).  As a single guy, it’s a safe bet for me to go Full Sheeple – lie down and take it, try and enjoy it – but if there are women in your household, you risk having the Wichita Horror be your last living memory.

And the no-knock warrants are just one example.  Just look at this exchange between Maddox – who perfectly summarizes how most of us feel about present-day police tactics – and an LAPD officer who (if I’ve guessed his identity correctly) is definitively filed under the “Good Guys” column.

What’s going on here?

It’s pretty simple, really: our civilization has forgotten how to be civilized.

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Let’s start with Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, a fictionalized response to the counter-culture movement of the late-fifties/sixties:

To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority . . . other than through the tragic logic of history. The unique ‘poll tax’ that we must pay was unheard of. No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead—and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.

Unlike the B-Moive of the same title, the novel was an in-depth mediation upon the nature of Civilized Man.  The Civilized Man – the Citizen – will indulge in the luxuries his civilization offers, and in eras of remarkable peace he might even go about unarmed… but ultimately he is the Man who takes responsibility for his society.  At all times he is ready to react with swift and proportionate violence in defence of orderly values.  He might be wearing a business suit or a toga, but underneath such peaceful accoutrements beats the heart of a soldier.

Enter the Peace Officer.  While the Citizen embraces his moral duty to ensure protection of the weak, and enforcement of fair-play amongst his peers, the Peace Officer is the man who goes above and beyond; he not only ensures the peace in his own home and community, he’s legally obligated to seek out and intervene in those places where the Hobbesian Brute has taken over.  As such he is granted a magical talisman by civilization – he is given a badge.

It is this magic which turns him into Officer Friendly.

A tense situation.  A fight over women, a knives drawn, raised voices, ready to slide into chaos at any moment.  There are no inherent rules or guidelines present.  All are potential victims; all are potential victimizers.  Just as the cusp of violence approaches-

“Oy, what’s all this, then?” The Bobby strolls in, twirling his baton in an absent-minded manner.  Tensions evaporate as this one, Chosen by the Gods, intercedes in the situation.  He is unafraid; he is unassailable.

Like the value of paper-currency, and all other forms of magic, the Shield only works if we believe in it.  To the Citizen it is a belief inviolate; the Sacredness of Civilization, the Sacredness of the Badge.  Amongst a society of such Men, it truly does confer protection, as the merest hint of violence against the bearer brings down the fury all against the one who threatened it.

In a civilized society, the Peace Officer isn’t frightened by conceal-carry, and has no need for no-knock warrants.  He has something better; he is protected by the Gods.

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Zimmerman may have been found innocent, but the message has been delivered Loud and Clear: only professionals are allowed to patrol their own neighbourhoods, if you hear the screams of Kitty Genovese you are to phone 911, hide under the rug, and wait for the Proper Authorities to arrive for body-removal and evidence gathering.

By no means should you do anything to protect your fellow “citizens.”  As Free Northerner points out:

Zimmerman was persecuted by the state for the purpose of making you think twice about helping your neighbour.

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They want you to question yourself when you hear someone in trouble. Eventually, when enough people question themselves and do not intervene because they do not want to go risk a year-long trial, death threats, and public opprobrium, community trust collapses, because nobody is intervening to keep neighbourhoods safe.

Eventually, organic community dies, and the police and the state can step in.

In other words, we no longer live in a Civilization; we live in an Occupied Territory.

The Magic of the Shield – that spell which turns a Peacekeeper into a Peace Officer – only works in a society of Civilized Men.  It only works when you have a population of Citizens who are willing and able to enforce Law and Order with their very own Peace Makers.  It only works when the Emperor Himself is but a servant to the Mandate of Heaven. It only works when the Truth isn’t just a label on a shelf of consumer goods.

Separation of Church and State was never about keeping religion out of governance – it was about keeping the magic in.  But we’ve killed the Magic, we’ve killed the Truth, we’ve killed God, and we’ve killed Reason.  With all of that gone, we are all of us Brutes – all we have left is is Brute Force.

Welcome to the degenerate modern progressive era.  Things are going to get worse before they get better.

La Vérité by Jules Joseph Lefebvre

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