Instead of being held to a higher standard of justice for betraying the public"s trust and preying on a child, a police officer in New Jersey was let off on rape charges without having to spend a single day in jail.
The post Court Allows Cop Who Raped 15yo Girl and Impregnated Her to Walk Free—NO JAIL appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A cop lost his mind and opened fire on an innocent man for no reason. Now, the innocent man is charged with assault for causing the panic attack.
Citizens were outraged after a former cop who was caught with horrifying images of abused children was given a suspended sentence and walked free.
A federal court has just handed down an insulting decision by claiming that a cop shooting at a fleeing minivan full of children does not violate their rights.
A man who admitted to repeatedly sexually abusing a 12-year-old escapes jail as a father and son are sentenced to years in prison for selling a plant.
A cop shot an unarmed woman in the face on video, attempted to cover it up by claiming he was in danger, did not violate a woman"s rights, according to the court.
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1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people .
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control."
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.
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Seattle, WA — An overzealous cop was fired in 2015 after the officer was caught falsely accusing a 69-year-old man of swinging a golf club at her patrol car. Accused by the police chief of acting with racial bias in an unnecessarily aggressive manner, Officer Cynthia Whitlatch wrongfully arrested an Air Force veteran walking down the street using a golf club as a cane. Although Whitlatch argued that her dash cam video recorded the elderly man swinging at her, the video does not support any of her allegations. Now, two years later, this cop is having her termination reversed and receiving two years of back pay.
As KIRO 7 reports:
The back pay is more than $105,000 in two lump payments, paying her for 90 hours a month for the time since she was fired. All sustained findings by the Office of Professional Accountability about Whitlatch’s conduct will remain in place.
The agreement, signed Saturday by Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, also is expected to give Whitlatch her full pension for her 18 years as an officer and the two additional years after her firing.
“Her not being on the force, that’s a good thing, regardless of how it is done,” Wingate said. “I wish nothing bad on nobody. I’m not here to hate on anybody. … That’s not me.”
At 1:06 p.m. on July 9, 2014, while collecting her near $50 per hour salary, the dash cam video from Whitlatch’s patrol car captured footage of the officer harassing 69-year-old William Wingate, who appears standing on the corner and using a golf club to support himself. After stepping out of her patrol car, Whitlatch immediately orders the elderly man to drop his golf club even though he is not using it in a threatening manner. Unable to hear the officer at first, Wingate removes an earbud from his left ear and repeatedly asks the antagonistic cop: “What’s going on?”
READ MORE: Mentally Ill Man Refuses to Take Medication So SWAT Shows Up and Kills Him
As Whitlatch continues ordering him to put down the golf club, Wingate tells her to call someone because he’s been walking in Seattle with that golf club for 20 years. After she informs Wingate that he’s being audio and videotaped, the apparently delusional officer accuses the elderly gentleman of swinging his golf club at her.
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“I ain’t done nothing to nobody,” Wingate explains to her.
In response, Whitlatch says, “You just swang that golf club at me.”
“I did not!” Wingate defended.
“Yes, you did. Right back there. It was on audio and videotape,” Whitlatch lied.
While Whitlatch can be heard requesting for backup on her radio, Wingate begins explaining to a bystander that he’s being harassed for no good reason. After Whitlatch threatens to arrest him, Wingate tells her, “My church is up there, and everybody knows me.”
As Officer Chris Cole approaches the scene, Whitlatch can briefly be seen brandishing a nightstick while following Wingate. After the frightened senior hands over his golf club, Whitlatch digs through his pockets but finds nothing illegal. The rest of the video depicts Wingate being loaded into the back of a transport van and sent to jail for committing no crime.
Falsely accused of swinging his golf club at a patrol car, Wingate spent over 25 hours in jail after being booked for obstruction and harassment. Although Whitlatch pushed the Seattle City Attorney’s Office to charge the elderly veteran with obstructing a police officer, an assistant city attorney declined to charge him with obstruction but decided instead to charge Wingate with unlawful use of a weapon to intimidate.
READ MORE: "Mommy am I Going to Die?" Mom Calls 9-1-1 for Paramedics, Cop Shows Up, Shoots 4-yo Daughter
Unable to afford decent legal representation, Wingate pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge under an agreement in which the case would be expunged after two years if he complied with all conditions ordered by the judge. But after reviewing the dash cam footage, the Seattle City Attorney’s Office dismissed the charge, and the police chief formally apologized to Wingate nearly eight months after his arrest.
After the dash cam video was released to the public in January of 2015, Mayor Ed Murray ordered Whitlatch to be removed from public patrol duties. In a disciplinary action report filed last year, Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole accused Whitlatch of being inappropriately aggressive while unnecessarily escalating the situation.
“You never asked the individual any questions during the Terry stop to determine if he had, in fact, swung the golf club towards you and/or into a stop sign,” wrote Chief O’Toole. “Despite that, and despite never actually seeing him swing a golf club toward your car or hitting a stop sign, you actively participated in moving forward with an arrest for obstruction and even called the prosecutor days later to push for prosecution of the individual.”
In April of 2015, Wingate filed a lawsuit against Whitlatch for race discrimination, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violation of his civil rights. His lawsuit also accused her of making racially derogatory comments on her personal Facebook page after Wingate’s arrest and the Ferguson riots. In her report, Chief O’Toole noted that Whitlatch also made disturbing comments about the race of a judge and deputy chief involved in expunging Wingate’s criminal record related to his wrongful arrest.
READ MORE: SWAT Team Barges in Assaults Two Children, Smashes Everything. Whoops Wrong House
“You expressed a strong belief that these actions were taken because the judge and deputy chief are black, and that race drove the decision-making of a high-ranking Department official and a long-serving Municipal Court Judge, not the legitimate factual and legal analysis by thoughtful and dedicated public servants,” O’Toole wrote. “Such statements further indicate that your biased views prevent you from being able to honestly reflect on your own job performance and successfully receive constructive criticism of your policing techniques because you view the critiques as racially motivated.”
Unwilling to admit any fault, Whitlatch claims that she was being targeted due to the fact that she is white. In her report, O’Toole wrote, “I was disappointed by your failure…to take any responsibility, or show any understanding that your conduct at issue here was inappropriate.”
“Your inability to understand, even in hindsight, that your behavior was unnecessarily aggressive, an abuse of discretion, and negatively impacted the community’s confidence in this police service, offers me no pathway to understand how you can improve and do better,” O’Toole concluded. “For the reasons summarized above, and while giving careful consideration to your full employment history as well as the facts of this case, your employment is terminated.”
Now, however, all that sentiment has apparently changed and O’Toole signed the grievance resolution on Saturday to show that Witlatch retired instead of being fired. An innocent elderly man was assaulted, kidnapped, and falsely charged. The cop who did this to him was rewarded with a $50 per hour salary for two years of not working. And, Americans have the audacity to call this ‘justice.’
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“There is one criminal justice system for citizens - especially black and brown ones - and another for police in the United States.”
- Redditt Hudson, former St. Louis police officer
President Trump needs to be reminded that no one is above the law, especially the police.
Unfortunately, Trump and Jeff Sessions, head of the Justice Department (much like their predecessors) appear to have few qualms about giving police the green light to kill, shoot, taser, abuse and steal from American citizens in the so-called name of law and order.
Between Trump’s pandering to the police unions and Sessions’ pandering to Trump, this constitutionally illiterate duo has opened the door to a new era of police abuses.
As senior editor Adam Serwer warns in The Atlantic, “When local governments violate the basic constitutional rights of citizens, Americans are supposed to be able to look to the federal government to protect those rights. Sessions has made clear that when it comes to police abuses, they’re now on their own. This is the principle at the heart of ‘law and order’ rhetoric: The authorities themselves are bound by neither.”
Brace yourselves: things are about to get downright ugly.
By shielding police from charges of grave misconduct while prosecuting otherwise law-abiding Americans for the most trivial “offenses,” the government has created a world in which there are two sets of laws: one set for the government and its gun-toting agents, and another set for you and me.
No matter which way you spin it, “we the people” are always on the losing end of the deal.
If you’re a cop in the American police state, you can now break the law in a myriad of ways without suffering any major, long-term consequences.
Indeed, not only are cops protected from most charges of wrongdoing—whether it’s shooting unarmed citizens (including children and old people), raping and abusing young women, falsifying police reports, trafficking drugs, or soliciting sex with minors—but even on the rare occasions when they are fired for misconduct, it’s only a matter of time before they get re-hired again.
For example, Oregon police officer Sean Sullivan was forced to resign after being accused of “grooming” a 10-year-old girl for a sexual relationship. A year later, Sullivan was hired on as a police chief in Kansas.
St. Louis police officer Eddie Boyd III was forced to resign after a series of incidents in which he “pistol-whipped a 12-year-old girl in the face in 2006, and in 2007 struck a child in the face with his gun or handcuffs before falsifying a police report,” he was quickly re-hired by another Missouri police department.
As The Washington Post reports: “In the District, police were told to rehire an officer who allegedly forged prosecutors’ signatures on court documents. In Texas, police had to reinstate an officer who was investigated for shooting up the truck driven by his ex-girlfriend’s new man. In Philadelphia, police were compelled to reinstate an officer despite viral video of him striking a woman in the face. In Florida, police were ordered to reinstate an officer fired for fatally shooting an unarmed man.”
Much of the “credit” for shielding these rogue cops goes to influential police unions and laws providing for qualified immunity, police contracts that “provide a shield of protection to officers accused of misdeeds and erect barriers to residents complaining of abuse,” state and federal laws that allow police to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing, and rampant cronyism among government bureaucrats.
Whether it’s at the federal level with President Trump, Congress and the Judiciary, or at the state and local level, those deciding whether a police officer should be immune from having to personally pay for misbehavior on the job all belong to the same system, all with a vested interest in protecting the police and their infamous code of silence: city and county attorneys, police commissioners, city councils and judges.
It’s a pretty sweet deal if you can get it, I suppose: protection from the courts, immunity from wrongdoing, paid leave while you’re under investigation, the assurance that you won’t have to spend a dime of your own money in your defense, the removal of disciplinary charges from your work file, and then the high probability that you will be rehired and returned to the streets.
It’s a chilling prospect, isn’t it?
According to the New York Times, “Some experts say thousands of law enforcement officers may have drifted from police department to police department even after having been fired, forced to resign or convicted of a crime.”
It’s happening all across the country.
This is how perverse justice in America has become.
Incredibly, while our own protections against government abuses continue to be dismantled, a growing number of states are adopting Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBoR)—written by police unions—which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.
In other words, the LEOBoR protects police officers from being treated as we are treated during criminal investigations.
Not only are officers given a 10-day “cooling-off period” during which they cannot be forced to make any statements about the incident, but when they are questioned, it must be “for a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with plenty of breaks for food and water.”
These LEOBoRs epitomize everything that is wrong with America today.
Now once in a while, police officers engaged in wrongdoing are actually charged for abusing their authority and using excessive force against American citizens.
Occasionally, those officers are even sentenced for their crimes against the citizenry.
Yet in just about every case, it’s still the American taxpayer who foots the bill.
Human Rights Watch notes that taxpayers actually pay three times for officers who repeatedly commit abuses: “once to cover their salaries while they commit abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers; and a third time through payments into police ‘defense’ funds provided by the cities.”
This is a recipe for disaster.
“In a democratic society,” observed Oakland police chief Sean Whent, “people have a say in how they are policed.”
Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy, which means that “we the people” not only have a say in how we are policed—we are the chiefs of police.
Mesquite, TX — As the Free Thought Project reported earlier this year, police were caught on video tasering a young man’s testicles and his body — until he died. Now, we have just learned that although the Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson found that the officers involved had committed a crime during their torture — they cannot be charged.
“If I could go back in time and have this case, it would be indicted,” said Michael Snipes, the first assistant district attorney. “We would have pursued criminally negligent homicide charges.”
These charges cannot be brought now, however, because — in spite of the family just finding out about their son’s horrifying death — cops kept the footage of it secret long enough for the statute of limitations to expire.
As My Statesmen reports, such charges cannot be brought more than three years after the incident, which came to the district attorney’s attention as the result of an American-Statesman investigation two months ago. And while there is no such limitation on the higher charge of manslaughter, Snipes said the officers’ behavior that contributed to Graham’s death didn’t reach the level of a knowing disregard for his life.
Now, the nightmare Graham’s parents have been enduring since losing their son that fateful night, just got even worse.
On August 14, 2013, Kathy and Robert Dyer got a phone call one night that is every parent’s nightmare — their son, Graham, was in the hospital. The 18-year-old boy had been severely injured during a struggle with police and was fighting for his life — a fight he would lose.
When Kathy and Robert got to the hospital that night, police refused to let them see their son. “They said he was in serious trouble — that he had felony charges for assaulting an officer,” Kathy recalled.
READ MORE: City Refuses to Keep Paying Legal Fees For Cop Who Shot & Killed Unarmed Man
Graham had taken LSD that night and his friends called police after he had a bad reaction to it. Police claimed Graham injured himself as they drove him to jail. While the video does show Graham flailing back and forth, police failed to mention to the parents that they’d tortured him, repeatedly, with a taser — including deploying it on his genitalia.
Although this tragic incident happened in 2013 Kathy and Robert are only now finding out what happened to their son. For more than two years, the Mesquite police department would keep the video of Graham — before he went to the hospital — a secret. Now, after watching the video, we know why.
Thanks to the work of Eric Dexheimer at Austin’s MyStatesman, the Dyer’s story is now being told. And although the Mesquite police department won’t face charges for their horrifying actions, they are getting some much-deserved negative attention.
As MyStatesman reported in April:
It seemed improbable the five officers who’d brought him in couldn’t safely subdue Graham. The youngest of the Dyers’ three children was small and slight — 5-foot-4, 110 pounds. He was a skateboarder, not a linebacker.
As the morning passed, a series of scans showed Graham’s brain activity slowing to a stop. “The worst day ever,” Kathy said. Their son’s autopsy said he died of self-inflicted head injuries — an accident, the medical examiner concluded.
Even in the dark days following their son’s death, the Dyers tended to believe the police. Why wouldn’t they? Kathy, a civil engineer, and Robert, a teacher, were solid citizens.
Even though they were originally inclined to believe police, Dyer’s parents continued to ask more and more questions, like what were all those “chicken feet” scratches all over Graham’s body? Or, why did the emergency room doctor’s notes say Graham appeared to be a victim of assault?
READ MORE: 70-Year-Old Veteran Abused and Arrested By Power Tripping Cop for Walking with a Cane
However, when Kathy and Robert went down to the Mesquite police department, they were not given answers to any of their questions — because police weren’t required to answer any of them.
According to the ridiculous state law, police departments aren’t required to hand over records for any incidents that don’t result in a conviction. Since police killed Graham before he was able to stand trial for his alleged crimes, they were shielded from handing over the evidence.
For years, the Dyers would fight to get this information from police. Eventually, because of their persistence, the Dyers finally obtained the video footage from their son’s last hours alive. When they viewed it for the first time, they realized everything police said that happened that night was a lie.
Those chicken feet scratches, they would learn, were from taser prongs.
The family hired Susan Hutchison to build a civil rights case against the department. During her investigation, horrifying details emerged.
As My Statesman reports, Hutchison said the additional information contained more troubling details about Graham’s interaction with the police. Taser records indicated four officers shocked him multiple times, she said. As Graham is being stunned with a Taser in the back seat of the cruiser, one can be heard saying: “Mother[expletive], I’m going to kill you.”
And kill him they did.
At one point in the horrifying video, an officer is seen sadistically deploying the taser directly on Graham’s penis. It’s as if these officers enjoyed causing harm to this clearly distressed boy.
When asked about the use of the tasers, the department wrote it off as standard procedure.
“A Taser was deployed in an effort to control decedent, prevent escape and prevent him from injuring himself,” the city stated in court documents, adding the officer had been aiming for Graham’s leg and it was dark.
READ MORE: We don"t need police. Here"s how we can do without them.
However, in the video, we can clearly see the cop hold the taser to Graham’s genitals. This is, by no means, standard procedure to ‘prevent suspects from hurting themselves.’
Even with this lawsuit, the Dyers keep hitting roadblocks in holding these cops accountable, like the statute of limitations protecting the criminal cops who killed their son.
As Hutchison said, police departments “In effect, have complete immunity and no accountability—at least in Texas.”
The Dyers aren’t even going after money. As My Statesman reports, Robert said his goal for the lawsuit is modest: “I just want them to say they fucked up.”
“I’m not saying doing LSD wasn’t stupid,” Kathy said. “And things happen. But this should have never happened.”
In spite of this selfless family getting railroaded by the corrupt system, they have taken action to make sure this doesn’t happen to other families.
As the Statesmen reports, Kathy and Robert testified in front of legislators in support of a bill that could help other families in their position.
Sponsored by Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, House Bill 3234 would have compelled law enforcement agencies to release their investigative records if, like Graham, the suspect had died, or, if not, gave his consent to their release. The couple’s emotional testimony appeared to move several of the lawmakers on the state House Committee on Government Transparency and Operation.
However, thanks to the police state worship in Texas, the bill only made it out of committee and then died.
The family has now pledged that they will fight to the end for justice.
St. Paul, MN — The power of pro-police propaganda is so vast that it can convince a jury to dismiss an officer’s own admission, police reports, witness testimony, and even video evidence of an assault. The most recent case of an abusive officer being found not guilty by a jury comes out of Ramsey County in which jurors acquitted an officer who was seen on video punching a handcuffed child — repeatedly — in the face.
Thanks to the American worship of the police state, Officer Michael Soucheray II will not be held accountable for the charges of misdemeanor assault fallowing an incident in December of last year.
As the Free Thought Project reported in January, Soucheray was placed on administrative duty after punching the 14-year-old girl for allegedly spitting on him. The 14-year-old was at the East Side shelter for girls when police responded to a call of a suicidal girl.
According to the criminal complaint, officers were trying to take the girl to a hospital because she was reportedly suicidal, but she refused to go and became agitated, screaming and at one point going limp.
Because the girl, who was clearly in the midst of a psychological crisis, refused to get into an ambulance, police force was escalated.
When Soucheray told the girl that police would be taking her, the girl said she was not going and officers handcuffed her. They escorted her to a squad car, and the teen was screaming and crying, according to the complaint.
The girl then spat into Soucheray’s face, and instead of maintaining his composure, knowingly dealing with a traumatized girl in a diminished mental state, this cop grabbed her by the neck and punched her in the face — twice.
READ MORE: Cop Arrested After Video Shows Her Shoot Unarmed Man in Back Lying Face Down in the Snow
In spite of the acquittal, the St. Paul Police department continues to chastise the officer for his choice to punch the girl — but has yet to fire him.
“I am deeply disappointed by what the video shows. The officer’s actions do not in any way, shape or form reflect, or align with, our values, expectations or mission,” Saint Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said in a statement Thursday after the dashcam video was released.
How can a cop, cast out by his fellow cops, beat a child on video, and get off scot free? Well, you just have to do a little lying.
In spite of the fact that Soucheray wrote in his own report that he hit the girl — and in spite of him being heard losing his temper and yelling while hitting her on video — his attorney, Peter Wold managed to convince the jury that he really didn’t hit her at all.
He used a ‘diversion technique,’ said Wold.
“The optics of it, the story of it, if you look at it superficially, alarming. I mean, this is a big strong guy with a handcuffed thirteen-year-old stressed child. And it looks like he was swinging at her face. But that was without the context of what was going on, and I’m confident the jury saw the context and did exactly the right thing,” Wold said.
To be clear, this girl had done nothing wrong other than express suicidal tendencies. Only when a police officer was brought in, however, was she actually harmed. And now, the cop who did this to her will face no consequences.
READ MORE: Silk Road 2.0 Has Been Born…New Website Mocks the Feds
He’s also been on paid vacation this entire time as well, which means that because he was acquitted, he will most likely go back to work as a St. Paul cop.
If a citizen punched a 14-year-old girl in the face on video — twice — do you think they could use the same excuse, “it was a diversion technique,” and walk?
Below is the full video of the arrest.
Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
If we don"t challenge these poisonous polarizing binaries, they may well trigger the accidental suicide of our polity.
If there is any statement about politics in America that qualifies as as a truism accepted by virtually everyone, left, right or independent, it"s that America is a deeply divided nation. But is this really true?
Like everyone else, I too accepted that the line between Hillary supporters and detractors, and Trump supporters and detractors, was about as "either/or" as real life gets.
But are we really that divided? A fascinating 55-minute lecture by historian Michael Kulikowski entitled The Accidental Suicide of the Roman Empire has made me question this consensus certitude.
Maybe the real driver of this division is devisive language--more specifically, language that is designed to drive a wedge between us. In other words, maybe the divisions are an intentional consequence of the language we"re using.
Kulikowski makes a number of nuanced arguments in his talk, but his primary point is that the late-stage Roman Empire collapsed partly as an unintended consequence of rhetorical binaries, polarizing rhetoric that lumped an extremely diverse Imperial populace into false binaries: Roman or Barbarian, Christian or heretic, and so on.
The actual lived reality was completely different from these artificial either-or binary classifications. As Kulikowski explains (and anyone who has read a modern history of late-stage Rome will know this from other accounts), many "Roman generals" were "Barbarian" by birth, and the boundary between "Roman citizen" and "Barbarian" was porous on purpose.
Rome had prospered by ensuring the boundary was porous (not counting slaves, of course). An impoverished young man from the hinterlands could join the Roman military and achieve a stable income and Roman citizenship. (Women could advance through marrying into a Roman-citizen family--even one that was "Barbarian" until recently.)
By Imperial decree in the 3rd Century A.D., any free person inside the boundaries of Imperial Rome was declared a Roman citizen. So numerous people of a variety of ethnicities may have been born outside the boundaries (i.e. Barbarian) became as "Roman" as any native born Roman in terms of their obligations to pay taxes and rights to judicial review.
This social/economic upward mobility was a key "secret sauce" of Rome"s enduring success.
So why the sudden fatal attraction to completely false polarizing binaries? Kulikowski makes the case that deploying these rhetorical devices--polarizing binaries-- served the political purposes of warring elites within the Imperial aristocracy.
For example, one sure-fire way to undermine a political challenger was to label him as a "Barbarian." Even though he might have served in the Roman army from his youth, his political opponent could transform him into a "bad guy" by virtue of his being born a non-Roman. Sound familiar? (Hint: try "deplorable".)
There is a self-destructive, self-reinforcing dynamic in this polarizing rhetoric: though it served the political interests of individual members of the elite, it did so at the cost of the entire polity, which was poisoned by these false binaries that then developed into dominant narratives.
Hence Kulikowski"s startling conclusion: Rome didn"t "die of natural causes"--it accidentally committed suicide once its political elites embracing polarizing binaries as political weapons. These weapons seemed targeted to their users, but the rhetorical narratives spread like a deadly virus through the empire, helping to trigger collapse of the Imperial core.
Bloomberg-BusinessWeek published a major multiple-part story in September of 2016 prior to the election entitled One Nation Divisible: The American Electorate.
The story repeats the truism of America being a divided nation, but my take-away was not the either-or binaries accepted by the mainstream and alternative media alike-- my take-away was a newfound appreciation for the incredible diversity in America, not just ethnically, but geographically, demographically, and in every other measure of complex diversity.
How could a nation of such astounding diversity be artificially cleaved into polarizing binaries? The short answer is that it cannot: the polarizing binaries are artificial rhetorical devices, completely out of touch with the nuanced, complex reality of a diverse populace with widely diverse opinions on a wide spectrum of political topics.
My conclusion is that we should be alert to the great distance between these politically useful but systemically poisonous polarizing binaries and the complex and dynamic realities of the American populace.
We would also benefit from recognizing the artificiality and self-serving nature of these polarizing binaries, and be alert to the false and destructive narratives and teleologies they generate.
For more on narratives and teleologies, please read my recent essay The Deep State"s Dominant Narratives and Authority Are Crumbling.
We"ve already witnessed the toxic weeds of polarizing binaries spreading across the political landscape, choking out real-world narratives: diverse populations are being demonized as "deplorables," "racists," "evil," and so on. So many of our choices are false choices based on polarizing binaries. For example-- how many voters would have championed an alternative to Hillary or Trump? If given a choice, would 60% of the voters have chosen someone other than the two party candidates? (Hint: Bernie Sanders is the most popular politico in America, according to recent polls.)
Identity politics is another rhetorical device designed to consolidate diverse populaces into politically useful (to the elites jockeying for power) binary blocks: you"re either "for us" (and good) or "against everything good" (bad, evil, racist, etc.)
If we don"t challenge these poisonous polarizing binaries, they may well trigger the accidental suicide of our polity. THe saying is the demographics is destiny; the same can be said of the language we use to divide or unite people of good faith who are sick of the parasitic, predatory elites that are plundering the nation.
File this under Justice Porn...
A miserable seething bitch and her browbeaten husband are the stars of a new video making it"s way around the internet after the woman, a horrible human being, decided to berate a Trump supporter on an airplane. First, here"s what happened from the guy it happened to:
The first flight attendant to deal with his bigot isn"t having any of her shit:
Attendant #1: "Is there going to be a problem?"
Woman: "There will be, I would like for him to change seats with somebody who did not put us all in harm"s way"
Attendant #1: "Well, you don"t have that right!"
[mic drop, goes to get other flight attendant]
When the second flight attendant breaks the news of her impending ejection, this ivory tower liberal starts throwing her dead mother in law out to try and gain some sympathy:
Woman: "I"m going home now. My mother in law, his mother, died. And we had to be here. I"m going home now, there is no way I"m getting off this plane."
Attendant #2: "I"m terribly sorry for that, but that does not give you the right to treat people the way you"ve been treating them.
[indignancy intensifies]
Husband: "What if we trade seats and she quiets down? How would that be?"
Attendant #2: "Unfortunately the captain has already made the call..."
DENIED
Enjoy the show:
And a potato quality recording of her actually getting tossed:
Note the applause...
After years of injustice, thousands of people wrongfully convicted on drug charges in Massachusetts will finally have their convictions overturned. The ruling centers on drug lab tests that were falsified by a state-employed chemist named Annie Dookhan.
“The state’s highest court on Wednesday ordered prosecutors to drop a large portion of the more than 24,000 drug convictions affected by the misconduct of former state drug lab chemist Annie Dookhan, issuing an urgent call to resolve a scandal that has plagued the legal system since 2012.”
Dookhan was imprisoned in 2013 after being charged with a suite of crimes relating to her years-long career of deceit, where she falsified tens of thousands of reports to jail innocent people. She would mark results as ‘positive’ for illegal substances without actually testing them, even adding cocaine to samples when no cocaine was present.
At sentencing, Judge Carol S. Ball stated, “Innocent persons were incarcerated, guilty persons have been released to further endanger the public, millions and millions of public dollars are being expended to deal with the chaos Ms. Dookhan created, and the integrity of the criminal justice system has been shaken to the core.”
After the shocking revelations, some of the ‘Dookhan-tainted’ convictions were overturned, but when 2017 came around, 24,391 of those convictions still remained. Most of these people were poor and charged simply with possession. Many remained in prison or on parole, and many more were denied jobs and housing due to their criminal records.
The Massachusetts high court ruled that each defendant had a right to a hearing, but the cost and logistics of doing so would be unfeasible. Prosecutors sent cryptic, confusing letters to the defendants to supposedly inform defendants of their rights, which prompted the ACLU to get involved.
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Incredibly, state prosecutors were fighting to keep the convictions in place, despite justices saying these cases involved “egregious government misconduct.” Despite being victimized by a serial liar under an immoral war on drugs, each defendant had to appear their case individually.
“It’s as though the state is almost addicted to prosecuting its way out of the problem of drug abuse,” said Mathew Segal, legal director at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “The addiction is so strong that the state won’t even walk away from convictions tainted by fraud. And they could walk away. Prosecutors could walk away from these cases right now.”
But prosecutors didn’t walk away, and the state’s high court finally put an end to most of the injustice.
“The court said district attorneys across the state must “exercise their prosecutorial discretion and reduce the number of relevant Dookhan defendants by moving to vacate and dismiss with prejudice all drug cases the district attorneys would not or could not reprosecute if a new trial were ordered.” The cases affected by the ruling include people who pleaded guilty, were convicted, or admitted that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict them. By vacating the cases, the convictions would effectively be erased…
The court said defendants whose cases aren’t dismissed should receive a notice that their cases had been affected by Dookhan’s misconduct. Then, any indigent defendants would receive public counsel to explore requests to vacate their pleas or get new trials.”
Almost all of the defendants convicted of simple possession have already served their jail sentence. Being locked in a cage for a non-crime is enough to scar a person for life, but at least they will not be hindered the rest of their life by a conviction.
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This scandal demonstrates one way in which the war on drugs provides opportunity for the State to ruin lives for the victimless behavior of possessing a substance deemed illegal by arbitrary, baseless means. When control of the drug lab was transferred to the Massachusetts State Police, several red flags on Dookhan were ignored by superiors, and the lab silenced whistleblowers who reported Dookhan.
It all points to an insidious obsession by government to attack citizens – especially the less fortunate who have no means to fight the system – by treating drug use as criminal behavior instead of a health issue. It’s past time to end the war on drugs, which will prevent the kind of abuse carried out by Dookhan and her superiors.
