Abu Muqawama: Post
Abu Muqawama retains its autonomy and the views and beliefs expressed within the blog do not reflect those of CNAS. Abu Muqawama retains the right to delete comments that include words that incite violence; are predatory, hateful, or intended to intimidate or harass; or degrade people on the basis of gender, race, class, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. In summary, don't be a jerk.
On Police States and Political Language
Yesterday, I watched some folks describe the United States as a "police state" because of some allegations of police brutality in Chicago. Without either defending the Chicago police department or agreeing with its critics, I tweeted that those who describe the United States as a "police state" have never lived in or visited an actual police state. I then watched as leftists went berserk in response.
As regular readers of this blog know, I believe language matters -- as does the precision with which we use it.
So let's first explore the term "police state." Political science literature has a lot to say about authoritarianism and police states, but here is the plain vanilla definition from Merriam-Webster:
a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures.
Now, by that definition, I think most observers of U.S. politics and comparative politics would be hard pressed to classify the system by which we we govern the United States as a police state. But let's look at the United States in comparison to other nations using the Freedom House and Polity IV surveys. The 2012 Freedom House survey (.pdf) ranks the United States as among the most free countries on earth with respect to both political rights and civil liberties. And here is the 2010 Polity IV country report for the United States (.pdf), which raises questions about some post-9/11 legislation passed in the United States (and also this crazy thing called the Electoral College) but otherwise gives the United States a clean bill of democratic health.
None of this is to say that the United States is perfect or that violations of civil liberties do not occurr too often for any of us to be comfortable with. And yes, I realize that a white guy such as myself shouldn't take his largely positive interactions with law enforcement authorities as being representative of, say, the experiences of African-Americans who live in my neighborhood.
At the same time, though, when polemicists and activists on both the left and the right
After all, if the United States is a police state, can Syria really be that much worse?
I keep hearing leftists and
I keep hearing leftists and right-wingers say that about the UK and the USA.
As an Iraqi (and an Arab) they need to shut up and become informed about what a police or totalitarian state *really* is, like Iraq under Saddam.
Indeed, some western nations, such as the UK and most specially the USA, are far from perfect; but to imply that they are barely better than Republics of Fear negates the real suffering of people that live with real threats to their freedom and their lives.
Abu M Smart and good post in
Abu M
Smart and good post in many ways - especially appreciate the shoutouts to Polity IV and Freedom House.
Link to Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" or maybe a line or two about how language and discourse mattered in Thucydides's Athens?
Best
ADTS
Extremists misuse jargon
Extremists misuse jargon ...
They exploit military, political, economic, of -- for that matter -- theological terminology they can get their hands on. Exotic jargon is just an attention-getting device inasmuch as their actual communication is visual, tacit, or visceral. As self-serving politicos, they talk "magical realism". But, such verbiage is also manifest as "magical clericalism" by mercenary scholars posturing as vacuous "moderates".
So, the rest of us need to be careful, too: Just de-bunking extremist hyperbole won't do in this instance. The question for a civil society is the scope, scale, and cycle of our institutions of justice and mercy, including their robustness and agility. These institutions span war and commerce at home or abroad or ... fail to do so.
Then conventions of justice and mercy, a common, historical standard for both civil and military institutions of security, aka "law and order", break down.
The United States proved to have robust and agile military, political, and economic institutions across a span of Great, World, and Cold War. We did not do nearly so well during that period in matters of crime and social order as we were (and still are) struggling with sub-national legacies, e.g, racism and gender equality, among what Colin Woodard calls the "Eleven Nations" of North America. The results are clear though: The US has extraordinarily high and economically biased rates of incarceration and low, also biased, rates of political participation.
Given the total amount of expenditure, the United States also has suprisingly low and biased rates of educational and health status as well as sometimes dubious military performance given material imbalances between forces that are contending over just what justice and mercy entails here or there.
To wrap this up, let me just observe that the US has a "Second Amendment" "gun culture", now called a "gun lifestyle" by gun peddlers or "vigilantism" by gun controllers, but ... no constitutional "well regulated militia" at all. Moreover, we have court-mediated "civil rights" in some but not other states but no uniform "military obligation" across all the states.
However, the very (Roman, Swiss, Israeli) definition of a militia is a part-time military formation, mobilization, discipline, and action capability coterminous with the full-time electorate.
So, among vulnerabilities that extremists, tribalists, brigands, and pirates (sometimes called merchant, investment or commercial bankers) exploit are not just error driven by misuse of words but, also, institutional vacuums like a uniform principle of suffrage (voting rights) or of other military-economic and civil-economic entitlement (police and fire pension rights) across states and municipalities.
Now, academics can put dollar figures on the "police-state" and the "garrison-state". They are both big numbers. But, at the very heart of those numbers are both casual and hyperbolic use of jargon by our clerical elite (lawyers mostly) and extremist fringes (left and right), respectively.
John Robert BEHRMAN
Committeeman, SD-13
Texas Democratic Party
Ex, Great post - augmented in
Ex,
Great post - augmented in effect by Mr. Behrman's comments. It's obvious the English (American version) language is becoming much more hyberbolic, either helped by the practice in political circles or the cause of it. It's not a disagreement anymore, it's a war of words. It's not 4.3%, it's "best/worst this year (since last month was only 4.2)". Pick the situation, and hyperbole is the answer to making it a headline.
I personally blame the slipping quality of scientific education in the U.S., but I assume there's other causes working against the American ability to describe the world around them in helpful and informative ways. Mr. Behrman cites the lawyers, and I can't say that I disagree.
In the last two weeks 7 PRT's
In the last two weeks 7 PRT's have been recalled to Kabul and deactivated from operations in Afghanistan.
Sounds to me the pull-out has started Dr. Exum.
What are your thoughts?
I was grumbling throughout
I was grumbling throughout your post because I'm one of those odd far right/far left folks (not sure which variety at any given day) who has been growing more and more dismayed at the various incremental losses of civil liberties, and the pattern of increasingly heavy handed law enforcement responses to public assembly and public speech.
And then you turned my grumbling around with that last line. You're right - we're not Syria or any number of a laundry list of other countries with deeply embedded totalitarian or fascist state bureaucracies.
But, nonetheless, there are plenty of reasonable people who aren't completely on the margins of our political dialogue who've been getting frustrated/concerned about some things that are happening within our country that seem to betray some of the bedrock principles of the founders (i.e., the slow disappearance of habeus corpus, limitations on free assembly, lack of judicial due process, illegal search and seizure, torture).
But until larger amounts of people (media, politicians, think-tank wonks) who are more closely identified with mainstream opinion start speaking with outrage about these things, then they will simmer on in the background, creating gradual acceptance for the occasional heavy-handed repressive tactic. We may not be Syria, but there are things we take for granted now that we wouldn't have 20 years ago.
So, at the risk of stretching things and implying you're identified with mainstream opinion: every time you call out the far left/right for critiquing the US as a police state, you're supporting the status quo of mainstream dialogue which largely laughs off any suggestion that we're doing anything wrong these days.
I'd much rather hear your thoughts about what specific violations of civil liberties are happening that had you make the statement "None of this is to say that the United States is perfect or that violations of civil liberties do not occurr too often for any of us to be comfortable with" while at the same time poo-poohing people who were using hyberbole to try to make that same point.
This post reminds me, have
This post reminds me, have you seen the new Sascha Baron Cohen movie, The Dictator? Check out his speech in the final scene.
Andrew, I really have no idea
Andrew, I really have no idea of what happened in Chicago during the NATO discussion because I wasn't there to witness the interaction.
What I know about Chicago Police is via law enforcement outside of Chicago and their interaction with Chicago's department. Your comment, " I realize that a white guy such as myself shouldn't take his largely positive interactions with law enforcement authorities as being representative of, say, the experiences of African-Americans who live in my neighborhood " really does not reflect the actual discussion on the ground in Chicago. What happens in Chicago, for the most part, is on the lines of partisan politics. The Chicago Police are pretty much the machine's muscle and there is corruption as a result and they go easy on people that vote to keep it that way. I know of a few details that I will not share. In a lot of cases, but not always and not limited to Chicago, the Police usually march to the view of the City Mayor because the Chief of Police is in the chain of command. You have to remember the history of Chicago and its Mayors to have this discussion. Illinois has always been a "I scratch your back and you scratch mine" State. Corruption is why Illinois has two recent Governors sitting in the pokey, one of whom still has a Chicago address and tried to make Chicago the State capital of Illinois.
There have been too many court cases that went through the Chicago system were facts were omitted or skewed to push the court decision in favor of politics. That is justice in Chicago, you better have friends in power.
As far as donuts go. The only reference I have for donuts and Police is from a NYC Officer. He retired to Florida and told me that he cannot even stand going into a donut shop cause that is where they always met while on duty. From what he told me, NYC is really in the same shape as Chicago.
Once you let law enforcement slide to get votes it is really hard to secure the streets. Maybe one of these days I will tell you some stories that will send chills in your bones.
As regular readers of this blog know, I believe language matters -- as does the precision with which we use it.
For Pete's sake Exum, this is a blog not a White Paper.
Sir, We may not be a police
Sir,
We may not be a police state but we sure have created some close facsimiles in AFGH and Irq.
We support Egypt at 1 1/2 bil$ a year , and they fit the police state definition.
What about the govt of Yemen? Are they democratic?
What about all the stan states that we support.?
We supported a police state in Iran -pre 79- and then flip our gears when they oppose our post 79 policies.
I guess they just didn't understand that repression was a gift.
jim hruska
A bit off topic but while
A bit off topic but while reading books on linguistics by Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir I deduced this axiom in 2005 and that is that "Those who control language command reality." James Enriquez, 2005.
Also you might add the book on "Propaganda" by Jacques Ellul to your reading list.
You also might reconsider your thesis on democracies if you realized that George Orwelle's "1984 " was written in referenced to England.
James Enriquez
Add your comment