Army of Light
Cappy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I've come to understand that as far as the ruling class is concerned, as far as those in power are concerned, they would prefer it if we did not have any rights at all. The powers that be regard the Warren court, who was the one that gave us most of the guaranteed rights that we had been promised under the Constitution, they regard that Court as a runaway institution and a mistake. People before that Court routinely got illegally searched and seized and there was no remedy. There was no exclusionary rule, they break into your house with a fire ax instead of a warrant and they'd find stuff and even at the court yelled at them for breaking the law, you still went to jail. It wasn't even that long ago that there wasn't a Miranda warning, that there wasn't public defenders. It was not uncommon for people to be put in jail for their political opinions here in america. Eugene Debs for instance.
The rationale at the time was that while the Constitution said you had a right to speak, it did not say that the government couldn't punish you for your speech. This is also where the fire in a crowded theater argument came from. The context was a court case about someone who was against us participation in World War I and was being jailed for his activism.
The promise of liberal democracy is wonderful but it is also a sham. When you see paradoxes like police being allowed to pull people over for factory installed tints on their windows or criminalizing black people through stopping frisk for having folding knives that you can just buy at the store, especially when they are applied to people of color and not to white people that's why.
Ultimately the Constitution is a piece of paper, and whether or not we have a right comes down to sovereign power giving us that temporary privilege. The exceptions to our rights are vastly more telling than the rules. As soon as someone needs their rights the most, they disappear, such as the gitmo detainees or the Japanese who were put in concentration camps during World War II. Where was the right to free speech during the McCarthy era? None of the people who got blacklisted were ever apologized to and some people even got put in jail just for being communist. These are not bugs or mistakes, they are features, they are a technology that lets sovereign power do bad stuff while still maintaining the illusion that they are being fair.
This is where I come back to sovereign power and the state of exception. The United States needs to maintain this appearance that we have rights and that this is a nice place to live and that sovereign power is not run by a bunch of ghoulish jerks. At the same time they still have an empire to run, they need to keep certain populations most exploited by capitalism and the prison industrial complex managed and controlled. So we get bullshit like window tints that selectively enforced only against marginalized populations, with features that can be identified at a glance. If we have a right to privacy why do police get to demand that they're allowed to see into our cars. As far as the majority of the public is concerned we still have rights and the promises kept and those who are violated by the government, well, "they must have done something wrong" as far as the public is concerned. Consent is manufactured for compliance being demanded.
What we have been seeing in the past few years is a rollback of those rights by the supreme court. These past few years, the court has shipped away at those gains that were hard fought back in the '60s, they've chipped away at the exclusionary rule and the right against self incrimination. An exception to our right not to be searched is if we consent to the search but why is anyone consenting to be searched when they have contraband on them? Because the courts have regarded things as consenting to searches that are obviously not consensual. They've let baloney confessions stand that were extracted through psychological torture. We let police get away with going on fishing expeditions based on what they claim a dog thinks. We let police beat a confession out of a suspect well after they asked to speak to a lawyer because they used African-American vernacular and said "I want a lawyer dog." The court also gutted the voting rights act and de facto legalized bribery through citizens united.
The rationale at the time was that while the Constitution said you had a right to speak, it did not say that the government couldn't punish you for your speech. This is also where the fire in a crowded theater argument came from. The context was a court case about someone who was against us participation in World War I and was being jailed for his activism.
The promise of liberal democracy is wonderful but it is also a sham. When you see paradoxes like police being allowed to pull people over for factory installed tints on their windows or criminalizing black people through stopping frisk for having folding knives that you can just buy at the store, especially when they are applied to people of color and not to white people that's why.
Ultimately the Constitution is a piece of paper, and whether or not we have a right comes down to sovereign power giving us that temporary privilege. The exceptions to our rights are vastly more telling than the rules. As soon as someone needs their rights the most, they disappear, such as the gitmo detainees or the Japanese who were put in concentration camps during World War II. Where was the right to free speech during the McCarthy era? None of the people who got blacklisted were ever apologized to and some people even got put in jail just for being communist. These are not bugs or mistakes, they are features, they are a technology that lets sovereign power do bad stuff while still maintaining the illusion that they are being fair.
This is where I come back to sovereign power and the state of exception. The United States needs to maintain this appearance that we have rights and that this is a nice place to live and that sovereign power is not run by a bunch of ghoulish jerks. At the same time they still have an empire to run, they need to keep certain populations most exploited by capitalism and the prison industrial complex managed and controlled. So we get bullshit like window tints that selectively enforced only against marginalized populations, with features that can be identified at a glance. If we have a right to privacy why do police get to demand that they're allowed to see into our cars. As far as the majority of the public is concerned we still have rights and the promises kept and those who are violated by the government, well, "they must have done something wrong" as far as the public is concerned. Consent is manufactured for compliance being demanded.
What we have been seeing in the past few years is a rollback of those rights by the supreme court. These past few years, the court has shipped away at those gains that were hard fought back in the '60s, they've chipped away at the exclusionary rule and the right against self incrimination. An exception to our right not to be searched is if we consent to the search but why is anyone consenting to be searched when they have contraband on them? Because the courts have regarded things as consenting to searches that are obviously not consensual. They've let baloney confessions stand that were extracted through psychological torture. We let police get away with going on fishing expeditions based on what they claim a dog thinks. We let police beat a confession out of a suspect well after they asked to speak to a lawyer because they used African-American vernacular and said "I want a lawyer dog." The court also gutted the voting rights act and de facto legalized bribery through citizens united.
