So I make an additional comment to the point that the police ethic of military piety is anti-democratic, that the military and police don't teach their recruits to understand the full weight of their their conflicting obligations, that each of them will have to negotiate on their own, that military culture is a form of "geekdom" following a blunt variant of the rule of non-contradiction; and Brian Leiter pulls my comment off the page.
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Then reposts it edited with the above comments removed.
amazing.
And on the specifics of the case: between the indignant rant of someone demanding obeisance and the letter of the law [
read the comments] I let the law slide. Gates' arrogance is more offensive to me than the cops' response.
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As I said below, Farrell later pulled the post.
Archive.org
Horseshit. I don't have a transcript of their exchange, and neither do you. As far as anyone actually knows, either one could have vastly overstepped. Your knee-jerk assumption that the cop was in the right and Gates was arrogant quite clearly betrays authoritarian bias. Have you never heard of, much less experienced, a police officer's overweening arrogance?
ReplyDeletePolice in this country are routinely accorded respect leagues beyond their desserts because they are situationally powerful. They can fuck your shit up, and they know it. Many grow accustomed to such deference, and become jealous of it.
"The cop felt constrained"? Really? The cop had, and used, the option of handcuffing and arresting Gates. When one is able at whim to unilaterally abrogate the freedom of the person with whom one are in conflict, one is not constrained.
Gates may have been abusive (we don't know), but he was in his own home and had proved it. Crowley had no more business there. He was in the wrong, period.
Thanks anonymous, for getting me to reread that post.
ReplyDeleteOh boy was it pompous. Now it's not, but the argument's the same.
Read the links here and at Leiter's. All of them.
Most of the arguments about this case haven't been about the case at all. Generalizations aren't facts.
The 911 transcript might change something.
And anonymous, read comment #492[!]
ReplyDeletehere at Crooked Timber. It's written by the author the post.