“Y’know, the world’s gone crazy, and it ain’t safe on the streets.”
– Cheeseburger, Comin’ Home, 2008
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post lamenting the pointless fatalities during the mostly peaceful rioting. This year, we’re seeing more of the same, and once again, stupid people are learning the hard way that if you go looking for death, you’re sure to find it.
“…life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
– George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, 1970
Parallels: Sovereign Citizens and Mostly Peaceful Rioters
My YouTube feed has been sending me a lot of sovereign citizen arrest videos, and I find them as fascinating as they are formulaic. Essentially, “john doe” [sic]. A “natural man” representing the corporate entity known as “JOHN DOE” gets pulled over for an easily avoidable traffic violation (i.e., displaying a bogus license plate), then exacerbates the situation by refusing to identify himself or comply with lawful orders. Invariably, the officer reaches a point where he’s had enough of the SC’s shit and gets him (or her) out of the vehicle, in cuffs, and off to jail they go…
Watching these interactions through the lens of the officer’s bodycam, I can’t help but marvel at the SC’s surprise. What did he think would happen? Whether they, in their stupidity, earnestly believed what they were doing was right and just, or they were just another antisocial fuck trying to game the system, is irrelevant; the result is the same…
What Did You Think Would Happen?
When I hear about the coordinated mobs of people blocking streets, harassing fellow citizens after mistaking them for ICE (even after it was established that they weren’t), and stalking, doxing, threatening, obstructing, and attacking federal agents, I can’t help but be reminded of those sovereign citizens. I ask again, “What did you think would happen?”
I have no love for cops, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m afraid of them. It’s within their lawful authority to detain, search, arrest, and use (and sometimes abuse) deadly force. Yes, there are rules and standards, but most hinge on the officer’s reasonable belief; they must be able to act decisively in uncertain situations, and sometimes mistakes happen…
Their response to a given situation is contextual. On one side of the spectrum, you have Smokey the Bear, benign and preventative. On the other end is a man-eating grizzly. Depending on the circumstances, things can quickly escalate from Smokey to Cocaine Bear. Do not poke the bear!
In situations like this, I ask myself, what compelled a mother of three to intentionally prevent ICE agents from conducting a lawful investigation? Why did an ICU nurse vandalize a federal vehicle, resist arrest, and obstruct law enforcement? Did they earnestly believe that they were revolutionaries protecting their communities from jack-booted thugs, kidnapping innocent people off the streets? Or were they antisocial miscreants looking for trouble?
Did You Think This Was a Game?
“We don’t rise to our expectations. We fall to our level of training.”
– Archilochus, 645 BC (possibly)
The partner of the young mother who was shot in the head when she attempted to flee from federal agents is alleged to have shouted, “Why did you have real bullets?”
I find this statement to be quite telling, and she isn’t alone in her (mis)understanding of how the world works. In a later conversation I had with a friend, he expressed similar childish naivety. We got to talking about the shootings, and he mentioned a video he’d seen where the crowd managed to snatch someone who was being arrested back, and another where a community of people came out of the woodwork and chased off those nasty ICE people. It sounded like he was describing how to play ‘Red Rover’. At one point, I interrupted him to ask, “Do you think this is a game?”
The partner also said in the aftermath, “I made her come down here; she didn’t want to come; it’s my fault.”
Some of the worst trouble [with the law] I’ve ever been in, and certainly the closest I ever came to losing my liberty, was the result of being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong people. I suppose I was lucky, as all it cost me was 3 hours in jail – but I learned my lesson! These two weren’t so fortunate…
From all accounts, they were good people, but fell in with the wrong crowd, followed bad advice (e.g.,”…put your body on the line”), and paid for it with their lives.
Here Endeth the Lesson
At first, I pitied them… but then I think about the criminals ICE is trying to remove, and their victims… Victims like Victoria Eileen Harwell. She was a mother, too! No one wants to talk about her. No one is protesting for her. No one is giving speeches about her. Do black lives stop mattering when they’re politically inconvenient?
There’s a section up on the DHS website, forty-one pages there by now, probably more. I do wish these people would go out and count them sometime, maybe they’d learn a lesson. No, probably not.
Epilogue
“If it doesn’t matter in 20 years, it doesn’t matter.”
– Dave, the Guy on the Couch, 1998
There’s a lot to suggest that some of these agitators were [Minnesota] state-sponsored, and possibly even used as fodder to distract from widespread fraud. It wouldn’t surprise me either way, and I’m no longer bothered by it…
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When I was a kid, just starting out on my own, I lived in a flophouse with Jungle George, a pot dealer and Capoeira enthusiast, and his old friend Dave, ‘the guy on the couch’.
Dave had a hard life and desperately clung to whatever dignity he had left, despite being well beyond caring about what anyone thought of him. His most redeeming quality was that he viciously stood up to anyone who challenged his friends, and was always there to offer helpful advice to us young, dumb, hormone-fuelled idiots.
In an effort to comfort me through a bad breakup, Dave relayed a little piece of wisdom allegedly passed down to him by an old Mafioso: “If it doesn’t matter in 20 years, it doesn’t matter.”
This made me feel better, but more importantly, he was right! It’s a shame more people don’t think this way… perhaps the world would be a better place.
