Paradocracy

When a people have succumbed to tyranny, the punishment doled out assumes a certain quality, a kind of official capacity, business as usual. 

Not only do the ‘officials’ come to view their egos as one of their leading qualifications, one of the basic job requirements, they come to view their hostility as one of the primary requirements, one of the most reliable tools on their belts, their preferred tool for any task. Indeed, that general hostility, the heavy hand of government, has become part of the very archetype of the ‘professional law enforcement officer’, business as usual for that institution maintaining a monopoly over the initiation of force and coercion; that institution specializing in torment, torture, intimidation and trauma, often to the point of permanent bodily damage and occasionally to the point of death, all in pursuit of social paralysis (or assuring the public’s obedience) in the name of ‘official business’.

Indeed, the ‘officials’ and the ‘enforcers’ come to view their hostility, disrespect and their generally unpleasant, dismissive and insulting demeanors as entitlements, perks of the job and proof of authority, badges of courage and benefits of the offices they hold: the kinds of insulting attitudes forming part of the culture, being accepted as fair treatment for those questioned, detained, or apprehended, and the kinds of offices regarded internally as superior to those assumed by mere ‘civilians’ who, in the view of the bureaucracy, are best assumed inferior in intellect, lousy at life, and guilty until proven innocent; ‘civilians’ who are apparently entitled to nothing near the sort of respect or dutiful reverence they are expected at all times to extend eagerly to their masters; ‘civilians’ who are considered ‘disorderly’ or ‘interfering’ or ‘resisting’ or ‘mentally ill’ — or, another favorite, ‘nutty Constitutionalists’ — for articulating their disapproval or for daring to defend their rights; ‘civilians’ who are often at the receiving end of threats and hostility (and even fabricated charges) for their refusal or even their mere reluctance to submit, obey, or grovel to the satisfaction of the ‘officer’, the ‘enforcer’ carrying a badge, a loaded gun, and a loaded ego, prepared to use all three to have his way; ‘civilians’ who are, apparently, constantly getting in the way and never paying enough in the way of taxes for the privilege of occupying so much space, enjoying the benefits of so much ‘progress’, and being the loyal subjects of such ‘civilized’ society, whose enforcers of ‘civility’ enjoy both the unique privilege of conducting their own ‘internal investigations’ and the protection of ‘qualified immunity’ (and paid leave) wherever the bureaucracy is even prepared to admit the possibility of a mistake. What’s more, where fellow members of that bureaucracy are to witness any ‘mistake’ or transgression, whether in the form of violated procedure or in the form of ill-treatment, members are behooved by peer pressure (or by the threat of losing their jobs) to ignore it or to turn and walk away if not actively supporting the enforcers. What a twisted idea of ‘civility’ we have.

Facing little resistance and rarely a penalty for any ‘mistakes’ made in the course of their ‘duties’, the members of the bureaucracy come to view the hostility toward, and manhandling of, the public as part of their day-to-day; and the people are expected to accept these as part of theirs, too, only on the receiving end, should they be suspected of causing any ‘disturbance’, ‘discomfort’, or ‘interference’ (or generally any inconvenience to the establishment), regardless of whether any citizen is within his rights. Meanwhile, the people themselves come to fear being trampled by this massive bureaucracy of bullies, always waiting for the next shoe to drop, anticipating the punches before they’re even delivered. Likewise, the people do whatever they can to avoid persecution and the hefty costs (fines, legal fees, jail time, court appearances, humiliation) of defending themselves — from the kinds of bullies indifferent to the public, accustomed to toying with the people’s rights, feeding their own massive but fragile egos, or simply ‘doing their jobs’, making sure to protect their incomes and benefits, to prioritize (at virtually all costs) their safety, their job security and the handsome pensions promised at the end of their careers (granted only if they continue to play along and do as they’re told). 

Persecuting at their will and selectively at their own discretion, the members of the bureaucracy are restrained in their political activities in name only. Although ostensibly forbidden by federal edict (under the Hatch Act), federal agents and bureaucrats all over actively advance their own political causes, or the prevailing causes of the establishment, by determining what actually qualifies as ‘political’ and what constitutes ‘official business’, what is ‘progressive’ and what is ‘politically-correct’, what is ‘insensitive’ and ‘inappropriate’, and ultimately which ‘laws’ they enforce, which ‘crimes’ they prosecute, and which ones they either don’t know or let slide. In other words, they pursue their political causes all the same by deciding how and whom to persecute; what ‘crimes’ are worth prosecuting and which ‘criminals’ are worth charging; what constitutes extenuating (or aggravating) circumstances and what doesn’t; which activities are worth tolerating and which are decidedly unfit for ‘civilized’ society; or, on the whole, which policies and which practices serve the interests of the establishment and which ones threaten to undermine or disturb it.

In the course of this despotism wrapping its tentacles ever tighter around the public, the people come to pay for their further humiliation and subjugation, the militarization and empowerment of these forces against them. Likewise, the people come to expect ever greater force and coercion from the enforcers: mistreatment, threats, hostility, heavy-handedness and even outright torture from the bullies who are ‘just doing their jobs’ and consistently underestimating the threats they pose to the country (or the community) they claim to serve; the country they claim to be so patriotic about (without having any substantial knowledge of its history, its traditions, or its constitution). Of course, this is a twisted (and hollow) form of ‘patriotism’ in service to government, in service to the state, the usurpers, not the kind of patriotism of the American tradition which serves the interests and liberties of the people. 

This is, perhaps, the only manner in which the bullies are consistent: seldom ever consistent in matters of logic, ethics, or morality — these types of ‘consistency’ being feasible only outside of the master-slave relationship — they are nearly always prepared to justify suspending the rights of man, doing so callously without any regard for the constitution they swear to uphold, without any regard for the preciousness of the particular article of freedom upon which they so casually tread in the course of their regular ‘duties’. Likewise, the people succumbing to this tyranny come to regard their liberties in the same way, not as rights inherited from their Creator but privileges afforded them (often arbitrarily) by the grace and mercy of any given member of the state; members often operating from their own kinds of god complex, or an inferiority complex met with the means to seek retribution and take out their own personal frustrations on the people whom they envy or regard with disdain (or whom they otherwise bless with their indifference).

Even in the face of the absurd, the humiliating, and the most abject of inhumanities, witnesses and victims alike are hardly fazed by the force, the violence and the arrogance of ‘public servants’ in their dealings with the public, especially among those enforcers who present themselves more like soldiers chomping at the bit in front of their number-one enemy, the people; people whom the enforcers would much rather see just hurry up and die; people who even come to wish this upon themselves after such ill-treatment, who come to expect pain and discomfort from the bureaucracy, who expect agony for any individual among them having the misfortune of encountering any enforcer in the course of his regular ‘duties’ or his ongoing ‘investigation’. Indeed, the people even extend their gratitude where they are spared, and the bullies — who expect desperate pleas from the people, the benefactors responsible for their salaries (apparently for the privilege of licking boots and taking punishment) — even take some measure of pride when they manage to squeeze that gratitude out of their ‘suspects’; every citizen, every benefactor having the privilege of being assumed a ‘suspect’ until cleared of wrongdoing.

A people succumbing to tyranny will be terrorized by even the very possibility of offending the bureaucracy, so much so that even a mere letter in the mail, bearing some official letterhead, is enough to send the citizen into a full-blown panic attack, to convince the citizen that he is a criminal or that he threatens to become one should he fail to do his duty and pay his respects to the state. The citizen will beg and plead for mercy, apologizing to the bullies for his mere existence, his daring to even consider the possibility of freedom, his daring to fancy himself worthy of such a prize as free will, human rights, and personal discretion, his daring to call himself an American endowed with these qualities, his daring to exercise and affirm his inalienable rights or to merely consider himself innocent until proven guilty. Under such tyranny, it is at his own risk that any citizen considers himself anything other than a criminal, a blight upon humanity, a corrupting and contaminating force requiring corrections and remediation.

As far as the bullies in the bureaucracy see it, the people are free from torture only through its grace and mercy; the people being accountable to its every whim, weakened and emasculated to the point of complete and unquestioning (and even proud) obedience, even to the point of condemning peers who present legitimate grievances or disputes, with the people generally doing their best to avoid being railroaded and crushed by the weight of a thoughtless and heartless bureaucracy. Of course, in the view of those within the bureaucracy (and those condoning it), this isn’t ‘torture’ at all, just business as usual. It is a sick and twisted state, indeed, wherever the people, any society, has succumbed to this disease, wherever this plague is said to be the mark of ‘civilized’ society, wherever the contagion is presented as the cure, and wherever the individual is considered ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ or ‘mentally-ill’ or ‘dangerous to society’ for challenging any of this or merely pointing any of it out.