“Hate Crime” Protection For Heroes?

Eric Peter’s Autos

Should it be illegal – a crime in and of itself – to dislike cops?

The Fraternal Order of Police – the union for cops – thinks it ought to be. It is officially demanding that cops – already a protected (and entitled) class – be further set apart from ordinary folks by passing legislation that would enable prosecutors to pursue additional “hate crimes” charges against any not-cop who is accused of voicing anti-cop sentiments while, say, “resisting arrest” by attempting to ward off the wood shampoo being administered by a cop. Or in the course of committing any other crime involving one of the state’s enforcers of the laws where the crime-committer can be characterized as having committed the crime with dislike of cops in his heart.  

One must (literally) love Big Brother … or else.

Well, one must at least not convey any indication of overt dislike for him and his minions. That might be regarded as hateful and thus actionable.

The proposed legislation – “act now!” says the FOP – would expand existing race-based “hate crimes” laws that make a murder more than merely a murder if the perpetrator and his victim are of different ethnicities.

Or rather, if the murderer is white and his victim not-white (it is extremely rare for a black murderer of a white to be charged with hating his victim – though one wonders who imagines that a murderer of any race is kindly inclined toward his victim, whether of the same race or otherwise).

At any rate, the proposal would make the murder (or assault) of a cop more than merely a murder or an assault – which it de facto already is. Even to kill a police dog – including incidentally/inadvertently – is treated with particular severity by the system (whereas cops routinely murder non-cop canines very deliberately – and with near-impunity). The mere touching of a cop’s person by a mundane is also a serious crime – whereas they may touch us (and more) with prima nocta impunity.

This will make everything nice and de jure – and (as the lingo goes) enhance the punishments imposed upon any citizen for transgressing the person of a cop, four legged or two.

It goes without saying, of course, that cop malice for mundanes will not carry extra sanctions.

“Enough is enough,” squeals FOP President Chuck Canterbury. “It’s time for Congress to do something to protect the men and women who protect us.” (Italics added; insert laugh track here.)

That “something” being an additional 10 years of prison time for doing “x” to a cop vs. doing the same thing to a not-cop, if it can be shown that the offender “hates” cops.

In the age of the Internet – and social media – this will not be hard to do. Have you everwritten an e-mail or posted a comment online critical of cops? Derisive of “officer safety”? Referred to one as a “pig”? If you have, don’t forget that these sentiments are on file – on a hard drive out in the Utah desert – forever. Your comments and postings may come back to haunt you someday… .

That day may the day you’re arrested for transgressing a “free speech zone,” or ignoring the government-vehicles-only diktat during the next snowstorm. You do not immediately Submit and Obey, find yourself arrested and charged. They pull your records – which remember will exist in perpetuity – and lo and behold, discover youdon’t love Big Brother.

Doubleplusungood, that.

Double the punishment.

Over the years, without most people noticing it – and a frightening number of them actively cheering it – cops have become a kind of Praetorian Guard and like their Roman antecedents, legally entitled to do things which if we (the non-Praetorian) did them would be – are – punished most severely. These range from the fairly trivial (though nonetheless grating) such as driving as fast as they like without having to worry much about getting a ticket for “speeding” to the spectacularly egregious, such as recklessly handling deadly weapons and physical assault that ends up with a mundane dead on the sidewalk. Such things are tolerated – even applauded – because the populace has been marinated in authority worship from toddlerhood on for generations such that it has become unconscious and reflexive. But lately it has become downright fetishistic. Adulation of authority’s most obvious manifestation – the uniform. Put an ordinary (often, a very ordinary) person in one and – presto! – you now have a hero. Who must constantly be “thanked for their service.”

Are we really that far away from reviving the heel click? The stiff-armed salute? A society that worships people in uniform is necessarily a society that venerates authority.

And which increasingly does not tolerate those who don’t.

One of the very few upsides to getting older is having a memory of how things were by dint of having actually experienced them – and contrasting Then with Now.

In my youth, back in the ’80s, worship of those in uniform as “heroes” was looked upon as a kind of weird aberration, like snake-handling and talking in tongues – and largely practiced by the same people. It is no coincidence that the mainstreaming of holy rolling religiosity and authoritarianism (thank you, Ronald Reagan) have tracked together. One hand washes the other. Just believe. Just obey. They spring from the same source waters. Buzz cut toughs doing the lord’s work – and Uncle’s – whether in the lands of the freedom-haters abroad or back in the “homeland.”

http://ericpetersautos.com/2015/01/29/hate-crime-protection-heroes/