ON RIOTING; ON THE
ABUSE OF DETAINEES' RIGHTS; ON THE DUTY OF CITIZENS
By Frank Newton,
Boiling Springs, North Carolina
=> REVISED VERSION <=
Mon. June 15th, 2020
1. Preamble
We are trapped in a sequence of recurring tragedies. The people cry out for justice.
Since the murder of George Floyd, Americans have gone into
the streets in numbers to show their anger, and to petition for redress of
grievances.
The citizens of other nations have protested, too: because
they hold the United States of America to a higher standard.
During or after the American Revolution, people called
Thomas Paine a pamphleteer, a writer of pamphlets. I am trying to be a pamphleteer on the
internet. This is my pamphlet.
2. On Rioting
Do you believe Von Clausewitz's saying: [because men have
found it is difficult for their country to obtain what they feel is its due]
"War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means"?
Here is what I believe: Rioting is a continuation of
political discourse by other means.
Destruction of property is a wicked thing. But war is destruction of property. But men say: "War is a continuation of
diplomacy by other means."
In the United States, riots arise because of the failure of
political discourse. Failures of
political discourse in turn arise because of the failure of the non-poor to
listen to the discourse of the poor.
There are those who say: We have no choice but to listen to
the discourse of the rich. We might
listen to the discourse of the middle class.
But there is no need for us to heed the discourse of the poor.
God gave you these riots because of your hardness of heart.
There is no law and order without justice.
3. On the Abuse of
Detainees' Rights
It is unacceptable for a police officer to put his knee on
the neck of a detainee.
4. Among the Things I Am Sick and Tired Of
I am sick and tired of people complaining about outside
agitators. If grievances exist, it does
not matter if the protests are led by outsiders. Address the grievances. Stop whining about who leads the protests.
5. Message
5a. What am I saying to arresting officers everywhere?
I am saying: courts and courtrooms exist for a reason. Here is a quotation from the unchanging prolog
of one of the Law and Order television shows:
"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important
groups: the police who investigate crime [and arrest suspects], and the
district attorneys who prosecute the offenders."
The division of
labor is that after investigation and bringing of criminal charges, the courts
will organize the story of what happened into order, sequence, and context --
and from that judicially created account full of details, the citizens of the
county and of the nation will draw their conclusions about whether justice has
been served, and whether the guilty parties have been correctly
identified. The citizens then use their
conclusions to determine who they will vote for in the next elections, based on
how the candidates propose to make the system of justice more just.
The tragedy of
President Kennedy's assassination is a textbook case of what can go wrong when
the accused is killed before trial -- even if the accused is guilty! As it seemed to me, the question was not so
much, was Lee Harvey Oswald guilty? The
question was, who paid him to kill the President? As far as we were able to grasp the situation,
the answer to that question was unobtainable after Jack Ruby murdered Lee
Harvey Oswald. From the investigation
which did take place, one would have thought that Jack Ruby was mentally
incompetent to tell investigators who paid him,
or to help investigators understand what motivated him. The upshot, as best I could understand. was
that innocent men had their reputations attacked in the years that followed,
because the courts had had no opportunity to put the story of what happened
into order, sequence, and context for the people of the United States. It could
not be done, because there is no trial of a dead defendant.
If the
principle of keeping the accused alive until trial applies to the guilty
accused person, it applies so much more strongly to the innocent accused
person!
I am saying to
the arresting police officer: Give the man you are arresting a chance to defend
himself. His chance to defend himself is
in court. Your job is to preserve his
life until he has had that chance.
I am saying to
the arresting police officer: In an arrest, you may only have a split second to
determine whether to fire your gun.
Train yourself with dedication and resolve to use that split second as a
person of good will would use it.
I have spoken
of man this and man that, because when a police officer murders a person being
arrested, it always seems to be a man murdering a man. Murder is not abstract but concrete. I have tried to fit my description to the
facts of what happens in these abominable failures of justice.
5b. What am I saying to high-ranking police officials?
What am I saying to the police chiefs who are in charge of
hiring rookie cops, or in charge of studying and acting on reports of
questionable behavior of junior white police officers when they are arresting
or detaining black people?
I am saying: do something about this intolerable and
loathesome situation.
With the help of psychologists, figure out some way to weed
out men who do not have what it takes to be on your force. That is your work. Keep working on it. That is what we ask of you.
5c. What am I saying about the President of the United States?
It is beyond my power to enumerate this President's abuses.
But I will name his basic problem: he is no good at his
job. Like most other jobs in this and
every country, his job requires honesty.
This President does not know how to be honest. He is not dedicated to the proposition that
honesty is the best policy. He is also
mean-spirited. Being a spiteful man, it
makes him angry if his subordinates win any praise, or any reputation for doing
the right thing.
5d. What am I saying
to young people, in justification of old people?
The difference in age between the Democratic candidate and
the Republican candidate-apparent for President is negligible. They are both old men. I heard a very serious young man recently criticize
Candidate Biden severely. That was after
Candidate Biden -- in a speech lofty by comparison with anything that comes out
of the mouth of the man in the White House -- quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.
saying "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward
justice." To an old man like me,
that rings as a hopeful statement! But
to a young man it said: "Justice is slow." Alas!!
"Justice is slow" is not a good slogan for young people as of
just now, when they are trying to survive the current arc of abuse of power and
trust by the most abusive president in our lifetime.
But I am saying this: Not all old men are bad. There are good old men, there are bad old
men. We are all a little bent over, and
we may look much the same on the outside: That is because we have all absorbed
a lifetime's worth of troubling but truthful news reports, which have
reluctantly driven us to conclude that changing the wicked ways of the world is
far, far harder than we ever thought it would be when we were your age. If the wicked prosper: it is not because the
good people aren't trying their best.
6. Remedies
We are thankful for parents who protect and feed their
children and raise them well. But we are
not thankful for abusive parents.
We are thankful for police officers who protect citizens
from lawlessness. But we are not
thankful for abusive police officers.
The United States has ways to punish abusive parents. We need to find ways to punish abusive police
officers.
7. On the Duty of
Citizens
"Days of toil, and hours of ease" -- Cecil Frances
Alexander, author of the words to the hymn "Jesus Calls Us O'er the
Tumult."
Recently, I heard it stated on an American sports news
channel that Americans at this moment have free time to consider the tragedy of
George Floyd, because there are no sports competitions taking place on
television for our people to watch, because of the corona virus.
Keep the people happy with pānem et circēnsēs, the poet said: bread and entertainments. We have bread! Now we even have toilet paper, thanks to the
hard work and dedication of our workers, and the angel in the details of our
distribution system! But we are waiting
for the entertainments to resume.
I am under the impression that Americans have the most
leisure time of any nation in the world.
Not everyone around here has leisure time. Some are working three jobs to make ends
meet. But, if you add up all the leisure
time that is present in our country, it mounts up pretty high, I believe,
compared to worldwide levels of leisure.
When the virus passes, and we return to sports competitions,
Americans will still have a duty to think about civic issues over long spans of
time. That is the opposite of treating
news stories like blips on the screen.
Our oppressions and prejudices are "in it for the long
haul." Our duty to think about
civic issues has to be in it for the long haul, too.
In speaking of our duty to put on our best thinking caps
when considering civic issues, I want to address my fellow Christians in
particular. We Christians have a saying
and a belief, that the Devil seduces
people. It is a metaphor. The metaphor means when the Devil is trying
to test you, it is like you are the woman and the Devil is the man, and the
Devil is trying to persuade you to have sex with him, even though you know in
your heart that is a bad idea.
The metaphor of seducing
is applied whenever we are being persuaded to do something we believe is
wrong. In fact: the metaphor of seducing is applied whenever we are
being messaged by people we disagree with.
The fact of the matter, however, is that when people you
disagree with are trying to send you a message, they are not always trying to seduce you. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not.
That is why God gave us free time. As citizens of a republic, a portion of our
leisure time should be dedicated to the purpose of trying to determine when
people we disagree with are trying to seduce
us, and when they are in fact men and women of good will, who are trying to
persuade us that we were wrong about something we were taught to believe. After all, being wrong happens to the best of
people.
I repeat: God gave us free time in part so that we can
distinguish times when people we disagree with have dishonest motives, from
times when they are, in all honesty, trying to persuade us that we are on the
wrong track, or have overextended our generalizations. We must renounce entertainments for some
amount of time every week, so that we can make a more detailed assessment of
the motives of, and the evidence presented by, specific persons who are trying
to persuade us to change our minds about something -- specific persons we judge
to be among the more honorable section of the people who disagree with us.
There are times when listening to what the other side has to
say is not the same as being tempted by the Devil. Finding those times among the hours of
our life is part of our duty as citizens.
8. On the Wretched
State of the American Dream
"I have a dream" -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I will not cease from mental fight" -- William
Blake
What has happened to the American dream? What has happened to Dr. King's dream? Illegal drugs done screwed with the American
dream. Illegal drugs have sabotaged Dr.
King's dream. That is just one of the
troubling but truthful news reports my generation has received!
Illegal drugs have turned every economic class in our nation
against every other. The rich believe
the mess we are in with illegal drugs is because of the bad example set by the
middle class and the poor. The middle
class believe the mess we are in with illegal drugs is because of the bad
example set by the rich and the poor.
The poor believe the mess we are in with illegal drugs is because of the
bad example set by the rich and the middle class. In truth: every economic class has
sinned. There is no righteous economic
class in this matter.
Our society has to have a set of discouragements in place to
discourage people from wasting their own and other people's resources, and our
precious time, on addicting ourselves to illegal drugs. When our resources and our time are wasted:
our dream is betrayed, and our strength as a nation is shrunken.
But the particular set of discouragements we have in place
is not working. We have to consider
other discouragements. In other words:
we have to devote some of our precious leisure -- the time we would have
devoted to entertainments -- to looking at the problem of illegal drugs from
all angles, and considering creative ways to make our discouragements more
effective. That is the path we have to
follow to rehabilitate the American dream, and reinvigorate the movement to
break every yoke of oppression.
9. In Praise of Black
Football Players
To use a baseball metaphor, black football players have
stepped up to the plate in the current crisis.
They have a position of influence in the black community, and they are
using it for the good of our country.
In earlier generations, the black clergy and religious
leaders held a leading position in articulating the black response to crises
and disasters in the American system and landscape.
Black clergy and religious leaders still have my ear; so do
white clergy and religious leaders. But
the reality of our generation is that black football players, in our time, have
the ear of a larger group of Americans than black religious leaders.
I am proud of Torrey Smith of the Carolina Panthers, my
family's football team, who has made a valuable and timely contribution to the
discussion about this crisis.
His
interview with Jonas Shaffer of the Baltimore Sun (published June 5th) is
here.
The football players who have spoken out have demonstrated
that, after hours and hours of grueling practice to play their game
competitively, they have dedicated some of their hours of ease to address civic
issues.
I am praying for our country.
DISCLOSURE: I am a white man.
