marjaerwin

There are 2 ways to interpret the verdict.

The 1st is if it is consistently applied. In this case, if there’s a shoot-out, whoever wins the shoot-out can always claim self-defense. Even if they’re the only one shooting.

Seems the point of having laws and courts is to avoid this situation, not to create it.

The 2nd is if it is inconsistently applied in favor of far-right shooters.

So Zimmerman and Rittenhouse get a license to kiill, while Reinohl gets gunned down without trial. For the state, the point of laws and courts is to protect itself and its supporters, not to rein them in.

1. It can allow the victim-blamers to pretend there was no injustice, and to pretend there is natural justice.

2. It can enable the victim-blamers to trigger victims who speak out, by forcing us to describe our experiences, again, and again in more detail, to show we weren’t doing anything to provoke our attackers.

3. It can enable the victim-blamers to silence victims who don’t want to be triggered again.

It's hard. Some beatings, some stuff I'd rather not talk about, a death in the family, and frequent reminders that I don't control my own life have sucked all the joy out of my own life.

P.S. I've had good days and bad in the past three weeks. I'm triggered now, but on the whole I'm doing better these days than I was then. I've got a better idea too, of what keeps bringing me back to the beatings, and the other stuff I've survived, and the fear. Maybe I can work through it after all. Maybe it will start getting better instead of worse.

(Luckily, they aren't rounding up dissident bloggers yet.)

I am still wondering how they have normalized the torture and surveillance states. However, I'd like to mention a number of contributing problems:

1. It looks like many of the people in the political/corporate establishment are interested in expanding its own power. In many cases, they may wish to expand their power for benevolent reasons; the effect is just as maleficent.

2. It looks like most of the people in the political/corporate establishment deal with other members of the establishment more often than they deal with outsiders. If they hear the same ideas, attitudes, etc. from each other, they reinforce each other.

3. Most of the people in any privileged group believe their ideas, and only their ideas, are serious. They are likely to believe outsiders' ideas are unserious, simply because they are outsiders' ideas, unless the outsiders agree with the establishment.

3-Note. We don't need tapes of cabinet meetings to discover this. We can see similar phenomena in everyday life. Men tend, unconsciously, to give more weight to each others' voices than to womyn's voices. Even in activist meetings which try to achieve gender equality, men speak more often than womyn, and men's ideas are often immediately discussed, while womyn's ideas are often deferred unless/until a man seconds the idea. We can reasonably assume that this is one of the causes of the serious/unserious dynamic Glenn Greenwald has written about.

4. The beneficiaries of authoritarianism are better organized for lobbying than the targets of authoritarianism will ever be. These would include the prison-torture-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the information control industry, and myriad groups which are already involved in crimes against humanity and are hoping for secrecy and legal impunity.

5. The rapid expansion of authoritarianism, the increasingly frequent wars, etc. have drained activists; the use of violence, trumped-up charges, agents provocateurs, the use of torture against alleged whistleblower Brad Manning, and so on have intimidated many of us.

6. America has an established culture of victim-blaming - the dark side of the myth of meritocracy.

7. American schools, media, etc. have played up the ideas of the enemy within - which the Wilson regime used to justify its repression - and of the stab in the back. They most often apply the myth to the Vietnam War, claiming that the United States military was undefeated, and could have won the war, but that the anti-war movement had somehow tied their hands.

7-Note. We can see these at work here: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/29/guantanamo_bay_obama_bush_karen_greenberg_peter_king_bradley_manning/index.html

Note: Edited because I for one don't know what they are thinking; 1 and 2 are based on their behavior and 3 is based on my knowledge of how other kinds of privilege can affect group dynamics and/or reinforce groupthink.