The reaction of some allegedly liberal bloggers to the tasering of a student at a Kerry event speaks volumes to me about the normalisation of torture. For the writers it’s not an issue of whether tasers should be used on citizens in a free state at all and whether police should be allowed to render what is, in effect, a punishment without a trial. For them it’s merely an issue of who deserves it and who doesn’t.
Torture is becoming normalised – here, as if we needed much more proof is a demonstration of that normalisation:
Awww, how cute. This cute pink seal taser’s perfect for any budding little hitlerjiugend on your Christmas list. Imagine the joy on Christmas morning! No more childish bickering over the Wii…
Tasers even come in cool designer colours, like electric blue, black pearl and baby pink. Match your taser to your cellphone and go jackbooting in style! Not just handy for shutting up kids or getting rid of annoyingly on-point loudmouth sophomore journalists, tasers are a must-have for shutting up annoying relatives, cripples and the mentally ill:
Wheelchair-Bound Woman Dies After Being Shocked With Taser 10 Times
Wed Sep 19, 9:38 AM ET
A Clay County woman’s family said it’s seeking justice after their loved one died shortly after being shocked 10 times with Taser guns during a confrontation with police.
The family of 56-year-old Emily Delafield said it would take the Green Cove Springs Police Department to court, according to a WJXT-TV report.
In April 2006, officers with the police department said they were called to a disturbance at a home in the 400 block of Harrison Street just before 5 p.m.
In a 911 call made to the Green Cove Springs, Delafield can be heard telling a dispatcher that she believed she was in danger:
Dispatcher: And what’s the problem?
Delafield: My sister is waiting on my property.
Dispatcher: Your what?
Delafield: My sister (inaudible) is on my property trying to harm me.
Officers said they arrived to find Delafield in a wheelchair, armed with two knives and a hammer. Police said the woman was swinging the weapons at family members and police.
Within an hour of her call to 911, Delafield, a wheelchair-bound woman documented to have mental illness, was dead.
Family attorney Rick Alexander said Delafield’s death could have been prevented and that there are four things that jump out at him about the case.
“One, she’s in a wheelchair. Two, she’s schizophrenic. Three, they’re using a Taser on a person that’s in a wheelchair, and then four is that they tasered her 10 times for a period of like two minutes,” Alexander said.
According to a police report, one of the officers used her Taser gun nine times for a total of 160 seconds and the other officer discharged his Taser gun once for a total of no more than five seconds.
A medical examiner found Delafield died from hypertensive heart disease and cited the Taser gun shock as a contributing factor, the report said. On her death certificate, the medical examiner ruled Delafield’s death a homicide.
Did Emily Delafield deserve it, too? If not,why not?
“But she was in a wheelchair!” So what? She was armed. The Kerry protestor wasn’t armed – but if he deserved it, why didn’t she? Who decides who deserves it and who doesn’t anyway, the cops?
You see where we go when accept the premise that tasers can be used by a supposedly civilised society against it’s citizens? Right down the rabbithole.
Now if only they’d used the pretty pink seal taser on her, at least she’d’ve died smiling at teh cute and they might’ve avoided a lawsuit…
I don’t suppose this report will raise any more outrage with some liberal bloggers than did the Kerry tasering, though. One of the things that’s so shocking about the Kerry video is the way Kerry just let it happen and how the audience, inured to Jerry Springer-hype shenanigans, just sat there and watched avidly and worst of all was the approving applause from the audience – and some bloggers
If it were up to those bloggers being a pretentious writer and careerist publicity hound iwould be a crime deserving of summary judgement and umpty-thousand volts. Christ, if if that were the case then many of those same bloggers wouldd’ve been regularly writhing in agony on their own floors these past years. I suggest they go read their own archives, it can be a sobering experience.
There is at least one useful result though from the controversy; it’s causing a real sorting of sheep from goats as ‘sensible’ liberals come out as objectively pro violent repression, or at least pro when it suits them.
If now isn’t a time to choose which side you’re on – for or against creeping corporate neofascism – when is?
As Martiin points out, anyone who is in favour of taser use in any way, shape or form has taken a political position that’s entirely incompatible with any known definition of ‘left’ or ‘liberal’.These are the same bloggers who’ve appointed themselves the vanguard of the revolution and who’ve proclaimied themselves ‘the left’ – when what they actually are is anti-Bush and anti-Republican, which is not at all the same thing.
This is highlighted most clearly when it comes to authoritananism and policing: many self-described US liberals, when it comes to repressive policing, seem to consider it to be ‘for thee but not for me’. However much they might try to convince themselves otherwise to try and retain their alt credibility, they are conservatives, not liberals, because they don’t want to question the political system we live under, they want to conserve what they have, and if that takes harsh and repressive policing, so be it.
Crack a few jokes about prison rape and Scooter Libby, really stick it to the man, man, it’s all good snark – but ignore the fact of insitutionalised torture, sexuali abuse and modern slavery in US jails because that’s what’s propping up your own comfy lifestyle.
The Kerry incident brought out something very ugly in US liberal blogging – but it’s also served the useful function of reminding us just how skewed notions of left and right in US politics are and how useless it is to try and compartmentalise left and right when the entire public discourse, is slanted so far right to begin with that the Democrats, far from being the flaming communist atheists the rightwing media paints them as, are pro-free-market, pro-military imperialism and pro the status quo, and would be out on the right iwng of any given .eu conservative party.
Democrats are not the left or the good guys. You won’t see Democrats rolling back the police state when in power: just so long as it happens to people they don’t know or who they can easily despise and dismiss, and they don’t have to question capitalism and they get to keep their stuff, repressive paramilitary policing is no problem.
What I hope is that the furore of comments that’s resulted from their flip and callous reactions to the Kerry tasering has also caused some ‘liberals’ to examine their consciences and ask themselves what it is they really stand for when they accept taser use as a given.
If nothing else, the Kerry incident’s pushed taser misuse into the public spotlight, so I suppose you could at least count that as a plus.
