Can it Be Both?
Your pops caught you smokin' and he said "NO WAY!"
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day!
--Fight for your Right, Beastie Boys
I could see you're only telling
Lies, lies, lies
Breaking us down with your
Lies, lies, lies
--Lies, Glen Hansard
For "the crowd" is untruth.
Eternally, godly, christianly what Paul says is valid:
"only one receives the prize"
--Soren Kierkegaard
______________
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day!
--Fight for your Right, Beastie Boys
I could see you're only telling
Lies, lies, lies
Breaking us down with your
Lies, lies, lies
--Lies, Glen Hansard
For "the crowd" is untruth.
Eternally, godly, christianly what Paul says is valid:
"only one receives the prize"
--Soren Kierkegaard
______________
Ranger has been preoccupied with thoughts about lies and truth.
Maybe his mortal soul is in danger, but aside from the personal and metaphysical angle, he has been considering how these concepts apply to our government. He believes that government of, by and for the people is a lovely concept, but is a lie.
We are served a daily ration of lies called politics; more lies are called policy, and bigger lies are called OPSEC and National Security. These are lies of commission, and do not include the lies of omission. It is also a lie when pertinent truths are omitted from the dialog, such as when Treasury Secretary Geithner omits facts from congressional oversight briefings.
These mandarins are exempt from truth-telling, yet The People are legally constricted in their speech to Federal law enforcement agents.
FACT: Federal law dictates that lying to a Federal agent is a Federal crime
FACT: This is a major law enforcement tool
FACT: It is not a Federal Crime and it is permissible for local, State and Federal agents to lie to citizens when conducting investigations
FACT: Police may lie to you when you are being interviewed or interrogated, per Supreme Court ruling
FACT: Government officials lie to us daily.
It seems we have a freedom of speech myth in the U.S. The myth is that we are free to lie if we so desire. That is what freedom of speech means. Yet Congress passed a law which outlaws lying to Federal agents. On what constitutional grounds may Congress outlaw any speech? Why does the imperative to speak the truth apply to The People but not to Federal agents?
They can lie to us, but we are denied the same privilege. Ranger realizes this argument will not earn him a halo, but it is valid.
There cannot be two standards of truth -- one for them and one for us -- and still be equality under the laws, can there?
Labels: lies and federal agents
posted by rangeragainstwar at 9:47 PM
9 Comments:
Well...umm...
RE: "There cannot be two standards of truth -- one for them and one for us -- and still be equality under the laws, can there?"
It appears there can, and is..
No equality, however...
Remember that old saw about the Golden Rule, don't ya?:
"Them with the gold make the rules."
"Same as it ever was, same as it ever was"
Except it appears to be getting worse...
Deryle
Reminds me of that story about the American who 'd been living in Europe for a few years returning to this country during the Bush Intifada:
"Man, what happened while I was gone?" he asked, "It appears the entire country has been sprinkled with dumb -dust."
i just had a long conversation about truth and law enforcement with a niece of mine.
she borrowed my car to drive herself out to the local community college. the place has it's main parking lots all torn to shit, and work to unshit them has stopped because california is broker than a mormon with seven wives and 47 kids.
the upshot of it was that in a rush to not be late to class, she parked in the handicapped parking spot. this would have been a case of "no blood, no foul" if she had remembered to hang my parking placard on the rearview mirror. when she came out of class she found a ticket ($250 in california) and she went to the parking control office to see what was up.
her big mistake was that she told the truth to the rent'a'cops who patrol the torn up lots like east german wall guards. when she got to the point about how it was my placard, the pissant pretend law dogs confiscated my handicapped parking placard.
this. made. me. fucking. mad.
when i went down there, i went armed with the california statutes on parking. i also found out that the rent-a-cops do not have valid ticketing authority. they can issue warnings and in the case of flagrant violations they are, as is any citizen, able to call the real fucking police. (which, by the way, was something i was totally prepared to do, i had a cop friend and his partner standing by on their lunch break five minutes away)
the upshot of the whole thing was that the confiscating pissant is suspended for a week along with his supervisor, my placard is once again back in my car, and my niece's ticket is in the shitcan along with the other waste paper.
as we were driving home i told her "look. if you had simply driven home and showed me the ticket, i would have taken a picture of the ticket and the placard side by side, faxed it to them and said something along the lines of 'silly, silly me' and this all would have been over with. never. ever. cop to anythig. telling the truth is something that you do with your lawyer. if you're not going to lie to the fucking police, at least shut the hell up. and that goes super-mega-monster-double for rent'a'copz. fuck. them."
she said "they threatened to arrest me."
i said, "i promise that would have gone very badly for them. should they ever say anything like that, go along with it, use your phone call to get ahold of me, and i will come down and make khe sanh look like an old lady's tea."
MB,
I wish I had you for an uncle.
A similar thing happened to me on the FAMU campus. A parking cop with a 9 pulled his car behind mine so I could not exit my spot. I had an FSU sticker, but the universities have reciprocity.
That desgracado walked all the way around my car and said, "I think you've fabricated that sticker. I've got my eye on you!" I'm in my early 20's, I break down crying. What brutishness.
And if it happens on that level, it filters all the way up. That is what is wrong with our society. It is the Zimbardo effect.
Deryle,
I like (or rather, don't) the "Bush Intifada" :( "Dumb-dust" -- so many of us do seem in thrall to one thing or another. Not many people seem to be awake, do they? If they wake up a little, they medicate to go back under.
Why?
Lovely little article in the local paper here http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2010/02/clackamas_man_exercises_free_s.html about a guy who is driving around flipping off the county poletzi. They are not happy about this and ticket and arrest him whenever possible.
One aspect of what I see as the increasing domestication and sterilization of the U.S. public is our fetishization for luuuurving us some cops.
Cops do a job. Sometimes that do a great job and they do it well. Sometimes they don't. But the power and position of police is such that, like government officers and soldiers, they should be viewed with no more than indifferance tinged with suspicion by citizens of a genuine republic.
No thief or robber is more dangerous to your liberty than a policeman. All the former can do is take your property or life and that with some effort - the latter can take your freedom with the greatest of ease.
is it possible we can live without deceiving ourselves?
Lies are power.
And the Supremes recognize the benefits to the status quo of keeping power distribution unequal.
As far as the cops and coplets go, when our shining icons of truth and honor (such as champion athletes, titans of industry, and glorious leaders) are so invested in the 'win at any cost' paradigm, why wouldn't that seem good enough to some of those with a badge?
Choloazul says,
"Lies are power". Right, specifically, the ability to define truth (and untruth) is power.
I heard Ricky Gervais on NPR today. His film "The Invention of Lying" is such a powerful trope because the utterly naive are so vulnerable to one messiah.
G.D. asks, "is it possible we can live without deceiving ourselves." Great question. One must know what it is to dissemble, before one can free oneself, really recognize that, and feel the pain of the understanding. I think with much effort and vigilance, one can wake up. But it is very hard since we are using the mind to decipher the wiles of the mind.
I think it takes the ability to game alternate scenarios + the ability to be awake to live in non-deception. But, deception/denial is a built-in opiate to help us cope and survive. So to be in non-deception would be to override the brain's default.
Yes, I think it can be done. But ... I think few do it, because the cost-benefit ratio is not favorable enough. We like our palliatives -- we are like paramecia skittering away from our stressors.
GD,
When i lie to myself they can't send me to prison.
Those lies worry me.
jim
MB,
Silence is always the best weapon-especially when on ambush.
jim
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