At times in my life, I’ve wanted the powers of law enforcement. To arrest my crackhead neighbors for disturbing the peace by yelling Ludacris lyrics in the alley at 6 a.m. To subpeona information some jackass was stalling on for a story. To put George W. Bush in prison for war crimes. I would exercise eminent domain thehell over the craptastic big-box pharmacy that should have been a bookstore down the block. Not to mention locking up every goddamn van driver who can’t make a left turn downtown in less than 25 agonizing minutes. Oh, have I wanted the powers of law enforcement.
But I’ve never actually paid ‘roided-up dickheads to act like my personal army just CUZ.Somehow, I’ve never managed to go that crazy:
The culprit was Tony Hopfinger, editor of the evil Alaska Dispatch Internet website. Let’s see why he deserved to be arrested (ha ha, who are we kidding? Heasked a question, that’s why!):
Tony Hopfinger was handcuffed by [Miller’s private security] guards and detained in a hallway at Central Middle School until Anchorage police came and told the guards to release Hopfinger.
…
Hopfinger, who was holding a small video camera, said he was attempting to draw out a statement from Miller on why he was disciplined by the Fairbanks North Star Borough when Miller worked there as a part-time attorney. After Miller walked away, Hopfinger said, he was surrounded by Miller supporters and security guards and felt threatened, so he pushed one of them away.
Yeah, like we said, “no comment” seems to work most of the time? That’s not nearly as fun/embarrassing as handcuffing people though!
You know why? BECAUSE THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS. You can’t just give some mall cops a couple of badges and tell them they’re now your own private Red State Strike Force, no matter what your teawad supporters say. Calling someone a security guard doesn’t empower him or her to do anything to anybody without consequences, anymore than my calling myself a cupcake makes me dessert.
These people jaw the hell on about the Constitution all day long, about their rights and their freedoms and their powers and you know what it all means? It means I SHOULD GET TO DO WHATEVER I WANT TO PEOPLE I HATE. That’s all it means to these people. They’re like the day-traders of freedom pretending to be Gordon Gekko, with their bullshit about the Founders and what George Washington would think of Obamacare. All any of their high-minded talkiness means to them is that they get to hate on poor people, harass and mock minorities, and rough up anybody who calls them on their snide shit.
This isn’t new, wrapping hate in the flag, but I honestly can’t remember it being quite so blatant as it is in this case. This is the country we’ll be living in under Teabag Governance: piss us off and you’ll wind up in handcuffs. Not that that’s much different from the Bush years, but they’re not even bothering to make the argument anymore. They’re just muttering “freedoms” and slapping on the irons.
A.