The Cold War was great PR for the United States. As one of just two superpowers in the world, it wasn’t hard for the U.S. to look good. Carrying the mantle of the defender of freedom and justice was easy when the other side maintained a network of forced labor camps and killed millions of its own citizens through famine and ethnic cleansing. But ever since the collapse of its Soviet Union, the former good guy has increasingly turned the powerful institutions it developed for use against a monolithic enemy onto perceived threats great and small, both at home and abroad. Nearly two decades into this new reality, America has become drunk on authority.
The sickness exists at every level of American government, starting with those charged with enforcing its drug laws. Local police in New Mexico last year said they were justified in allowing medical doctors to repeatedly anally probe a 63-year-old man – and bill him for the privilege – because he had clenched his buttocks during a routine traffic stop; the drugs they were supposedly looking for didn’t turn up even after three forced enemas and a forced colonoscopy because they never existed in the first place. One group of police officers in Milwaukee similarly used drug laws as an excuse for serially molesting dozens of unfortunate citizens who fell under their gaze over a two-year span beginning in early 2010. Border patrol cops have similarly forced gynecological exams on American citizens re-entering the country. Even those who aren’t subject to sexual humiliation at the hands of the state can have their property seized through civil asset forfeiture, under which one’s property is presumed guilty of a crime until proven innocent.
All of these examples come from officers engaged in routine execution of their Drug War duties. Anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the middle of police excited by an actual dangerous situation, as opposed to now-routine drug searches, face far more indiscriminate violence – just ask the two petite Mexican women and one small-framed white man who in separate incidents were attacked by police after being mistaken for rogue former cop Christopher Dorner, a 6’2 black man.
For those who enter the prison system, life in America can become a total nightmare. There are an estimated 80,000 prisoners being held in solitary confinement in the United States, some for decades on end, for reasons as flimsy as the books they read or the company they keep. Then there are the convicted criminals who end up in the hands of private prison contractors, where beyond the degradation of solitary confinement they can be further subjected to subhuman living conditions.
Even for the rest of the citizenry who manage to stay out from under the criminal justice system’s thumb, there’s always someone up above them who has a price to exact. Federal law enforcement sees being a fan of a bad rap music as no different than being a member of a criminal enterprise. State legislatures routinely try to disenfranchise voters. Florida’s governor enthusiastically supports the forced and indiscriminate drug testing of Medicaid and welfare recipients even though a federal judge has ruled such a program unconstitutional.
The only directly elected representatives in the federal government – Congress – are rarely of any real help. They’re happy to take the reins when it comes to inconsequential matters like investigating baseball players for lying about whether they cheated, but when it comes to exercising their Constitutional responsibilities on matters of real importance they continually hand the ball off to the controlling party’s favored industries. In the early 2000s this tendency gave oil interests and defense contractors a war based on false premises; today it’s granting Hollywood’s wish list in the form of the Trans Pacific Partnership. That leaves the judiciary as the people’s only line of defense against executive overreach, but even they aren’t beyond reproach, especially at the state and county levels. One judge in Texas resigned after she was exposed for sending texts to the prosecution with instructions to help win convictions. Another former Texas prosecutor and judge recently became the first American ever to serve time in jail for withholding evidence that led to a wrongful conviction (though his sentence of community service and 10 days in jail paled in comparison to the 25 years the wrongfully convicted man spent in jail). In Arizona, prosecutorial misconduct was alleged in nearly half of the capital cases heard during the last decade – and investigations by the state’s Supreme Court found such misconduct in 40 percent of the cases. And these are just a handful of examples. There are many more similar stories to be found even by cursory internet searches.
The intoxicating effect of all this authority at home has extended to the exercise of similar powers abroad. In areas where there is strong local government, the U.S. applies diplomatic pressure to get what it was. That’s the case in New Zealand where Kim Dotcom, founder of online file sharing services MegaUpload and Mega, has been under house arrest for the last year after being raided by local authorities at the behest of the American government, which leveraged a secret spy arrangement with the New Zealand government to investigate the internet mogul. In areas with weaker governments, the American tendency has been the indiscriminate use of its power. During the Bush Administration the method of choice was imprisonment and solitary confinement at Guantanamo Bay, where some 20 men remain who have been held for close to 12 years now, some of whom have never even been charged with a crime and nearly all of whom who were cleared for release years ago. Under Obama, imprisonment is a passé political albatross and the M.O. has been to assassinate at will via drone strikes and explain away civilian casualties by redefining terms like militant.
In the face of all this corruption and violence, what’s to be done? Not much, unfortunately. Those with the qualifications, wherewithal, and stomach for the mission can choose a narrow sector and try to fight back within the system. For everyone else, cross your fingers and try to stay out of the way. With any luck at all, the drunk will either pass out eventually or someone will find a way to restrain him until he’s no longer a danger to himself and those around him.
