Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Seattle has abandoned the rule of law. Is this a foretaste of what's to come?


Protesters and demonstrators in Seattle have set up what they're calling the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone around the 11th Precinct police building in Seattle.  They've even produced this map of the "liberated" area (clickit to biggit).




As the labels on the map make clear, this is nothing more or less than a far-left-wing, progressive, communist-inspired project.  The labels are typical of communist propaganda throughout the world over the past century or more.  They leave little doubt as to the ideology behind this farce.  It's Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" writ large, on the streets of one of America's largest cities.

Of course, that city - Seattle - is so far left of center in its politics that it's arguably no longer American in its governance and outlook.  The occupiers of the "Autonomous Zone" appear to agree.  This notice appears on one of the barriers blockading entrance to the zone:






Please imagine, for a moment, that you're a business owner or resident inside the boundaries of that zone.  Suddenly your customers and suppliers no longer have free access to your business;  suddenly your right to the peaceful enjoyment of your residence is interrupted by radical activists who are controlling entrance to and exit from the zone.  You may face demands for access to your facilities at any time, and any refusal may draw accusations that you're "racist" or "reactionary" or (perish the thought!) "conservative".  You may be expected to "support the people" by donating supplies to the "masses", whether you like it or not.  Refusal is unlikely to be well received.

Worst of all, to my mind, is that local police deliberately and openly abandoned their own precinct building, opening the way for the radicals to take over.  I doubt very much whether police took this decision on their own initiative.  I'm pretty sure it was imposed on them by city administrators.  Despite claims that the precinct will remain staffed, it's now clear that those staff are not using their own headquarters building, which has been taken over by the mob.  Police are patrolling from mobile staging areas instead, and appear to be voluntarily remaining outside the self-declared "Autonomous Zone".  What this means for you, if you live and/or work inside that zone, is that you can no longer rely on police protection or assistance.  You're on your own.

This means that Seattle has effectively abandoned the rule of law within city limits.

Let's examine what "the rule of law" is.  Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as:

... the mechanism, process, institution, practice, or norm that supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power. Arbitrariness is typical of various forms of despotism, absolutism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism.

. . .

In general, the rule of law implies that the creation of laws, their enforcement, and the relationships among legal rules are themselves legally regulated, so that no one—including the most highly placed official—is above the law. The legal constraint on rulers means that the government is subject to existing laws as much as its citizens are. Thus, a closely related notion is the idea of equality before the law, which holds that no “legal” person shall enjoy privileges that are not extended to all and that no person shall be immune from legal sanctions. In addition, the application and adjudication of legal rules by various governing officials are to be impartial and consistent across equivalent cases, made blindly without taking into consideration the class, status, or relative power among disputants.

There's more at the link.

Those conditions no longer apply in Seattle.  There, it's now patently obvious that:
  • Not all citizens are equal under the law.  Left-wing protesters and agitators are being handled with kid gloves.  Try mounting a right-wing protest, for any cause from free speech, to pro-Second-Amendment, to outright racism like the Ku Klux Klan, and you'll doubtless get handled rather differently.  Don't believe me?  Why don't you try it, while the rest of us watch?  Pass the popcorn, please . . .
  • Power is used arbitrarily, particularly as regards policing.  The police are no longer "protecting and serving" everybody.  They're doing so selectively.  If you're in a zone controlled by the politically correct, you can expect little, if any, help from law enforcement authorities and officers.  Seattle PD's motto is officially "Service, Pride, Dedication".  As far as the "Autonomous Zone" is concerned, I see from them little service, nothing to be proud of, and dedication only to surrendering to the mob.  It's hard to see how any self-respecting officer can remain in the employ of so pusillanimous an agency.
  • The Mayor and city administration are abandoning their duty of care towards the city under their control, and pandering instead to pressure groups and extremist ideologies.  Those who don't fall into "politically correct" categories are no longer welcome in Seattle.  They're on their own.

In a properly administered state, the Governor and/or state authorities would have intervened long since to protect and uphold the rule of law, and ensure equality before the law for all citizens of the city.  That's unlikely to happen in Washington, where left-wing progressive politics dominate the state government.  The powers that be will adopt a snooty, high-toned, morally bankrupt perspective on the whole thing, and abdicate their responsibilities.

I'm fairly sure this won't be the only such "Autonomous Zone" set up in US cities.  Anywhere the radicals can expect compliance from city authorities, they'll try to do likewise.  Those opposed to them, or those who object to their businesses and property being turned into political pawns, are going to find themselves S.O.L. as far as the authorities are concerned.  It goes along with the "Defund the Police" and "Abolish the Police" narratives currently being spouted by the radicals.  By excluding police from "Autonomous Zones", they hope to demonstrate that they're not needed.  They may not be needed by the radicals, but they'll sure be missed by those the radicals intimidate, oppress and rob!

Of course, this will only accelerate the inevitable backlash.  Don't believe me?  Aesop spelled it out yesterday evening in relation to the "Abolish the Police" movement, but what he said applies just as well to radical "Autonomous Zones" (run, as they are and will be, by the same people that want to get rid of law enforcement).

Since ever, the whole thing is a Left-wing con job, exactly like advertising.

Create the need for the otherwise needless; then meet the new "need".

They've just taken ads for dishsoap and popcorn makers to their logical political extreme.

It's a riff on the Mafia's "protection" racket:  "That's a nice society you have there; be a real shame if it suddenly burned down."

The only answer to that is to shoot the "salesmen"; and then hunt down and exterminate the guy who sent the salesmen, and all their minions, to the last man, and last child.

Nothing less will suffice.

The Left, whether they realize it or not, is setting the table for an existential war of survival, down to the last side standing.

It's a recipe for civil war on a biblical Armageddon scale.  Everyone's families and entire lifestyle are the chips in that game.

Kill all they send.
Then find and destroy the nest.
First one to go ugliest the fastest wins.

Any half measures are a recipe for self-destruction.
Dresden and Hiroshima were a template.
Second place prize is a body bag.

What we're all witnessing daily right now is the Left's Useful Idiots trying to completely upend civilization, to suit their own ends.

Half of them think they can win. The other half would rather burn everything down to try, knowing they cannot win, and not caring anyways.

This is logic via Lucifer:  "If I cannot rule everything, I'll burn it all down."

The answer to that, as ever, comes out of the barrel of a gun, and at the point of sword and spear.

Again, more at the link.

This is my greatest fear right now.  The more radicals on one side push the limits, the closer they get to the brink, the more the other side will become radicalized and push right back, raising the stakes, "upping the ante" until there's no alternative but to go all in - or lose.  That's what's behind terrorism, the ultimate expression of radicalism.  It's what we saw on 9/11, but written (so far) in political slogans and biased, one-sided actions rather than in the large-scale shedding of blood.  Can it stay that way?

Historically, it hasn't.  Historically, extremism has always led to counter-extremism.  I think that's what we're seeing right now in the USA.  I'm reliably informed that many local movements are forming and organizing right now.  They're taking extreme pains to remain "under the radar", not using traceable or interceptable communications, being very careful and selective about whom they trust, and making plans that are not discussed publicly.  Some have progressed to the point of coordinating their plans with other groups, through very carefully vetted channels.  I won't be surprised to see regional and national networks forming, in due course.

I'm not part of any of those groups.  I'm a pastor and chaplain, and have my own perspective on what's happening - which does not involve violence unless in defense of my life, family and property.  However, some of those involved are former (and still trusted) colleagues, so I hear a few things from time to time.  I'm very worried by what I'm hearing.

After the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015, I wrote:

I've seen war from the inside.  I've been under fire, and I've fired on others.  I've been wounded ... and I've inflicted my share of wounds.  I've picked up the dead, and the pieces of the dead.

Those aren't the worst aspects of violent conflict.  To me, the worst is what it does to the human psyche.  You become dehumanized.  Your enemies are no longer people - they're objects, things, targets.  You aren't shooting at John, whose mother is ill, and who's missing his girlfriend terribly, and who wants to marry her as soon as he can get home to do so.  You're shooting at that enemy over there, the one who'll surely 'do unto you' unless you 'do unto him' first.  He's not a human being.  He's a 'gook'.  He's 'the enemy'.  He's a thing rather than a person.  It's easier to shoot a thing than it is a person.

. . .

You no longer think of civilians as such.  They're in enemy territory, or known to be sympathetic to the enemy:  therefore, they're 'things', suspects, never to be trusted, never to be treated objectively or with anything other than the forced, mandatory legal definition of 'decency' imposed by your superiors . . . and even that becomes flexible when those superiors aren't around to monitor what you're doing.

. . .

That's the bitter fruit that extremism always produces.  It's done so throughout history.  There are innumerable examples of how enemies have become 'things'.  It's Crusaders versus Saracens, Cavaliers versus Roundheads, Yankees versus Rebels, doughboys versus Krauts . . . us versus them, for varying values of 'us' and 'them'.

. . .

And in the end, the bodies lying in the ruins, and the blood dripping onto our streets, and the weeping of those who've lost loved ones . . . they'll all be the same.  History is full of them.  When it comes to the crunch, there are no labels that can disguise human anguish.  People will suffer in every land, in every community, in every faith . . . and they'll turn to what they believe in to make sense of their suffering . . . and most of them will raise up the next generation to hate those whom they identify as the cause of their suffering . . . and the cycle will go on, for ever and ever, until the world ends.

We cannot 'kill them all and let God sort them out' ... There are too many of 'them' to kill them all, just as 'they' can never kill all of 'us' ... We cannot kill our way out of the dilemma of being human, with all the tragedy that entails.

May God have mercy on us all.

I fear greatly that unless the extremists on both sides come to their senses, those words may yet prove prophetic in these tragically dis-United States in which we live.

Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  It seems that yesterday evening, Tucker Carlson basically agreed with what I've said here about the threat from extremists.  See for yourself.





Quite so.

24 comments:

mark leigh said...

For those who don't know Seattle Capitol, Hill is that city's gay district. Sometimes known as the Swish Alps. The residents of the district are less inclined to self-defense than any other part of the city. That a city council member has been seen unlocking doors for occupiers just adds insanity.

McChuck said...

So, like the schools, Peter doesn't seem so much concerned about the bullies running rampant as with the victims hitting back. That sort of "extremist" escalation simply can't be allowed!

For those who have never been exposed to game theory, please learn about the most successful strategy to the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. At first you cooperate, then in each subsequent round you do what your opponent did to you in the previous round.

We have been in a war for survival since before we were born. Most of us just haven't recognized that simple fact, because the first targets of the Enemy were the church and the media.

Tom said...

I realize that your definition of "victory" is "I'm alive."

That's fine. Some people, however, have a definition of victory that includes "did not create authoritarian hellscape as bad as the one I fought against."

Unknown said...

When your politics are based on dividing people into tribes, don't be surprised when the tribes don't get along...

https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/06/in-chicago-hispanic-gangs-protect-their-neighborhoods-from-looters-get-the-fck-out-we-wont-let-our-neighborhood-burn/

JackL said...

So basically we're being handed a choice between Communism, Trumpism, or flaming chaos, and "none of the above" isn't an option. Ultimately we wind up with either ashes and rubble, or a police state of one stripe or another.

Lovely.

Time to triple down on my investments in precious metals.

Namely brass, lead, and copper.

FTW.

sysadmn said...

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

A contrarian view: What is wrong with this is not what they have done, but how. It used to be a tenet of conservative thought that government should be as small as possible, and as local as possible. If a Seattle neighborhood wants to experiment with anarchy, let them! In this case, anarchists are determined to inflict they viewpoint on someone else's neighborhood - oppose them.

milton f said...

Yeah, so for those who still vote: wouldn't it be swell if every ballot choice had as a last alternative the option of NON-ESSENTIAL?

Should the majority of votes indicate that the will of the people is that that office be eliminated, then it IS eliminated, AND that portion of the budget comes OFF the tax roles.

Arguing here about what Mini-Appleless or Seattle chooses as far as police "services" is ridiculous. Let the locals decide. And please, pass the popcorn.

Rob said...

When nothing was publicly done about Ms. Clinton's mishandling of classified documents she was clearly and publicly above the law and that was the end of one era and the beginning of another.

kurt9 said...

It reminds me of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Derry

Peter B said...

Did the Seattle PD clear out any weapons lockers before they bailed?

Beans said...

Sorry, but they, Antifa, said it. They forcibly removed that section from These United States.

May God have mercy upon their black, twisted souls, because they just did it. They finally crossed the line from 'plain politically crazy' to 'full whackadoodle ISIS' (without the obligatory goat-raping and stoning and throwing of gays off the roof for their 'sins.' Yet. Just wait as the power festers in their little black hearts and minds...)

By announcing they have forcibly removed themselves and that section of Seattle from the USA, they have just given every other person in These United States the perfect opportunity to go free-fire upon them. Any Antifa in other city streets? Hey, look, it's an invading army. Any takeover? It's an invasion.

Sorry, but not sorry. Every one of them has now committed sedition and treason and should be shot, hung, run over, stabbed and otherwise allowed for their magic powers to escape from their bodies by violent means.

Protesting? That's okay. Marching down the streets and littering? Okay... but please clean up after yourselves.

Taking control of land and declaring themselves a sovereign state? Hot Lead and Cold Steel. Apply 'liberally.'

I have had enough. So have a lot of people. Either government, local, state or federal, takes out the trash or the People will.

Either way, not a nice ending coming, but it will be much harsher on Pantifa if The People act, rather than Gov acts.

Unknown said...

This is good example of how the coming war will not be like the American Revolution not the American Civil War. What's coming will be very much like the French Revolution.

Those who once were driven by their blood lust yet now tired of it will be judged as against the movement. Those who are 'woke' will be judged as not woke enough. The judgments will be capricious but they will be harsh.


Rick

ADS said...

If my choice is "authoritarian hellscape where my side won" and "authoritarian hellscape where I'm loaded onto a boxcar with my family and friends" I know which way I choose.

Sam L. said...

Seattle and Portland (OR) are bug-nuts CRAZY.

Unknown said...

If the endstate of "authorization hellscape" is inevitable, (and it is, so long as the Left continues to advance uncontested), then your choice is simply whether you and your progeny shall be willingly enslaved.

Aesop said...

"Should the majority of votes indicate that the will of the people is that that office be eliminated, then it IS eliminated, AND that portion of the budget comes OFF the tax roles.

Arguing here about what Mini-Appleless or Seattle chooses as far as police "services" is ridiculous. Let the locals decide.
"

This is codswallop from someone who was sick the day in school they covered the difference between "democracy" and "constitutional republic".

No majority of voters anywhere, ever gets to vote the rule of law and the equal protection of the laws away; acknowledging they are already under it is the price of existing in civilization.

They are now in open rebellion, and exactly as outlined by Beans, they are now outside the law, in every sense, and the subject of "shoot on sight" treatment by everyone else in society, whether TPTB want to admit that undeniable truth or not.

To try anything else is to pretend your leg isn't gangrene, hoping it won't kill the rest of the body.

Everybody "running" that "autonomous zone" should be rounded up and summarily executed, in trials lasting no longer than it takes to pull the triggers or tie the nooses, and the bodies left for an example to others until the buzzards are satiated.

"By announcing they have forcibly removed themselves and that section of Seattle from the USA, they have just given every other person in These United States the perfect opportunity to go free-fire upon them. Any Antifa in other city streets? Hey, look, it's an invading army. Any takeover? It's an invasion.

Sorry, but not sorry. Every one of them has now committed sedition and treason and should be shot, hung, run over, stabbed and otherwise allowed for their magic powers to escape from their bodies by violent means.
"

Amen. Can't start, nor end, soon enough, and continuing the experiment until the last one breathing that sedition is dead, Dead DEAD, is not too high a price to pay.

If it wipes out their entire family line in the process, it's merely a good start.

Exactly like cancer: radiation, poison, and the knife are the only ways to handle it, and soonest is bestest.

The time for half-stepping is over.
Those jackholes merit a swift and terrible reckoning, such that people will talk about it in hushed tones of awe, and compare it to the fate of Carthage.

Anything less is qui tacit consentire, which option cannot be even contemplated.

Cry "Havoc!", and let loose the dogs of war.

Robin Datta said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Robin Datta said...

There may come a time when it is time to kill. It is a moral failure not to do one's duty, whatever may be presented to one as one's duty by one's karma.

Therefore, arise and achieve glory! Conquer your foes and enjoy a prosperous empire! O best amongst archers, all your enemies have already been killed by Me – you are but an instrument.

Tom said...

Man, whiny and cheesy replies.

kurt9 said...

Everybody "running" that "autonomous zone" should be rounded up and summarily executed, in trials lasting no longer than it takes to pull the triggers or tie the nooses, and the bodies left for an example to others until the buzzards are satiated.

We can call it operation Motorman 2.

P. Lester said...

On a lighter note I see where the "homeless people" they invited in to their little paradise have stolen all the food stocks they were counting on. They have put out a distress call for food to be donated to them..Apparently no farms in their little slice of heaven.

waepnedmann said...

McChuck
"For those who have never been exposed to game theory, please learn about the most successful strategy to the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. At first you cooperate, then in each subsequent round you do what your opponent did to you in the previous round. "

I think you are thinking of the "Tit for Tat" strategy in game theory: as you have said you match the action of the opposing side, but this strategy is only used if you want to maintain a stalemate and not escalate an adversarial relationship.
Winning requires something like the "Dollar Auction" gambit which caused the downfall of the Soviet Union.
Or, you take a lesson from Cato the Elder and his admonition that Carthage must be destroyed.
Did you ever meet a Carthaginian?
No.
There is a reason for that.

Peripatetic Engineer said...

So, without some sort of "police", the homeless stole all their food and they have had to ask for food donations from outside. I guess they didn't look up the meaning of "autonomous". It's time to shut off the electricity and water and wait for them to surrender.

ADS said...

Be sure to tell your Antifa executioner that you were a good, principled conservative before you get shot in the back of the head and rolled into a ditch.