Sunday, July 11, 2010

There should be a place for the rack in the torturer's arsenal

I've said before that despite all of her massive, massive, highly useful-to-power blind spots, digby should at least be praised for her dedicated reporting on the horrifying use of tasers by police forces, particularly in the US but also worldwide. And yes, her dedication to documenting the atrocities is admirable.

But Jesus goddamned Christ, how the fuck do you explain this?
There should be a place for the taser in the policeman's arsenal.
No, no, no, a thousand fucking times Jesus no.

8 comments:

Jack Crow said...

You explain it simply: progressives love power, so long as conservatives don't have it.

They're just as lawn order as their connie counterparts. They just have different bogies.

Jenny said...

Well, she also says that the police can't be trusted with them in the same entry so it seems her worldview as been slightly altered:

"hey make their lives easier so they have become a tool of torture and abuse --- and death --- upon the citizenry rather than a weapon used in place of a gun. It's clear that this is an experiment that has failed."

Jack Crow said...

Jenny,

The full quote is:

"There should be a place for the taser in the policeman's arsenal. But they have shown that they cannot be trusted to use them. They make their lives easier so they have become a tool of torture and abuse --- and death --- upon the citizenry rather than a weapon used in place of a gun. It's clear that this is an experiment that has failed."

She laments not the tool but the flawed vessels who use it.

If only there were more noble men in blue, this piece d'arsenal would be more effective...

Ethan said...

It just blows my mind how she can be so dedicated, and so effective, at documenting all this, but so apparently unaware of what it means.

Soj said...

I suppose it begs the question then... what SHOULD be in the "policeman's arsenal"?

Ethan said...

If we must have policemen, which you may be surprised to learn I don't remotely take as a foregone conclusion, they could at least have the decency to not have arsenals.

Johnny Sunshine Jackson said...

Last week, outside the office park where I work, my co-workers and I witnessed a (presumably) drunk and disorderly man getting tazed five floors below. He had been chased out of the Mall of America across the street (a ghastly place).

Needless to say most of the co-workers were laughing at heartily at the police brutality, and when the police searched his bag and found a bottle... and when he struggled against the paramedics as they strapped him onto a gurney... although one of them remarked that it seemed strange it took twelve officers to subdue the (presumably) inebriated man in his early sixties. Your tax dollars at work, people!

I asked aloud whether the man's behavior warranted the use of lethal force, which elicited a few looks of incredulity from my fellow office drones. Apparently the man had a pocket knife with a two inch blade.

Ethan said...

Jesus.