All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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Police Violence: Peace Isn’t The Priority

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Korryn Gaines and son
Korryn Gaines and her son (photo widely distributed, allegedly from Facebook)

Precisely how did Korryn Gaines die? We don’t know, and probably never will.

The Baltimore County, Maryland Police Department admits that one of its officers shot her dead on August 1. In fact, the department admits that the officer shot first and that Gaines then returned fire in self-defense and defense of her five-year-old son (no, the department does not use those terms) before being gunned down.

The police also admit that before forcing their way into Gaines’s apartment and killing her, they went out of their way to ensure  their actions would be hidden from public view. The department contacted two social media services, Facebook and Instagram, asking that Gaines’s accounts be disabled so as to cut off her photo and video streams of what was happening. To their everlasting shame, the two firms complied with the request.

So we don’t know what happened. But we have a pretty good idea what happens next: The Baltimore County Police Department will “investigate” itself and announce that it has cleared itself and the unidentified officer who killed Gaines (he or she is currently on paid vacation, aka “administrative leave,” until the “investigation” is over) of any wrongdoing.

Baltimore County police chief James Johnson  characterizes his department’s desire for “peace” as the overriding priority justifying the concealment operation. Social media contacts needed to be stopped from urging her “not to comply with negotiators’ request that she surrender peacefully,” he says. “For hours, we pleaded with her to end this peacefully.”

Let’s dispense with the risible claim that “peace” was the priority here. Had that been the case, Johnson could have just called it a night and directed his officers to get in their cars and drive away.  Problem solved. Easy, peace-y.

If the priority was not “peace,” then what was it?

Officer safety? No.  Sending an officer into an apartment occupied by an armed woman isn’t very safe for the officer at all.

Public safety? No. At least one police officer fired multiple rounds — firing first, remember? — in an apartment building. Those rounds were probably 9mm, 10mm or .45 caliber rounds which could have penetrated walls (Gaines was allegedly armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a much safer weapon for people on the other side of a wall).

The Baltimore County Police Department’s number one priority, their overriding concern, wasn’t peace, or officer safety, or public safety. It was — as has become the case with many American police departments, much of the time —  successful exercise of authority at any price.

That’s why the Baltimore County PD covered up the details of their killing of the ninth American woman of color to die at police hands this year. Just like a cat in a litter box.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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$400 Million: The Partial Price of Peace?

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Hundreds (RGBStock)

When the US government sends $400 million in cash, stacked on pallets, to Iran on the same day the Iranian government releases four imprisoned Americans, it looks an awful lot like ransom.

On the other hand, when the US government decides to keep $400 million sent to it by the Iranian government pursuant to an arms deal  for 35 years without ever shipping the arms, it looks an awful lot like stealing.

And when the US government reaches a settlement to finally pay back that money with interest, it looks an awful lot like  justice.

Yes, the simultaneity of payment and release looks pretty damning on both ends.

On the other hand, it seems very understandable from both ends.

The Iranians have had good reason to distrust the US government for more than 60 years, ever since the US overthrew their elected government and saddled them with a US-approved dictator, then stole their money when they overthrew that dictator.  As often as the US has screwed them, why would they trust the US to repay them absent some kind of leverage?

President Obama, on the other hand, wanted to secure the return of those prisoners, and he seems to genuinely want to improve US relations with Iran after more than three decades of cold (and sometimes not so cold) war.  Coughing up cash that the US owed to Iran anyway probably looked like a good way to make progress on both of those fronts.

Yeah, I guess it looks kind of bad. But you know, I don’t have any heartburn over it. And I find it hard to give much credence to Republican temper tantrums over the whole thing.

I don’t recall Republicans complaining about the Iranians timing their release of hostages from the US embassy in Tehran to coincide with the inauguration of a Republican president (some people even believe that that Republican’s running mate negotiated a secret deal with the Iranians to stretch the matter and create that coincidence).

I do recall Republicans defending that same president when he was discovered to have traded arms to — not to merely have returned money to, but to have intentionally armed — Iran in return for assistance in achieving the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by Iran’s Hezbollah allies.

It seems to me that all is well here, election year partisan bluster notwithstanding. Peace gets messy now and again, but it beats the alternative.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Donald Trump: Unprincipled Populist

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English: 1896 Judge cartoon shows William Jenn...
English: 1896 Judge cartoon shows William Jennings Bryan/Populism as a snake swallowing up the mule representing the Democratic party. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rhetoric is, by most accounts, “populist, ” but that’s a broad description. Trump takes his “populism” from a particular historical tradition — one with a baleful history in American politics.

What is populism, and what’s the problem with Trump’s version of it?

Simplified, populism is the notion that society consists of two classes — the righteous but oppressed masses, and the greedy and oppressive power elites. That notion is timeless, but in modern political theory we can trace it to two French libertarians, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer, who correctly identified the righteous masses as “the productive class” (those who make their living through honest labor and exchange) and the greedy power elites as “the political class” (those who make their living, and accrue their power, by working for or buying the favor of the state).

Karl Marx repurposed Comte’s and Dunoyer’s theory and put it in harness to his nutty economic theories. Marx’s righteous masses were “the workers;” his greedy power elites were “the capitalists.” His proposed solutions militated in a non-libertarian direction, but he was at least clear on the relationship between the power elites and the state.  The state, he said, is “the executive committee of the ruling class.”

The final disposition of the ruling class is the rub with most “populist” agitators: They aim to topple the existing ruling class and replace it with another.  They don’t want to get rid of the power elites; they just want to BECOME the power elites. And they promise that their constituents (the righteous masses) will ascend to power with them.

Principled populism aims to end the existing class division altogether. By either limiting or liquidating government, it proposes to make the formation or existence of a “political class” impossible. In a genuine populist society,  a libertarian society, honest labor and free exchange are the sole sources of wealth and power.

Trump’s populism descends from an odd twist in American populism which treats the most marginalized and oppressed groups as the oppressive power elites, the middle class as the oppressed righteous masses, and a demagogue as the savior of those masses. We saw this kind of populism in the Dixiecrat rebellion of 1948, in George Wallace’s independent presidential campaigns, in Nixon’s “southern strategy” and in Pat Buchanan’s upstart Republican and Reform Party efforts.

Trump tells Pennsylvania steel workers and Louisiana carpenters and Kansas farmers that the oppressive power elites aren’t the political class (American government’s taxers, regulators and subsidy eaters), but rather foreign workers crossing the border and foreign governments American politicians get “a bad deal” from.

He tells the white middle class that the power elites aren’t the political class (government police terrorizing our communities), but their fellow productive class Americans (often  African-Americans) who object to assault and even slaughter by those police.

He tells Americans that putting him in power will put them in power.

Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie. Trump’s a fake populist and a run-of-the-mill (except for the really bad hair) power seeker.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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