Occupation and Response

In light of this morning's clearing of Zuccotti Park, I think a moment of reflection is in order.

 I don't approve of police brutality, needless to say, and some of what happens in the videos and images Jon embedded in the post prior to this one constitute police brutality. Nor do I approve of gross misuse of the law, as in the case of Occupy Dallas protesters being arrested for "misuse of the sidewalk", which is not a crime, though as we all know if the police would like to charge you you are always guilty of something.

However, there is a construct I like to keep in my head called "minimal realistic government" (MRG). This is not, I fear, a concept likely to warm the hearts of my anarcho-capitalist friends. It isn't even a concept that warms my minarchist heart particularly. It is simply this: given our culture and traditions, what's the bare minimum amount of government we can actually reasonably expect? If the behavior of the government is behavior I would expect from a minimal realistic government, I don't get worked up over it, though I may dislike it and work to change it.

Hence my ambivalence about Occupy Wall Street. I'm less patient with what I consider to be frankly stupid aims and methods than is Jon, but shooting a peacefully protesting ex-Marine in the head with a supposedly nonlethal device is not good MRG behavior. On the other hand, clearing Zuccotti Park of firetraps and health hazards and allowing the protesters to return afterwards is. No government is going to condone public health hazards, nor survive long if it does. It follows that arresting them with the smallest possible amount of force if they refuse to depart temporarily is also MRG-compatible.

 You will note, however, that there is a fine line there. If you go in to arrest them with the minimal possible amount of force and they chain themselves to trees, the minimal level of force rises. Pretty soon you're gunning down girls like it's Kent State. This seems perfectly reasonable until the trial.

 Cops are, let's be honest here, underpaid, underqualified and generally psychologically unsuited to be navigating those waters. Which is why you get so many incidents of brutality. And if the OWS protesters achieve all their goals tomorrow, cops will still exist, and they will still be underqualified, and we will all still be outraged by the behavior of the OWS-government Police. Human civilization has a baseline level of outrage implied by its existence.

 So the tl;dr version: Cops will be cops. Much of what they do is not worth getting worked up about. Some of the things they do that are worth getting worked up about will nevertheless always be with us, like Jesus said about the poor. But since we know that we are never going to be able to stop being outraged, I for one am going to bottle it up and use it for special occasions. A Zuccotti hosedown does not appear to be one.