Keystone Death Squads

Perhaps nothing epitomizes modern America’s contradictory views on masculinity, guns, and authority like the attack on, and subsequent arrest of,  University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly.

Fresh from a “Take Back the Night Vigil” in which she was harangued into being terrified of men with guns, she found herself in jail, accused of three felonies for being terrified of multiple men with guns.

The message is clear:  Even though armed and burly men are responsible for unmentionable and innumerable crimes against women and all of humanity’s injustices since the beginning of time, if an armed and burly men tells you to do something you should comply immediately without question.  Don’t try to get away, don’t be scared, JUST DO IT.  Unless he’s creepy, in which case you have every right to kick him in the balls.  Or something.

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were.  But that wasn’t good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies.  Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can’t understand why she sat in jail.

“This has been an extremely trying experience,” [Daly] wrote. “It is something to this day I cannot understand or believe has come to this point.”

Daly is obviously a dumbass.  What idiot could possibly not expect to face a plainclothes SWAT team in the parking lot after purchasing bottled water, ice cream, and cookie dough?  Imagine what might have happened had none of those agents jumped on the hood of her car or pulled guns on her.  That twelve-pack of LaCroix sparkling water might have actually been a twelve-pack of beer, in which case as many as two underage college students might have gotten intoxicated.  Is that’s not worth the potential arbitrary loss of life and limb, I don’t know what is.

Obviously, this is just another entirely contradictory mess, and that’s the point.  College students get wasted beyond recognition by the thousands each and every night, but you may very well find yourself looking down the barrel of a gun for doing exactly what you’ve done every other night of the school year while everybody else you know is just having a grand old time doing the exact same thing.  The overt sexualization of underage women has kicked into hyperdrive ever since the era of Britney schoolgirl video and TaTu.  Fifteen year-olds are encouraged to elicit as much sexual attention from men as they can get away with, but woe to the man who succumbs by actually noticing what she’s dying to get him to notice.  As for her, sex with the entire basketball team at once is perfectly okay (she’s just experimenting), but one photo of it on her phone and her life is destroyed.  Guarding a polling location in paramilitary garb is not voter intimidation, but poll workers asking to see their driver’s licenses is.

Women repeatedly express their longing for dominant males by purchasing books like 50 Shades of Grey by the millions, but get just a little too aggressive and find yourself in front of a university kangaroo court that’s hopelessly biased against you.  Never mind if you’re eventually exonerated:  The Process Is the Punishment.

To combat terrorism, our government is watching everything we do, except for those of us who are most inclined to do something wrong.  The list goes on.

We’re left in an impossible situation.  The rules are arbitrary, contradictory, and often impossible to understand, but the consequences for just being accused of breaking them can be beyond costly (and why did we only hear about the IRS harassment and not the FBI, OSHA, and ATF’s?), or even lethal.

And whether they be or establishment Republicans or Democrats, this is exactly how they want it.  The Rule of Law is objective, and if the Third or Fourth Amendments actually mean what they mean, it limits their power.  If you’re able to understand the rules and abide by them, they might not be able to arrest you or raid your home at will.  You’ve probably already broken the law today, so if somebody in a position of power wants to put you through hell, they can.

Likewise with the contradictory nature of our feminized societal norms.  “Be a nice guy so I have emotional support as I boink the multiple felon” creates men with no earthly incentive left to be ethical.  Sexual harassment accusations are reserved for those who aren’t Alpha enough to actually disrespect women.

The solution to the societal aspect of this is threefold.  First, individual men need to become Alphas (and hopefully ALPHAS+) so as to protect themselves from the capricious nature of the women in their own lives.  Second, Alphas need to encourage other men to do the same through their friendships, churches, and whatever other means at their disposal.  Third, those who develop ALPHA authority need to develop a healthy moral code and exert whatever social sanctions they can on those around them.

But the political solutions will be even harder to enact.  People with power don’t like to relinquish it, and they won’t unless we make them.

First, we need fewer (and simpler) laws and regulations.  I’m aware that lots of lefties get wet at the very mention of a new regulation keeping some corporate monster in line, but some of these also fetishize the Fourth Amendment, and they need to recognize that bringing along a few “inspectors” on a raid is a great way to get around it (this applies only to the Benighted, the Anointed love it just like it is).  The fewer laws we have, the harder it will be for some SWAT team to no-knock raid your apartment.

Libertarian conservatives agree with me, but for their own reasons, social and law & order conservatives may not.

Social conservatives often want our laws to coincide with God’s laws.  However, God’s laws enforced by trigger-happy Alcohol Control Boards are no longer God’s; they’re man’s, and they’re more likely to please power-hungry politicians than the Almighty.  In the massive leviathan of legal mumbo jumbo of America’s laws (and most of its states), we simply can’t trust the government to enforce such laws justly.  They’ll just be another excuse to throw you in jail if you object to their policies, and not actually having done anything won’t protect you from the legal fees.

Therefore, as much as I think that less random banging would be beneficial, I respectfully disagree with Sunshine Mary’s idea to outlaw fornication.  Regarding her retort that the penalties wouldn’t be that bad, she valiantly defends men against false rape accusations but seems to trust women not to make false seduction accusations (or perhaps riding the carousel but declaring that the stop on the carousel she liked the most was actually the man who de-flowered her).

Law & order types need to recognize that the arbitrary and excessive domestic use of militarized force may well sever whatever trust in government the citizenry has left.  I, for one, am inclined to trust most police officers, and I’m getting suspicious as hell every time I encounter one.  The mistrust of law enforcement in our inner cities is spreading to our small towns and suburbs, and every time some chick gets thrown in jail for buying bottled water, it’s only going to get worse.

Unlike some other libertarian-inclined folks, I am concerned with the ensuring that law enforcement has the tools it needs to throw people in prison when they deserve it.  Government is necessary, but it is the use of force, period.  If we have fewer laws, perhaps we won’t be able to arrest as many people at will, but I think most of us will be far less hesitant to support no-knocks raids if we know that  the raids we do have are for a good reason.

To paraphrase an oft-repeated mantra, the more responsibility government has, the less likely it is to handle those responsibilities well. If we reserved stings for child-prostitution rings instead of cookie dough purchases, perhaps we might do a better job at curtailing sex-trafficking.  We’ve got federal agents raiding homes and farms but not nearly enough on our southern border.

Of course, if government stuck to it’s job instead of making sure we don’t bother some turtle, it wouldn’t matter as much; we wouldn’t feel like every single Presidential election is a prelude to Armageddon.

But then we’d be in charge of our own lives again, and that’s the last thing Washington wants.  They want us confused, terrified of each other but enamored of them.

Assume every guy you meet could be a rapist, but bend over and take it if you violate (or don’t) some regulation you’ve never heard of.  That’s the lesson they taught Elizabeth Daly, and it’s one they’ll teach the rest of us if we don’t put a stop to it.