Indemnify
This
At a recent rally Trump, backed by a brace of lily-white,
male officers of the law, promised that he'd indemnify the
police of this country, an idea he said he'd just made up.
Indemnification, he said, would save the cops from legal
action for doing
things like violating the Constitution because they didn't
like the way a dirty old Liberal looked at them.
Upon investigation, though, it seems that the state and
local police of this country don't need additional permission
to relieve their inner tensions by treating their captors
to a thorough cranial massage with their night-sticks. No,
something called "qualitative immunity" affords them all
the protection they need from legal recourse from applied
trauma.
A 2014 New
York Law Review study of eighty-one law enforcement
agencies showed that police having engaged in civil rights
abuses were personally liable for less than .5% of damage
awards, and never liable for punitive awards. They might
be disciplined, terminated or prosecuted but the state always
footed the bill for both penalties and legal support.
So why would Trump offer indemnification, too? Danged if
I know. Maybe he just
learned a new word or, more likely, he knows the wolf likes nothing better than
a new way to eat cheep.
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No Labels has decided
not to field a third-party candidate in 2024 for reasons
of their own, but I think it's because interior polling numbers
suggest a huge ass-kicking of Trump no matter how many 1%
spoiler
candidates are on the ballot in November. Either way, good,
and I hope the doorknob hits them in the ass on the way out.
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I'm currently reading a book about the Comanche called
"Empire of the Summer Moon". Great book as it
pointedly illustrates that my great state of Texas would
very likely have still
been in Spanish/Mexican hands today had the plains not
been awash in what the books described as "The greatest
light
cavalry this country had ever seen."
Why? Because the Mexican government was completely unable
to control the Comanche, who had great fun killing and
looting and
raping
anything
on two legs that wasn't also Comanche. Eventually the
Mexican government threw in the towel and said "Anyone
who wants
to homestead this hell-hole can have a big old piece of
free land."
As a result, pioneers surged west forming the nucleus of
the new state of Texas to come. After statehood the U.S.
government applied the kind of federal military might,
using technologically superior weaponry, that eventually
forced all Plains Indians onto the reservations for good.
I bring this up because the story of the U.S. vs. the Plains
Indians has a lot in common with what we're seeing between
Israel and Gaza. Jewish immigrants accumulated in Israel
and slowly push-push-pushed the indigenous populations
into ever smaller areas to live. These people pushed
back with growing ferocity against the invaders resulting
in endless atrocities that cost many innocent, and
not-so-innocent, lives on both sides.
At the moment it appears that Netanyahu's military, using
technologically advanced weaponry, has adopted the policy
of "The only good Palestinian is a dead
Palestinian" and
is keen on killing/starving any and all Gazan residents
until they're someone else's problem.
The equivalent of a reservation for the Palestinian's, the
two-state solution, would be the best idea for that region
in the long run but what do I know?
-
Lefty
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