You're just another punk in Cop Nation

So Obama's getting ready to have a sit-down with Henry Louis Gates and the cop who arrested him. It's an attempt to put the whole thing to rest. They'll have a beer or two and everyone will make nice and the whole thing will go away.

The media continue to have this whole contretemps completely wrong. They want to make it an issue of racial profiling. It's not (see post below). What it's about is the fact that we are all just punks who live in Cop Nation.

The cops can do anything they want to do, and ninety-nine percent of our populace will just look the other way. Out of fear of societal chaos (drugs! crime! youth run wild!) we have ceded all our rights to the police state. They now own us, heart and soul and ass.

The cop who arrested Gates arrested him for "disorderly conduct". What is "disorderly conduct"? It's anything the cop wants it to be, for instance asking the cop what fucking right he has to harass you when you're on your own property and doing absolutely nothing wrong. Stand up for yourself and you go downtown. Stand up for yourself too loudly and you'll also get the privilege of a beat-down before you get downtown.

America, land of the free home of the brave? Nah. Land of the weak and home of the spineless. That's why each and every one of us is just another punk in Cop Nation.

Addendum--From earlier this week, Hitch agrees with Baby Fatt: http://www.slate.com/id/2223673/

Baby Fatt hates police

"Dicks hate police, it's true

You can't find justice

It'll find you!

Yeah it'll find you."

"Dicks Hate Police"

--The Dicks

Recently a respected Harvard professor was arrested and taken downtown by the police. He was coming home from a trip and his front door was stuck. He tried to push the door in and one of his neighbors saw him. He's a black man and so of course she called the cops. The cops showed up and he showed them his identification--proving that he was in his own residence--but he became a little too uppity (which is to say he questioned their authority) and so he was handcuffed and taken downtown.

Many see this as yet another example of how black men are treated by the police. Others pointed out that it's not just a matter of race, it is also a matter of class, and a poor white man could have expected the same abusive treatment by the cop.

But it's more than either of those things. What it really says is that we have given over control of our nation to a bunch of steroid-ridden, self-important cops.

How I detest all this idiot drivel any time the police are mentioned in the media about how they are "first responders" and "everyday heros" for protecting us from the forces of darkness. How asinine. The cops are the gang that we hired to protect us from all the other gangs, but who have now taken over, and so we are no longer in charge, they are. We live in Cop Nation.

Out of our fear of disorder, we hired a bunch of thugs who would wear a uniform and protect us. The politicians told us that more cops would equal fewer criminals--all the criminals would be locked up (exploding our prison system--the US has the highest rate of incarceration of any nation in the world, including nations we belittle as being dictatorships), and so there would be less crime.

We hired the cops. And then hired some more. But if someone breaks in and steals your stereo or rapes your sister good luck getting justice.

If, on the other hand, you have a loud party, or drive through a nice part of town in a beat-up car, or smoke a little Lamb's Bread, you can expect the cops will be right there to show you the error of your ways. And if you question their right to do whatever they want to do, then you get a beat-down.

I'm not sure if we ever really had civil rights, but I know that we do not have them now. If you're driving down the street with a thousand dollars in your pocket and a cop pulls you over for some bogus charge ('unsafe lane change' for instance) and finds the money (by searching your pockets--i.e., by robbing you), he can impound it and you have to prove that it was not gotten through criminal means before it's returned to you. So much for the right to be free from warrantless search and seizure.

Or, to take the case of Professor Gates, if a cop shows up at your house and you prove that you have the right to be there but ask for the cop to prove that he has the right to be there, you get taken downtown in handcuffs. Sure, you might get the charges dropped, but the cop gets to have fun with you in the meantime (as cops like to say: 'you can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride').

I was driving through New Mexico recently on vacation. I was on the interstate going by some shithole town called "Belen". I had the cruise control set on the speed limit, hand some old David Bowie on the sound system ('Helden', the German version of 'Heroes'--great stuff) when I saw the flashing lights in my rearview.

The cop pulled me over and had me get out and show him my license. I asked what the problem was--why I had been pulled over--and he wouldn't answer. He looked through my stuff then, finally, in response to my question, said "riding in the left lane". Riding in the left lane? Since when is that against the law? It's an Interstate! Of course he didn't give me a ticket--proving that I had done nothing wrong--he just wanted to look through my stuff.

By the way Detective Adam Keck, to paraphrase Frank Zappa: if your children had any idea how lame you really are they would murder you in your sleep. Worthless scum-sucking punk.

The citizens of the USA do not rule our country. We decided we didn't really want to and so have allowed the cops to do it for us. If a cop pulls you over or shows up at your house you better forget any concept you have of what the Constitution says--it's just an old piece of paper in a far off city that's displayed with a bunch of other antiques. Best just to say "Yes sir, no sir, thanks so much for the rapid response sir" if you don't want a beat-down.

America: racist punk police state. How stupid we all are for putting up with this crap.

Baby Fatt: Outlaw

I'm an outlaw. Why? Because women love outlaws.

I've always been an outlaw, but I came by it naturally. I remember once Dad said to me "Son, there's more to life than cold beer and cheap hookers" and then he looked off, into the distance, at some unseeable place past the horizon. Daddy was an outlaw, and I knew at that moment that I was too.

Toward A Psychoanalysis of Celebrity Culture

Baby Fatt loves celebrities. I've been an avid reader of the National Enquirer since I was seven years old. One day at my grandmother's house (who, in addition to my love of celebrities, also gave me my love of monster movies and of a nice cup of English tea), I noticed a copy of the Enquirer. This was back in the day when it was a black and white rag, and even at that young age I was immediately captivated by the headline screaming from the cover: "JFK found alive and living in the Caribbean".

Wow, I thought, I gotta read this (and yeah I was able to read well enough to understand all this at that young of an age--not a sign of intelligence, though perhaps from a psychodynamic view a premature development of ego----more of an early hobby with which I was fascinated and which I acquired in no small measure as a means of avoiding my parents). And boy was it interesting.

Turns out that JFK, instead of being assassinated in Dallas, had just been horribly wounded instead, and he was now living out his last days as a cripple on an island in the middle of the Caribbean. There was even a blurry picture of a guy huddled in a row boat with a black cape wrapped around him being taken back to his island refuge. This was just a few years after Dallas so man was I shocked.

Incredible I thought! Here's amazing, secret knowledge that only those of us who read the National Enquirer have. Consider me hooked.

Secret knowledge! Special insight! Understanding of things only briefly glimpsed by mere mortals--what could be greater than that? I've been a total information junkie since, and can tell you anything you want to know about cults, serial killers, celebrities, politicians, go ahead and try to stump the Fattmeister, baby--can't be done.

Of course the quest for secret knowledge explains only part of the fascination with celebrity culture (and I define celebrity culture as anything having to do with the rich and famous--for whatever reason they might be rich or famous, be it show business, politics, whatever). The biggest part of our fascination with celebrities has to do with the universal need to have our deepest instincts and emotions acted out in front of us so that we can thereby feel like we are part of something greater and more powerful than the mere shitting reality that in actuality defines us.

Consider the mythology of the Greeks and Romans. The tales of Zeus and Pan and Apollo. The legends of Midas and Sisyphus. The conflict--often sexual but always, at its core, about power--that these figures acted out allowed the hoi polloi to live vicariously through these tales of irony and woe. It allowed ordinary people to share in the sense that they were part of something greater than life as a mere sentient dustball. It allowed the powerless to project themselves into the drama of gods and heroes and also allowed them to pull something of the supernatural and heroic back into their own pitiable lives.

Thus it has always been with the hoi polloi, and thus it always will be. From the domestic conflicts of Zeus and Apollo, to those of Michael Jackson and George Clooney, the attraction remains the same: the opportunity to dream. The imagining consciousness (i.e., that which makes us human) always wants to be part of something greater, something with meaning, something with power. This is the etiology of religion, and also of celebrity culture.

The quest for meaning in something greater than ourselves is, of course, ultimately futile and childish. And at base--on a deep instinctual level--we all understand this. It is in this understanding that anxiety and dread have their origin, and it from this anxiety and dread that we spend our lives in increasingly desperate flight (money! fame! power! I swear I'm not mortal, I swear!).

Alas, we are doomed. We are powerless, insignificant creatures who will soon die and it will be as if we never were. Oh well, there's always the National Enquirer. And that little tart Britney Spears.