When Partisanship Takes on Science on Global Warming: The Part before the Whole

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams concurred on the following preference—namely, a natural aristocracy of virtue and talent over the artificial sort of birth and wealth. Talent here is not merely skill, but also knowledge. Hence the two former U.S. presidents agreed that citizens ought to be given a broad basic education in free schools. The corollary is that as a citizenry lapses in virtue and knowledge, decadence will show up in public discourse and consequently public policy. If kept unchecked, the tendency is for the republic to fall.
Therefore, as governor of Virginia, Jefferson proposed a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge in 1779. His rationale was that because even “those entrusted with power” who seek to protect individual rights can become tyrants, popular education is necessary to render a republic secure. Jefferson’s hope was that by teaching “the people at large” examples of despots in history, the electorate would be more likely to recognize despots in their own time and throw the bastards out on their noses. As for those whom voters put in public offices, Jefferson believed that “laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest.” Hence, “those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights of their fellow citizens.” This is why, beginning at around 1900, law schools in the American states began to admit applicants to the undergraduate degree in law (LL.B. or J.D.) who had already earned an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts and sciences. It was not as though the undergraduate degree in law had been promoted to graduate status.
Having had largely self-governing, popularly-elected colonial legislatures for much of the seventeenth century, the nascent American republics would stand on the two pillars of virtue and talent (including knowledge) instilled in the self-governing peoples themselves as well as their elected and appointed public officials. It is said that the only constant is change, as in the extent to which an electorate is virtuous and generally knowledgeable, as well as in the related rise and fall of republics. One notable example is ancient Rome, which went from being a republic to a dictatorship under the purported exigencies of war. Lest the rise and fall of republics seems a bit too dramatic to be considered realistic, I offer the more modest thesis that a decline in virtue and knowledge among an electorate renders the public policy increasingly deficient in dealing with contemporary problems. The matter of climate change is a case in point.

According to a study at Yale in April 2013, Americans’ conviction that global warming was happening had dropped by seven percentage-points over the preceding six months to 63 percent. The unusually cold March—quite a reversal from the previous March—explains the drop, according to the poll’s authors. The cold may actually have resulted from a loosening in the artic jet-stream southward—like a rubber-band whose elasticity has been compromised—due to more open water in the arctic ocean and thus less temperature differential in the air. Even so, only 49% of Americans believed that human activities were contributing to global warming. In fact, only 42% of Americans believed at the time that most scientists had concluded that global warming is really happening. Thirty-three percent of Americans were convinced that “widespread disagreement” exists among scientists.
In actuality, a study showed of more than 4,000 articles touching on human-sourced climate change, 97% of the scientists having written the articles conclude that human-caused change was already happening. Less than 3% either rejected the notion or remained undecided. “There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception,” one of the study’s authors remarked. “It’s staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. This is significant,” the author concludes, “because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they’re more likely to support policies that take action on it.” Going back to Jefferson and Adams, ignorance among the electorate in a republic can be sufficient to divert enough political will that legislation needed to fix a societal (or global) problem is sufficiently thwarted.
Perhaps some of the apparent ignorance on global warming in 2013 could actually have been partisan angst. If President Obama favored policies predicated on the assumption that human-sourced global warming was then already underway, just his support alone could have been enough for some Republicans to hold firm in their denial of even other-sourced global warming. In holding knowledge hostage to score cheap partisan points, citizens and their representatives do not demonstrate much respect for knowledge as well as virtue; the vice of partisanship subdues the good of the whole in preference for the good of a part.
If Jefferson and Adams were correct that a virtuous and knowledgeable citizenry is vital to the continuance of a republic, the extent of ignorance and partisan vice related to global warming in spite of the nearly unanimous scientific conclusion and the huge stakes involved may suggest that the American republics and the grand republic of the Union may be on borrowed time (and money). Moreover, that the ignorance and vice pertains to global warming enlarges the implications to include the continuance of the species. That is to say, a virtuous and educated species may be necessary for its very survival.

See this PSA on global warming: http://www.thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2013/05/global-warming-psa.html


Academic Sources:

Philip Costopoulos, “Jefferson, Adams, and the Natural Aristocracy,” First Things, May 1990.

Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, “Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes in April 2013,” Yale School of Forestry and Environomental Studies, 2013.

John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Mark Richardson, et al, “Quantifying the Consensus on Ahthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” Environmental Research Letters, 8 (2013) (2), pp.

Press Source:

Tom Zeller, “Scientists Agree (Again): Climate Change Is Happening,” The Huffington Post, May 16, 2013.

The Gettysburg Address: Shaped by Small Pox?

By the time Lincoln was back on the train returning to Washington, he was down with a high fever from Small Pox. I’m thinking the illness did not grip the president the second he stepped on the train. Already distraught over Mary falling off a horse-carriage, his son Tad taken grievously ill, and the old, tired war, the president was almost certainly already stricken when he delivered the address and perhaps even when he wrote it the day and evening before. I suspect that the Gettysburg Address would not have been only 272 words long had Lincoln been well.
I make it point of getting a flu shot every year now. Contracting the illness was particularly costly academically when I was in graduate school. Typically, I would ration any accumulated energy to going to class. Back in bed, I found writing to be quite arduous, and sustained reading to be almost as exhaustive. In terms of writing, editing particular words or sentences was easiest, for it takes far less energy to think than to write on and on.
I suspect that Lincoln wrote such a short speech because thinking up just the right word or phrase was easier than writing a lot. Small Pox is much more serious than the common cold. Lincoln was likely already exhausted and feeling bad on the train to Gettysburg and in the bedroom that night before the day of the address. Lincoln’s emphasis on diction rather than length was likely a function of the illness rather than political calculus.

Lincoln's address was so short that the photographer only caught the president as he was returning to his seat. In the photo, Lincoln's head (below the leafless tree, just above the crowd-level, and facing the camera) is down, perhaps because he was already not feeling well. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons.

By the end of the twentieth century and into the next decades at least, U.S. presidents typically relied on a speech-writing staff to write many speeches, the vast majority of which being long. One effect of this trend is the shift in presidential leadership from broad principles to incremental legislative reform. In this context of technician presidents, the attendant speech-inflation resists any feasible restraint. Strangely, presidents overlook Lincoln’s short address as a precedent and act more like the famous orator who spoke for two hours just before Lincoln. In spite of the obvious lesson from Gettysburg, the notion that a very short speech can be more powerful than a long one has been lost on the American political elite.
The explanation may lie in Lincoln’s address being a function of him being ill rather than any political calculus. Even so, a discovery is a discovery, even if it comes about by accident. That the subsequent political success of the Gettysburg Address did not give rise to an ongoing practice in political rhetoric suggests that such a short, extremely thought-out speech runs against the current of politics at the moment and even out a year or two. Stature achieved by hard-thought reputational management literally by intensely investing in word choice, or diction, is of value nevertheless even within the space of a four-year term, especially if the incumbent has courageously taken on a few vested interests by moving society off a “sacred cow” or two. Even if neither statesmanship nor politics accounts for the severe brevity of Lincoln’s address, I contend that much political gold is waiting for the leader—whether in the public or private sector—who radically alters his or her rhetorical style and preparation.

On the History of Thanksgiving: Challenging Assumptions

We humans are so used to living in our subjectivity that we hardly notice it or the effect it has on us. In particular, we are hardly able to detect or observe the delimiting consequences of the assumptions we hold on an ongoing basis. That is to say, we have no idea (keine Anung) of the extent to which we take as unalterable matters that are actually quite subject to our whims individually or as a society (i.e., shared assumptions). In this essay, I use the American holiday of Thanksgiving, specifically its set date on the last Thursday of November, to illustrate the following points.

First, our habitual failure to question our own or society’s assumptions (i.e., not thinking critically enough) leaves us vulnerable to assuming that the status quo is binding when in fact it is not. All too often, we adopt a herd-animal mentality that unthinkingly “stays the course” even when doing so is, well, dumb. In being too cognitively lazy to question internally or in discourse basic, operative assumptions that we hold individually and/or collectively, we unnecessarily endure hardships that we could easily undo. Yet we rarely do. This is quite strange.

Second, we tend to take for granted that today’s familial and societal traditions must have been so “from the beginning.” This assumption dutifully serves as the grounding rationale behind our tacit judgment that things are as they are for a reason and, moreover, lie beyond our rightful authority to alter. We are surprised when we hear that some practice we had taken as foundational actually came about by accident or just decades ago.

For example, modern-day Christians might be surprised to learn that one of the Roman emperor Constantine’s scribes (i.e., lawyers) came up with the “fully divine and fully human,” or one ousia, two hypostates, Christological compromise at the Nicene Council in 325 CE. Constantine’s motive was political: cease the divisions between the bishops with the objective being to further imperial unity rather than enhance theological understanding.[1] Although a Christian theologian would point out that the Holy Spirit works through rather than around human nature, lay Christians might find themselves wondering aloud whether the Christological doctrine is really so fixed and thus incapable of being altered or joined by equally legitimate alternative interpretations (e.g., the Ebionist and Gnostic views).

Let’s apply the same reasoning to Thanksgiving Day in the United States. On September 28, 1789, the first Federal Congress passed a resolution asking that the President set a day of thanksgiving. After an improbable win against a mighty empire, the new union had reason to give thanks. A few days later, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a "Day of Publick Thanksgivin."[2] As subsequent presidents issued their own Thanksgiving proclamations, the dates and even months of Thanksgiving varied until President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation that Thanksgiving was to be commemorated each year on the last Thursday of November. Here, the attentive reader would be inclined to jettison the “it’s always been this way” assumption and mentality as though opening windows on the first warm day of spring. The fresh air of thawing ground restores smell to the outdoors from the long winter hibernation and ushers in a burst of freedom among nature, including man. Realizing that Thanksgiving does not hinge on its current date unfetters the mind even if just to consider the possibility of alternative dates. Adaptability can obviate hardships discovered to be dogmatic in the sense of being arbitrary.[3]

The arbitrariness in Lincoln’s proclaimed date was not lost on Franklin Roosevelt (FDR). Concerned that the last Thursday in November 1939, which fell on the last day of the month, would weaken the economic recovery on account of the shortened Christmas shopping season, he moved Thanksgiving to the penultimate (second to last) Thursday of November. He defended the change by emphasizing "that the day of Thanksgiving was not a national holiday and that there was nothing sacred about the date, as it was only since the Civil War that the last Thursday of November was chosen for observance.”[4] Transcending the common assumption that the then-current “last Thursday of November” attribute of Thanksgiving was a salient—even sacred, as though solemnly passed down from the Founders by some ceremonial laying on of hands—in the very non-holiday’s very nature, FDR had freed his mind to reason that an economic downside need not be necessary; he could fix a better date without depriving Thanksgiving of being Thanksgiving.

To be sure, coaches and football fans worried that even a week’s difference could interrupt the game’s season. In a column in The Wall Street Journal in 2009, Melanie Kirkpatrick points out that "by 1939 Thanksgiving football had become a national tradition. . . . In Democratic Arkansas, the football coach of Little Ouachita College threatened: 'We'll vote the Republican ticket if he interferes with our football.'"[5] Should Christmas have been moved to April so not to interfere with college basketball? Sadly, the sheer weight being attached to the “it’s always been this way” assumption could give virtually any particular inconvenience an effective veto-power even over a change for the better, generally (i.e., in the public interest).

Unfortunately, most Americans had fallen into the stupor wherein Thanksgiving just had to be on the last Thursday of November. “The American Institute of Public Opinion, led by Dr. George Gallup, released a survey in August showing 62 percent of voters opposed Roosevelt's plan. Political ideology was a determining factor, with 52 percent of Democrats approving of Roosevelt's move and 79 percent of Republicans disapproving.”[6] Even though the significance of the overall percentage dwarfs the partisan numbers in demonstrating how pervasive the false-assumption was at the time among the general population, the political dimension was strong enough to reverberate in unforeseen ways.

With some governors refusing to recognize the earlier date, only 32 states went along with Roosevelt.[7] As a result, for two years Thanksgiving was celebrated on two different days within the United States. In his book, Roger Chapman observes that pundits began dubbing "the competing dates 'Democratic Thanksgiving' and 'Republican Thanksgiving.'"[8] Sen. Styles Bridges (R-N.H) wondered whether Roosevelt would extend his powers to reconfigure the entire calendar, rather than just Thanksgiving. "I wish Mr. Roosevelt would abolish Winter," Bridges lamented.[9] Edward Stout, editor of The Warm Springs Mirror in Georgia -- where the president traveled frequently, including for Thanksgiving -- said that while he was at it, Roosevelt should move his birthday "up a few months until June, maybe" so that he could celebrate it in a warmer month. "I don't believe it would be any more trouble than the Thanksgiving shift."[10] Although both Bridges and Stout were rolling as though drunk in the mud of foolish category mistakes for rhetorical effect, moving up a holiday that has at least some of its roots in the old harvest festivals to actually coincide with harvests rather than winter in many states could itself be harvested once the “it’s always been this way” assumption is discredited. Just as a week’s difference would not dislodge college football from its monetary perch, so too would the third week in November make a dent in easing the hardship even just in travelling and bringing the holiday anywhere close to harvest time in many of the American republics. As one of my theology professor at Yale once said, “Sin boldly!” If you’re going to do it, for God’s sake don’t be a wimp about it. Nietzsche would undoubtedly second that motion.

Why not join with Canada in having Thanksgiving on October 12^th? Besides having access to fresh vegetables and even the outdoors for the feast, the problematic weather-related travel would be obviated and Americans would not come to New Year’s Day with holiday fatigue. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to complain about the retailors pushing Christmas over Thanksgiving in line with the almighty dollar, but amid the better feasts and perhaps colorful leaves we might actually allow ourselves to relish (or maybe even give thanks!) amid natures splendors rather than continue striving and complaining.

To be sure, resetting Thanksgiving to autumn in several of the states would translate into summer rather than harvest time in several others. Still other states are warm even in the last week of November, and harvest time might be December or March. Perhaps instead of carving the bird along partisan lines, Thanksgiving might be in October (or even the more temperate September!) in the “Northern” states and later in the “Southern” states, given the huge difference in climates. Remaining impotent in an antiquated assumption that lives only to forestall positive change while retailors continue to enable Christmas to encroach on Thanksgiving reeks of utter weakness.

Giving serious consideration to the notion different states celebrating Thanksgiving at different times might strengthen rather than weaken the American union. Put another way, invigorating the holiday as a day of thanksgiving amid nature’s non-canned bounty might recharge the jaded American spirit enough to mitigate partisan divides because more diversity has been given room to breathe. For the “one size fits all” assumption does not bode well at all in a large empire of diverse climes. Indeed, the American framers crafted an updated version of federalism that could accommodate a national federal government as well as the diverse conditions of the republics constituting the Union. Are the states to be completely deboned as though dead fish on the way to the market at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial? Is it so vitally important that everyone does Thanksgiving on the same day when “by state” enjoys a precedent?

Engulfed in the mythic assumption that the “last Thursday in November” is a necessary and proper fit for everyone and everywhere, Americans silently endure as if out of necessity all the compromises we have been making with respect to the holiday? Perhaps changing the date or returning the decision back to the states would free up enough space for the crowded-in and thus nearly relegated holiday that people might once again feel comfortable enough to say “Happy Thanksgiving” in public, rather than continuing to mouth the utterly vacuous “Happy Holidays” that is so often foisted on a beguiled public. 

Like Christmas and New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving is indeed now an official U.S. holiday. This would also be true were the states to establish the holiday as their respective residents see fit. As push-back against FDR’s misguided attempt to help out the retailors and the economy, Congress finally stepped in almost two months to a day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii (whose harvest time escapes me). The U.S. House passed a resolution declaring the last Thursday in November to be a legal holiday known as Thanksgiving Day. The U.S. Senate modified the resolution to the fourth Thursday so the holiday would not fall on a fifth Thursday in November lest the Christmas shopping season be unduly hampered as it rides roughshod over Thanksgiving. Roosevelt signed the resolution on December 26, 1941, the day after Christmas, finally making Thanksgiving a legal holiday alongside Christmas and New Year’s Day.[11] Interestingly, the U.S. Commerce department had found that moving Thanksgiving back a week had had no impact on Christmas sales.[12] In fact, small retailors actually lamented the change because they had flourished under the “last Thursday” Thanksgiving rubric; customers fed up with the big-named department stores like Macy’s being so overcrowded during a truncated “Christmas season” would frequent the lesser-known stores in relative peace and quiet. Charles Arnold, proprietor of a menswear shop, expressed his disappointment in an August letter to the president. "The small storekeeper would prefer leaving Thanksgiving Day where it belongs," Arnold wrote. "If the large department stores are over-crowded during the shorter shopping period before Christmas, the overflow will come, naturally, to the neighborhood store."[13] This raise the question of whether a major legal holiday is best treated as whatever results from the tussle of business forces oriented to comparative strategic advantage as well as overall sales revenue.

Lest the vast, silent majority of Americans continue to stand idly by, beguiled by the tyranny of the status quo as if it were based in the permafrost of “first things,” things are not always as they appear or have been assumed to be. We are not so frozen as we tend to suppose with respect to being able to obviate problems or downsides that are in truth dispensable rather than ingrained in the social reality.

---

1. Jarslav Pelikan, Imperial Unity and Christian Division, Seminar, Yale University.

2.  The Center for Legislative Archives, “Congress Establishes Thanksgiving,” The National Archives, USA. (accessed 11.26.13).

3. The other meaning of dogmatic is “partial” in the sense of partisan or ideological more generally. Given the extent to which a person can shift ideologically through decades of living, might it be that partisan positions are not only partial, but also arbitrary?

4. Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, “When FDR Tried To Mess With Thanksgiving, It Backfired Big Time,” The Huffington Post, November 25, 2013.

5. Melanie Kirkpatrick, “Happy Franksgiving: How FDR tried, and failed, to change a national holiday,” The Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2009.

6. Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, “When FDR Tried To Mess With Thanksgiving, It Backfired Big Time,” The Huffington Post, November 25, 2013.

7. Ibid.

8. Roger Chapman, Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2010).

9. Sam Stein and Arthur Delaney, “When FDR Tried To Mess With Thanksgiving, It Backfired Big Time,” The Huffington Post, November 25, 2013.

10. Ibid.

11. The solely religious holidays in November and December are private rather than legal holidays. As Congress cannot establish a religion on constitutional grounds, Christmas is a legal holiday in its secular sense only. Therefore, treating Christmas as a legal holiday as akin to the private religious holidays (including Christmas as celebrated in churches!) is a logical and legal error, or category mistake. Ironically, Thanksgiving, in having been proclaimed by Lincoln as a day to give thanks (implying “to God”), is the most explicitly religious of all the legal holidays in the United States.

12. Ibld.
13. Ibid.

The Arrest of a Senator in Georgia’s Capitol: A Sign of a Growing Authoritarian Police-State in America?

Sen. Nikema Williams (D-Atlanta) of the Georgia Senate “was arrested along with more than a dozen other protesters” at the Georgia Capitol on November 14, 2018.[1] The demonstration asked Georgia’s government to count every vote in the gubernatorial election. As a civil rights advocate, Williams had organized domestic workers for Stacy Abrams when she was running for Governor. Protesters shouted, “Let her go!” as the Capitol police handcuffed Sen. Williams and led her from the rotunda. No sitting legislatures in Wisconsin had been arrested (as far as I know) when huge constituent protests erupted in the Wisconsin rotunda against Gov. Scott Walker’s successful effort to remove collective-bargaining from powers of public sector unions there. As odd it may be for the police of a Capitol building to arrest a sitting senator, the observations of another senator, who witnessed the arrest, are even more chilling concerning an ominous trend then well underway in American cities.

Rep. David Dreyer (D-Atlanta) of the General Assembly, which was in session at the time, later said he had gone down to the rotunda about the same time as Williams, “but for some reason, Sen. Williams was treated differently than I was treated.”[2] He was insinuating the presence of racism in the Capitol police. “Because of our system, because of the bias and the way that our laws are enforced, just like I went down with Sen. Williams to try to de-escalate the situation, Sen. Williams was taken away,” he said. “We understand she’s been left in a van for a very long time on a cold and rainy day.”[3] Was there political pressure on the police to teach the senator a lesson? The gubernatorial election had been called for Brian Kemp, before which he had lost several court cases over “his attempts to block voters of color from the polls.”[4] In other words, as secretary of state, the Republican had not only exploited a giant yet virtually ignored conflict of interest in being the head of elections in Georgia even as he was a candidate for the highest office. It is thus conceivable that he pressured the Capitol police to arrest his former rival for the governorship—maybe even to punish her for having stood up to him in contesting his conflict of interest.

Yet beyond race and garden-variety partisanship, what more Rep. Dreyer had to say is even more critical in terms of Americans’ daily lives. “For some reason,” he continued, “I saw Capitol police lined up three abreast, row after row after row, looking like they were trying to stop a riot, when we were standing up for people’s right to vote. So this is not democracy; this looks a lot more like an authoritarian government. And it seems like that’s happening a lot these days, doesn’t it.”[5] Yes, it does.

In the Phoenix metropolitan area, especially in the city of Phoenix, local residents with sufficient longevity were noticing an increased police presence. Armed police standing outside certain stores and banks as a matter of routine, four or five police vehicles showing up to issue minor traffic tickets, police standing next to security guards just inside many grocery stores—police even going aisle to aisle as a routine rather than in responding to an incident or theft—police and security guards stationed in light-rail cars (sans incidents) and on the platforms, and generally very rude police; all these data-points are indications that an authoritarian government—at least in terms of political culture—was already well ensconced in Arizona.

I lived in the Phoenix metro area at the time. Coming from California and major cities in the Midwest, I was stunned by not only the number of police cars I saw on a daily basis, but also the number of security guards stationed on a light-rail car (sometimes up to six) as a matter of policy rather than incidents. 

 Three guards, two of whom are just on the other side of the small passageway. 

 Four guards: two at the outer edges of this picture, and two others at the middle of picture (standing at one of the back doors.

Four or five guards: one perhaps watching me take the picture. The other three or four (two visible) are in the car on the other side of the passageway. 

In none of these pictures has an incident induced the coverage. Rather, it had become all too common. On several occasions while I was standing near the door, I would look up only to see three uniformed guards standing "point blank," side by side, staring at me behind dark sunglasses. They were apparently just fine with their combative, over-the-top stance. Talking with a security manager at the city's light-rail company about the excessiveness on the trains, I learned that the company (or the subcontracted guard company) believed that so many guards are necessary for the guards to feel safe because one had been hit. I suggested that two might do, hence enabling the company to cover more trains at a time. The manager saw the efficiency in this, but the manager did not understand why people would feel uncomfortable or even intimidated being watched by several guards at close range. The normal reaction of regular folks to being watched combatively by so many guards at close range was something the manager just couldn't grasp, which in itself was a red flag. In such an unconscious state of denial, a police-state can grow unimpeded, without internal checks.
Interestingly, in spite of the presence of four to six guards at times in a car, none of the ticket-checkers ever gave out a citation! The guards were more interested in intimidating a car of passengers than devoting the surplus manpower to writing citations, especially to the people who were fraudulently using low-income passes.  

In fact, only twice while on the light-rail did I see citations being written, and this was done not on the trains but by pulling a few passengers off onto one of the platforms. On the first occasion, I saw 14 police and security guards suddenly enter the car I was in while only two of the guards checked tickets. The other passengers and I were very uncomfortable. It felt as if a raid were in progress, but it was actually only about giving citations! 
I had been on a train in which 20 police and their dogs ran into the car because the smell of weed had been reported. At the time, pot was legal in several U.S. states, but to Arizona law-enforcement, you would think the stuff could blow up cities. The sheer excessiveness, the (passive) aggression, and the reputation of the Phoenix police for rudeness even to ordinary citizens (i.e., not suspects) all came together for me while watching the bizarre scene unfold on the train.  

On the two sweeps by a massive showing of police and security guards to issue citations--always after commuting hours, interestingly enough--three or so passengers without passes or tickets (one of which was merely without the transit ID to show with a low-income pass!) were taken off the respective trains and told to sit on seats at the platforms (see the picture above). Four or five police and guards would then surround each person, as if he or she were to be arrested for assault or worse! To conflate writing out a citation and arresting someone for a violent crime suggests the presence of a serious psychological issue that might be widespread in police departments. 
Besides those two sweeps, I had never witnessed (over four months) a guard give out a citation; a guard would merely ask a person without a ticket or pass to leave the train at the next platform, which had a very mild punitive effect even as the company claimed that 43% of its ridership were using low-income passes. At no time on a train did I witness a security guard ask to seek the transit ID that was in theory at least necessary for the low-income pass. The passengers obviously had the impression that no such ID was needed during the actual travel. Yet I only heard this request on the first time I witnessed 14 security people running into a car for the writing of three citations.  The second time I witnessed the same event from across the street. I never saw 14 police surround a vehicle in order to write a traffic ticket. I suspected that the police's overkill was connected to a bias against poor people. The deplorable conditions facing the legions of homeless in Phoenix supported my sense that the powers there didn't care about the poor, and even were prejudiced.  

Another way that Phoenix stood out as a whole as being a proto-police state lied in vague sense of always being watched, not only in public outside, but also while entering stores.I and other people, I would discover, stopped going to a grocery store chain (Fry's) in the Phoenix metro area because in walking into a store, a customer had to pass not only a security guard, but also a policeman wearing a bullet-proof vest! The police would even walk from aisle to aisle! Imagine a young mother shopping with her daughter in an aisle only to look up and see an uptight man wearing a bullet-proof vest  labeled "POLICE" at the end of the aisle staring. While at waiting at the deli once, I asked the assistant store manager about this. His reply revealed that he did not perceive the excessiveness. "We want our customers to feel safe," he stated. At what cost to the customers? I wondered. The lack of balancing safety with the uncomfortability of being aggressively watched plays a major role in an authoritative police state getting worse and worse.

To catch the light-rail, I used to walk down a sidewalk with a 1st Bank on one side. I noticed one day that the security guard was not only stationed outside the bank, but that he wore a bullet-proof vest. I thought all this was too much, even given the so-so neighborhood. Worst still, he would walk around the side of the building to watch people getting off the bus cross the intersection to the light-rail platform (which is in the middle of one of the streets). On another occasion, I saw the guard follow me as I crossed the street and walked up to the platform. Utterly excessive! On a Friday morning while I was speaking with two Jehovah's Witnesses who were sitting in chairs on the sidewalk (i.e., not on the bank's property), I looked up to see the creeper-guard staring at me. That he had a bullet-proof vest on, and was standing "point blank" (i.e., combatively) facing me was enough of a red flag. This was confirmed when the two religious women told me that the bank's guard had told them he would protect them as well as police the area. The women, enjoying the convenience of such protection, were not bothered by the fact that the guard was not keeping to his job-tasks by going beyond the bank's property on a regular basis. Visibly, the two woman did not need protection from me, yet the guard stared at me anyway, though when I took his picture, he turned his head as if he had not been starring. The placement of his feet, however, revealed exactly where he had been looking! 
I called the bank's centralized customer service twice, asking that only a district manager or a customer service manager contact me if needed. Not the branch manager and certainly not the guard. Yet both of them left messages on my phone! I called customer service a third time and finally talked with a supervisor, who promised he would get to the bottom of why my requests had been ignored. I even emailed him the picture below to support my initial claim regarding the creeper guard, for I worried that the lack of accountability at 1st Bank could enable the guard to turn the tables on me. In the message he left me, he practically ordered me to call him back. Or else? I thought. This is another way in which authoritarian police-states can grow--by protecting their sense of entitlement by threatening people who object. This may be partly why the Georgia Capitol police arrested Sen. Williams. 
Back in Phoenix, an authoritarian police state was well underway, with at least two Christian women just fine with it. Moreover, enough of the safety-obsessed people of the city were just fine with it too. In fact, the political culture there could be labeled as at least sporting values that enable a proto-fascist police state that takes liberties from and with respect to "civilians."  The police and security guards even assume that anyone even just noticing the excessiveness is thereby a threat. 

Going into a Goodwill store once, I was astonished to see an armed policeman standing outside the door. Thinking that an incident might be going on, I made my way around him, and turned to check him just as I was walking in. “Trying to sneak a picture of me?” he said dismissively. I did turn on my phone's video by mistake once I had entered the store (hence no sneaking around). He entered the store after me, while I was complaining to a cashier about the police employee's rudeness. Incredibly, the policeman stood near the cashier and me; we both ignored his presence--this too I took to be overkill on the policeman's part, for no reason for suspicion existed--only the human urge to eves-drop with impunity. In this video, the policeman coming in and standing near the cashier and I can be seen. I had no doubt that the motive concerned me even though it is hardly illegal to complain to a store employee or manager about the security guard, even if he is (strangely) an on-duty police employee.  

I went on to tell the store manager about the policeman's rudeness, but the manager merely replied that he didn’t mind if the local police were being rude to his customers because the strip-mall’s property management arranges for the presence of the on-duty police. There was also a security guard inside the store. Only in Arizona had I seen both a policeman and a security guard standing at the front of a store to monitor things (i.e., sans incident).

Incredibly, some Arizonans told me that such a police presence was necessary for safety. I would inevitably reply, so two security guards are not enough on a train car? Incredibly, many native Arizonans relied, “Yes.” I realized that the political culture in that republic was very different—even enabling of the encroaching police state.

If a security guard or police employee are to add to their routine measures stemming from each incident so it is not repeated, then the status quo on the streets and in businesses will become increasingly strangling for a people. Put another way, if a city’s police department is to increasingly rely on shows of intimidation (i.e., when no incident is occurring), then people will feel less comfortable, distrust will increase in the public square, and the passive-aggressive tyranny will have dimmed the natural flame of liberty. The relative comfort of the home will increasingly paint “being out in public” in increasingly stressful colors. An authoritarian police-state was already well in place at least in two major American cities when Sen. Williams was arrested amid rows of Capitol police in riot gear; such gear itself heightens the smell of aggression in the air. Mayors and heads of police departments must have at the very least enabled to trend to continue; I suspect the sheer lack of awareness of the excess and especially how people react psychologically to it on a daily basis—an indifference to how citizens could be affected—is rife throughout many police departments in the U.S. Given the extremely rude comments I heard from police employees when I lived in Phoenix, I also suspect that the low-level (or low class) police employees let the power go to their heads, even in just being rude. Such an entitlement is a symptom of an authoritative police state, which the American people have allowed to grow as if the changes were invisible or inevitable. One effect societally may be increasing levels of accumulated passive-aggression--a sort of psychological carbon that also heats the atmosphere. The problem is thus societal in nature. 

On conflicts of interest such as the one exploited by Georgia's Secretary of State, see Institutional Conflicts of Interest, available at Amazon. 

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1. Laura Bassett, “Georgia Legislature, Arrested at Work, Says She Was ‘Singled Out As a Black Female Senator’,” The Huffington Post, November 14, 2018.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.