Empire-Scale Representative Democracy: The American Presidency

On the very day in which a health-care company’s executive collapsed in the Oval Office, with U.S. President Trump being the only person in the group standing and looking away in what looks like callous disregard instead of compassion or empathy, that president directed his Administration to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the U.S. Government had to immediately fund food-assistance, or SNAP (formerly “food stamps”) completely for the month then more than a week in, in spite of the "government shutdown." On the next day, the Trump Administration demanded that the member-states that had just paid out full November benefits to recipients “undo"  the difference between the partial and full amounts that had just been "paid out under judges’ orders” because the U.S. Supreme Court “stayed those rulings.”[1] The photo of Trump literally looking the other way while everyone else in the Oval Office is bending over the collapsed man out of concern perfectly aligns with his lack of concern for Americans going without food due to the sudden stoppage of money for food without notice. That many employees of the U.S. Government who had been laid off without pay since earlier that November would be especially reliant on food-assistance money precisely because they were no longer obtaining income (or else they were receiving unemployment compensation at less than full pay) could be understood to be a matter of callousness rather than moral sentiments from Trump simply by looking at the photo.

President Trump's emotional indifference is palpable. (source: Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)

Looking at that photo, not even psychologists should conclude that a majority of the electoral (and popular) votes went to elect a psychopath. However, callousness in the face of a medical emergency can reasonably be inferred from the president’s non-verbal stance and emotionless facial expression. Had that photo been available to voters in the days before the 2024 presidential election, Trump may have lost that election. Such a hypothetical is useful ex post facto because it raises the question of whether so many voters as vote in a U.S. presidential election have enough actual information on the candidates. If the photo shocked many such voters just over a year after the 2024 election, the implication is that relying on “brand” marketing by presidential campaigns because so few voters even know people who know even just one of the candidates is deficient.

The Electoral College was established in the U.S. Constitution not only because the member-states, like those of the E.U., would retain some governmental sovereignty, but also because with even just 7 million people voting for president, so few of them could be expected to know the characters of the candidates beyond what reaches news print that a check by electors who could meet the candidates was deemed to be necessary. That the political parties captured the Electoral College such that such a check did not in fact operate means that American representative democracy as regards the federal president of the Union has been allowed to operate at a deficiency, which is to say that the elections have been vulnerable to the electorates (of the states) being misled by presidential campaigns.

In short, my point is that if even some of the millions of Americans who had voted for Donald Trump in November, 2024 were subsequently shocked a year later when they scrutinized the photo of Donald Trump being so visually inert emotionally, and perhaps even annoyed at the unwanted delay in his office, while antipodally the other people there could be seen as so obviously concerned about a guest who had just collapsed. Trump stood out so much from the others that even the president’s supporters could have been surprised, even marveling in the privacy of their own minds that they had known so little about Trump the man when they had voted for him. I am assuming that only a small minority of the electorate would favor voting for a person who at the very leeast appears to be so callous in person, for judgment, which involves not just reasoning, but also emotion, is salient in governing. The photo of Turmp in the Oval Office paradoxically demonstrates the importance of humane emotion in governance by so clearly dipicting the utter absence of emotion in a very human situation in which we would naturally expect to find spontaneous emotion. In this surreal way, Trump's repeated efforts to stop food-assistance from reaching the poor judicially and in policy can be grasped in terms of Trump as a person.

Perhaps as in the E.U., the chief executives of the U.S. member-states should nominate a candidate for federal president, with the U.S. House of Representatives, whose counterpart in the E.U. is the European Parliament, confirming or rejecting the candidate. The idea of the states' chief executives, who are themselves elected closer to the people, choosing the federal president outright was considered in the Constitutional Convention, but the proposal was unfortunately voted down in favor of the ill-fated Electoral College. The U.S. federal system can indeed be improved by borrowing some ideas from the E.U., and vice versa; this just takes some humility on both ends. 

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1. Scott Bauer and Nicholas Riccardi, “Trump Administration Demands States ‘Undo’ Full SNAP Payouts as States Warn of ‘Catastrophic Impact,’” The Associated Press, November 9, 2025.

E.U. Citizens on the Union’s Enlargement

Having recently been presented with an E.U. citizen denying the E.U. has citizens even as he admitted that he could vote for a candidate to represent him in the European Parliament, I had my faith in human rationality restored the following day in reading of a poll of E.U. citizens on whether additional states should be added to the Union; ideology, even of the tribal sort, need not distort rationality beyond recognition. Even in the reporting of such a poll, however, the Euroskeptic, or states’ rights, ideology left its imprint. Even such an auxiliary presence is a sign of the headwind that has been facing the E.U. since its founding.

Euronews reported on 28 October, 2025 that 56% of E.U. citizens approved of adding new states. “Young Europeans in particular support enlargement. 67% of 15-24 year olds are in favour, ahead of 25-39 year olds at 63%.”[1] If the young adults maintain their optimism in the decades to come, we could expect the power of the Euroskeptic, states’ rights (i.e., anti-federalist) ideology to lessen over time. This in turn could allow the E.U. to accumulate enough additional enumerated powers, or exclusive and even shared competencies, so the benefits of united action could be realized more fully, especially in the domains of foreign policy and defense. As of 2025, it has been as if state officials had tied one arm behind the E.U.’s back even regarding existing federal competencies. The poll indicates that this could change.

The poll can also be taken as an argument for a more vigorous education prior to university and trade school, for the support for enlargement “comes to a large extent from young people and educated people.”[2] To be sure, an educated person could argue that because of the unwillingness of enough state governments to delegate additionally competencies (or even just strength those that the E.U. already had), the veto mechanism enjoyed by each state should be more restricted before additional states are annexed to the Union. It is possible, for example, to up the double majorities from 55% to 60% on major pieces of federal legislation, in place of keeping the veto-mechanism in place. Even at 27 states, unanimity is unrealistic; it could therefore be unrealistic to expect unanimous agreement with there being even more states in the Union.

The force behind retaining the veto-mechanism in the European Council and the Council of the E.U. is none other than the Euroskeptic, or states’ rights ideology that is just fine with allowing even small states to block proposed legislation even if it is in the interest of the Union as a whole. In the twentieth century, that ideology manifests as strident nationalism, which of course gave rise to war on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, old ideologies die hard even in the face of the fact of political development, such as that of several states forming a federal union of states. Such a development, especially after several decades, inherent relativizes otherwise unmitigated pro-state-oriented ideology.

That ideology is to some extend built into the poll, according to which “the most supportive Member States are Sweden (79%), Denmark (75%) and Lithuania (74%). Conversely, Austria (45%), the Czech Republic (43%) and France (43%) are the least supportive” of enlargement.[3] Although admittedly much daylight exists between 79% and 43%, and pro-E.U. advertising could be directed by the Commission to run in local media in the least supportive states on the basis of this way of dividing up the results, reporting by state is itself a reinforcement of the state-centric, Euroskeptic ideology that has held the federal legislative and executive branches back even from being able to fully exercise its enumerated powers, or competencies.

On May 1, 2025 at Yale, I met the E.U.’s ambassador to the U.S. after her talk. I pointed out that the media in the E.U. labeling the Union as a mere bloc as if the E.U. were only active in one power-domain and were temporary, was subtly undermining the E.U. itself and fortifying the Euroskeptics. To my surprise, she agreed with me, but my feedback had zero impact.  She told me that just admitting even that the E.U. has a federal structure would enrage powerful Euroskeptic officials in some states, such as Hungary. As a result, however, more uneducated Europeans could be expected to conflate the “bloc” with international organizations such as NATO and the UN, and the poll supports this point. Why expand something as weak as a bloc?

On October 24, 2025, an Oxford professor of political economy spoke at Harvard’s Center for European Studies. Whereas Yale’s Center acknowledges and so includes talks on the E.U. being intergovernmental relations only, Harvard’s political economists have been stuck in the political economy paradigm of Europe prior to the founding of the E.U. in the early 1990s. So, the professor from Oxford presented a European poll in which both the E.U. itself and the related impact of European cultural integration from the states being in a federal system were ignored. Instead, he (or the discussant) insisted that Denmark and Sweden are so different with respect to how the poor view public policy that is oriented to reducing economic inequality, even though both northern states are Scandinavian and have relatively low economic inequality, whereas every rural American is a libertarian against constraints on rising economic inequality. In other words, the interstate cultural differences are magnified when it comes to the E.U., while such interstate (mostly non-linguistic-based) differences in the U.S. are virtually ignored as if one cultural attitude spans across a continent. The European states’ rights, or nationalistic, ideology can be so exaggerated that cognition is twisted even in the minds of scholars! Unfortunately, the E.U. itself has been paying the price for this ideological denial; it is not just an artifact of ideology under the subterfuge of scholarship. Ironically, as long as the E.U. continues to pay the price from being reckoned by enough uneducated European citizens as merely a bloc (or even as nonexistent), enlargement by the accession of additional states without basic reform of the federal system would be likely to compound paralysis rather than increase the Union’s strength.

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1. Gregoire Lory, “56% of Citizens Support EU Enlargement, New Eurobarometer Poll Shows,” Euronews.com. 28 October, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Statehood for Canada: Hardly a Merger

The U.S. Constitution includes an open invitation for the accession of Canada into the U.S. as a state. The invitation was made before Canada spread across from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. So, were Canadians to seek statehood in the American union of states (i.e., the U.S.A.), they would have a good argument for Canada being split in to a few states rather than just one. This is qualitatively different than a “merger” between the two countries; the latter ideological conjecture is predicated on a category mistake. Such a mistake would say, for example, that Singapore and China are of the same genus politically even though the former is a city-state and the latter is on the (early modern) empire-scale. Just because both Singapore and China have foreign policies and are member-countries of the UN does not mean that a city-state is to be treated more generally as if it were the same as an empire. By “empire,” I am referring to China itself, rather than any territories it might have beyond mainland China. The Qing emperor Kangzi expanded mainland China to include some central Asian kingdoms, thus making China an empire (of kingdom-level/scale subunits). Similarly, the U.S., as well as the E.U., are empire-scale/level polities of (kingdom-level) polities, whereas Canada does not have enough such polities to qualify as being on the empire-scale, for an empire contains many kingdom-level polities.

When the U.S. federal constitution was written, Canada consisted of Lower Canada, which was French-speaking, and Upper Canada, which is present-day Ontario. There were also maritime colonies to the east. It makes sense, as Ontario hardly stretches across the continent to present-day British Columbia, that the American delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 would naturally view both Upper and Lower “Canada” together as being equivalent to an American republic being represented at the convention, both in terms of population and extent of territory. However, that Upper and Lower Canada were so culturally different, with different languages being predominant in each, had I been at the convention, I would have urged the other delegates to offer statehood as two states rather than just one. Different states having different languages is of course well-known in the E.U., and even in the U.S., German was just narrowly—by one vote—voted down as the official language of Wisconsin by its legislature. Even today, “brats and beer” have a cultural meaning in Wisconsin (e.g., grilled on the lakeside terrace just outside the Rathskeller bar at the University of Wisconsin) that simply does not exist in Illinois, even just miles from the northern border. Imagine if German were the official language of Wisconsin; the cultural differences between the two American republics would be even greater; but I digress.

When U.S. President Trump broached the idea that Canada could join the U.S. as the 51^st state, some government officials at the state level in the E.U. displayed their abject ignorance of what the U.S. was and is by correcting Trump by insisting that Canada joining the U.S. would actually be a “merger” of two sovereign countries. Actually, each of the states in the U.S., as well as those in the E.U., are semi-sovereign and hold residual sovereignty (whereas the U.S. and E.U. have only delegated, enumerated powers/competencies). Neither Texas nor France is a sovereign country anymore, for both have agreed to delegate some governmental sovereignty to the federal system represented by federal governmental institutions. So the presumptuous, dismissive tone used was actually like primped arrogance on stilts during a flood, and in a Nietzschean sense be viewed as a manifestation of the will to power from resentment rather than as a factual statement.

So, when the prime minister of Canada visited the White House in October 2025, Euronews lied that the “US president even made a joking reference to a ‘merger’ between the two countries.”[1] He would not have used the “merger” to refer to Canada becoming a state. The European journalist was writing as an act of power to reduce the US as if it were equivalent to an E.U. state. Canada is not a united states; neither is Mexico. When an official from the British consulate of Chicago spoke at the University of Wisconsin in the 2000s, before Britain had seceded from being an E.U. state, I asked him about how the possible accession (not merger!) of Turkey would affect the European Union. He replied that it would be like Mexico becoming the 51^st state. He was implicitly rejecting the view that Mexico would merge with the U.S., even though Mexico had incorrectly adopted the nomenclature, “The United States of Mexico.” France or Belgium or Germany could call itself a united states, but those republics are nonetheless states in the E.U., which is equivalent, as an empire-scale union of states, to the U.S.

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1. Malek Fouda, “Trump Says There Is ‘Natural Conflict’ with Canada as He Hosts PM Mark Carney at the Oval Office,” Euronews.com, October 8, 2025.

The E.U. on Ukraine: On the Human, All Too Human

On August 17, 2025, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U., as a precursor to both of them meeting with Don Trump, president of the U.S. on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Von der Leyen had decided to accompany Zelensky to Washington in part to potentially play interference should the U.S. president again publicly berate Zelensky to his face and in part to protect Zelensky should Trump’s position/pressure be too pro-Russia (i.e., pro-Putin). To virtually all Europeans and to many Americans, Trump’s verbal outburst at Zelensky in the Oval Office had been shocking, especially as it seemed to be pre-meditated and orchestrated. Taking emotional advantage of the head of a state being invaded by the empire-scale Russia can assuredly be reckoned as being a bad host, and even low class for the president of the empire-scale United States. International relations do indeed contain a very human element, and in fact leaving it out of an analysis of an international situation is nothing short of negligent.

The full essay is at "The E.U. on Ukraine."

A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was holding a news conference in early June, 2025 as protests against the arrests of illegal aliens were going on outside in downtown Los Angeles in California, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said, “I have questions for the secretary!”[1] Even if the senator was trying to visibly score political points with his constituents by interjecting, which, by the way, would be in the realm of the sort of power-trip that is quite common in politics, the reaction of the Trump Administration may point to a trumped up political reason for the violent way in which the senator was manhandled by Secret Service employees and then the FBI agent. The White House accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theatre” and Noem herself accused the senator of having ‘made a scene.”[2] If these opinions were behind the manhandling of the senator, then “criminalizing politics” steeped to a new low: instant violence against the elected representative for being political. The violence itself is much worse than merely charging someone for being political in a way that offends someone else in power.

For its part, the Secret Service lied that Padilla had “lunged at Secretary Noem,” and furthermore that the agents there “thought he was an attacker.”[3] Reviewing the video of the event shows the willingness of people with guns to lie to protect themselves, which I contend is reason enough for additional checks on law-enforcement employees, whether federal or state. That the senator, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Border Security and Immigration subcommittee, announced repeatedly that he was a U.S. Senator belies the credibility of the claim that he was thought to be an attacker.

California’s Gavin Newsom, head of state, chief executive, and commander-in-chief of California’s National Guard (i.e., army) wrote online a poignant point worthy of our consideration: “If they can handcuff a US Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”[4] Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagining to consider the actuality of employees of a government in law enforcement presuming that the law is theirs to make in real time—casting a blind eye intentionally on the actual law—and lying and threatening even victims of a crime with arrest should they object. Enforcing existing law does not give a government employee the discretion with which to ignore the law and even come up with one’s own law and yet how easy it is simply to ignore this vital point in the carrying out of one’s “duties.” I have witnessed this mentality enough to know that it is too common to ignore, and thus I contend that more checks are needed on law-enforcement employees on the non-supervisory level locally, at the member-state level, and at the federal level in the United States. The problem is worse “on the ground” than has reached the public air-waves.

Even if Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, was right in opining, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theatre-kid stunt” because “he wanted attention,”[5] treating the senator as if he were an attacker rather than simply escorting him out of the building—or even letting him remain and treat the altercation between him and Noem as political—reveals an emotionally jejune, hyper-“trigger-happy” mentality among the Secret Service and FBI employees in that federal building. Such a mentality among government employees who have been given the legal right to use force is, I submit, dangerous, and thus should be exculpated from the ranks of law enforcement in any jurisdiction, lest the trend eventuate in people being surrounded by security simply for being angry and even raising one’s voice at a political event. Treating such as a threat is itself passive-aggressive, which as we have seen can turn outright aggressive given the human, all too human proclivity to go to far. 

Put more plainly, assuming that lies used to cover-up the underlying mental ailment, Secret Service employees who perceived the senator lunge at Noem and thought Padilla was an attacker should be put on mental-health leave so they can relax and untighten, and be subjected to psychological tests on latent aggression, for their sort of power-trip is much more dangerous than that which goes on in the U.S. Senate—and the White House, for this incident is but a glimpse toward a realization that not enough had been done even in multiple jurisdictions to root out the sordid pathology from the field of law-enforcement. De facto absolute power “on the ground” loves a vacuum of accountability, and is even willing to lie to keep it at bay.

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1. Ali Abbas Ahmadi and Kwasi G. Asiedu, “US Senator Dragged Out of LA News Conference and Handcuffed,” BBC.com, June 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

American Law Enforcement: Extricating the Aggressive Personality and Presumption to Violate the Law Off-Duty

The assumption that more police than we might expect have in not being subject to the law even while off-duty suggests that hiring, training, and retention practices of police departments are inadequate. The presumption of being an ubermench and thus untouchable is dangerous when the person can legally carry a gun. Memo to police departments in the U.S.: please notify your employees that they are subject to local, state, and federal laws, period. Any indication of any presumption to the contrary subjects the culprit to termination. Unfortunately, police departments and their respective city governments in the U.S. are far from such enlightenment as could hold their employees accountable.

In June, 2023, a police employee of Orlando, Florida faced charges by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office for reckless driving and resisting and fleeing from a deputy. The culprit “refused to show the deputy his license, got back in his car, and took off . . .”[1] He had been driving at 80 mph in a 45 mph zone. It is significant that he thought that going to work was a viable excuse for speeding. Even more incredibly, he told the deputy to notice his police uniform, as justifying the speeding! When the deputy asked for the man’s driver’s license, the violator abstinently said a quick, “NO!,” and turned to get into his car before fleeing the scene. How dare you as me for MY license! That’s something I do to OTHER PEOPLE. How arrogant, wrong, and incorrect. Moreover, the man’s reaction to being held accountable provides the public with a view of someone having the legal use of a gun and yet not willing to be held accountable himself. He may have incorrectly appropriated the former President Nixon’s erroneous declaration that if the president does something, it is legal. A local police employee is not even close to being the president of the United States. Even aside from prosecuting the presumptuous law-breaker in Florida, the city of Orlando would have done well in considering whether such a person should be granted the legal right to use lethal force.

My point includes the subtle one that prosecution is not sufficient and is thus inadequate as a litmus test for deciding whether a police employee literally takes liberties off duty should remain employed. Due to lack of evidence of a malicious intent, a police employee of Chicago, Illinois was not found formally guilty of assaulting a 14-year-old, whom the off-duty employee had wrongly assumed had stolen his son’s bike. The employee inserted one of his knees in the eighth-grader’s back.[2] Regardless of whether there was sufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution, the photograph of the man on top of the boy should be enough for a chief of police to decide that such presumptuousness predicated on being a police employee should eliminate the attitude from being on a police force. The presumption in being allowed to attack a child who happens to walk past a stolen bike would be a red flag even in the case of a police employee on-duty. Off-duty, a man who happens to work as a police employee is just like any other dad. While any father may feel like being judge, jury, and executioner of a suspected thief of one’s son’s bike, what father would actually act on the urge? Hence, the off-duty police employee can be seen as presumptuous, and even as questionable psychologically, as can a police employee who curtly says no when asked for his driver’s license for speeding to get to work. An aggressive tenor can be detected from both men, and this alone should bar them from having the legal right of lethal force.

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1. Connor Hansen, “Orlando Police Officer Accused of Reckless Driving, Leaving Traffic Stop after Exchange with Deputy,” Fox35 Orlando, June 12, 2023 (accessed June 17, 2023).

2.  Alex Hammer, “Moment Off-Duty Chicago Cop Kneels on 14-Year-Old Boy’s Back after Mistakenly Accusing Him of Stealing a Bike,” DailyMail.com, July 4, 2022 (accessed June 17, 2023).

Compromising Public Health for a States' Rights Ideology: The Governor of Arizona Nullified a Federal Law during a Pandemic

On October 27, 2021, I rode on two mass transit buses in Phoenix, Arizona. Both drivers were knowingly and willfully violating the federal regulation (42 CFR sec.s 70-71), which requires transit operators to wear masks during the pandemic even when they are situated behind a plexiglass barrier. One of the drivers, whom I had twice before seen not wearing a mask, again had lowered the plexiglass window pane between the driver and customers paying.  The first time, I had asked her to put a mask on, given the federal regulation and her proximity to the passengers boarding. Replying as if making an announcement, she said, “If anyone feels unsafe on the bus, they can get off and wait for the next bus.” That prompted a passenger to insult me. The company subsequently backed up the driver's refusal by saying that the federal law doesn't apply to buses in Arizona. It did, so the company violated federal law with impunity.

 

I reported this incident to the regional bus authority and the city of Phoenix. Nevertheless I saw her maskless more than a week later and then during the following week. I did receive a voicemail from TransDev, a bus-operating company contracted by Metro Valley, informing me that regardless of the federal law, the company policy does not require bus drivers to wear masks. In fact, a representative from Metro Valley defiantly declared on a subsequent phone call that drivers can let maskless passengers board—again, in violation of federal law. Company policy apparently can nullify federal regulations in Arizona, a U.S. state with special needs. 

Even though the FBI told me that it looks to local law enforcement agencies to enforce federal regulations, a supervisor at one of the police sub-stations told me that his department would not enforce the regulation. “Oh, so they want to dump it on us,” he said. Astonishingly, he claimed that only law passed by his state’s legislature is “real law in Arizona.” About a week later, a police transit supervisor told me that the chief of police had told the non-supervisory patrol employees not to enforce the federal regulation, and this directive had come down from the governor.

As shocking as such corruption is, the immature, even pathological behavior of the second maskless bus driver I witnessed on the morning of October 27, 2021 told me after I had asked her to put on a mask that she didn’t care if a federal regulation requires drivers to wear masks. “I don’t care. Go ahead, call the FBI,” she said with a daring tone of presumed impunity. She also encouraged me to call the local police after I said I would contact them too. “They don’t wear masks either,” she shouted. Yes, shouted. I replied that I was ending the conversation, which she ignored until I went to the back of the bus. She then accused me of threatening her. “Get off my bus!” she exclaimed angrily even though she kept the bus in motion. She was clearly making up an excuse to get me in trouble for having asked her to comply with U.S. law. What a strange, absurd mentality, at least outside of Arizona. Not surprisingly, she had let a maskless man ride. While walking to the back door to exit the bus, the maskless old male passenger felt entitled pick up the baton from the driver and shout “I’m vaccinated; I don’t have to wear a mask” at me. I knew he was ignorant so I did not comment. Nevertheless, she kept shouting his presumed factoid to me as he got closer. After he left, the driver once again began shouting insults at me, having dismissed my statement that I was done with the conversation. She called me a dumbass and a weirdo, and told me in a dismissive and hostile tone, “Go back to your institution!” My stop was coming up, so I could not get off the bus, but I did not want to hear any more from the childish driving having a temper-tantrum. So I began repeating, “I don’t talk to local creepers.” I had said this to the maskless passenger too.  “I won’t let you ride on my bus ever again,” the driver said. It is significant that she referred to her bus, in repeating, “I won’t let you ride my bus ever again,” when in actuality the city of Phoenix owns the bus and she does not have the authority to ban anyone from ever riding “her” bus ever again. Even were the bus her own, she would still be required to follow federal law, though she clearly believed otherwise.  She even put her two hands to her ears while operating the bus like a kid would do, and angrily repeated, “I know you are, I know you are,” after I declared that I do not talk with local creepers.  It was surreal that any bus driver would behave like a four year-old. “What are you in kindergarden?” I replied. Even when I was walking out of the bus and then outside of the bus, the driver was yelling insults, so I continued repeating my line. It was incredibly pathetic that a four year-old’s mentality would stop her temper-tantrum only to pick up her phone to call her supervisor, and yet the bus company’s customer service does not allow passengers to speak with a supervisor of the drivers in real time even when a driver is not only abusing his or her authority, but is having a temper-tantrum. It is precisely because the drivers know that they can misbehave with impunity that they go on the offensive even more by claiming that a passenger is misbehaving. It is not surprising that drivers tend to presume impunity in violating a federal regulation geared to ending a pandemic. It is not surprising that several drivers in 2020 and 2021 felt entitled to ignore the local and federal laws, respectively, requiring that passengers and drivers wear masks. Some drivers actually wore their masks to cover only the chin area as if that constituted compliance. Arizona’s pre-college education ranked 49^th out of the 50 states at the time. Go figure. Presumptive arrogance combined with astounding ignorance is a toxic combination.

I submit that this last driver was so brazen at least in part because there really is no accountability in the local mass transit system, which includes Metro Valley, the regional transit authority and TransDev, a private subcontractor that operates the buses, which are owned by the city of Phoenix. Both Metro Valley and TransDev have told me that their policies allowing maskless riders and drivers invalidate the federal law. By the way, a local police patrol employee informed me (when he was off duty) that bus drivers are not federal employees to the federal law does not apply to them. “So you locals are ok with the federal money you get from the feds for your mass transit, but that doesn’t obligate you to follow their regulations,” I concluded. He gave a thumbs up. Three weeks earlier, a patrol supervisor informed me that the only “real law in Arizona is that which goes through the state legislature.” There is virtually no enforcement of masks on the light rail by security guards either. They illegally impersonate police officers by wearing silver badges, yet have admitted that Metro Valley won’t allow them to enforce the local ordinance in 2020 and the federal regulation in 2021. I think the guards are more interested in intimidating passengers to feel the pleasure of being dominant (albeit certainly not superior in any way) than in enforcing even federal law.

It is strange seeing three or four guards on one half of a car yet not one of the Allied Security employees are enforcing the federal law as it is even stated on on-board signs declaring, “Per Federal Law, Masks Are Required.” Once when I heard a train’s operator make an announcement at every stop, I pressed a red button at an intercom with the driver. The drivers want passengers to report problems, so it was ironic that a young black guard rushed to me (I had not seen him in the back) and demanded to know what I had been talking about. I asked him twice to lift his mask from his chin to cover his mouth and nose. He obviously felt entitled to break the law even though signs on the doors and windows were obvious. Without even waiting for me to answer his question, he became very hostile toward me and declared that if he ever sees me use the intercom again, he would kick me off the train. As I was leaving the train, I passed by the operator’s open window. “Of course we want you to use the intercom to report things like you did—that many passengers are ignoring my announcement!” I asked her to report the guard.

In short, the arrogance, corruption, and incompetence at the state, city and mass transit levels at least in Phoenix are such that someone who is not used to such a sordid, ignorant, and hostile culture cannot but be astonished—jaws-dropped astonished. Not only does the bus company ignore reports of illegal behavior; the company claims that its policy, which contradicts federal law, is the only thing that the company acknowledges as valid. How could anyone at a company believe that a company policy nullifies a federal law? How could a police chief tell her police force not to enforce a federal law, when according to the U.S. Department of Justice, the F.B.I. routinely relies on local law enforcement to play a role in enforcing federal law. Yet in Phoenix, Arizona, a police supervisor specializing on transit refused to acknowledge that state officials ever enforce federal law. “They want their laws enforced? They will have to send feds to enforce them.”

On the Weakening of the Rule of Law in the United States

When law enforcement (i.e., police) conveniently exclude themselves from obeying law, the contradiction should, I submit, be sufficient for the perpetrators to be fired. It is not enough for their boss to chastise or even suspend the hypocrites, for they are inherently unfit for law enforcement, and should instead be treated as actual or potential criminals. What about when such a sordid mentality comes to proliferate through a police department, especially if it lies beyond the competence of a city government to hold even such a department accountable? What if a local political “law and order” culture tacitly exempts police and goes on to look the other way as the latter render the locality into a police state? I contend that the Phoenix metropolitan area, including the suburbs surrounding Phoenix itself, furnishes us with a case in point.

In a subway station in New York City in October, 2021, two cops shoved a passenger out of the station because he had asked them why they were not wearing masks, which federal law at the time required be worn on subways, light rail, street cars, buses, and indoor subway stations. The alpha male policeman lied in declaring to the passenger that he was “a disturbance,” and subsequently shouted. Sounds like a bully to me. Not exactly a fitting persona for people who can legally kill others, yet how many police departments willow out such misfits?

Whereas the bully component can be dramatic enough to grab headlines in the news, the presumptuous decision made by police employees—and this is what “officers” really are—that the law does not apply to them is noxious in its arrogance. As NYC mayor de Blasio said after viewing the video of the subway incident, “if you’re going to be in law enforcement, you actually have to participate in following the law.”[1] The mayor noted that the police had been given the mask-requirement instructions “a thousand times.” It was not as if the two police employees did not know that they were breaking the rule—and violating a federal regulation!—when they aggressively turned on the passenger who was motivated to see that the law was enforced. Janno Lieber, CEO of the MTA (the metro transit authority) put it well in saying, “I don’t want to see [passengers] being pushed out of the system by people who are not complying with the rules that the federal government sets. Come on, enough.”[2] 

Unfortunately, “Come on, enough” could be said of the Phoenix (Arizona) police department, which the U.S. Justice Department had found guilty of lying to the department about having denied police-accountability protesters their constitutional right of political protest. To knowingly intimidate protesters with excessive shows of guns, police employees and vehicles, and low-flying helicopters reveals an immaturity and lack of judgment on proportionality that de facto de-legitimate a police department even if such qualities are salient in the local culture.

In Phoenix, self-exemption from having to obey federal law had become overwhelmingly salient in the local culture, given the proportion of light-rail and bus passengers who did not wear masks—or wore them only covering their respective chins! Even a significant number of bus drivers had self-exempted themselves from the signs on the buses: “As Per Federal Law, Masks Must be Worn on the Bus.” Calling the mass transit authority (Metro Valley) to report some of the drivers who were disobeying company policy and violating federal law, I was stunned to hear, “Our drivers don’t have to wear masks. Don’t pay attention to the signs on the buses.” A manager of TransDev, one of the bus-operations sub-contractor, left a voicemail informing me that even though masks were required by federal law, the company had no such policy.” Interesting. Company policy trumps federal law. Welcome to Arizona.

In October, 2021, with passengers passing by to pay, this bus driver was violating federal law by refusing to wear a mask. I reminded her that masks are required on city buses. After I took my seat, she made a general announcement that if any (paying) customer on the bus feels unsafe, he can get off and catch the next bus. Notice that the driver had lowered the plexiglass "window" pane and thus was being unsafe (and thus inconsiderate). Her passive aggression in her hostile announcement added insult to injury even though she felt convinced that she was entitled to break federal law. This sense of entitlement backed up by passive (and active) aggression is salient in the local culture. I called in a complaint to the regional transit authority (Metro Valley) against that driver. 

A few weeks later, I witnessed the same driver again not wearing a mask. At least she had the plexiglass window pane up, though the federal regulation requires masks be worn by operators even behind plexiglass. I had heard back from TransDev, a subcontractor bus-operating company, telling me on my voicemail that the company policy allows drivers to go maskless, even in spite of the federal regulation. Metro Valley customer service had a week earlier informed me similarly that passengers can board the buses even though the company's signs on the buses forbit it as "per federal law." Such entitlement! Such willfulness! Such passive aggression! Such ignorance! A company policy does not outweigh a federal law or regulation. 

Seeing a managerial-level Phoenix policeman walking from his "Supervisor" car to the police substation on Central Ave near Arizona State University’s downtown Phoenix campus, I told him that I had encountered: bus drivers (and light rail security guards) refusing to wear masks and even allowing passengers to ride without wearing masks. I added that the regional transit authority and one of its sub-contractors arrogantly and ignorantly declaring that such passengers can ride and bus drivers need not wear masks.

To my profound, jaw-dropping astonishment, the police patrol manager informed me that “the only real law is Arizona law,” and my governor told us that we don’t have to follow that federal mandate.” Every law and regulation mandates, I said to correct for the man’s ignorant belief that a mandate is optional and does not have the force of law. I pointed out that state governments cannot constitutionally nullify federal law; South Carolina had learned this lesson in 1832. I also cited the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. “Where did you learn that?” the policeman asked, “At Yale?” I had told him that I had studied political theory (as well as theology) at Yale. The man’s disdain for higher education was just as salient as was his sordid ignorance, and of course he presumed that he could not be wrong. Unfortunately, the local workforce in general was saturated by unbelievable ignorance that would presume itself to be infallible and lash out as if in getting even.

I reported my conversation as well as the messages from the regional transit authority and its TransDev subcontractor to the office manager of the Phoenix mayor’s office. I even called the city manager’s office and asked for a managerial level employee to return my call. Instead, a misleading intern called me. Meanwhile, nothing changed in the mass transit system. Given the decadence in the local culture, I would have been surprised had anything changed. I was most concerned that the city government would not pounce on such outrageous statements by a police manager concerning federal law. Such utter corruption and an inert local government could produce a toxic, perfect storm beyond the reach of the U.S. Justice Department to counter, for the local police department and regional transit authority (and its two operations sub-contractors) had become infused with the local culture. 

Specifically, I am referring here to the sense of entitlement that laws can be ignored or simply dismissed if they are inconvenient, and the defense mechanism of hostility in the face of having the bloated, self-serving sense of entitlement questioned or contradicted outright. For instance, I called the police non-emergency number in 2021 to report loud bass from cars at a self-serve carwash near where I was living at the time. The offender was still present when the police arrived. To my utter shock, one of the two patrol police employees claimed that no law prohibits loud noise in a residential neighborhood. "The business owner has posted signs--right over there--citing the Arizona statues and the local ordinance number (2-22). Would you take a look?," I countered in a calm voice that belied my real objection to his ignorance. "No, I won't," he objected like a child. So the man-child would not even go to the offending pick-up truck to speak with the young men. While I was waiting for the business owner to call me back, the man-child slowly followed me as if I were a suspect rather than witness reporting an ongoing, almost daily crime that the local police had failed utterly to stamp out. The man-child's sense of entitlement was evident not only in his lying about the law, but also his abject refusal to drive or walk over to one of the signs. He assumed himself infallibly to be on solid ground, from which he then tried to intimidate me (hostility). Getting back at me for what? What sort of sordid mentality invents retribution out of thin air? A week after I had reported the man-child's behavior to his department, I received a call from a patrol supervisor, who was intent on arguing with me by insisting that the sign read "No Trespassing." "I don't doubt that such a sign exists there, but that's not the signs that I was referring to when I said that the signs read 'No loud noise, no revving engines, ...' and at the laws are cited at the bottoms of the signs--one posted at each post." The woman hung up on me. There would be no accountability within that woefully stubborn and corrupt police department, which had lied to the FBI concerning another matter: intimidating protestors who were protesting against police brutality in 2020.  A dysfunctional culture, whether of a locality or an organization, is extremely difficult to cure. 

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[1] Liam Reilly, “NYC Mayor ‘Troubled’ by Video Showing Unmasked Officers Forcibly Removing Masked Subway Commuter,” CNN.com (October 21, 2021).
[2] Ibid.

An Aggressive Culture Applied to a Pandemic

If a local culture does not value education, such that the public education system is weak, and furthermore engages in and enables aggressive behavior, even self-protective statements and efforts can provoke aggressive responses based on ignorance. In such a culture, authorities may be particularly unlikely to stem such aggression, and they may even be inclined to engage in active or passive aggression against victims rather than enforce laws and rules. For existence, police called on a noise complaint at an apartment complex may willfully or unwittingly turn on the complainer not due to lack of noise, but, rather, out of ignorance as to what constitutes a residential disturbance, fear of confronting people who are disturbing others, a desire to inhibit future calls or simply due the aggressor’s bidding by blaming the victim for complaining. Besides indicating a corrupt, sordid police culture, that of the locality itself would likely be compromised. During a pandemic, such pathology might be especially transparent because it is clear when people and authorities are not only not enforcing laws and organizational policies geared to protecting both employees and customers, but also acting against public health by turning on the victims. The case of Arizona and, more particularly, the Phoenix police department, is particularly revealing.

On March 30, 2020, the chief executive of Arizona issued an executive order in response to the coronavirus pandemic. With enumerated exceptions, people in Arizona were to stay in their places of domicile. Essential activities constitute the first exception in the order. Obtaining food (i.e., groceries) is first on the list of such activities. Interestingly, outside exercise, including walking, and “constitutionally protected activities such as speech and religion” are also listed.[1] The order requires that when “individuals ar using shared or outdoor spaces when outside their residence or property for Essential Activities, they shall to the extent possible maintain physical distancing of at least six feet from any other person, consistent with guidance from the CDC.”[2] The word shall here means must. The executive order is stronger than mere guidance. Even so, even local police in Phoenix took physical distancing to be nothing stronger than CDC guidelines. Even though the executive order states that “(n)o person shall be required to provide documentation or proof of their activities to justify their activities under this order,” the order was enforceable against infractions. Even so, the police in Phoenix were not necessarily grasping this point.

  

For example, while I was shopping at an Albertsons (Safeway) grocery store in Phoenix on May 1, 2020, when the executive order was still in full effect, a man approached me very closely from behind while I was at the front of a one-way aisle. Even though the “cash register has emerged as the most dangerous place” in a grocery store, “according to public health and worker safety experts,” the most dangerous place for customers may be the aisles when confronted with a customer who not only refuses to keep a distance, but also becomes physically and verbally abusive as a result.[3]

The customer who I encountered was confrontational and aggressive from the outset. He refused to step back, causing me to back up past the product I had been selecting. I asked him to step back so I could get the product, but he told me I would have to go down the aisle and come around again. We were at logger-heads. The aisle was too narrow for him to pass me. Indeed, passing me so closely would have violated the store requirement that six feet be maintained where possible (e.g., excepting the cashier area). While I was calling for a store employee or manager to come (none did), the other customer rammed into my cart, causing it to block the narrow aisle. Both he and his wife (far behind him) were hurling insults to me even though he had violated the store requirement. Even as I was walking to the store manager’s office, the customer’s wife felt the need to insult me. It is such aggression on top of fault that I submit is particularly toxic, as well as prevalent in the local culture there.

A police supervisor claimed he couldn't tell tell from either my video or the store's who slammed into whom. Why would a police manager lie? I had called to complain about his subordinate, but the supervisor managed to dissimulate and deflect (indicative of the culture).

Adding insult to injury, when the police arrived—seven or eight of them!—after I had agreed to the manager’s suggestion that I report the aggression to them, four of the police were positionally or vocally hostile and even confrontational with me even in approaching me. Put another way, when the caller is the victim, he or she does not need three police standing in a hostile pose behind the police employee conversing with the victim. Such distrust applied to a victim is consistent with blaming the victim.

Even though the store manager told me later that she had told the police that the store requirement on physical distancing was not a suggestion, the policewoman told me that the manager had told her otherwise. I showed the police employee a large sign indicating that maintaining six feet of distance was a store requirement and told her that a store policy is not a suggestion, then she was once again antagonistic, threatening me by asking me if I understand that I could be charged with assault because my cart blocked the aisle after the other customer repeatedly slammed into the cart. 

I don't know why law enforcement would even venture an opinion on a store policy (and getting that wrong) when it is clear that law enforcement enforces laws. The police employee even got the law wrong. She erroneously claimed that the governor’s executive order only gave a guideline for physical distancing, so it was unenforceable. Strangely, she even told me that the police cannot enforce a store policy, or suggestion as she viewed a policy to be. “A store policy is not a law,” the police employee told a man with three degrees in business. Perhaps because she was irked at me for knowing more, she even told me that I had committed an assault against the customer who had rammed my cart because my cart was blocking the aisle. Incredible!

Was there no limit to the lengths that the local police would go to blame the victim? Later, when I spoke with the policewoman’s supervisor, who had also been at the store but had not bothered to speak with me, I was stunned when he claimed that he couldn’t tell from the store’s video (and presumably mine, as the police woman had shown my video to him in the store) who was slamming whose cart. After the police herd had left the store, the store manager and I examined very closely the store video, and we agreed that the other customer had rammed my cart—not vice versa. Yet later, the police supervisor claimed that nothing of the sort was on the tape (including my own!) and that the store manager had agreed with him. “It is on tape,” I told the supervisor by phone. “You’re wrong,” he said, “maybe your conduct was disorderly.” He was threatening to charge me with disorderly conduct!

In short, the local police seem to have been getting away with turning the tables on victims, especially if a police employee (or supervisor!) is annoyed when a victim tries to support his or her claim even with audio-video by returning to the matter of the actual aggression. Even when I called in a complaint against loud, heavy-bass music near my apartment, the policeman who responded felt the need to focus on me rather than the ordinance-violator. “She says that you taping her music from inside your apartment is harassment.” Even getting some evidence away from the culprit’s apartment outside would not constitute harassment. In fact, for a police department to discourage evidence and then refuse to intercede for lack of evidence (i.e, he said, she said) suggests (just a suggestion!) a dysfunctional police culture (as well as incompetent employees). For a police department to take such a counter-claim seriously and even use an accusation-tone with the victim of the disturbing loud noise may suggest (just a suggestion!) that the police employees are habituated to blaming the victim or even viewing every call as a dispute rather than a complaint.

In my conversations with the policewoman at Safeways and her supervisor later by phone, neither person wanted to talk about the aggression against me. They were both accusatory throughout. Even though I had both the store requirement and that in the governor’s executive order backing me up (as well as even my video of the incident), the strategy of the police was to undermine me at every point—too keep the focus on me—even accusing me of physical assault and disorderly conduct. The store manager had suggested that I let her call the police, and I concluded after the police herd had left that I could no longer trust the police to even focus on aggressors. Such passive aggression, moreover, is a glaring indication of a dysfunctional department culture.

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[1] Executive Order 2020-18, State of Arizona, March 30, 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Nathaniel Meyersohn, “This Is the Most Dangerous Place in the Grocery Store,” CNNbusiness, May 1, 2020 (accessed same day).

Police/Security Over-Reaches: A Mentality Unfit for the Job

Absolute authority corrupts absolutely. On an organization or even a local scale, people with authority can play considerably on the ignorance of individuals to over-reach at their expense. As a consequence, surveillance and actions can be horribly excessive without there being recognition of it. Seeing an off-duty police employee wearing a bullet-proof vest and standing next to a store security guard in the entry-way of a grocery store in Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, can give at least new-comers an immediate sense of the excessive use of authority to intimidate even the innocent shoppers. As if seeing a policeman and security employee "greet" customers entering the store was not enough, I also saw a young mother with her young daughter in one of the aisles “freeze up” at the sight of the policeman (wearing a bullet-proof vest) staring at them in a confrontational posture from the end of the aisle. I could not believe my eyes. As the front doors opened as I left the store, I looked up only to see a security guard with his feet pointed right and left, respectively, in a confrontational posture. 

A security guard stands in a confrontational posture at an Albertsons (Frys) grocery store in Phoenix.

Could such practices ever be accepted as the default in the "land of the free"? It depends on the State. Furthermore, how does such ill-fitting excessiveness, which would only fit were someone reported to be shooting in the store, shift from inappropriateness to become the default—the status quo? Typically the underlying mentality is one of stubborn ignorance that cannot be wrong, backed up by an excessive and microscopic grip on real or invented authority. How is it that the more educated and broad-minded perspective in upper-echelon management comes to doubt even its common sense by being hoodwinked by the lower mentality? Excessive delegation to middle-and-lower levels of management, where the wider perspective can easily be lacking, may be part of the answer. Playing a supporting role, the value-system in the local culture may actually support the excess or look the other way in blind obedience to an ideology. Finally, if a practice beyond the pale gets its toehold in the status quo, then people can become blind to the excessiveness and treat it instead as normal. Excessiveness as the new normal. Dislodging an invasive or encroaching unquestioned trend can be very difficult given the nature of the status-quo default to act like cement. Two case studies demonstrate that an absurd over-reach by someone in the security field can occur. The first took place in Orlando, Florida. Accountability did occur, so the absurd was not allowed to become ensconced. The second was in Phoenix, Arizona. Such accountability is much more difficult there, so the aggressive over-reach of authority would likely become further ensconced in the conducive or enabling local culture. 

In September, 2019, an elementary school “resource officer” arrested two 6-year-olds at school in Orlando, Florida. At least one of the kids had committed the high crime of kicking another student. The “resource officer,” a misleading term for what was actually a policeman capable of making arrests (a resource for whom?), was subsequently fired for not having obtained permission from a “watch commander.” The militaristic term, commander, in having anything to do with first-graders, makes clear just how far the Orlando police department had overreached. Indeed, I submit that the cloak of being a resource is just as dishonest, and overreaching, as is the appropriation of military terms. A police employee is neither a security guard nor a military commando.

Of course, arresting a first-grader is such an obvious overreach that the judgment involved in the overreaching itself is arguably incompatible with the legal right to use lethal force. At least one of the first-graders was arrested for battery, fingerprinted, and had mugshots taken. That a police employee (or department) would even suppose that with a commander’s permission is appropriate or sufficient to arrest a first-grader for kicking another kid is so far-fetched that a lack of perspective, not to mention common sense, was also in the mix. Even Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala chastised the Orlando police department when she said, “These very young children ought to be protected, nurtured, and disciplined in a manner that does not rely on the criminal justice system to do it.”[1] That a police employee (and department) would interlard that system indicates a basic lack of understanding regarding that system and the fact that it has boundaries. People who have problems with boundaries should not be wielding power, for such people love power too much to exercise it realistically. For a child to make being a child a crime suggests that that child should not be allowed to play with guns, much less to be lawfully entitled to use them. 

Such an obvious overreaching mentality can also exist “under” the police, such as in security guards. In Phoenix, Arizona, for instance, the security guards on the light-rail trains have regularly over-reached beyond their authority. This reflects the culture, as the same tendency can be observe in other domains there. 

For example, some of the employees of the security subcontractor have turned on passengers simply for taking pictures inside the train. Guards have aggressively threatened to kick such passengers off the trains, using the flimsy excuse that the guards had been photographed and the erroneous claim that picture-taking on the trains was illegal. Such ignorance that could not be wrong backed up by authority that simply did not exist is inherently toxic and utterly incompatible with (i.e., a danger to) wielding even the authority that has been authorized. Beyond even the ignorance is the sheer aggressive nature that looks for any opening in which to bully another person. In fact, the dismissiveness of other people’s natural boundaries may itself be sociopathic. The aggression unleashed by efforts to hold such people accountable points to a demented perspective in which the victim rather than the aggressor is actually the aggressive party. 
It is interesting, or telling, that security employees would be so preoccupied with passengers taking pictures and yet actually refuse to do anything, whether on a platform or on a train, about a passenger known to have walked across the tracks even in front of an oncoming train. 

This man rushed across the tracks so fast his baby's carriage back wheels caught on a rail.  

Once I witnessed a man run across a street (amid oncoming cars) and across the tracks before entering the train-car that I entered. The security employee told me that he too had seen this, but could do nothing. "The street is not our property," he explained. "Aren't the tracks your property?" I countered. He did not reply. Being so reluctant to even confront such a passenger (or people smoking on the platforms) is quite a contrast to the excessive presence of the employees on a train car. 

Three security employees are clustered together in one half of a rail car. Typically none of them would be checking tickets. Imagine being a passenger surrounded by security guards! 

Looking at me leaving the train and then at the three security employees, the man in the foreground asked me if he could enter the train! When I was on the train standing next to the door, the security employee shown on the right walked over and stood in the middle between the doors, blocking the entry-way to the rest of the car. He was too big to be standing in that space, but I suppose he felt that he could do whatever he wanted as he had a badge.

That the security company put as many as six guards at a time in a car (typically not during commuter times, as office workers could be expected to complain) suggests a proclivity toward and enabling blind-spot concerning excessiveness itself. At the very least, the employees don't care whether passengers feel uncomfortable as a result. Sometimes the excessiveness is so obvious on a rail platform that customers may stand at a distance until a train comes.

Four or five security employees were on this platform. 

Twice I witnessed around fourteen police and security employees enter a rail car to check tickets. In both instances, three or four passengers were taken to the platform to be surrounded by the police and security employees as the latter wrote municipal citations! Imagine if so much attention were directed to a motorist pulled over for speeding! In effect, the passengers were being treated as criminals likely to become violent. 
Tellingly, at least one supervisor of bus drivers at a bus-transfer hub in Tempe decided to have his new van's yellow lights flashing continuously, as if the default were to treat the routine as a constant state of emergency just because one might be possible. 

Even during daylight hours, on a Sunday when the hub was virtually empty, a supervisor still felt the need to have his flashers on!

The flashing yellow lights on top of the white van are barely visible, and yet presumably someone thought they were fitting. 

People who are not willing or able to perceive when they have gone too far should not be permitted to wield power over other people. 

The relationship between excessiveness and over-reaching is an interesting one. Perhaps the former connotes being oblivious while the latter stresses the underlying motive. In both of the cases of Orlando and Phoenix, the excessiveness in the over-reaching itself was of such an extent as to be utterly transparent to the naked eye. It is perhaps a easily overlooked truism that going beyond authorized authority is itself an over-reach.

Typically when an over-reach or excessiveness is treated as part of the legitimate status-quo, or societal default, the culprits eventually go so far that they come to be viewed as a problem. For example, the decision of Allied Security in Phoenix to have the ticket-checkers/security-guards wear police-color uniforms and even separate silver badges could eventually lead to the company being charged with intentionally impersonating police. 

One of six security employees (not the one who became aggressive concerning picture-taking of half of the car)  watching passengers (rather than checking tickets) on a routine basis rather than because of an incident suspected or in progress on one car of a light-rail train in Phoenix. The obvious police impersonation, with its (intended) implications of additional authority, is no accident. Even though the employee pictured here was not belligerent, she and another employee blocked the conduit between the two sides of the car (and thus were "front and center" for any general picture-shot).

I submit that the impersonation to look like police employees was geared to intimidating customers beyond that which a security guard as such could muster. On account of the low pay, minimal qualifications (a High School diploma), and the bad (hiring) management (as reported by former employees online), it should be no surprise that the attitude toward customers has been more like that of the local police to the citizens than customer service in a company. The allure of power taken can be too much, especially if that elixir is not ideally in a customer-service attitude.
In the Phoenix Public Library, the security employees also wore silver detachable badges, at least as of 2019.  

The security employees are so numerous that a patron could easily sense that the library's management had gone too far. That the security employees intermingle with the police stationed at the library renders the impersonation problem more of problem because patrons could more easily assume that the employees also have police powers. 

The policewoman is at the left-back, next to one of the security employees. 

That the police and security employees are constantly making the rounds passing by patrons who are reading or studying does not render the library a place conducive to studying. 

At the Tempe Public Library, armed security employees with badges stood at the entrance at least by 2019. A volunteer told me that a manager had insisted that the "Welcome" desk be relabeled "Security" just in case patrons miss the point even in seeing two armed guards in front. 

Those security guards, each having a gun and taser, also made rounds through areas where patrons were reading or studying, as the video below testifies. 

At one of the pot dispensaries in Phoenix, a security guard could be seen sitting at a close proximity to the customers on whom he was keeping a direct eye. I doubt it made any difference to him whether they felt uncomfortable with his excessiveness. To him, he may not even have been excessive. 

The security guard is seated on the right, positioned to face the three customers seated against the side wall. Was the guard worried that one of the customers would suddenly explode in reefer madness? Such over-blown assumptions, while ludicrous, have existed in Arizona even as marijuana was legal in some of the other States. 

In the television series, Downton Abbey, the Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith, remarks that power goes to the head of a common person like strong drink. She is referring to the village physician whom the British military put in charge of the military hospital during World War I at the Downton residence. If that could be said from her perspective of a physician, the hiring of (in many cases) inner-city youth to wear badges on trains can be expected to lead to a host of problems.  

The dynamic can be explained by appropriating Nietzsche’s philosophy in which some people are weak internally and so they cannot resist their instinctual urge to dominate even and especially the strong. The weak resent the strong for their self-confidence and surfeit of strength. Whereas the strong do not feel a need to use more power than necessary because they have more than enough strength anyway, the weak will stoop to even cruelty to exact even a bit of pleasure from the exercise of power externally; exerting power internally, as in mastering an intractable urge, requires more strength than the weak have.

If a hiring budget is inadequate to attract a certain maturity- and knowledge-level, then fine-tuning the hiring criteria will not be adequate. Unfortunately, if, as Nietzsche says, the weak cannot but be weak and the strong cannot but be strong, then training too can be expected to have limited usefulness. Organizational, governmental, and even societal accountability may have to be called on to supply the needed check on the power-overreaches. Unfortunately, in such a law-and-order culture as has existed in Arizona at least through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, security guards as well as the local police could be expected to get away with a lot. Even the state's major universities, including ASU and UA, were not immune from over-reaches by security guards given police status (a police department is reports to a city, rather than an organization), and yet students passively took it while the "academic" administrators compromised academic ways to make way for other values such as intimidation (i.e., of students). 

It was not uncommon, at least by 2019, for campus "police" to park their cars on a routine basis on sidewalks used by students to get from class to class. The assumption that they would not be concerned passing such a car belongs in a fantasy movie rather than on at an institution of higher learning (at least in principle). 

It was not uncommon for campus police to "patrol" in one place on an ongoing basis out in front where students walk. The obvious need to stick out carries with it a certain amount of ego and lack of concern for how the young students may be affected emotionally. Few, I submit, would feel that such a presence during a school day is necessary to feel safe. 

In fact, in addition to the campus police, ASU hires student security guards. The result is a sense of constantly being watched on that campus, which obviously must have had cameras too. 
Once while talking to two students representing a cause at a table, I noticed that a student security guard was taking his job too seriously, or was told to do so, by how he was so obviously watching us. I was reminded of the secret police of the Communist states in the last century. 

Notice how needlessly confrontational the security employee's posture is in this picture. 

To the extent that a local culture enables the over-reaches by casting a blind or even permissive eye, as in Arizona, the imposition of checks on authority are especially important. That Florida's authorities, in contrast, came out against the child-cop who tried to criminalize being a child suggests that not every state is as dire in this respect as is Arizona. 

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1. A. Willingham, Artemis Moshtaghian, and Amir Vera, “A School Resource Officer Is Fired after Arresting Two 6-year-old Children,” CNN.com, September 23, 2019 (accessed same day).