The War On Bullshit

10. Opening on a Religious Holiday

Why should Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, the non-religious, etc. close their businesses for Christmas and Easter? This goes against separation of church and state, and freedom from religious discrimination.

9. Jaywalking

If there are no cars, who cares what color the light is? If the light says walk, but a car runs the red light, knowing you had the right of way won’t take away the pain from the broken legs you end up with. If you don’t want to get hit by a car, you ought to watch cars, not lights.

8. Legal Age

to vote, drive, drink, gamble, buy cigarettes… take your pick. They’re all equally stupid. Using age as a surrogate for maturity is about as valid as using height as a surrogate for leadership qualities. How is a 13-year-old genius less able to vote than a 30-year-old moron?

7. Possession of Marijuana

Given the absence of evidence that marijuana is dangerous, throwing people in jail for possession is just plain stupid.

6. File Sharing

I have dealt with the stupidity of prosecuting file sharers before. In summary, downloading music or movies is no more stealing from the music/movie industry than building your own rocking chair is stealing from the rocking chair industry.

5. Gay marriage / Polygamy / “anti-sodomy” laws

Who you marry is none of the State’s business. Marriage is not on official designation managed by the government, it is a bond among people. If a man wants to marry another man, or two women want to marry the same man, or two men the same woman, who cares??? Unless you are directly involved, it’s none of your concern, so if you don’t like it, you can piss off. And using “anti-sodomy” laws that are intended to protect children to throw people in jail for consensual acts among adults is bullshit.

4. Freedom of Speech/Assembly/Association in Schools

Students in public and private schools are not entitled to the basic freedoms enjoyed by adults in most civilized countries. If you are in high school and you tell your teacher that s/he is wrong, incompetent and ought to be fired, you will probably get detention. That’s because you do not have freedom of speech. When a teacher gives an entire class detention because a few students cause trouble, this violates freedom of association, and the association isn’t even voluntary! Why is this a big deal, you may ask? Well, the fact that so few people understand the importance and genuine meaning of individual freedom might have something to do with being educated in a dictatorial, collectivist, freedomless system.

3. Public Nudity

If someone decides to wander around the beach, park or streets naked, how is that hurting me? It’s not. It’s not hurting anybody. Just because something is taboo or unusual in a particular society and offends some people, doesn’t mean it should be illegal. If we made everything that offended people illegal we would no longer have anything approaching a free society.

2. Drinking in Public

This one, I have never understood. If someone sits next to me smoking, that bothers me. It smells bad, it makes my clothes smell bad, it’s poisoning me, it’s polluting the environment, yet it’s legal. If someone sits next to me drinking, it does not bother me, there isn’t much smell (most of the time), it doesn’t poison me and doesn’t hurt the environment. So what gives? Why can you smoke in public but not drink? This just doesn’t make any sense.

1. Prostitution

Why is it that paying someone to have sex with you on camera is legal, but paying someone to have sex with you off-camera is illegal? The common response is that pornography is protected under freedom of expression: that it is not about the sexual gratification of the actors. First, this is complete bullshit, as should be obvious from the recent trend toward “reality porn,” where a bunch of jackasses pay some amateur actress (i.e., call girl) to bang someone, or several people, while somebody takes a home movie. The division between porn and prostitution is much less clear-cut than it was years ago. Second, what exactly is wrong with paying someone for sexual gratification? Isn’t this what strip clubs and peep shows are all about? Criminalizing prostitution is yet another symptom of amoral, groundless religious influence in our society.

I simply cannot find any good reason for prostitution to be illegal. People argue that keeping it illegal protects women. This is manifestly false. If prostitution were legal, the prostitutes would be able to seek legal action against pimps and johns who assault them or steal from them, and police would not be able to extort sex from them in return for overlooking their indiscretions. It has Also been suggested that prostitution is inherently demeaning. Bullshit. The idea of prostitution being demeaning is inherent to our misogynistic, sex-demonizing, evangelical culture, not to the act itself. It has further been suggested that prostitution contributes to the modern slave trade. Since the penalties for slave trading ought to be significantly stiffer than the penalties for prostitution, people involved in slave trading should be prosecuted as slavers, not as pimps. Guns contribute to gun violence, but we don’t make those illegal. Corporations contribute to embezzlement, but we haven’t criminalize those yet. It’s a stupid argument. Prostitution is illegal because it offends the religious right. For me, that is not a good enough reason.

Further to last week’s list of 5 reasons not to trust the police (and the nazi-esque comments that ensued), I can’t help but provide a few more.

6. They can turn off the cameras. Apparently, if prisoners don’t cooperate, the police can turn off the security cameras before beating the living shit out of said prisoners. Take this woman in Louisiana, for instance, who’s denied her right to a phone call and a lawyer. The cop turns off the camera. Shortly thereafter the prisoner is on the floor in a pool of her own blood. She slipped, they say. Riiiiiight.

7. They can remove your clothes “for your own safety”. In this video, you can see 7 officers, male and female, pin a handcuffed woman to the floor of her cell and strip her naked. It wasn’t a strip search though, because male officers aren’t allowed to strip search a female prisoner. What the fuck is it then? If these weren’t cops in this video, they’d be on trial for attempted gang rape. I’m going to make this simple. If a gang of cops ever sexually assaulted my wife, girlfriend, sister, mother, etc, they’ll end up like this guy. Oh, and that woman in the video was left naked in her cell for six hours afterwards.

8. Your recourse to police misconduct is the totally screwed up legal system. Even in cases where the defendant gets the death penalty, cases where you would think the case is airtight, two thirds turned out to be screwed up in some serious way or other. Liebman’s study is just one indication of the increasingly screwed up legal systems in western countries. Good luck getting justice on anything, let alone police misconduct. Which brings me to:

9. Police treat tasers like water pistols. Seriously, the number of deaths by tasers is ridiculous. The taser is not a sensible weapon for police, as I’ve discussed before.

10. The Rampart Scandal. The Rampart Scandal proves two interesting things. 1) a conspiracy among a large number of police officers is possible (over 70 in this case). 2) Police are not punished for their crimes. Some of these motherfuckers SHOT people unprovoked. If I shoot someone, I go to jail. If a cop shoots someone, eh, he gets suspended.

Again, let me emphasize that there’s lots of good police officers out there. I’ve met several. But there’s also some real assholes. Therefore, it’s not wise to trust someone just because they’re in uniform.

Recently, a police officer has engaged me in a debate about whether police are justified in using Tasers on individuals who nonviolently refuse to cooperate. I think we all agree that anyone who attacks a police officer deserves the asskicking that follows (most of the time); however, the issue is murkier where the “perpetrator” gives no threat or indication of violence, but simply refuses to comply. The aforementioned police officer argued that police are totally justified in use of force were civilians are noncompliant; I disagree.

It seems a major assumption underlying this argument is whether or not John Q. Public should trust the police by default. A major tenant of the justice systems in western countries seems to be that the police are trustworthy. This is bullshit. Here are 5 good reasons civilians should not be expected to trust the police.

1. Rodney King. History speaks for itself. So do videos.

2. Legalized Entrapment. In New York, police leave purses with credit cards in them lying around and cart off to jail whoever picks them up whether or not he or she intended to return the purse intact.

3. “No-knock” warrants. Man hears someone break into his house. Man gets 18-month-old daughter down on the ground, hides behind bed. Man sees armed assailant break into bedroom, shoots and kills him in self defense. Assailant was actually officer who didn’t bother yelling “police!” upon busting in. Man is now on death row.

4. Extraordinary rendition. If the US government suspects that you might have information that could lead them to someone who might be a terrorist, they can kidnap you out of an airport, deport you to a secret location in another country and torture a false confession out of you. This is not a conspiracy theory: Washington has officially apologized to a Canadian citizen treated in this manner. Hello thought police.

5. Legal ignorance. Whether or not you support open carry laws, if the law says that you can walk around carrying a gun, the police should know that and not hassle you. In many places, you are not even required to give police identification but try telling an officer that.

Conclusion

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good cops. All I’m saying is, at the group level, assuming that everyone should trust the police and always cooperate doesn’t make sense in the face of historical and current events. Why should I trust a group of people known for violating individual rights, not knowing the laws they’re supposed to uphold and inciting unnecessary violence?

Related Articles: 5 MORE Reasons Not To Trust the Police