From: "Paul Hager" <hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Clinton in _Rolling Stone_ on civil liberties
Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 12:37:15 -0500

henrya@yang.earlham.edu writes:

>In article <1992Sep2.234829.25589@news.cs.indiana.edu>, hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu (Paul Hager) writes:
>> kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>> 
>>>Clinton is gang interviewed in this month's _Rolling Stone_. Here is
>>>an excerpt from that interview.
>> 
>>>=============
>> 
>>>If you want less police brutality, you should have more police on the
>>>street, walking the streets, doing community policing.  New York City
>>>went to community policing and has just reported its first crime drop
>>>in thirty-six years.
>> 
>> Uh-oh.  There goes my fascism detector.  I'm starting to hear a full
>> brass band playing the Horst Wessel song.  I can't remember the song
>> at all -- I seem to have a mental block -- unless something happens
>> to trigger the memory.  Something external like watching a PDFA
>> commercial, seeing a promo for COPS, or watching the State Police's
>> MJ search copter take off from its helipad (as I did today).  Just
>> what we need, more police.  "Die Fahne hoch ..."
>> 
>> -- 
>> paul hager		hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu
>> 
>> "I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
>>                        --from _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt

>I think you missed the point completely.  Clinton wasn't arguing for more 
>police in that quote, he was advocated a redistribution of existing 
>police.  Instead of having all policemen in cars, he wants some on foot 
>patrols.  By walking around, the neighborhood becomes accustomed to 
>individual officers.  The next step in his logic is that the current 
>bunker mentality of many police departments would decrease.  

I don't think I missed the point.  The idea of "community based
policing" in and of itself is nothing new and was being advocated
back in the 60s.  As you point out, the "bunker mentality", the
"us against them" mindset in which it becomes the police against
the civilians was long ago identified as one of the factors leading
to police brutality.  The problem with Clinton is that he takes
a good, albeit old, idea, and melds it with MORE police and some
kind of overarching federal control.  This, coupled with his 
atavistic views on continuing and expanding the drug war, sets 
off a veritable Bavarian polka band of Nazi anthems in my head.

Unlike a lot of politicians who probably know the drug war is a
crock but are afraid to speak up, I suspect that Clinton may
actually buy into it.  His step-father was an alcoholic who engaged
in physical abuse and, so the story goes, Clinton turned in his 
half-brother for cocaine use.  Clinton is thus predisposed to 
unquestioningly accept all of the drug war propaganda, given that 
his family background seems to validate it.  Paradoxically, the 
unprincipled but pragmatic George Bush would probably be more 
likely to switch his position if the political winds shift on drug 
prohibition than would Clinton.  I would like to be wrong on this
but I bet that I'm not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Clinton is a Nazi -- far 
from it; merely that Clinton will expand the police state for
reasons that he considers humane.  I fear we are sliding toward
what I call the 10,000 year dark age, an era in which huge 
multi-nationals and government bureaucracies control every facet
of people's lives.  Clinton is an agent of that process, albeit
an unwitting one.
-- 
paul hager		hagerp@moose.cs.indiana.edu

"I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
                       --from _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt