the devil's in the details

[sophiaserpentia]

The Echo 9 launching facility for the intercontinental nuclear missile Minuteman III is about 100 miles northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota. Endless fields of sunflowers and mown hay dazzle those who travel there.

... On the morning of June 20, 2006, three people dressed as clowns arrived at Echo 9. The clowns broke the lock off the fence and put up peace banners and posters. One said: “Swords into plowshares - Spears into pruning hooks.” Then they poured some of their own blood and hammered on the nuclear launching facility.

[Fr. Carl Kabat, 72,] is a Catholic priest. [Greg Boertje-Obed, 52,] is an ex-military officer, married and the father of an 11 year old daughter. [Michael Walli, 57,] is a Vietnam vet who has worked with the homeless for decades. Greg and Carl are members of the Loaves and Fishes Community in Duluth. The three are called the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares.

They placed a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, international legal condemnations of nuclear weapons, bibles, rosaries, bread, wine, and a picture of Greg's daughter on the top of the missile silo.

Then they waited until the air force security forces came and arrested them.

From Bill Quigley's article CONVICTIONS: The Trial of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares Clowns

The Plowshares Clowns were convicted and each face up to 10 years in prison. What caught my eye in this article was this:

The defense asked for two instructions about justice – one from the preamble to the US Constitution another from Judge Learned Hand – both were denied by the judge. Defendants asked that the jury be read the First Amendment – denied. International law? Denied. Nuremberg Principles? Denied. The US statute defining war crimes? Denied. The US statute defining genocide? Denied.

The judge then went forward and instructed the jury to disregard anything about nuclear weapons, international law, and the good motives of the defendants. The effect of these instructions was to treat the actions of the defendants the same as if they had poured blood and hammered on a Volkswagen – pure property damage.

... One of the jurors told people afterwards that many on the jury learned a lot in the trial and were sympathetic to the defense, but “the judge's instructions left us no option but to find them guilty.”

Of course they had no option but to find them guilty. The whole process had been rigged from the beginning to reduce the various perspectives and nuances of the situation to a single black-and-white renduring of "innocent or guilty." It is not a process by which the truth of the matter is discerned; it is a process by which all of the meaning and significance of life, the big picture, is filtered out as much as possible.

This is what i've referred to in various entries as "the tyranny of the written word." By that i don't mean that written language is somehow evil or tyrannous (although that idea has been explored); i refer to a way of looking at the world which deliberately examines details in a distinctly literal and direct way... pouring over the words of contracts and laws, with the net result that the greater meaning of things -- which many of us might be inclined to think of as the really important part -- is filtered out in favor of a stultifyingly limited cross-section of events.

How else is it conceivable that three people, avowed pacifists, protesting in a less than placid and well-behaved way their lack of voice with regards to the distribution of resources and labor in their society, can be essentially reduced to vandals? The ability of people to speak their wishes aloud, and act in accordance with their words and beliefs -- in short, to act in accordance with their will -- is perhaps the most fundamental right there is. And it is NOT in the best interest of the ruling oligarchy to allow people that right, or to even let them think that right exists.

Hence, we have this "rationalistic" method of smashing reality with a hammer and looking only at the little bits that best suit our goals.

The justice system meets the needs of the state rather than the needs of people. The needs of people would be best served by mapping out a route from here to the maximum empowerment of every person involved. Even though the ideal "government of, by, and for the people" would (according to the US's founding documents) have a similar concern (and would therefore have no interest in restricting people's non-harmful actions or expression), the government we have is not in the least interested in the empowerment of people. It is interested in the self-preservation of ongoing institutional concerns.

The "big picture" is threatening to the state -- not just because, as Stephen Colbert put it, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias" -- but because thoughtful, engaged citizens are not so easily swayed by shepherding tactics. People can only become aware of the inequality and injustice which permeates our society, of the truly small amount of control the state allows them to have in the direction of their lives, if they are able to deeply contemplate the big picture. Being conscious and aware is one of the most radical things you can do.

Comments

[alobar.livejournal.com]

More people need to learn about the fine old American tradition of Jury Nulification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
If it were not for Jury Nulification, John Peter Zenger would never have been declared innicent, and we might not have freedom of the press today.

http://www.fija.org//index.php?page=displaytxt&id=162
http://www.fija.org//index.php?page=displaytxt&id=31

[akaiyume.livejournal.com]

i refer to a way of looking at the world which deliberately examines details in a distinctly literal and direct way

"A distinctly literal" way is about as indirect as one can get. Words have not separate inherent meaning. It is the space around them that creates the meaning, even if many are unaware that the space - which lacks concrete form - exists. What was that thing you quoted once "everything contains an echo of what it is not." By playing with the resonances, maginfying some echos, covering up others then what a word stands for can be changed. This is how misappropriation works. This how "we must restrict freedom in order to protect liberty" doesn't have every English speaker in the world going "WTF"? The concept of literal is practically fictitional as it implies that a one-real-true-meaning exists.

Okay, I'm through quibbling now.

As far the rest: I completely agree.

[igferatu.livejournal.com]

Of course, not only are the innocent punished, but I imagine that the NSA/DHS/DOD collects such incidents to justify massive allocations for 'clownlike-insurgency threat analysis' and development of 'sacrament prevention technologies' on their next budget.

Maybe protest needs to go the other way. I propose that we petition to change the name of the USA to something more appropriate and contemporary, like "We Will Crush You".

Then it might be good to ratify a meta-constitution which states that all rights and privileges in the canon of domestic and international law shall apply only to large corporations and extremely wealthy families, whereas all restrictions and punitive statutes shall apply solely to the unincorporated masses, hereafter referred to as 'useless shit-machines'.

[pangaia93.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that was stirring to read.

[sarahmichigan.livejournal.com]

I was always taught (by my fundamentalist Christian parents, as well as others) that it's a fine and moral thing to do civil disobedience, but that you have to be willing to face the consequences, including being imprisoned. It's not that anybody's saying your cause isn't just, but that you may have to put up with being imprisoned for protesting in a way that breaks the law.