CALMING THE TAXHERD

     Very subtle illustrations of mass-media psychological conditioning have occurred recently concerning the latest examples of cops caught on tape in the act of being them selves; viciously beating shackled victims of their hatred. The newspeddlers, presented with sensational tape that they fear that their competitors will use, reluctantly use it themselves. No news organizations wish to anger the establishment, nor do they wish to be scooped by other, less apologetic media outlets. Thus they minimize the viciousness with clever editorial tricks, than "report" it.

     Trick one is to edit out all but a brief fraction of the tape depicting the attack. This few seconds is edited further in subsequent showings. The media rely on first-viewers to draw in subsequent viewers, who are disappointed when half the punches and slams don't appear. They conclude that the first viewers lied, hallucinated or exaggerated.

     Trick two is the news-stalkers using words like "struck" instead of "punched in the face". Even the BBC never mentioned the facepunching, as if they too have the journalist's duty to conceal our cops' viciousness.

     Trick three is to get "experts", none of whom ever suffered a beating from cops, and many who have given beatings as cops. A police chief drones about how he will "intensely" investigate. This is code for "We'll give them paid vacations, call them "suspensions", wait months for the public to forget, then quietly reinstate them with bonuses, back pay and promotions." The second "expert" is an ACLU lawyer who feigns minimal outrage and mumbles about possibly justified behavior. Only the mayor shows real outrage and suggests real accountability. He wants no judicial fraud to cause his city to burn.

     Trick four is the apologists' talk show. Take NPR's "Talk of the Nation" of 7-11-02 (www.npr.org) They screened out everyone except cops and one woman caller who was mildly concerned over her drunk, large brother being choked by a cop. For almost an hour they tiptoed around cops torturing shackled, helpless victims by calling it "corporal punishment", as if black eyes, busted lips, smashed noses, broken teeth and trying to chop hands off with manacles is like spanking a child. People who've never suffered coptorture are easily duped by this type of subtle psychological conditioning.

     One female cop says we should have more female cops and reward vicious cops with more training. Next the host asks, more or less: What invisible justification for torture does the untrained eye not see in these tapes? It's this type of nonsense that tricked a jury of rich white people into thinking they could pretend their eyes lied to them about the cops caught torturing Rodney King. The Establishment has learned to be slightly more careful in indoctrinating their voting herd into thinking justice is occurring since another city burned.

     Next was the standard "one bad apple" spiel followed by the usual "most cops are excellent" speech. To prevent the whole farce from looking like the copcoddling marathon it is, the police chief paid lip-service to prosecution and accountability. Yes, prosecution by trick courts that momentarily convict, them quietly acquit or pardon their own do most to calm the taxherd back into our apathetic comas. Accountability it is not!

     How do we counter such fiendishly clever mass-media psychological conditioning of voters? We don't forget. We enlarge the tapes, was distribute them and incorporate them into our culture as icons. We keep our own databases of vicious, offending cope. We take away the cops' anonymity by making them wear name tags and color-coded armor with names and huge numbers on them like football players do. We make the cops publish and update this list, and fine them out of their own pockets when they don't. We force citizen's oversight committees on them, paid for out of their lavish police budgets, for urgenty needed quality control of cops by citizens. Statistics prove that we need protection from them much more than they need protection from us. (Their own justice department admits to over 12,000 beatings from cops occur every year. Fleets of police cars chasing each joyrider kill hundreds of citizens every year. Most cops die by killing themselves chasing cars this way.) We pay rewards for tapes of cops abusing citizens. We reward cops who report or stop police brutality and torture.

     Since these measures will push police atrocities further back inside police stations, we demand transparency them too. We learn to quibble like lawyers and we cleverly use their rhetoric to prove that quality control is more important than police secrecy. Self-policing has never worked for anyone. We have to endure police surveillance and prove we have nothing to hide. Police, being vastly more dangerous and corruptable with their absolute power, should also prove their innocence and show they have nothing to hide. This is only fair.