Following Orders

by digby

Pam Spaulding put up a list of the 39 people (that we know of) who have been killed so far this year by tasers. (The list was compiled by Electronic Village, which is keeping track of the statistics.) Unsurprisingly, nearly 40% of the victims were black, despite being only 6% of the population.

But lest anyone who isn’t black think they are immune, consider this:

An 81-year-old man tased during his arrest by a Stockton CHP officer says he may take legal action.

Victor Schiaffini says he is considering filing an excessive use of force complaint.

Schiaffini walks with a cane, has no use of his left arm after suffering six strokes, and takes several prescription medications daily.

The CHP says he attacked an officer with a deadly weapon, his cane.

Schiaffini was pushed to the ground and tased three times during his arrest.

“That was the worst whoopin’ I’ve ever taken in my life,” Schiafiini told CBS13.

Schiaffini spent three days in San Joaquin County Jail following his arrest in July.

The District Attorney reduced Schiaffini’s charges to an infraction and he pleaded guilty.

Again, every American needs to realize that if they look at a police officer sideways or misunderstand their orders they will be shot with electricity regardless of whether the officer has other choices. When you see a half paralyzed, 81 year old man tasered, you know for sure that it cannot be possible that they needed to taser him three times to subdue him. It was to teach him and anyone who was watching a lesson: if you fail to quickly comply with a police officer’s instructions, no questions asked, you will be electrocuted and hauled off to jail. That’s just the way it is.

And the more this is officially sanctioned the more common it will be become. The famous Milgram Experiment showed that people are more than willing to inflict pain on their fellow humans if they are instructed to do so by someone in authority.

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: “Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?” In other words, “Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?” Milgram’s testing revealed that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.[3] Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, “The Perils of Obedience”, writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.[4]

Over time Americans will learn that in order to maintain their liberty, they must instantly comply with everything those in authority tell them to do. The police will follow the edicts of their civilian leaders, who sanction torture on many different levels “to keep the people safe.” The population will learn eventually that they will automatically be shocked with electricity if they fail to comply and over time they will be conditioned to fall in line regardless of their constitutional right to speak or resist unwarranted intrusion. And then we will truly be free.

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