Out of Stanford’s basement and onto our streets
Something clicked. Former federal prosecutor and ex-FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann spoke with MS NOW’s Ari Melber on Monday on how far removed DHS agents in Minneapolis are from professional law enforcement.
“They had the professional demeanor of criminals,” as one Minneapolis senior described his too-close enounter.
Weissmanm referenced a weekend statement by Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara on “Face the Nation.” O’Hara reacted to the Saturday killing of Veterans Administration intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in a hail of Customs and Border Patrol bullets:
“People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year, recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone. This is the second American citizen that’s been killed, this is the third shooting within three weeks,” O’Hara said.
“That’s training,” Weissman said of MPD, “that’s people who are not looking to terrorize a civilian population. But if you create ICE as a model of “Lord of the Flies” or the Stanford Prison Experiment, where you’re telling people they have unfettered power [and] absolute immunity … that is what results in a group of law enforcement officers who are really not doing what many, many law enforcement officers in this country are trained to do day in and day out.”
End this experiment
For those needing a refresher, this is from Stanford University’s archive on the infamous 1971 psychology department experiment:
Carried out August 15-21, 1971, in the basement of Jordan Hall, the Stanford Prison Experiment set out to examine the psychological effects of authority and powerlessness in a prison environment. The study, led by psychology professor Philip G. Zimbardo, recruited Stanford students using a local newspaper ad. Twenty-four students were carefully screened and randomly assigned to groups of prisoners and guards. The experiment, which was scheduled to last 1-2 weeks, ultimately had to be terminated on only the 6th day as the experiment escalated out of hand when the prisoners were forced to endure cruel and dehumanizing abuse at the hands of their peers. The experiment showed, in Dr. Zimbardo’s words, how “ordinary college students could do terrible things.”
Given total control over the “prisoners” (fellow students), “guards” in the mock prison quickly became abusive: “Over the course of the experiment, some of the guards became cruel and tyrannical, and a number of the prisoners became depressed and disoriented.”
Donald Trump and Shadow President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller have operationalized the Stanford experiment and loosed undertrained, militarized immigration thugs with a penchant for violence and a need to dehumanize civilians. They are the guards. We are the prisoners. Comply or die.
The people of Minneapolis were not having it. Even in the face of arrest and even death, they resist.
From Instagram comes this warning: “If they’ll arrest veterans, they’ll arrest you too.”
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“History is being made here in Minnesota,” MS Now host Chris Hayes declared Tuesday night.
You are living through history. Make the best of it.