Author: Tom Sullivan

There’s many a slip twixt the cop and the news clip
by Tom Sullivan

Writing at Wonkette, Shrill unearthed a revealing story the other day that you might have missed:

Anyway, on New Year’s Eve, the New York Police Department requested the public’s help in finding a man who grabbed an MTA worker, threw her on the ground, throttled her, and then ran away with a jaunty and satisfied smirk on his face.

Being the New York subway system, surveillance cameras captured the play-by-play. Turns out the attacker was an off-duty police officer. But here’s where Shrill turns it into a man-bites-dog story:

The hilarious coda to this story is the treatment of this story in the news by the New York Daily News. Here’s the headline from the story they wrote before they knew that the culprit was a police officer:

And here’s the lede of that story:

A hulking brute grabbed a 28-year-old MTA employee up in a bear hug at a Bronx train station, shoved her onto the platform and began choking her in an unprovoked attack – then ran away smiling, authorities said Wednesday.

Here’s the story after they found out that the culprit was a police officer:

And here’s the lede of that story:

Police Officer Mirjan Lolja, 37, was suspended after the assault in which the Metropolitan Transportation Authority worker — who was on-duty and in her uniform — was allegedly put into a bear hug, thrown to the floor and choked, cops said.

Notice anything? Gone is the evocative “thug” in the headline and the “hulking brute” of the lede, and the sensationalism of the label of an “unprovoked” attack, replaced by plainspoken and bare nouns. Gone, too, is the directness of the active voice, replaced by a circumspect passive voice, accompanied by the (necessary) lawyerly “allegedly”. The callousness of him smiling has been dropped, too, demoted to the second paragraph. This is no surprise — it’s just an example of the subtle way in which our media defers to and genuflects before law enforcement, shaping and coloring the narrative in their favor.

That’s about as plain as it gets. “There was an officer-involved shooting,” etc. An officer “discharged his weapon,” etc. News language is indirect and allows that things “just happen” when police are involved. Or as Jameson Parker snarks:

“A shot rang out from the officer’s gun.” Who is the actor there? The gun? So much for the old NRA adage “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Apparently officers’ guns do.

No thugs around the station house, either, people. Move along.

Thank you for not voting your best interests
by Tom Sullivan

At a party over the weekend, a couple of guests asked the question I hear time and again from friends frustrated that so many working-class people vote Republican: Why do they vote against their best interests?

It’s a question that honestly perplexes and frustrates them as much as this particular verbal tic frustrates me. It’s obvious to them how conservative policies hurt working people and undermine the middle class. Yet, people continue to vote Republican. But you know this.

Well, first off, people don’t vote their interests. They vote their identities. This is standard Lakoff stuff. People vote for candidates they believe share their social views, not necessarily their economics. People vote for candidates they feel they can trust. People wanted to have a beer with recovering alcoholic, George W. Bush, for godssakes.

Second, step back from that question a moment and look at “voting your best interests” dispassionately. Do we really want our neighbors to go into the voting booth and vote what’s best for No. 1? For their bottom lines?

Seriously. Is that who we are? Is that the kind of country we want? Does that reflect our values?

Because by posing the same question over and over, and by using it as an accusation against working-class, white voters, are we not sending the message that that is exactly how we think people should vote? Bottom line? Every man for himself?

I understand people’s frustration, but that is just the Randian, social Darwinism we oppose. Counter it. Don’t reinforce it. Complaints that people are voting against their best interests are not reinforcing a more progressive message, that as Americans we are all in this together and should vote with an eye for the general welfare. Maybe we should stop voicing them.

Worse, the fact that so many on the left frame the question in “best interests” terms suggests that we ourselves have unconsciously internalized our opponents’ messaging.

And while we may think it a legitimate, innocent question, family members, coworkers, and conservative sparring partners hear it as arrogant and condescending — a liberal dog whistle. “You’re voting against your best interests” sounds like a snooty, intellectual’s way of saying, “You’re stupid.” If we’re looking for reasons they don’t vote with us, we may have found one.

It’s godawful messaging. I wish we would stop it.

What an echo!
by Tom Sullivan

Republicans are flinging aside their crutches and shouting hallelujah. President Obama’s executive powers have cured them of judicial activism sensitivity. In ingratitude, they’re filing legal briefs across the country, hoping to stop Obama from exercising executive power to direct federal agencies:

On health care, Republicans in Washington have sued the president and joined state lawsuits urging the Supreme Court to declare major parts of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. On climate change, state attorneys general and coal industry groups are urging federal courts to block the president’s plan to regulate power plants. And on immigration, conservative lawmakers and state officials have demanded that federal judges overturn Mr. Obama’s plan to prevent millions of deportations.

Now that a Democratic president is flexing the executive power the Bush-Cheney administration deployed so expansively, checks and balances are back in fashion with Republicans. And trial lawyers. Coming up: leisure suits.

“What they cannot win in the legislative body, they now seek and hope to achieve through judicial activism,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia. “That is such delicious irony, it makes one’s head spin.”

No, no, no, no, says West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey:

Mr. Morrisey, a Republican, disputed the view of many liberals that conservatives are now looking for help from the activist judges they once derided. “Quite the opposite, it’s a call for adhering to the rule of law,” he said.

Call me when they sue the Department of Justice to prosecute Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bush cabal. Morrisey’s statement rings as hollow as the Tin Man’s chest.

Scarecrow: Beautiful! What an echo!

Tin Man: It’s empty. The tinsmith forgot to give me a heart.

Dorothy & Scarecrow: [in unison] No heart?

Tin Man: No heart.

IOKIYAR

Which one are you working for?
by Tom Sullivan

Those of us already pondering how to approach 2106 campaigns follow in Robert Woolley’s footsteps. The strategist for Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 presidential reelection campaign originated using message control, targeting, and opposition research, say Washington Post’s Dan Balz and John Maxwell Hamilton of Louisiana State University and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Campaign technologies have changed more than many tactics, they argue.

But to fight its way back after a disastrous 2014, Democrats will have to do better than more of the same in 2016. The left will have to step up its game, writes Sean McElwee. Much more than a standard bearer, the left needs a movement:

The left must remember that leaders do not make movements; rather, movements make leaders. Instead of vacillating from one hero to another, the left must create a formidable power base from which to both defeat Republicans and shift Democrats to the left.

Turnout increases with income, McElwee writes, which leads Democrats to target higher income voters groups that do turn out. This compounds with them favoring policies that appeal to higher income voters, leaving poor non-voters even less incentive to go to the polls.

Mass mobilization of core constituencies is the first key to winning. Problem is, the very solutions McElwee offers are the ones Republicans — now in control of roughly 70 percent of state legislatures — are systematically targeting: eliminating same-day registration and expanding ID requirements. Not to mention eliminating or shortening early voting.

Party leaders cultivating more progressive candidates would help, especially more workers and African American candidates to help boost turnout among the half of Americans with working-class jobs. “The good news,” McElwee reports, “is that research suggests that people of color are actually just as likely as white candidates to win: the problem is that they often don’t run.”

Obviously. But there’s a reason for that besides old-boy gatekeepers among Democrats’ leadership. Money.

Legislation and regulations aimed at getting money out of politics is another obvious solution McElwee offers (like same-day registration, etc.) that both lower barriers to entry and tend to favor the left’s base voters. But we have a chicken-and-egg problem. If you expect to pass them, you have to have control, but how do you get control unless you pass them?

But McElwee nails the master solution, saying, “a progressive America will require work.” Working Families Party and groups such as New York Communities for Change have busted their tails to advance just the kind of policies that benefit Democratic constituencies and candidates.

I can’t count the times I’ve heard from a disgruntled progressive, “We need a third party in this country.” My response is always the same.

“I can name a half-dozen third parties off the top of my head. Which one are you working for?”

Sadly, that usually ends the conversation.

“Over to you, welcome to the fight”
by Tom Sullivan

Bill Moyers’ show may have signed off last night, but as Digby noted, he’ll continue at his website to do what he’s done for so many decades. Moyers closes out his show with a message both of apology and encouragement to the next generation:

BILL MOYERS: Mary Christina Wood reminds us that democracy, too is a public trust – a reciprocal agreement between generations to keep it in good repair and pass it along. Our country’s DNA carries an inherent promise for every citizen of an equal opportunity at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our history resonates with the hallowed idea – hallowed by blood – of government of, by, and for the people. Our great progressive struggles have been waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich and privileged, share in the benefits of a free society. In the words of Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest of our Supreme Court justices, “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Yet look at just a few recent headlines: this one from “The New York Times”: “U.S. Wealth Gap Is Widest in Decades”. From the website Alternet: “Just 40 Americans Own As Much Wealth As Half the United States.” From Slate.com: “The Great Wealth Meltdown: Middle-Class Families Are Worth Less Today Than in 1969.” And from “The Economist”: “Wealth without workers, workers without wealth,” pointing to the reality that “for all but an elite few, work no longer guarantees a rising income.”

So as the next generation steps forward, I am tempted to think that the only thing my generation can say to them is: we’re sorry. Sorry for the mess you’re inheriting. Sorry we broke the trust. But I know in my heart that’s not what they ask or expect. So instead I recommend to them the example of Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, another of my heroes from the past. He battled the excesses of the first Gilded Age a century ago so boldly and proudly that he went down in history as “Fighting Bob.” He told us, “…democracy is a life; and involves continual struggle.” I keep asking myself, what if that struggle is the palpable reality without which this world would be truly barren?

So to this new generation I say: over to you, welcome to the fight.

Speaking of Wisconsin, I guess my 80-something aunt in Milwaukee (who still canvasses) won’t have reason to call me on Saturdays anymore to ask if I caught Moyers’ show. Over to me.

By their outrage, ye shall know them
By Tom Sullivan

Something Amanda Marcotte wrote parenthetically on New Year’s Eve caught my attention. On Christmas, Neil deGrasse Tyson typed out this Tweet most of you have already seen:

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) December 25, 2014

“War on Christmas” soldiers were like boxers in their corner, gripping the ropes and bouncing on their toes, just waiting for the bell to ring. Tyson’s Tweet knocked the big chip off their shoulders, and out they came. Marcotte wrote:

Right-wing Christians, already primed to be hostile to anyone who values evidence and facts over myths about the supernatural, claimed that Tyson was deliberately provoking them. (Why they allowed themselves to be provoked, if this is what they believe, remains a mystery.) Odds are it was just Tyson being Tyson, grabbing any opportunity he can to educate people about science and push people to ask questions and learn more about the world. The ugly reaction from right-wing Christians only served to make them look close-minded and afraid of learning new things, which Tyson later pointed out on Twitter, writing, “Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.”

Why they allowed themselves to be provoked, if this is what they believe, remains a mystery.

Indeed. In my experience, the more confident you are in your opinions, the less threatened you are by others’ views. As Jefferson wrote, “But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” That is, what’s it to me what you believe? Then again, if everyone adopted Jefferson’s attitude, Fox News’ business model would collapse like the derivatives market in 2008.

If their god is God (as Yul Brynner might say), why do they feel it necessary to defend the Creator of the Universe from Neil deGrasse Tyson? Presumably, God is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, and is even less threatened by what Darwin Tyson thinks than Jefferson would be. Unless (as you guessed), it’s not God who is threatened. To borrow from Matthew’s gospel, by their outrage, ye shall know them.

Okay, but we can say the same of many on the left — always spoiling for a fight with conservative opponents, eager to vanquish their adversaries with the power of their supposed superior command of the facts, and way too eager to humiliate them. It’s a guilty pleasure that reinforces the worst “elitist” stereotypes of the left. While it may be intellectually satisfying to engage in such verbal combat, it likely won’t win friends and influence voters. As the saying goes, “You don’t have to attend every argument to which you are invited.” Leaping into a fight when baited is not a sign of strength.

A close friend once related how at a meeting of her condo owners’ association, some guy verbally attacked her when she asked for clarification on a new rule. I’ll never forget her reply. It was almost Zen.

“Didn’t you read the memo?” he snarled.

Keeping her cool, she turned to him in front of the crowd and asked calmly, “Do you have a need to pick a fight with me tonight?”

He withered and slumped back into his chair.

Gettin’ medieval
by Tom Sullivan

With 2014 gone (and good riddance), perhaps in 2015 America will look itself in the mirror and reflect on what it means to behave as if civilized rules only apply to everyone else. We look somewhat less exceptional from across the pond. Take this op-ed from Christian Christensen, a professor in Stockholm, for example:

… 2014 has been a year in which the mythology of domestic U.S. legal egalitarianism — reinforced by the mantra of blind justice and a near religious reverence of the U.S. Constitution — was exposed as a pretense. As abroad, so at home: Some people are more equal than others.

After the police killings of unarmed black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner; after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma; after the SCCI report on a torture program approved by the White House — more brutal than the world already knew, and in violation of domestic and international law; and after a majority of Americans when asked approved the torture; on reflection, exceptionalism looks more like license. There are not two sets of rules in America, Christensen concludes, but three: “one for white killers, one for black killers and one for police officers who killed black suspects.” And a fourth for rich, Wall Street bankers, I might add.

Christensen continues:

One thread ties together all these cases: The willingness of the U.S. to bend the law and condone the barbaric treatment of human beings is grounded in differences of race, ethnicity or religion. Police violence, the death penalty and torture are predominantly applied to nonwhites or non-Christians. How supportive would white Americans and lawmakers be of procedures such as “rectal rehydration” — a gruesome procedure that, according to the torture report, was applied to hunger-striking inmates — if they were performed on white Christians? How long would they would be to willing to tolerate routine police killings of unarmed white citizens?

It all seems, I don’t know, a little medieval:

Perhaps critics are right. Perhaps we’ve been wrong to base interrogation and prisoner treatment on traditions and superstitions of past centuries. Maybe as citizens of a democratic republic we should strive in the 21st century to live up to our lofty, Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all. Maybe instead of falling prey to jingoism, we should reflect, examine our assumptions analytically, through experimentation and a “scientific method”. Maybe this scientific method could be extended to other fields of learning: the natural sciences, art, architecture, law. Perhaps it could lead the way to a new age, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance! … Naaaaaahhh!

What’s left of our schools once the Midas cult moves on?
by Tom Sullivan

What happens to America and its children once investment gurus decide the K-12 market is no longer the place to invest money? When education is no longer the Big Enchilada? When they dump their charter schools back on the states? Or raze them to build condos?

Those who have followed the school deform movement know that standing just behind parents expressing genuine concern for their children are investors. Millionaires and billionaires are targeting public education for the same reason banksters pimped mortgage loans. For the same reason Wall Street tried to privatize Social Security. For the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks.

What is the largest portion of the budget in all 50 states?

As I wrote after the Center for Media and Democracy posted online a trove of ALEC documents:

The impulse among conservatives to privatize everything involving public expenditures – schools included – is no longer just about shrinking government, lowering their taxes and eliminating funding sources for their political competitors. Now it’s about their opportunity costs, potential profits lost to not-for-profit public-sector competitors. It’s bad enough that government “picks their pockets” to educate other people’s children. But it’s unforgivable that they’re not getting a piece of the action. Now they want to turn public education into private profits too.

But first, the “risk takers” must remove anyone that stands between them and that steady, recession-proof, government-guaranteed stream of public tax dollars. Teachers, and state and local boards of education, for example. The Midas cult won’t stop until it turns our daughters and our sons into gold, and maybe not then. If there is anything more addictive than wealth, it’s the power it brings.

Henry Giroux has been writing about that power for some time. He is back this week at Truthout with “Barbarians at the Gates: Authoritarianism and the Assault on Public Education.” Giroux writes:

Equality, justice and the search for truth no longer define the mission of public education. Economic policies that benefit the bankers, corporations and the financial elite result in massive inequities in wealth, income and power and increasingly determine how the US public views both public education and the needs of young people.

The shortsightedness of the investor class is as stunning as its avarice. And its fickleness. Once the Great Eye looks elsewhere, what will remain of public education and public infrastructure past generations paid for in taxes and sweat to make America a world power? Once demolished, how will we rebuild when the Midas cult inevitably moves on to its next shiny, new investment opportunity? Of these “dangerous times,” Giroux continues:

The struggle for public education as a crucial civic resource and public good must continue through the large-scale organizing of teachers and labor unions, students and groups outside of education who are also struggling against a range of injustices. The struggle over public education cannot be removed from wider struggles against student debt, funding for public goods, the elimination of massive inequalities in wealth and power, the elimination of the military-industrial-security state, the abolition of police brutality, and the eradication of the punishing-mass incarceration state, among other struggles. These struggles all share underlying interests in restoring and reclaiming a notion of radical democracy that puts power in the hands of the people rather than in the hands of the ruling elites. They also intersect around the need to elevate social needs over the narrow interests of the market and those elites who benefit from the financialization of society.

Because what the privatization of public education is leading to, Giroux believes, is “a new form of authoritarianism,” a democracy stripped of agency, a kind of “totalitarianism with elections.” It is a betrayal of the founders’ vision, one we are meant to forget. As I have written before:

John Adams (a tea party favorite) wrote in 1785, “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”

To that purpose, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (passed under the Articles of Confederation prior to ratification of the U.S. Constitution) called for new states formed from what is now the American Midwest to encourage “schools and the means of education,” and the Enabling Act of 1802 signed by President Thomas Jefferson … required — as a condition of statehood — the establishment of schools and public roads, funded in part by the sale of public lands. Enabling acts for later states followed the 1802 template, establishing permanent funds for public schools, federal lands for state buildings, state universities and public works projects (canals, irrigation, etc.), and are reflected in state constitutions from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The practice continued up to and including the enabling act for the admission of Hawaii in 1959 as America’s 50th state, for example (emphasis added):

(f) The lands granted to the State of Hawaii by subsection (b) of this section and public lands retained by the United States under subsections (c) and (d) and later conveyed to the State under subsection (e), together with the proceeds from the sale or other disposition of any such lands and the income therefrom, shall be held by said State as a public trust for the support of the public schools and other public educational institutions, for the betterment of the conditions of native Hawaiians, as defined in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, 1920, as amended, for the development of farm and home ownership on as widespread a basis as possible for the making of public improvements, and for the provision of lands for public use. Such lands, proceeds, and income shall be managed and disposed of for one or more of the foregoing purposes in such manner as the constitution and laws of said State may provide, and their use for any other object shall constitute a breach of trust for which suit may be brought by the United States. The schools and other educational institutions supported, in whole or in part out of such public trust shall forever remain under the exclusive control of said State; and no part of the proceeds or income from the lands granted under this Act shall be used for the support of any sectarian or denominational school, college, or university.

Just a half-century ago, that is what America valued, and what we believed in. That centuries-old tradition and American birthright is now being plundered by people whose threadbare code seems to be, “Well, a man’s got to believe something, and I believe I’ll have another million.”

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Education: Testing the testers
by Tom Sullivan
As someone pointed out the other day, in some circles increased oversight of the police and the military is deemed improper and/or unpatriotic, yet other public employees are fair game. Public school teachers, for instance. Even as tests required under No Child Left Behind come under fire, teachers themselves face increased screening tests using “Big Data, ‘Moneyball’-style” tools. As Politico reports, “Prices vary widely, from $5,000 for a small district to $500,000 for a large district, depending on the product.”
Are they useful, or just another opportunity for investors to turn kids into cash?

The new screening tools slice and dice aspiring teachers into dozens of data points, from their SAT scores to their appreciation for art to their ability to complete geometric patterns. All that data is then fed into an algorithm that spits out a score predicting the likelihood that each candidate will become an effective teacher — or, at least, will be able to raise students’ math and reading scores.

The tools seek to cut through hiring biases that favor “geographic proximity” or “teachers with last names starting with the letters A through G” because résumés get alphabetized. But critics contend there is no magic formula for revealing who makes the best teacher.

“The search for a formula … just isn’t realistic, at least not at the present time,” said Gerardo González, dean of the School of Education at Indiana University.
González said he fears that the formula approach, which he calls “reductionist,” will scare bright young people away from the teaching profession at a time when many education colleges already report declining enrollments.

Plus, from what I hear on the ground, teachers fed up with increased bureaucratic micromanagement are leaving the profession, or considering it. With educational versions of Omni Consumer Products flexing their political muscles, that may be the goal. Politico continues:

Another screening tool, Paragon K12, which is sold by Hanover Research, produces an overall score for each applicant, known as the Student Achievement Index. It aims to quantify how likely it is that the candidate will boost student test scores.
Districts using the tool also get a breakdown of each applicant’s performance on measures of general intelligence, extrovertedness, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability, among others.

You wonder how the NYC Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association would respond to the increased scrutiny.

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Accountability and obeisanceby Tom Sullivan While munching on vegetarian everything at a Harmonic Convergence potluck in 1987, people quietly fled the kitchen when a friend and I (two engineers) began discussing the military’s propensity for buying guns that can’t shoot straight and amphibious vehicles that sink. It was one thing for lefties to oppose Pentagon spending, and quite another to besmirch your white-vinyl soul by knowing anything about it. The Atlantic has in its current issue an article about a rifle the Pentagon is still buying, one designed over a half century ago. For James Fallows, lack of accountability for the military in both performance and procurement stems from the Washington-like bubble we insist the military inhabit. As Fallows begins in his latest for the Atlantic, “[W]e love the troops, but we’d rather not think about them.” With less than one percent of Americans at risk under fire, “Fewer and fewer people know anyone in the military. It’s become just too easy to go to war.” On the history of that disconnectedness, Fallows writes:

If I were writing such a history now, I would call it Chickenhawk Nation, based on the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going. It would be the story of a country willing to do anything for its military except take it seriously.

Much as we discussed in that kitchen conversation 30 years ago, military procurement is still a problem fraught with political machinations. There is a lot of money at stake in maintaining a global empire, and it persists unchecked even as we cut spending at home, you know, for food (SNAP). As I wrote in 2012:

Just for comparison, the Pentagon had a “base” budget of $515 billion in 2009 to staff and maintain 545,000 facilities at 5,300 sites both in the United States and around the globe (not including tens of billions in GWOT supplementals and other off-budget and “black” budget costs). Thus, it is not easy to determine how much all U.S. security agencies spend on defense annually, nor to separate out how much the Pentagon alone spends just to maintain the offshore portion of our global empire. But drawing on various sources, assumptions, and the fact that one-quarter of U.S. troops are stationed abroad, the Institute for Policy Studies estimated the 2009 costs of our overseas operations (wars included) at $250 billion annually “to maintain troops, equipment, fleets, and bases overseas.”

Fallows continues on that process:

… such is the dysfunction and corruption of the budgeting process that even as spending levels rise, the Pentagon faces simultaneous crises in funding for maintenance, training, pensions, and veterans’ care. “We’re buying the wrong things, and paying too much for them,” Charles A. Stevenson, a onetime staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former professor at the National War College, told me. “We’re spending so much on people that we don’t have the hardware, which is becoming more expensive anyway. We are flatlining R&D.”

The latter half of Fallows’ piece examines the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. That it is insanely over budget and wracked with technical issues should come as no surprise. One wonders how many joints were involved in its conception. Fallows also looks at how our relationship to the military has changed since WWII when 10 percent of Americans were serving in it. As we have become more disconnected from the military, we have fallen into rote “’salute to the heroes’ gestures that do more for the civilian public’s self-esteem than for the troops’.” That disconnectedness leads to a lack of accountability. Lincoln removed generals for military failings. We remove them for personal foibles. But what Fallows does not address is whether the disconnectedness and lack of accountability he describes — combined with our nagging economic uncertainty and fear-flogging by the press — fosters tolerance for growing authoritarianism. Or at least a deference to it. The same unquestioning, knee-jerk obeisance we’re supposed to give “our troops” seems now to extend to the police as well. In light of the recent police shooting incidents and the reaction of the NYPD, it seems police now expect demand obeisance and immunity from accountability.