Law Enforced
A person close to me got stopped the other day by a law enforcer. Note that the sentence says nothing about anyone having caused harm or even threatened harm to anyone. Well, except for the law enforcer – who caused financial harm to the person he forced to stop (italics to emphasize the point) by handing her what they call a “ticket” – i.e., an extortion note requiring the handing-over of a sum of money (or else). Not because she had harmed anyone or done anything that could be intelligently be argued might lead to someone being harmed.
Her “crime”? Or – rather – her offense?
The word is italicized to mark an important distinction in that a “crime” was once-upon-time presumed to involve a victim whereas offenses are affronts committed against the authority of the government. These latter involve no victim and so aren’t crimes – yet they are treated exactly the same as if they were.
You are pursued – and forced to stop – by an armed agent of the state. You will be treated as if you’d done something wrong.
The offense committed in this case was driving past a law enforcer in a car that did not have the sticker – current state safety inspection – that the government says is required by law to display. The sticker, of course, does not establish that the vehicle it is affixed to is “safe.” Only that on the day the sticker was issued, the vehicle was in compliance with the various inspection points that determine whether the vehicle was in compliance – at the time of inspection.
For example, whether all four tires had a certain percentage of tread remaining. That the exhaust was not leaking. That the headlights and turn signals were working.
Note the past tense – and the italics.
First of all, the “at the time of inspection” thing. It does not mean the vehicle remains “safe” for the duration – i.e., the entirety of the year that will roll by before the time rolls around to get the next inspection.
A vehicle with tires that are 90 percent worn out will pass inspection because on the day of inspection, there was still enough tread remaining to pass inspection. But what about a month after that? The sticker’s still “good” – but the tires may no longer be. Same goes for such things as brakes. Headlights and turn signals burn out, too.
Yet the stickers says all is well. More finely that all is legal.
Sp much for “safety.”
This business of having a “good” sticker imparts both a false sense of “safety” and passivity on the part of the vehicle’s owner, who assumes the vehicle is “safe” because he sees his sticker is still “good.” He is relieved (or so he is encouraged to feel that he is) of any meaningful responsibility for making sure the vehicle is safe to drive on an ongoing basis, as by checking that his tires have good tread and that his brakes aren’t wearing thin himself, over the course of that year in-between inspections.
He feels “safe” – because the sticker says it is “safe.”
Then there is the case of the vehicle owner who does take care to assure his vehicle is safe to drive, by keeping track of such things as tire condition, brake wear and attending to other mechanical issues as they arise – but who didn’t bother (because it is a bother) to get his vehicle inspected. His vehicle is safe to drive – but because he (in this case, she) did not bother to get the vehicle inspected – a process that entails wasting a couple of hours, typically, arranging to have the vehicle inspected and then paying the inspector confirm what the vehicle’s owner already knows – he (or she, as in this case) is vulnerable to being hassled by a law enforcer.
All that seems to matter, in other words, is obedience. Mindless obedience. The most important kind.
The “safety” thing is mere drapery; window-dressing used to justify the harassment of people who’ve committed no crime, properly speaking, because they have not victimized anyone.
But who have affronted the authority of the state.
Such people then become the victims – of the state.
In the case at hand, the person who got “pulled over” – it sounds so benign and that’s on purpose – was handed that piece of paper which amounts to an extortion note demanding the handing over of money for the crime she did not commit. She is not a person who has a lot of money and even if she were, it would not alter the extortion made legal by this flim-flam of “offenses” against the authority of the state. But it does make it more execrable in that the $100-plus she will be forced to hand over as punishment for affronting the authority of the state amounts about a day’s pay for her. In other words, she must labor for a day to pay the state.
The man who pulled her over – like the overseers of old – was indifferent to the victimization he performed. The law is the law – and it is his job to enforce it.
No matter who gets harmed.
Even when no one has been harmed.
. . .
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