An Automatic Death Sentence From Which There Is No Appeal

I can't tell for sure what all is going on here, but a man is dead after being shot by police in Los Angeles, that much is clear.

Yet another execution on the streets of LA. Happens all the time.

The man is seen in the video disobeying and struggling with the po-po. He should have known that would be a death sentence. Many of those commenting on the video say as much. Po-po seem to believe it without question: disobedience and struggling with the police is justification for use of lethal force in most jurisdictions, most especially in places like the meaner streets of Los Angeles where this incident took place.

The police claim that the man they shot and killed was "going for the gun" of one of the officers. This is the justification police use almost as often as the "reaching for his waistband" justification. They are often false justifications, but you can see for yourself that it is difficult/impossible to tell whether the man they shot and killed in this video was "going for" a gun or anything else. It looks like he's simply trying to ward off the blows raining down on him, but it's too dark and the distance is too great to be sure.

Po-po lie routinely and they are routinely allowed to get away with it, so I would not take their word without question.

On the other hand, video isn't necessarily conclusive. This one certainly isn't, but it will have to do until something more definitive shows up.

The point here, obvious as sin, is that the man who was shot and killed was disobedient and struggled with police, and whenever that happens, it seems that the police have full authority to kill at will.

Just as they have the authority to kill any Negro they see with a gun -- or who they think has a gun. It doesn't matter whether it's true or not. All that matters is their perception.

At any rate, another man is dead on the streets of LA, killed by police. He was black and homeless and possibly mentally ill or impaired, but all that really matters in the eyes of the police is that he was disobedient and struggled with the police.

Doing so is in their eyes justification for summary execution.

They are cowards, every one of them.

Where is Darren Wilson? Why Did He Kill Michael Brown?

There is no question that Darren Wilson, officer of the law in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed a young man named Michael Brown on Canfield Drive in Ferguson shortly after noon on August 9, 2014, in front of numerous witnesses.

Not long afterwards, Wilson disappeared. He has not been seen publicly since the day he killed Michael Brown in front of numerous witnesses. He was placed on paid administrative leave following the shooting as is standard practice in such cases. He is said to have left his home in Crestwood, Missouri, within days of the shooting, but exactly when he left and where he went has not been reported. He is said to have lived with another Ferguson police officer named Barbara Spradling whose whereabouts is also not reported. Is she still on the job, or has she been given paid leave as well? Is she with Wilson? Why?

Where are Wilson and Spradling and who is protecting them? If there were any valid reason to believe that Wilson's life was in jeopardy because of his shooting and killing Michael Brown shortly after noon on August 9, then Wilson should be in the protective custody of a competent public agency -- given the nature of the killing, that would most likely be the Missouri State Highway Patrol or the FBI. He should not be free to wander at will, nor should his general whereabouts remain undisclosed. His precise location need not be stated, but the public should know whether he is in Missouri, in the St. Louis area, or somewhere else, and the public should know whether or not he is in protective custody. That nothing has been disclosed about his location indicates to me that it's possible the authorities don't know where he is. Perhaps only his lawyer does, or perhaps no one does.

We should also ask why Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown shortly after noon on August 9, 2014, in the middle of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri. That question is easier to answer than Darren Wilson's whereabouts. We have numerous eyewitness reports that pretty much say the same thing about the shooting of Michael Brown and which partially corroborate the incomplete police story of the shooting.

Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson were walking in the middle of Canfield Drive. They were approached by Officer Wilson who ordered them to get on the sidewalk. They continued walking in the middle of the street. Officer Wilson approached them again at speed, nearly hitting them with his vehicle. Words were exchanged. Wilson opened his vehicle door, slamming it into Brown who did not move out of the way. The door rebounded onto Wilson who was unable to get out of the car. He grabbed Brown and there was a struggle through the window of the car. Wilson apparently said to Brown, "I'll shoot you."  A shot was fired from Darren Wilson's gun inside the vehicle. Brown broke free and started running away with Johnson. Wilson got out of the car and fired several shots toward Brown. One may have hit him, though that's not entirely clear. The bullet fired inside Wilson's vehicle may also have hit Brown, but it is not certain. Brown stopped fleeing and Johnson sought shelter by a parked car. Brown turned around, reportedly with his hands up, and said, "Stop shooting. I don't have a gun" or something similar. Wilson shot him several more times. Brown fell forward, and Wilson shot him twice in the head. Brown collapsed on the street where his body and blood remained for the next several hours as more and more people gathered in sorrow and outrage.

Another black youth killed by police in the USofA.

Why?

Even on that day, it was suggested by TheePharaoh on Twitter that Brown had taken some rellos shortly before he was killed, but even in America, the theft of cigars does not generally warrant death in the streets. Something else must have happened to cause Officer Wilson to shoot Brown to death -- unless we are to believe he's simply a psychotic murderer waiting for the opportunity to kill a black youth.

I think there are a couple of keys to understanding why Officer Wilson felt he had to kill Michael Brown that day.

One is his order that Brown and Johnson get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Over the course of several weeks of protest, most Americans have had the opportunity to see the site where Michael Brown was shot down. There is a memorial of flowers and messages on the spot in the middle of the street where Michael Brown fell and his blood ran. It's a very moving memorial. The street is narrow and runs through a residential neighborhood of pleasant single family homes and garden apartments. It is not a busy street at all but a normal, curving residential street where a driver might ordinarily expect to find young people either playing or walking in the street, even in the middle of the street, as a matter of course.

For a police officer to order Brown and Johnson out of the street as he passed by them would not be particularly unusual, though following up might be. Brown and Johnson did not get out of the street, and Johnson said he told the officer they were nearly at their destination and they would move out of the street when they got there. Johnson said the officer drove on a few feet, then he suddenly stopped and backed up, nearly hitting Johnson and Brown. Johnson said that Wilson was belligerent and hostile at this point, and attempted to get out of his vehicle, but he had stopped too close to Brown and Johnson and was unable to open his door sufficiently to get out. Words were exchanged that apparently included some cursing. Wilson apparently claimed that Brown pushed him back into the vehicle and began to assault him through the window. Johnson said that the officer fell back into the vehicle when the door rebounded, and Wilson then tried to pull Brown into the vehicle through the window, drew his gun and threatened to shoot Brown. Wilson apparently claimed that Brown tried to grab his gun and a struggle for it ensued during which a shot went off. Johnson said that the shot hit Brown in the shoulder (he said he saw the blood), and at that point Brown and Johnson ran away.

Officer Wilson could then get out of the vehicle and he kept firing at Brown. But why?

According to Missouri state law (as I understand it) officers are empowered to use lethal force on a "fleeing felon" if the officer has a reasonable belief that the fugitive represents a physical threat to the officer or to others. It's been pointed out that Officer Wilson claimed that Brown assaulted him and tried to take his gun, both of which are felonies. Thus, when Brown ran away, he became a "fleeing felon."

But was he a threat?

Officer Wilson apparently believed he was -- for no other reason because he believed Brown had assaulted him and tried to take his gun.  These are not provable facts, but they are apparently Wilson's statements to St. Louis County police who took over the investigation. And they are statements tailored to substantiating justification for Wilson's shooting and killing Michael Brown.

The assault Wilson claimed he suffered from Brown cannot be proved, nor can it be proved that Brown tried to grab Wilson's gun. But these are key claims by Wilson and are the primary clues to why he killed Brown.

Non-compliance to Wilson's order to Brown and Johnson to get out of the street was the initial cause of Wilson's displeasure with the young men. No statement has been made to verify it, but it is possible that Wilson heard a report on his radio that there had been a robbery at the Ferguson Market a few minutes before his encounter with Brown and Johnson. This may have been the reason Wilson stopped and reversed his vehicle to confront Brown and Johnson again, but we don't know that. It may also have been because they didn't comply with his previous order and it is suspected one or the other may have mouthed off on top of defying the officer.

When Wilson was unable to get out of his vehicle upon the second confrontation, he apparently tried to grab hold of Brown to control him in some manner, and he also apparently drew his gun and threatened to shoot Brown. Why?

The likelihood is that Wilson's inability to get out of the vehicle and the subsequent struggle frightened Wilson sufficiently that he felt his life was in danger. His threat to shoot Brown was probably intended to overpower and intimidate the much larger Brown, but the gun went off apparently unexpectedly. A bullet may or may not have struck Brown at that point (autopsy is inconclusive), but the shock of the gunfire broke the struggle inside the vehicle,  Brown and Johnson were able to run away, and Wilson was able to get out of the car. Wilson kept firing. Why?

So far as he knew, neither Brown nor Johnson were armed, as neither had threatened him with a firearm.

After Wilson shot at the fleeing Brown, witnesses nearly unanimously state that Brown turned around with his hands up and stated, "Stop shooting. I don't have a gun" or something similar. Wilson, however, kept shooting until Brown was down and most likely dead.

Why?

The answer is not the law. The law protects the officer who uses lethal force, but it does not require that he do so. The answer is the department policies and protocols for use of force which in this case -- as in many thousands of others around the country, especially since the 1980s -- essentially require that under circumstances in which the officer believes his life is in danger, he must use lethal force to "neutralize the threat." In other words, he must attempt to kill the subject, and if at all possible, he must succeed.

The law will protect him, but the policy and protocols of the department demand that he must use lethal force under the circumstances.

This is true in case after case after case of police killings. It's not the law that makes them do it. It's the policies and protocols of the department. Police have vast discretion -- except when they believe or say that their lives or the lives of others are in danger in which case, in almost every department they are not only authorized to use lethal force, they are required to. It's not a matter of a "split second decision." Far from it. The protocols are mostly very clear and straightforward. Any perception of a life-threatening danger posed by a subject is enough to cause the use of lethal force, even if -- as is so often the case -- the danger is illusory. Often the perception comes long before the use of lethal force. Once the decision is made to kill the subject, that's it. Generally, there is no going back, nor is there anything the subject can do to save his or her own life. It's not the law that makes it so, it is the policy of the department that does.

There have been so many examples recently of how these protocols work to extinguish the lives of hundreds so far this year alone, but somehow the lesson never quite connects with the public. It's as if the public and the police are operating on entirely different planes, and in a sense, that's the case.

I've mentioned a New Mexico State Police sniper who has been sent to various incidents with the intent to kill. That's his job, after all. And he has killed -- twice since last December, while severely wounding another man last May.

A few days ago, Seattle police snipers were sent to an incident in Queen Anne. They shot and killed a man who police claimed was shooting at officers -- but how many times have we heard this claim only to find out later it wasn't true? The suspect didn't fire at all or he didn't fire at officers but fired in the air or away from officers.

In another incident in Bloomfield, New Mexico a few days ago, police went on a domestic disturbance call and an officer shot and killed a man who family and witnesses said was unarmed and not causing a disturbance of any kind. After the family of the dead man demanded accountability from the police for what they considered to be a murder, the investigators issued a statement that the man had been shot and killed because they believed he was reaching for a gun in the glove compartment of his vehicle.

There is no way to prove he was doing any such thing, however. There is only the statement of the officer who shot him. In this case, it is possible that the officer saw him "reach" -- whether for a gun or not, it doesn't matter -- and that's enough, according to protocol, to trigger use of lethal force. Police were alerted to the "danger" by their dispatch on a domestic disturbance call.

Something similar happened in St. Louis to Kajieme Powell. He was shot and killed by police within seconds of their arrival on a disturbance/shoplifting call on August 19. He'd taken sodas and pastries from a convenience store on the corner and he had been "acting strange" on the sidewalk outside. One of the callers to 911 -- a St. Louis alderwoman -- stated he had two knives and she was afraid of him so she was going to lock her door to keep him outside.

Powell did not threaten anyone according to video of his behavior prior to being shot. He was acting strange to be sure, and according to those who were there, he did have a knife in his hand, but he was not threatening anyone with it, he didn't raise it to threaten police when they arrived, but he didn't follow their command to drop it until after they shot him. Twelve times. It's clear they had determined to kill Powell before they got there -- if he didn't obey.

This incident was very similar to the killing of James Boyd in Albuquerque in March. The difference is that apparently the decision to kill Boyd was made long before police opened fire, not as they were approaching the scene. Boyd was also armed with knives, and like Powell, he did not threaten anyone. Police made clear that being armed in a confrontation with police is sufficient justification for police killing. Especially being armed and noncompliant with police orders.

In fact, in the vast majority of the thousands and thousands of police killings in the United States over the last few decades, the chief justification for killing individuals is noncompliance with orders, whether or not the subject is armed.

Noncompliance is itself regarded as a threat, life threatening in too many circumstances.

"Reaching for..." something (be it a cell-phone, wallet, pad of paper, or -- just maybe -- a gun or a knife) is considered life threatening and sufficient justification for opening fire on a subject.

The "waistband" gambit is tried and true. There's always a gun in there, right?

Holding a weapon of any kind while in an encounter with police is generally considered life threatening and sufficient justification for opening fire, unless you're a drunken elderly white man, in which case, no harm no foul and you will be allowed to negotiate in good faith.

Being black or brown and noncompliant -- whether armed or not -- is an almost certain death sentence, however.

I'm convinced from what I've seen that Darren Wilson decided on Michael Brown's eligibility to be killed  on the basis of his noncompliance with orders to get out of the street, and his decision to act on that eligibility came when Brown and Wilson struggled in the window of Wilson's vehicle. It didn't matter at all whether Brown posed an actual threat to Wilson. What mattered was that Wilson's authority had been defied and he felt he had been assaulted by an uppity nigra.

Bam.

But even if Brown had been white, the situation may well have devolved the same way. The point is that noncompliance itself can be a death sentence in the eyes of the police, regardless of anything else, and they know they will be held harmless if they carry it out.

This situation has been metastasizing for many years, and it is time to change things.

CEASE-FIRE!

There was another APD shooting last night in Albuquerque. Another man is dead from police gunfire. Two women were injured, one critically, allegedly by the man who was shot.

This has got to stop.

Of course, earlier this week, there was a wanton police killing in Salinas, CA, that looked and sounded strikingly like the many police killings in Albuquerque. It was the third police killing in Salinas this year. Needless to say, the community is up in arms about it. During a demonstration against police brutality and wanton killings in Salinas on Wednesday, a man was shot -- by whom is unknown -- and police were summoned to the scene where they faced a very hostile crowd. One of the officers attending the wounded man was hit in the head by a bottle.

It's out of control. It's got to stop.

There's a demonstration against police brutality scheduled for June 21 in Albuquerque.

I'm sure it will be a significant event, but how many more will die by police gunfire before then? This is the fundamental problem: nothing has so far seemed to stop the killing spree the police are on, in Albuquerque or anywhere else. If anything, the rate of killing increases the more the People protest.

What will stop it? Can anything stop it?

Several suggestions come to mind:

1) Don't call 911 if a loved one is having a mental health issue, is drunk and acting crazy, is elderly and acting crazy or is on drugs and acting crazy. The likelihood of your loved one getting shot and killed by police after calling 911 for help is very high.

2) Disarm. Disarm (most of) the police, and disarm the citizens as well. A big part of the ongoing shooting spree the police have been on is due to their fear that every citizen is armed and every citizen might shoot them, simply because of the massive proliferation of firearms in this country. New Mexico is an open carry state, and many citizens wear side arms. Worse, many have whole arsenals which too often turn into murder weapons of choice, particularly in domestic situations. The police are terrified of the armed citizenry, and they are trained to prioritize force-protection. If they see anything that might resemble a gun in the hands of a suspect, they will shoot to kill.

3) De-escalate. In the latest incident in Albuquerque, the police claim that they "tried to de-escalate" the situation by backing away and repeatedly ordering the suspect to drop his weapon (a knife). Instead, the police claim that the suspect "lunged" at them. Much the same claim was made by Salinas police, but video demonstrates they were not "de-escalating" the situation at all, they were threatening and aggressively trying to subdue and control the suspect. They were yelling at him, issuing contradictory commands (in English), they tried to taser him, they pointed their firearms at him, they were continually and aggressively stalking him, and finally they shot him. For his part, the suspect was continually backing away from the police. Yet the police claimed that the man attacked them when clearly he did not.

There was no effort to de-escalate the situation at all, only an aggressive attempt by the police to subdue and control the suspect. This has happened repeatedly in the forty incidents of police involved shootings in Albuquerque since 2010.

4) Restrain and Retrain. Police as a rule are terrified, and many of them are bullies and cowards. Lack of restraint when dealing with individuals and in situations which frighten them is one of their well-known characteristics. Too many seem to be roided or otherwise drugged up to such an extent that any resistance to their command, any inability or refusal to comply, is met with brutality or instant execution. Because there is almost no accountability for such routine police misconduct, the misconduct spreads, like a disease, until entire police forces are corrupted. Instead of priority focus on use of force and force protection, the priority should be on restraint in the use of force, and on courage in the face of potentially threatening situations, with the objective of preserving rather than destroying life.

This means a major alteration in the way police see themselves and their relationship to the community. It means completely revising current training standards, and it means retraining police forces from the ground up.

5) Replacement. In Albuquerque, the situation is exacerbated by a corrupt and corrupting police culture that is driven from the top. The higher ranks are a big part of the problem of police culture of violence and until they are removed and replaced, little or nothing can or will change. Placing someone in the chief's chair as a political favor -- which seems to have happened with the appointment of Gorden Eden in Albuquerque -- is not helpful. Similarly, the appointment of Tim Gonterman to command the Eastside -- promoting him from Foothills command, which position he held when James Boyd was shot in the foothills, and which position he gained after he and APD were sued for excessive force for tasering off a portion of a homeless man's ear in a illegitimate arrest, a suit which APD lost to the tune of $300,000, is simply insane.  

6) CEASEFIRE. Stop. Stop killing.

Adam Curtis Explains It All For You -- Counterinsurgency, That Is

Counterinsurgency -- COIN as it's known -- is the next big thing. In fact, it is being practiced globally by American and mercenary forces and no doubt by others in a kind of cat-and-mouse game constantly churning in the background of more and more people's everyday lives.

Adam Curtis explores the modern and historical versions of COIN in the following film-and-essay for the BBC. It's illuminating and yet strangely antiseptic.

For one thing, Curtis fails to mention the counter insurgency programs including notorious death squads conducted in Central America by various outfits connected with the United States Government during the 1980's. They are generally believed to have been under the direction of John Negroponte (who of course denies everything). Those operations, I would say, were the direct model for the counter insurgency actions undertaken in Iraq under Stanley McCrystal and General St. David Petraeus (who now heads the CIA).

However, Curtis's earlier history of counter insurgency theory and operations as developed by the French and expanded by the United States in Vietnam is fascinating and horrifying. Being aware of the Algerian counter insurgency and Operation Phoenix in Vietnam is one thing, seeing it all laid out the way Curtis does it is something else again.

Another point that Curtis doesn't touch on is that counter insurgency tactics are being employing domestically in the United States and elsewhere in the suppression of political dissent, what's said to be drug crime, and to some extent even in political campaigns.

In other words, doctrines of counter insurgency -- which ironically grow out of Maoist revolutionary concepts -- have become so commonplace as to be taken for granted.

There are lessons to be learned...

HOW TO KILL A RATIONAL PEASANT

AMERICA'S DANGEROUS LOVE AFFAIR WITH COUNTERINSURGENCY

At the beginning of this year one of the weirdest characters ever to become involved in the present Afghan war died. He was called Jack Idema and he was a brilliant con-man. For a moment, during the early part of the war, Idema persuaded all the major TV networks and scores of journalists that he was some kind of special forces super-hero who was using all kinds of "black ops" to track down and arrest the terrorists.

In reality, before 2001, Idema had been running a hotel for pets in North Carolina called The Ultimate Pet Resort. He had been in prison for fraud, and had tried to con journalists before about being some kind of super-spy. But September 11th gave him his chance - and he turned up in Kabul dressed like this.

Continues at the link in the title. Well worth some time to explore.

And in conclusion, Curtis points out what many others suspect, that General St. David Petraeus has been groomed to be Our Next President But One. Though Curtis doesn't mention it, there are rumors circulating now that Petraeus will be Romney's #2, which would mean -- if previous patterns hold -- that if Romney gets to the White House, Petraeus would be in effective charge (much as Cheney was) and would be ruling through Romney.

On Death Squads, Wet Work, and the Expansion of Mercenary Recruitment and Armies

Donald Rumsfeld really seemed to be the one who kick-started the current Imperial fashion for blitzkrieg, death squads, and armies of mercenaries roaming the world, killing and destroying at will, insinuating themselves with established governments, overthrowing and replacing uncooperative ones, and generally making mincemeat of such old fashioned and quaint concepts as "law" and "Nuremberg" and "stability" and such.

As Condoleeezzzzaaa Rice put it, "It's the birth pangs of the new...." Well, she said the New Middle East, but it's really an overturning of and replacement of the previous world order with something else again, something nastier, far more brutal, and vastly uglier than any set of rules we've lived under since, oh, I don't know, the late 19th Century-early 20th.

It is a New Imperium, of course.

When I hear or read people say we are witness to the decline or the death of the American Empire, I have to laugh somewhat morbidly. No, that's not what we're witnessing I point out. What we've been seeing is the decline and death of the Republic.

The Empire is fine; the Republic is being extinguished before our very eyes. This is the course of governance we've been on since the installation of George W. Bush on the White House Throne, completely without basis in the Constitution and Law. It was a straight out usurpation by the Supreme Court under the guidance of rightist -- indeed fascist -- ideology through Scalia's influence and that of the Government's "sponsors."

That isn't you and me. That is a select group of mostly cranky and in some cases insane billionaires who have bought and paid for this government and believe they have the absolute right to direct it to their preferred purposes.

Which obviously include War, Empire, and unbridled predation on the whole wide world.

You and I are at best merely impediments.

At worst, we are nothing but parasites to be disposed of as quickly and efficiently as.... disease organisms.

As more and more Americans wake up to this reality, they simply don't know what to do about it -- if anything can be done about it.

We fret quite a bit about the seemingly endless string of Imperial wars of aggression our government has launched or been engaged in since the advent of the Busheviks on the Throne, but we tend to ignore or forget about the now almost routine employment of Death Squads in the form of JSOC and Navy SEALS (among others) -- hailed as Heroes of course for their recent liquidation of The Devil Himself (and some others) in Pakistan -- the continuing Wet Work of our dauntless drones and their long-distance pilots, and the employment and deployment of mercenaries, paramilitaries and quasi-governmental forces everywhere.

All of which has become Doctrine, as the Whole Wide World is the Battlefield, and all peoples are potential insurgents to be put down, or failing that to be engaged profitably and productively for both sides... forever.

Forever and a day.

The Imperial Wars of Aggression are actually punctuation marks in the ongoing -- forever -- campaign of global murder and destruction that has become The Way of Modern America. It's a bloody form of expansionism that's been a hallmark of The American Way from the beginning, but has now become global in extent. There is no limit to the sights set by our Imperial Overseers, no sense of constraint. When Everywhere is The Battlefield and All Peoples are potential Enemies, there is no end -- there can be no end -- to expansionism.

Unless it is brought to an end by an outside force, rather like the British Empire ground to a halt and then went into precipitous reverse thanks to the Outside Force of two world wars as well as the determination of their subject peoples to be free of British control and the determination of their domestic population not to be further exploited to pay for their Betters' overseas adventures.

That's the thing. Any Imperial expansion is ultimately paid for by both the exploitation of colonial and the domestic populations.

The relentless campaign of the Rs to substantially reduce the standard of living of most Americans has as its primary objective paying for the Cause of Empire -- after all, the "defense and security" budget increases, doubles and redoubles, while the People's Budget is incrementally squeezed and reduced under current plans. There is no limit to the amount of treasure that can and will be devoted to the Cause of Empire, but strict limits must be imposed on the People's well-being to pay for it. Simple.

It happens under every Imperial regime.

The exploitation of the colonial peoples is even worse, of course, and they pay for the Imperial Adventure not only in treasure and dignity but in their own and their children's blood. Endless rivers of it.

Erik Prince, after all, has set up a new bloody shop in Abu Dhabi and is forming his mercenary Colombian and South African troopers into a force capable of countering the supposed expansionism of the Other Devil, Iran.

The Government of the United States is on an Imperial path and can't seem to get off. The People are on a very different path and can't seem to influence the Government sufficiently to force it to change course.

The Government is hardly even bothering to sell its path to the People any more; it simply imposes its Will, and the People be Damned. It's shocking but hardly unusual.

And of course The Shock is the mechanism through which domestic rule by the Imperial faction is to be maintained. It works.

We are left to ponder what can be done about this state of affairs. Or rather if anything should be done about it. We rail and fuss about it and we ignore it and try to get on with our lives under diminished circumstances, but Americans don't rise up in any large-scale and sustained manner, and except for a tiny fringe minority, there is no general call to "Restore the Republic."

To his credit, Obama from his Throne has actually tried to restore the Congress to its rightful position of authority under the Constitution, but the results have been mixed at best. For one thing, the Throne is not about to relinquish its authority to conduct its various forms of bloody diplomacy as it sees fit. On the other hand, Congress has shown neither a propensity nor an ability to utilize its authority (whether inherent or granted from On High) for positive -- or shall we say "progressive" -- ends. This is the continuing flaw in representative democracies. The Government and the People grow farther and farther apart and as their interests diverge, the ability of the People to interfere with the Government's desires is extinguished. The forms of representative self-government may remain in place, but the reality is that Government is transformed into an Autocracy, and it follows its own path, not that of the People.

That's basically what happened to Rome all those centuries ago. Thanks to the efforts of Augustus, the forms of the Republic remained in place for centuries after they ceased having a serious function. Nevertheless, elections continued uninterrupted, the Senate still met and debated, and many of the political positions of the Republic were maintained, even as they were either irrelevated or they were absorbed into the Imperial orbit.

As far as the People were concerned, it didn't really matter. Their situation did not improve no matter what happened in the cloisters and the palaces of the Empire, and for some, no doubt, the advent and invasions of the Barbarian Hordes from the East were less unwelcome than we might imagine. At least it was something different, and who knew, it might just be "better."

That's the path we're on. Whether We the People can actually influence it -- let alone change it -- or not is still in dispute.

If Our Rulers have any say in the matter, we won't.