The police chief of Tucson, Ariz., abruptly offered to resign on Wednesday while releasing a video in which a 27-year-old Latino man, Carlos Ingram Lopez, died in police custody two months ago. Yes it had happened two months ago and wherever said police orderly is employed it won’t bring Mr. Lopez back. He was defenseless and treated worse than an animal by genocidal white cops who carried on with a contemptuous, cavalier attitude during the episode; laughing at certain points, calling him “dude” and yelling “shut the fuck up” and ordering him to “chill” as they literally took his breath from him.

Rolebot Mayor Regina Romero on Thursday expressed confidence in the police chief, Chris Magnus, and said he would stay on the job. In great deference to her masters and in worship of government authority last night on Rachel Maddow’s show she couldn’t even say that a murder took place on the video. Evidently she has had time to rehearse her reactions because she knew about the video at some point before its public release, but like the cops, she kept it quiet. Not to worry because Maddow doesn’t press non-Trump issues.

The video is reprehensible but you should watch - if for no other reason other than to understand that anyone at anytime can be subjected to the senseless destruction of his/her life by government authority. It is not abuse of authority - authority itself, the right to forcibly control others, to rule over other people who have an obligation to obey is evil and is the source of the problem. Here, said problem trumps another intertwined problem at play, racism white supremacy, because the force continuum or authority will continue to oppress after RSW is eventually neutralized or destroyed.

The video, taken by police officers’ body cameras and not made public until Wednesday, depicts a gruesome episode on April 21. Before his death, Mr. Lopez is seen handcuffed while pleading repeatedly in English and Spanish for water and for his nana, or grandmother and he is clearly begging, crying for his life. While he was restrained, Mr. Lopez continually told the officers he could not breathe. The cops never appear to be in any danger of imminent harm. They laugh, yell “calm the fuck down” and call him “dude” and tell him to “chill out” as they put a plastic blanket over his face and smother him with it until he’s gone.

As if it were a plus, Chief Magnus said officers did not use a chokehold on Mr. Lopez. But he said they violated training guidelines by restraining the victim in a prone position, face down, for about 12 minutes before Mr. Lopez went into cardiac arrest and died at the scene. [MORE]

Right. Violated “training guidelines” - not a criminal law or morality because authorities are held to another, super-human standard. It is a super human standard because it refers to special powers that other people do not possess. Although people have no right to initiate unprovoked acts of violence on others, somehow “the people” have magically delegated said powers to government representatives and police officers, who are representatives of authority. Cops have said extra-human official, discretionary authority to stop, detain and arrest citizens and commit other unprovoked acts of violence when they deem it necessary to do so. Such power carries with it a moral and legal obligation for citizens to obey. Said power is an illusion and a non-reality that has captivated the minds of citizens. Firing and re-hiring and reforming cops will not alter authority - it only exists in your mind.

Larken Rose explains,

“Authority” can be summed up as the right to rule. It is not merely the ability to forcibly control others, which to some extent nearly everyone possesses. It is the supposed moral right to forcibly control others. What distinguishes a street gang from “government” is how they are perceived by the people they control the trespasses, robbery, extortion, assault and murder committed by common thugs are perceived by almost everyone as being immoral, unjustified, and criminal. Their victims may comply with their demands, but not out of any feeling of moral obligation to obey, merely out of fear. If the intended victims of the street gang thought they could resist without any danger to themselves, they would do so, without the slightest feeling of guilt. They do not perceive the street thug to be any sort of legitimate, rightful ruler; they do not imagine him to be “authority.” The loot the thug collects is not referred to as “taxes,” and his threats are not called “laws.”

The demands and commands of those who wear the label of “government,” on the other hand, are perceived very differently by most of those at whom the commands are aimed. The power and control the “lawmakers” in “government” exert over everyone else is seen as valid and legitimate, “legal” and good. Likewise, most who comply with such commands by “obeying the law,” and who hand over their money by “paying taxes,” do not do so merely out of fear of punishment if they disobey, but also out of a feeling of duty to obey, No one takes pride in being robbed by a street gang, but many wear the label of “law-abiding taxpayer” as a badge of honor. This is due entirely to how the obedient perceive the ones giving them commands. If they are perceived as “authority,” a rightful master, then by definition they are seen as having the moral right to give such commands, which in turn implies a moral obligation on the part of the people to obey those commands. To label oneself a “law-abiding taxpayer” is to brag about one’s loyal obedience to “government.”

In the past, some churches have claimed the right to punish heretics and other sinners, but in the Western world today, the concept of “authority” is almost always linked to “government.” In fact, the two terms can now be used almost synonymously, since, in this day and age, each implies the other: “authority” supposedly derives from the “laws” enacted by “government,” and “government” is the organization imagined to have the right to rule, i.e., “authority.”

It is essential to differentiate between a command being justified based upon the situation and being justified based upon who gave the command. Only the latter is the type of “authority” being addressed in this book, though the term is occasionally used in another sense which tends to muddle this distinction. When, for example, someone asserts that he had the “authority” to stop a mugger to get an old lady’s purse back, or says he had the “authority” to chase trespassers off his property, he is not claiming to possesses any special rights that others do not possess. He is simply saying that he believes that certain situations justify giving orders or using force.

In contrast, the concept of “government” is about certain people having some special right to rule. And that idea, the notion that some people – as a result of elections or other political rituals, for example – have the moral right to control others, in situations where most people would not, is the concept being addressed here. Only lose in “government” are thought to have the right to enact “laws”; only they are thought to have the right to impose “taxes”; only they are thought to have the right ) wage wars, to regulate certain matters, to grant licenses for various activities, and o on, When “the belief in authority” is discussed in this book, that is the meaning being referred to: the idea that some people have the moral right to forcibly control others, and that, consequently, those others have the moral obligation to obey.

It should be stressed that “authority” is always in the eye of the beholder, If the one being controlled believes that the one controlling him has the right to do so, then the one being controlled sees the controller as “authority.” If the one being controlled does not perceive the control to be legitimate, then the controller is not viewed as authority” but is seen simply as a bully or a thug. The tentacles of the belief in authority” reach into every aspect of human life, but the common denominator is always the perceived legitimacy of the control it exerts over others. Every “law” and “tax” (federal, state and local), every election and campaign, every license and permit, every political debate and movement – in short, everything having to do with “government,” from a trivial town ordinance to a “world war” – rests entirely upon the idea that some people have acquired the moral right – in one way or another, to one degree or another – to rule over others.

The issue here is not just the misuse of “authority” or an argument about “good government” versus “bad government,” but an examination of the fundamental, underlying concept of “authority.” Whether an “authority” is seen as absolute or as having conditions or limits upon it may have a bearing on how much damage that “authority” does, but it has no bearing on whether the underlying concept is rational. The

U.S. Constitution, for example, is imagined to have created an “authority” which, at least in theory, had a severely restricted right to rule. Nonetheless, it still sought to create an “authority” with the right to do things (e.g., “tax” and “regulate”) which the average citizen has no right to do on his own. Though it pretended to give the right to rule only over certain specific matters, it still claimed to bestow some “authority” upon a ruling class, and as such, is just as much a target of the following criticism of “authority” as the “authority” of a supreme dictator would be. [MORE]