I confess that I do like me some bodycam videos from police departments around the country. I have noticed a cluster of behaviors that I’m calling mild moral retardation. Mild, because what we see on camera is not real depravity, but a disturbing and persistent complex of motivated misbehavior. Certainly there is more going on, but I am only addressing what we see in these videos.
Separately, aspects of this behavior have been well-identified, such as the nonstop stream of questions (never listening for answers) being in some settings a “Gish gallop”, and in other settings a narcissistic controlling behavior. A Gish gallop is a debate or argument technique in which a person keeps throwing out non-sequiturs and nonsensical questions or statements. Here’s a surprisingly deep article at Effectiviology.com on the Gish gallop. And here’s a Psychology Today article about narcissistic communication style, and the guy in the video below ticks four of the five boxes straight off.
The suspect begins with a mumbling “here we go again” defiance, fails to comply with simple and clear orders, argues against clear points in a nonsensical style, repeats accusations about the officer’s actions and motives, and keeps up a nearly non-stop stream of babble. These are all aspects of a childish defiance like a surly miscreant on the verge of a full-blown tantrum. He displays a refusal to accept authority/reality, endless self-justification, an unwillingness to admit fault or blame, and a cozening style of argument that can be described as whining. He paints himself as a victim, in a performative display, that is, intended for an audience rather than being genuine. Of note, he is not physically forceful other than some failure to comply early on, including a refusal to put an arm behind his back, which gets him tazed. “That didn’t hurt.”
He repeats his performance to each person he speaks to. Wants his phone in the back of the car. When alone in the back of the patrol car with the door closed, he continues his theater of martyrdom, knowing full well that it’s all on tape. His exasperation complete, the long-suffering oppressed man who did nothing wrong can hardly contain his vicimhood and vents in mildy obscene frustration while the camera rolls. “I was confused”. An officer later tells him that he just doesn’t listen.
Next up is a somewhat similar confrontation (they all begin to look alike after watching a couple) but with the drama turned up involving two women picked up outside a store for a multi-jurisdictional shoplifting spree. The big girl is lucky she didn’t get tazed, and the small one is nearly off the chain, dudgeon at levels unseen since the Great Dudgeon of ’08. Note the non-stop stream of questions interrupted only by accusations and the occasional compressor stall where her mouth has outrun her brain despite saying the same thing over and over.
Why am I getting arrested? I have nothing on me. What does that have to do with me? Race card. How did you identify me, did they tell you my name? You didn’t read me my rights. Suddenly demands respect and civility when an officer raises his voice telling her to “Listen!” On the phone whenever she can be, and incidentally, the Siri use was impressive. Somebody on the phone (sounds like her Boo) yelling “You guys cannot legally arrest her…” Wants her phone in the back of the car. Tries bargaining about identifying herself. “I’m confused.”
The lady who settled down quickly (for the most part) was all over the place physically, surging into the back seat a couple of times to fiddle with the dog, and retrieve some papers. “Y’all not supposed to search my car without me being under arrest or anything.”
The legal scholarship on display in these videos is impressively bad, but that’s not its purpose, of course. None of the people we’ve discussed here actually expect to win their points. They may not be the brightest bulbs in the bug light, but they are not retarded. They can all think on their feet, as they shut up when they know they’re near an edge that they are truly unprepared for. At one point an officer gets through to the small one long enough to ask a direct “Where are you coming from,” and the young lady absolutely clams up long enough for something to rescue her from answering the question. The man in the first video knows to keep his charges down to resisting without violence, and walks that line.
The frequent claims of “confusion” are not genuine — they are strategically deployed the same way that so-called soveriegn citizens attempt to questin the jurisdiction of the court, indeed the country and the law itself. In their case, “Am I being detained” is tactical, whereas “I do not recognize your authority” is strategic. Unlike the Sov Cits, the mildly morally retarded people under discussion here engage in more pedestrian, more believable subterfuge, which is more difficult for officers to mentally ignore. Questions which could potentially be relevant, even if shouted repeatedly in busted English, are a mental tax, whereas Sov Cit nonsense bounces harmlessly right off the old cranium.
There is more going on in these videos than a mere collapse of culture and so forth. What you see here is a time-honed cluster of largely tactical offenses specifically selected for their high effectiveness in “jamming” the brains of people who try to respond to questions dutifully and in good faith. Scientists study this stuff. Leftists teach this stuff. It can also be seen in leftist “protests” which have their claws on some poor sap trying to reason with a crowd. The leftists start chanting obnoxious slogans, and there’s a reason that they do frequently do this while the right rarely does. As a tactic it fits exactly with other Marxist tactics of disruption and chaos.
Marxism is not an economic system. It is a program for disrupting society using economic and other “justice” rationales to incite mob violence. Alinsky was a master of adapting strategies to situations, and tactics to actors. There is a sizeable intersection (if you’ll pardon the term) between urban anti-culture and Alinskyite confrontation, provocation, and exasperation of those who try to act in good faith. What works for one set of actors may not work for another even given similar setting and circumstances.
Another element in this cluster is issuing commands for officers to do what they are going to do anyway. This is supremely annoying behavior, and is different from commanding an officer to “let me go,” or “stop that,” or “give me my phone,” which are all intended to be obeyed. The man in the first video when he realizes that his junk isn’t winning for him says “Just take me to jail.” As if this the cruiser were a taxi and he had some say in the matter. Likewise the people in the other videos (one more at the bottom) eventually issue commands for the officers to do exactly what’s about to happen. Yes, this can be a cope, but it is also a crazy-making brain-jammer. It’s difficult to process this stuff even when you see it for what it is. It takes an emormous discipline to let it roll off your back, a force of will if you are not yet inured to the behaviors. That’s why it’s a brain-jammer.
Just where is this university of provocation that so many Americans seem to attend? Well, all of our higher educatiioin indoctrination camps, to be sure, but much of it is in popular media, and that is where the majority of people pick it up. Increasingly, it is in mainstream politics, which is just one of many disasters crashing upon our shores. And of course, it’s in the water, so to speak. “Just keep asking the same thing. Keep talking no matter what. Don’t let them talk. Say you’re confused. Don’t answer questions. They can’t arrest you without a warrant, or proof in your hand. Admit nothing. They hunt us down like dogs and shoot us given half a chance.” Some of that is sound, but most is either false or simply hostile. The urban anti-culture has been shaped by decades of motivated high-level education such as adjunct assistant lecturer Barack Obama’s teaching on power dynamics. This is not for consumption by the masses, but for those who run programs in countless non-government and quasi-government organizations, and of course government itself. It must be supremely rewarding to get a country to fund its own destruction.
The effect is a moral retardation, not of an inborn kind, but I’m willing to call this an entirely cultural (anti-cultural) phenomenon. This is a class of people trashed by the deliberate efforts of those who teach intersectionality, victimhood, grievance, and power dynamics with an express purpose of inflaming and radicalizing a swath of society into an anti-societal army in the streets. There is an inborn morality, yes, but it can be co-opted like any other inborn drive, and set to entirely maladaptive purposes. It takes time and practice to develop such a finely-tuned lack of empathy, sense of entitlement, percolating rage, and proficiency in a set of tactics to exploit all of that. It is a mild retardation of individual morality, but it didn’t have to be that way.
I feel for American blacks who hate this garbage and who cringe when they see race cards and ratchet behavior like this. Much of the problem in the black communities hs been fostered and maliciously tended by white liberals who have known all along that the goal is to build a generational weapon, like a moderate version of the ruined mass of Gaza squatters who cheer the rape, mutilation, and murder of Jews. In support of blacks who have more in common with folks like me than folks seen in the videos, I offer the most entertaining video of these three, in which an obnoxious white woman outdoes anything seen so far in her persistent, nonsensical, brain-jamming questioning. She’s blotto drunk, gets thrown out of a gay bar, and sorely tries the patience of two of Key West’s finest (who are pretty entertaining in their own right). It’s hard not to smile when you realize that she gets her dome cracked on the floor for her trouble. It doesn’t slow her up a bit.
She just doesn’t listen.
