Deaf Ears: In vain do those seeking to radically curtail high-speed Police chases point out to those very special New Zealanders who insist that "The Law" must be enforced - at any cost - that the offences for which drivers are pursued by the Police are more often than not quite trivial. Violations of the road code and petty thievery are crimes punishable by fines, or a short spell in prison – not death.
WHENEVER A POLICE CHASE ends in tragedy, a very special sort
of New Zealander steps forward into the spotlight. The contribution offered by
this kind of Kiwi never varies. What happened is all about “The Law”. The
offenders, otherwise known as the dead and horribly injured, are solely to
blame for the tragic outcome of their offending. They chose not to stop when
ordered to do so by the Police – a crime. As law-breakers, they simply had to
be apprehended and punished. Any other course of action is unthinkable. The Law
is The Law.
When, as so often happens, high-speed Police chases ending
in high-speed collisions leave not only the offenders, but also entirely
innocent citizens, dead and injured, this very special sort of New Zealander
does not blink.
They understand that even the slightest acknowledgement of
the right of innocent road-users not to be put in danger unnecessarily can only
end in some form of limitation being placed upon the obligation of the Police
to pursue and apprehend law-breakers. That cannot be allowed to happen.
Innocent road-users are, therefore, straightforward collateral damage: unavoidable
casualties in the brutal but absolutely necessary war against disobedience and
disorder.
In vain do those seeking to radically curtail high-speed
Police chases point out to these very special New Zealanders that the offences
for which drivers are pursued by the Police are more often than not quite
trivial. Violations of the road code and petty thievery are crimes punishable
by fines, or a short spell in prison – not death.
For these special Kiwis, the original justification for the
Police pursuit is irrelevant: it is the offenders’ open defiance of authority
that constitutes the real crime. Allow people – especially young people – to
defy authority and the entire social structure is put at risk. Hounding these
miscreant drivers to their deaths, and even to the deaths of innocent
road-users, is a small price to pay for the maintenance of law and order.
The mindset of these special New Zealanders is very similar
to the mindset of those conservative white Americans who refuse to condemn
local law enforcement for killing unarmed black Americans. Even when there is
clear video evidence of a police officer emptying his firearm into a
defenceless African-American who is running away, white juries have refused to
convict the accused. In the eyes of these conservative American whites, law
enforcement’s “thin blue line” is all that stands between them and an America
in which the rights of “Real Americans” are no longer respected.
The rigid character structure of this particular type of
human-being has for long been the special study of psychologists and
sociologists. Taken in its entirety, it is referred to as “The Authoritarian
Personality” and is distinguishable by the presentation of some, or all, of the
following behaviours:
Conventionalism:
Adherence to conventional values.
Authoritarian
Submission: Towards in-group authority figures.
Authoritarian
Aggression: Against people who violate conventional values.
Anti-Intraception:
Opposition to subjectivity and imagination.
Superstition and
Stereotypy: Belief in individual fate; thinking in rigid categories.
Power and Toughness:
Concerned with submission and domination; assertion of strength.
Destructiveness and
Cynicism: Hostility against human nature.
Projectivity:
Perception of the world as dangerous; tendency to project unconscious impulses.
Sex: Overly
concerned with modern sexual practices.
At the core of the Authoritarian Personality lies a
deep-seated and all-pervasive fear of complexity. The simpler the world can be
made to appear, the more these authoritarians like it. Clear boundaries and
strict rules are crucial to easing their manifold anxieties. The idea that the
world might best be rendered in a multitude of shades and colours – as opposed
to black and white – both incenses and terrifies them.
It’s why these very special New Zealanders are so willing to
countenance the death of youngsters whose only real crime is being stupid – and
even the death of people who have done nothing wrong at all – rather than offer
the slightest challenge to the authority of the Police. When all that’s holding
you up psychically is the rigid and unforgiving structures of patriarchal
hierarchy and laissez-faire
capitalism, letting go is not an option.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Tuesday, 13 March 2018.
