I guess it’s always been this way, especially back in the old country, but more than ever I get the sense that most people in this country think of “criminal” the way someone else might think “Dalek” or “Cylon” – that criminals are a unique and distinct and fungible class, separate and irredeemable.
The war on drugs/crime/illegal immigration/terrorism/whatever has not particularly helped with this. Going back to the “law and order” fixation of the Southern Strategy Republicans of the late 60s, there’s always been some sort of bogeyman. The criminal of the 70s was most likely the New York City street mugger, displaced in the 80s and 90s by something drug-related (probably crack). In the last ten years, with violent crime trending lower than it has in decades, the new thing to be scared of is the “lone wolf terrorist” (whether Idaho white supremacist or Al-Qaeda sleeper-cell operative) – and now the general fear is that vast armies of criminals, probably drug-related, will pour undocumented into the US from elsewhere.
This came to mind this morning, when word came out that one of the prime suspects in one of the most famous “white girl missing somewhere” cases of the last decade has either been convicted or pled guilty to some other murder somewhere else.* Which, in the court of public opinion, serves mainly to confirm the guilty verdict already pronounced by television earlier. Consider also Casey Anthony, this decade’s necessary object lesson that the judgements of cable news are not, in fact, legally binding (a role previously served by OJ Simpson and the assorted officers who beat the hell out of Rodney King). Once you get that scarlet C, you are officially A Criminal, and thus beyond any form of redemption.
This also comes to mind with the rash of pardons granted by Haley Barbour on his way out the door as governor of Mississippi. This seems to happen anytime somebody gets pardoned, largely because there seems to be some misunderstanding of the nature of a pardon. As a rule, most pardons go to people whose sentences have already been carried out – it’s a question of expunging the record so they can get jobs elsewhere, or vote again, or what have you. In other words, a pardon clears off that scarlet C, and the notion that A Criminal might somehow cease to be A Criminal is tough for some people to wrap their heads around.
That notion of the undifferentiated criminal also informs gun control legislation – or opposition to it, when people assert that “criminals will always be able to get guns.” Which is comical on the face of it – you go down to CrimCostCo, show your card that identifies you as A Criminal, and walk out with a buggy full of assault rifles and handguns free of charge. What could be easier? Given that the bulk of violent crime is committed by someone the victim knows, though, it stands to reason that most criminals are getting their guns the way anyone else does – gun shop, Wal-Mart, pawnshop, bought it off a guy at the swap meet, whatever. Theft is certainly out there, but I would think that the main point of stealing guns is for resale value, especially if you can stick one in your pants and hock it later for five hundred dollars.
Nevertheless, since A Criminal has access to the kind of firepower normally associated with Navy SEALs, it’s necessary for the police to be adequately armed in response. Which is how we went from a cop with a big six-shot .357 Magnum on his belt, a billy club and maybe a shotgun in the trunk to two cops with Glocks, three magazines and fifty-plus rounds, body armor, a flashlight that doubles as a club, a taser (occasionally confused with the gun on BART platforms), pepper spray, and military-style rifles in the trunk. And thus we get “Don’t tase me bro” and UC-Davis students getting casually hosed down with chemical weapons and all manner of “less lethal” weapons, and the public goes along, because obviously anyone at whom the police point a weapon must of necessity be A Criminal. And when the cop’s taser turns out to actually be a gun, or the perpetrator’s gun turns out to be a wallet, or a SWAT team breaks into the wrong house, the public lets it go, because in a War On Crime there are bound to be casualties and unfortunate incidents.
Because the War on Crime is not far removed from the War On Terror. In both cases, the premise is the same: you have something to fear, and you must allow us power without restraint if you are to be protected. And for some people, the fear means that they themselves have to be armed to the teeth. Either way, the message is the same, and it remains: live in fear. And like any other animal, a frightened nation is dangerous – not least to itself.
* Details not important because a) the whole point of the fungibility of crime is that one Shady Individual Who Probably Killed This White Girl is not materially different from another, and b) I couldn’t give a shit if I tried.