...Run Government by Remote Control?

12/23/99

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Conservatives like to paint a romantic notion of America as a land populated by virtuous anarchists, unfettered by inflexible rules and regulations, free to make their own decisions in their own way, with government nothing more than a tool, a entity for the occasional cooperative effort. It all sounds very charming and is just crawling with the spirit of the frontier, and neato-keen stuff like that.

Now, lets flash forward 200 years from the world of the conservative, to present day America -- 275 million people, lots of diversity, a very complicated and often contradictory society, lots of problems, lots of challenges.

Conservatives, those manly, independent virtuous anarchists, have an answer to that, too. They want to govern through remote control.

This doesn't mean standing a safe distance back and twiddling a knob or pushing a button as needed. Only the very bravest of conservatives are that daring, and they are few and far between.

No, this type of remote control involves full automation. Just turn the sausage-making machine on, and walk away. Never give it another thought, and you don't even have to wonder what the source material for all those sausages is, anyway.

Take the matter of elected officials. Most people can't name any House members, including their own Representative, but they usually know enough about the Senate to have their pet hates. Liberals hate Jesse Helms, conservatives hate Teddy Kennedy. Every six years, various significant portions of the population look at the election results from Massachusetts or North Carolina and grind their teeth in rage. What really gets them riled is that they don't exactly -live- in either of those states-never even visited them, in fact-and so have absolutely no say in how the residents of each place vote. I can understand that. Every six years, I think the state of North Carolina should have to have a urinalysis test.

But where a normal person will just shake their heads and start making Teddy or Jesse jokes, conservatives have an Answer. If they can't convince the good people of Boston to stop voting for Teddy, they can MAKE them stop voting for Teddy. It's that hare-brained scheme of the hard right, "term limits".

Of course, it wipes out their own people too. That's annoying. But they can't do it in any other way that doesn't give away the fact that they want to control who other people can vote for. And besides, amicable sock puppets are a dime a dozen. Conservatives don't want their leaders to lead. They want them to take orders. And those are far more common.

Then there's the matter of mandatory sentencing. There's the occasional uproar over someone who commits a heinous crime who got out on early release after a short sentence for assault. The case of Richard Ray Davies, killer of Polly Klaas, is often mentioned. Conservatives, who don't much like the idea that unelected judges should have judicial discretion anyway (even though that's exactly what the Constitution wanted them to be), came up with mandatory sentencing. Steal $1,000, and it's an automatic six years. The judge might see that the accused was arrested while putting the money back, and decide that leniency is in order, but the law is the law. If the guy did it, he gets six years. Of course, the jury might not convict. Jurors might agree the guy deserves a slap on the wrist and nothing more, and realizing that a guilty verdict would mean six years for the guy, elect not to convict. This also suits the right, cause no conviction means no crime has occurred, and because less convictions mean less crime has been committed, this anecdote would be mixed in with the general stats and used to show that tough sentencing laws reduce crime!

The most recent wrinkle, of course, is "Three strikes". This has been around for ten years, and in most states where it's implemented, it means that on your third violent felony, you get an automatic 25 years to life.

But in some states, the conservatives decided that justice needed firmer measures, and so they decided that if you commit two felonies, any crime you commit after that, violent or not, felonious or not, would mean an automatic 25-to-life. Here in California, that means we have people who will get out no sooner than 2024 AD for such crimes as stealing a piece of pizza, or having a single joint of grass. Even Stalin didn't give people life sentences for stealing a crust of bread. But American conservatives believe that in this way, justice is served and society protected.

Finally, there's "zero tolerance". This is the offshoot of another idiotic conservative crusade, the War on (Some) Drugs. In a nutshell, it means anything that can be considered a possible weapon taken to school means expulsion. Anything resembling a drug can be grounds for expulsion.

But zero tolerance means ZERO TOLERANCE. A weapon is anything that can fire projectiles, or has a sharp edge. As a result, ten year old kids get suspended for two weeks for having a water pistol in the playground, and in a memorable recent case, an eight-year-old boy was suspended for three days for having in his possession a pair of NAIL CLIPPERS. Drugs mean anything that can be considered a drug, and so adolescent girls with menstrual cramps have been kicked out for possession of Midol, and kids get the boot for possession of cough drops. That'll teach the little whelps respect for "authoritah", you bet.

Remote control. Conservatives, for all their prattle about the rights of the individual, don't really trust individuals to make individual decisions. Parents can't decide what is ok for their kids to take to school, judges can't decide the severity of crimes, voters can't choose who will represent them. Remote control.

And once they have all these restrictions in place, they stand back and howl about how repressive and restrictive the government is!

Sweet work, if you can get it.