California man whose dog was killed by cops faces up to five years in prison

It’s good that you understood “that reference” as well, since it is the primary one—my post was a quote from that work after all. That police in some states happen to be even more privileged than police in other states leading to additional levels of meaning to the quotation was merely a nice literary bonus.

If you don’t think that there are in fact different classes in society, and that certain classes of government employees are effectively a privileged class in some ways, enjoy your fantasy world. Do you have a government pension, or do you try to get away with what a cop can get away with?

“...Of course, yes, it was wrong and cruel for the police to shoot his dog that way....”
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I’m no defender of cops who go rogue, but after viewing the videos it’s pretty clear that this was a justified shooting of the unrestrained dog which attacked an officer. The cops withheld their fire on the loose dog until he actually attacked.

INHO, a clearly righteous shooting.

The US is NOT a class based society.....the UK most definitely is. The fact that you can’t see that is sad

I’m not sure where you have picked up your knowledge of the U.K., but it is not a static society that continual reflects season two of Dowton Abbey.

The pre-WW I UK is not the post WWII UK which is not the post cold-war UK. My great-grandfather came over to the U.S. from England in 1919, and I remember him relating what life was like before the war. I doubt very much that boys are still punished for nodding to the coal man or the modern day equivalent in the streets, and people are no longer snatched from the ranks and commissioned when a family friend recognizes them in passing and realizes that they are not where they should be from society’s viewpoint. Even in the pre-WW I society there was some movement, but it was more gradual (my great-grandfather’s mother’s side had been rising for several generations, while his father’s side was on the way down).

Three of my close co-workers are from the U.K., another, while a Canuck was Oxford educated, and I had a half-dozen Brits that I was close to during university (all my grad stuff was done in Canada, so this is not as unusual as it might be in the States). Perhaps you have more extensive current knowledge of UK society—feel free to share it.

The current U.S. is also not the pre-WWI U.S. or the post WW II U.S. It is not a class based society in the sense that one is pretty well confined to the social caste one is born in, but it is class based in the sense that there are certain classes of persons that are protected and certain classes that are not. You failed to respond to any of the examples given in the second paragraph of my post 41, and I’ll raise you two more—try keeping paperwork in the same way that the IRS does, or picking and choosing which laws to keep the way that certain members of the Executive branch do.

My own immediate personal experience has been on the Canadian side and in a wide swath of the states (I grew up in the west, went to school in the east, and spent some time in the south before scooting up to Ontario, and my parents have since moved to the mid-west). I know that Canada, and particularly Montreal, used to be a class-based society in many ways. It is not that way now. The MPs that I have conversed with, one of whom I know somewhat (I know his wife better)are much more accessible and down to earth than the U.S. politicians I have had dealings with. It probably helps that the Canadian constituencies are around one-seventh the size of a U.S. congressional district in terms of population and that parliament is only in session about half the year. My boss, who grew up in Montreal at the end of the old days, is on good terms with a number of ministers on both the provincial and federal level, and also moves at ease with all sorts of people that he is in daily contact with.

Canada is largely a nation of laws, not of men. The U.S. is headed in the direction of being a nation of men, not of laws. Very few Canadian MPs are or become millionaires—you can’t say the same about the U.S. Senate.

Things do vary from place to place in the States, and I imagine that Georgia has seen some improvement over time, but Oregon, which I know best, has been on a 50 year slide and the bottom is no where in sight. My impression is that more of the states are on the way down than on the way up.

I won’t claim Canada is perfect—last fall I had a sniper on my porch and another in my woodpile because of absurd over-reaction to a domestic dispute across the street—but you don’t hear about Mounties or the OPP shooting dogs, and when the police shoot people, someone at arms length investigates. Toronto cops average killing about 3 people a year—in a city of about 2.5 million. About once every three years a Toronto cop goes on trial because of a killing. They usually end up acquitted, but the most questionable cases are handled by a jury. I could be wrong, but I think that the percentage of police killings in the U.S. that are presented a jury to allow the public to render a verdict on is not only less than 10% but less than 1%. In which country are law officers a special class?

Look up the phrase “police state” in Webster’s: “a political unit characterized by repressive governmental control of political, economic, and social life usually by an arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures.”

It doesn’t have to be Stalin’s USSR to be a police state. Obama’s and Cass Susstein’s ideal is a benign police state.

Anyway, consider Webster’s definition:

— repressive governmental control of political life - Check. Read up on the IRS scandal, if you have any doubt. Or perhaps consider that Obama has applied the Espionage Act against more whistleblowers than any President in history. There are numerous documented examples of political oppression without even considering the some of less credible conspiracy theories touted on FR. Check out the SWAT raid on Gibson Guitar, which was owned by a guy who did not pay proper fealty to Obama and his union buddies.

— repressive governmental control on economic life - Check. Read upon on recent actions by the EPA, or the Fed’s “financial repression” (Google it), or Dodd Frank, or ObamaCare, if you have any doubt. Remember TARP? People were over 9:1 against it, but their “elected representatives” voted for it. There is very little that the government cannot control in the economic realm with the USSC interpretation of the commerce clause. And, when I earn an extra $100, the government tells me that it is the majority partner in my life, and demands that I fork over $52. Wanna run a business, but have moral objections to abortion? Too bad. Wanna open a foreign bank account? Good luck with that: you are not a welcome customer simply because you are an American and American law has made you more trouble than you are worth. That is economic repression.

— repressive governmental control on social life - Check, though Americans are much more free in their social life than in the economic and political. But look at what is taught in US public schools if you don’t think the US government is trying to corrupt traditional American civic society. Or just consider that the government mandates what kids eat in school, and imposes all sorts of prohibitions old and new. By the way, what do you think your great-grandfather would have said if a potential employer said he could go to work, but only if he could watch your great-grandfather urinate in a bottle? I know my grandfathers would have probably punched him. But maybe it’s all worthwhile since Cheney, Obama, and life-appointed judges are having so much success in pushing gay marriage over the objections of voter majorities.

— arbitrary exercise of power by police - Check. Been to an airport recently? Traveled within a 100 miles of the border? Ihre papiere, bitte .... but usually without the bitte pleasantry. Did you watch what happened in Boston after the Marathon bombing? You see, I am old enough to remember what America used to be like. There were bombings in the 1970s, too, and the police did not go into Gestapo mode. And I could get on an airplane without showing an ID, traveling privately, and without all of the security theater. Hell, even the buses are getting the TSA treatment.

— secret police - Check. Your phone records, your credit card records, your bank records are no longer your business, but also those of various agencies that act in secret.

— “in place of regular operation of administrative and judicial organs of the government according to publicly known legal procedures” - Check. Shoot the guy’s dog = nonjudicial punishment outside of publicly known legal procedures. Lard up felony charges to bargain against civil damages = operation of police outside of publicly known legal procedures. Stymie formation of liberty-oriented groups by the IRS = the same. Google three felonies per day.

Having read every Solzhenitsyn novel and numerous non-fiction works on the USSR, the revolution, and biographies of its early founders, I know how awful the USSR was. It was a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship. And it was a police state. But a state need not be so brutal to be a police state.

If in doubt, reread the definition.

Maybe it would help to know the definition of “repressive”:
“inhibiting or restraining the freedom of a person or group of people.”

By the way, I lived six years in police state back in the seventies and eighties: Saudi Arabia. It was was different, definitely more socially and politically unfree, but more free economically than the US is now. My experience with cops there was not unlike my experience with cops and other agents of the government here. And they were much less frequent when I lived in Saudi, and much less annoying because the Saudis didn’t make any pretense about something other than a police state.

You are really delusional. The Brits are soooo class driven it isn’t even funny. If you are not in line you will never be king or queen. If you are not titled you will never be in the house of lords. The class structure in the UK is long and storied. It may have changed a little but it is NOT the US. In the US you can come from nothing and build a financial empire. The only thing stopping you in the US is yourself.

Things are long and storied, but you are more caught up in the story as it was in the past than the reality.

Yes, if you are not in line, a Brit can’t be King in Britain. But you also can’t be King in the U.S. For this particular position, it seems that there is an equal lack of mobility in both societies. The monarch in Britain is also so limited in what he is allowed to do that the position is essentially powerless and more a gilded cage than anything else. I think that there have been some decisions of minor importance made by the British Monarch since, but one of the last was the location of the capital of the province of Canada back in 1857.

As for the lords, Perhaps you haven’t paid attention to how titles are given in the House of Lords. Beginning in 1958, non-hereditary peers began to be the norm, and since 1964, no meaningful hereditary peerage has been created. Since 1999, the number of hereditary peers in parliament has been limited to 92, and they are chosen by and from the much larger group of hereditary peers. The other 683 Lords are peers for life, having been appointed by the government to the house of Lords and not having had titles before their appointment—the best analogy in the American system would be Supreme Court judges, except that the judges are more powerful. In Canada it parallels the Canadian Senate fairly exactly.

Just as nothing is stopping you in the U.S. from becoming a Supreme Court judge other than not having the favour of the President and of the Senate, so in Britain nothing is stopping you from becoming a member of the House of Lords other than not having the favour of the Prime Minister. Indeed, things are slightly more open in some ways in the U.K. because there is no particular customary upper limit on the number of life peers a Prime Minister can create, while in the U.S. custom dictates that someone from the class of Supreme Court Justices must die before you (or some one else) is appointed.

I have travelled through out Great Britain and worked there. Class distinctions are still rampant even now. You either do not understand the US or have your blinders on

You may have lived and worked in the U.K., but your comments on the House of Lords indicate that your perceptions are more grounded in the past than in the present and future.

As I understand it from my colleagues who have lived, worked, and immigrated, the U.K. is now a politically correct hell-hole that has serious Islamic and demographic problems.

The question at hand is not whether or not in private settings some distinctions are observed, but whether the government has institutionalized distinctions.

Centuries ago, the nobility in England could get away with murder because they were a member of the governing class. I do not believe that now, in practice, they are either part of the governing class or can get away with murder. I don’t think that English police can get away with murder either.

In the U.S., the police can get away with murder, the IRS can get away with extortion, and the executive branch can arbitrarily decide what to enforce and what not to enforce. This is more evident in some places than others.

One further comment on your observation about people not aspiring to be King—Kate Middleton’s parents were flight attendants, so it does seem that, unlike the past, anyone can aspire to be Queen, and anyone can aspire to have a grandchild as King. The flight attendant angle also points to class distinction greatly subsiding in private society. A hundred and ten years ago, as a boy, my great-grandfather was punished for tipping his hat to the social equivalent of such a person, and today a person in direct line to the crown has married such a person.

Another angle to be aware of—the U.S. now follows class distinction through affirmative action.

In point of fact, rich people in nearly every society are treated differently; likewise, people with power, and these two classes often overlap. How differently does vary.

England was an oligarchy in the classical sense of the word for about four centuries. The U.S. was a land where everyone was treated equally with its hay days from the abolition of slavery until the rise of affirmative action. However one needs to be sure that the past and mythology that arises from truths of the past do not unduly colour one’s perceptions of the present.

Police in the U.S. can be very careless about taking innocent lives because they can get away with it. This makes them a priviledged class.

You might also want to check out post 45.

“Another angle to be aware of—the U.S. now follows class distinction through affirmative action”

What utter nonsense. If you want to call that racism fine but it has NOTHING to do with class.

If you want to see what class looks like take a gander at India and Great Britain.