Watching the news w Pynchon yet, able to breathe, luckily.

[alice malice]

I agree that the door to police work is open from the wars, and the
current wars, the longest wars, have opened revolving doors, that is,
soldiers who join police and then return to war and then return to
police and corrections. So, the abuse of prisoners in the theaters of
war, and in the abuse of citizens in the prisons here and the same
with the neighborhoods. Moreover, those that have been to war,
especially those that have been in the most dangerous areas and jobs,
are revered by the others and have a sway over the group psychology
and the culture of the police, so enforcement is emphasized.

On Sat, Dec 6, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
> This has been true since the vets of Vietnam - I don’t know about Korea or prior.  And they bring with them a whole lot of baggage from the mindset they went in with to the PTSD they got while on active duty.
>
> http://discoverpolicing.org/find_your_career/?fa=military_veterans
>
> Bek
>
>
>> On Dec 6, 2014, at 7:56 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> You may be right, Mark. I would only add that in NYC a close
>> examination of the legacy of
>> Bernard Kerik is worth looking into. The wars, Obama's wars now, are
>> revolving doors for soldiers who work in NYC corrections, and on the
>> police department. While the so-called progressive mayor disappointed
>> most of his supporters with his appointment of Bratton, the recent
>> resignations, "retirements" of Black and Latino leadership is even
>> more frightening...the recruiting of whites from the suburbs, and the
>> placement of rookies in the toughest assignments (for example in the
>> Pink) is an other problem, a union, seniority problem that has an
>> apartheid impact on housing, education, courts...etc...so, a complex
>> web or entrenched power, but the wars, the fucking wars, and the way
>> the wars are brought home to poor neighborhoods is the major problem
>> here in NYC.
>>
>> David, though awkwardly, is on to something when he speaks of the
>> body. Matthew Pratt Guterl, in the The Guardian, takes on this issue
>> recently:
>>
>> This fear and fascination with the superhuman black male body is a
>> longstanding sightline – a “racial script”, as the historian Natalia
>> Molina calls it – in which a confused, delusional vision of the
>> dangerous black male body is repeatedly invoked as a reason for some
>> terrible, violent response. This is the story of Emmett Till and Eric
>> Garner, and a thousand stories in between. It is a reminder that the
>> story of King Kong is a metaphor for racial fear. It also points, as
>> Khalil Gibran Muhammad reminds us, to the myth of the coked-up
>> criminal, immunized from pain and impossible to bring down. We should
>> be recognizing that each and every one of these dehumanizing fears is
>> dangerously – and tragically false – but time and time again, we
>> refuse to admit it.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:41 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> we have read Pynchon's essay on the mind of Watts.
>>>
>>> I Repeat that Radney Balko's The Militarization of the Police
>>> traced the start of SWAT teams to the LAPD as an organizational response
>>> To those riots.
>>>
>>> for 40+ years, and esp since 9/11, the police departments all over the United States
>>> Have militarized themselves, prepared for " riots" instead of " freedom of assembly",  have allowed o'er the top Jacobean-like revengeful anger to build
>>> And build until: The Bigfoot cops can choke, gang-up on, beat and shoot at will.
>>>
>>> TRP did know exactly when the cops turned. Inherent Vice.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPad-
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l