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Blow by Blow: Lawlessness in Southern Oregon

Added: April 12, 2007

There has been concern recently that lawlessness might soon break out in Southern Oregon. Could it be? Seems unlikely...I mean real actual lawlessness can't happen in a filthy rich western democracy - c'mon!. Chances are, there is a funding vote coming up soon, and the Sheriff's department cracked open a can of hyperbole down in the basement to get the voters in the mood for making the right decision. But still, its hard to get such a striking image out of your mind once it is in there - especially since I write constantly about a lawless Southern Oregon 50 years in the future.

As usual, with any kind of law and order type of news, I have been hit by two completely opposing (and strong) reactions.

On one hand, my ambivalence towards the police led me to have a surge of hope that it actually might happen. "Lawlessness!...finally my dream has come true! us local folks can get to know our neighbors again, reinvigorate deep seated social mores and get back to the pioneer ideals of self-sufficiency and social cohesion beyond the constant presence of the state and its instruments of coercion!"

Hell Yeah!

To be honest, "ambivalence" is actually too mild a term for how I feel about the police, fear and hatred is really more accurate. I don't like it when they are around me, or when they pull out behind me, or any other time when they are in my sight. Why? I can't tell you. Have I had any bad experiences with police? Nope. Am I an outlaw? Nope. A pot grower? Nope. Has my car insurance lapsed? Nope. I'm a squeaky clean Swede who gets nervous if I accidentally take a pen from the bank. Why then, do I fear and hate the cops?

This question has occurred to me many times before and the only clues I can find seem to be intertwined with the savage, insane, carnage-packed history of the 20th century.

It is generally accepted that there were about 170 million state sponsored murders in the 20th century. If you want to join the completely futile and self-referential argument about how many it really was, feel free. You can also take a look at some of the resources on the web and add it up for yourself. Remember, every single number is disputed, and there is no "definitive" answer that more than two people agree upon. Suffice to say, that it was a really, stupendously gigantically sickeningly huge number. I'm just going to say 170 million because it is probably about right and is big enough to make my point (half that would make my point, but we know it was more than 100 million).

Now, how many murders were committed by the criminals - the bad guys out at the edge of town waiting to kill us all and take our stuff?

Hard to say.

The United States has had a relatively high per capita murder rate from criminals since the 1960's. For the last 30 years, about 15,000-20,000 people have been murdered per year in the United States. Rather than spend 18 months researching world crime statistics for the last 100 years, let's just use the U.S. rate (which has tended to be high on a global scale) to get a rough (and probably high) number for the 20th century. Say 15,000 murders per year in the U.S. for 100 years, that equals about 1.5 million murders in the United States for the century. Now, once again, we will generate a very broad estimate by applying this same rate to the rest of the world's population. On average, the United States held about 1/20th of the world's population during the 20th century, so we multiply our U.S. result by 20 to get a very rough number on the number of murders committed on Earth during the 20th century: 30 million.

Score so far:
Uniformed guys: 170 million
Standard Scruffy-Looking Bad Guys: 30 million

Hmmm, almost a 6:1 ratio so far - not shaping up so good for the uniformed guys. However, the bad guy number is actually artificially high, because over 20% of murders are "crimes of passion" that take place between aquaintances, family or spouses where the perpetrator has no previous criminal record. Since we are trying to get at a real number for murders committed by criminals - Tony Soprano style hits, psychopaths killing for fun and felony murders committed for some type of gain (like robbery) we need to get these crimes of passion out of the total. So we whack 20% off of 30 million and get the final number for the actual real bad guys: 24 million.

Final score:
Uniformed guys: 170 million
Standard Scruffy-Looking Bad Guys: 24 million

So there you have it. Your average Joe minding his own business was 7.08 times more likely to get nuked or strafed or death camped or run down like a dog by uniformed professionals on the payroll of a state than he was by common criminals. Based on this data, if the guy knocking on the door has a uniform on, its probably a good idea to run out the back door and scatter into the woods or hide under the floorboards. If its 2am and you see a dark shape with a crowbar at your window, just give him your wallet and some milk and cookies, chances are you will be fine.

Also, the fact that modern states regularly cast themselves as the guardians of civilization against the ravening mobs of criminals and maniacs waiting at the edge of town for their chance to roll large, brings us to a weird fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario that is something that you would definitely not want to try and explain to a 2nd grader (or at least not my 2nd grader).

What is the result of all this? First off, I think everyone in the western world knows somewhere in the back of their minds that uniformed guys are super, duper, extra dangerous. This in turn leads perfectly law-abiding peaceful folk (like me) who have never had one bad encounter with law enforcement, to fear and hate cops for reasons that they can't really explain.

Disagree? Let me ask you this, how many times have you heard this statement "Hey, yeah!, let's invite Fred to the party, he's a cop!"

I rest my case.

Anyway, that is my current theory so I'm going with it for now.

This, of course, brings us to the Oregon State Police. The Oregon State Police are not masquerading as the guardians of civilization while actually torturing and murdering people in the middle of the night. No. They actually are the guardians of civilization as far as I can tell, at least within the boundaries of Oregon anyway.

I have had absolutely 100% positive experiences with every one of them I have ever encountered. Every time I have had car trouble they have shown up within minutes and done everything in their power to help. They risk their lives daily with heavily armed interstate drug mules, savage meth-smuggling biker gangs and grisly car accidents. When they aren't busy with that stuff they try and reduce the frightening number (several hundred per year...yike) of road construction personnel who get run down like dogs on the interstate. They do this by keeping a high profile around I-5 construction areas - pulling over people going 75mph into twisty one-lane construction zones with 45 guys working with their backs turned to the oncoming traffic.

I don't see anything at all wrong with that.

On the few occasions when they have pulled me over for doing something wrong, they have always given me a warning. They have been impeccably polite, helpful and professional during every single second of every single interaction I have ever had with them. There is no doubt in my mind that they are 100% a force of good and they are 100% committed to saving lives, helping people, and protecting all that is good and right in the state of Oregon.

Really.

My experience with the OSP plays an integral role in my equal and opposite reaction to the prospect of lawlessness in Southern Oregon, which is the urge to use my voting power to make sure that the police have everything they need to keep doing their job and keeping things safe around here.

The other component in my opposite reaction is the reality of what actually happens when a state fails. A friend of mine famously said (after hearing one of my wistful musings on post-apocalypse living) "Hey, you don't have to wait for the super-flu or some sci-fi disaster, you can experience all the fun of the post-apocalypse world right now by going to Somalia".

True, in many ways true. There is considerable evidence that anything resembling middle class affluence is the first thing to go when the state fails. Or more accurately, middle-class affluence might continue, but without the cheap goods, the leasure time, the health care, the inexpensive mortgages, the unlimited supplies of cheap food, the jobs, the clean drinking water, the excellent public schools, the hospitals, the shopping centers, the cell-phones, the cars, the cheap gas, the perfect roads, the zero interest college loans that don't have to be paid back, the primary schools, the secondary schools, the colleges, the iPods, the downloadable music, the lightning fast internet service, the laptops, the desktops, the watches, the clothes, the double shot mochas, the laid-back coffee houses, the movies, the cable TV, the houses, the roads, the cars, the jobs, the food, the retirement and the money. Aside from all that stuff being gone, the middle class can continue in a post apocalypse world as if nothing happened. You just need to keep your head up and your spirits high as you live your life of grinding poverty, gunfire, extortion, empty stores, dirt tacos for dinner and constant injurous debris falling out of the sky. Its all about attitude anyway, right?

So, we have a bit of a contradiction on our hands. On one hand I despise the concept of the modern state, its rigid structures, its soulless machinations, its subjugation of the individual for the profit of the few and its periodic industrial-scale murderous rampages. On the other hand, I sure like raising my kids in a fantastically healthy, safe, prosperous, friendly, peaceful, beautiful place where we can have bar-b-ques in the yard and take trips to the coast on perfect roads whenever we want. I can't remember the last time the town was shelled or a neighboring tribe came through and committed genocide - I mean, its been years and years since anything like that happened around here...

Hmmm...baseless adolescent fantasy or irrefutable reality looking me right in the face...which one should I choose? Always a tough choice between those two.

Tough call, I think I will postpone my decision for now. Time for another mocha to think it over....

If only I didn't hate the cops so much...


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