Thread by @mcjulie

The Internet has helpfully conspired to point out that this statement is not, in fact, true. But I wanted to expand a little on the concept of "lawfulness" and how it pertains to our present moment.

https://twitter.com/KellyMcParland/status/1228099140158152709

I read the Dungeons & Dragons moral alignment grid at an impressionable age and still often use it to talk about human behavior -- for example, my theory that most people are actually neutral-neutral but THINK they're lawful good.

gothhouse.org/blog/theories-…

In terms of alignment II'm pretty clearly chaotic good, while I think @paulcarp13 actually IS lawful good, and some of our common arguments have led me to a greater understanding of the lawful temperament -- and why people would SAY something as obviously ridiculous as the quote.

@paulcarp13 To @paulcarp13, the law is a THING. An important thing. You follow the laws until you just can't anymore-- to the point where "good" and "the law" collide. So you break the law when the law is Nazis, Bonhoeffer-style. Otherwise, if you think a law is bad, you try to change it.

@paulcarp13 To me, the law is a bunch of stuff people made up.

I'll acknowledge that laws CAN be used to protect people and increase justice, and work with people like him to try to change both laws and the use of law to that end.

@paulcarp13 But using law for good is a constant uphill battle, and that should tell you something about the law.

(Namely, I'm right sweetie, laws are just a bunch of things people made up.)

@paulcarp13 But also, "rule of law," Democracy-style, where everyone at least HYPOTHETICALLY has to obey the same laws as everyone else, is preferable to what operates in, say, a monarchy, where the law is "kings can do whatever they want and everyone else has to deal"

@paulcarp13 It has become quite apparent over the last few years, that a number of US citizens, including all Republicans in the Senate, would prefer to live in a monarchy, and are just going to start acting like they do -- and the law is nearly powerless to stop them.

@paulcarp13 A law with no enforcement means NOTHING, and with selective enforcement becomes a tool for evil, to quash dissent and reinforce class, race, gender, and other hierarchies. The law in its majestic equality, etc.

@paulcarp13 With current trend of vicious anti-immigrant sentiment on the right, one thing I see people say a lot is that they don't hate immigrants PER SE, they just hate "illegal" immigrants.

@paulcarp13 These people don't actually know the first thing about immigration law, mind you. They just have this idea -- "proper" sorts of people are "legal" and "improper" sorts of people are "illegal" and yes, class and skin color have EVERYTHING to do with who's "proper" in their minds.

@paulcarp13 This is why I say that most people are neutral-neutral but think they're lawful good -- they don't even know what the law IS, but still carry around this notion that there's some inherent goodness in being lawful.

@paulcarp13 But the law doesn't exist. Humans made it up.

So, if you're going to make some argument based on lawfulness, you have to ask --WHO made that law and WHAT was it intended to do?

@paulcarp13 For example, traffic laws. "Speed limit" is a traffic law, and in some cases the rationale is clearly safety -- but speeding tickets are lucrative, so a lot of speed limits are constructed around revenue collection more than safety.

@paulcarp13 Cities make "sitting on the sidewalk" illegal & use it to target both homeless people and protesters -- ostensibly the purpose is "keeping sidewalks clear" but I've never seen them use that logic to stop a developer from closing off whole blocks for months or years at a time.

@paulcarp13 In a practical sense, the law is used primarily to maintain ORDER -- and so it reflects somebody's vision of what ORDER looks like. A lot of the time it looks racist and classist. It looks obedient and quiet and dissent-free.

It looks... you know... kinda fascist.

@paulcarp13 And often, I think people who don't have the faintest idea what the law actually is, project that backwards, retro-fitting what they imagine the law MUST be, based on what order looks like to them.

@paulcarp13 Similarly, people who don't know what the law is, naively assume that only obvious harm or cruelty -- breaking the windows of a synagogue, for example -- are illegal, and REASONABLE acts of protest or dissent must therefore be legal.

@paulcarp13 And this naivety is used by the police -- they know that BY attacking protesters with tear gas and such, they can create the sense that the protesters must have done SOMETHING to merit such harsh treatment.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Seat…

@paulcarp13 When usually the only law any of the protesters actually BROKE is "failing to disperse on command" or "sitting on the sidewalk" or some obvious BS like that.

@paulcarp13 In conclusion: the law is a tool, invented by humans, which can be USED for good or for evil.

The law is NOT a thing that exists in itself and is inherently good.