Thread by @AlexandraErin

This thing where New York is suspending habeas corpus is really THE WHOLE THING in a nutshell.

Law says the government has to charge people or release them. COVID-19 means they can't safely get people in front of judges as they're arresting them.

So what do they do?

Because COVID-19 means they can't safely hold the hearings that we're legally entitled to within 24 hours, they're holding the people without charges for longer, which means less social distancing, more virus exposure.

And, you know. The thing. The inalienable thing. With the self-evident truths and tea and the harbor. You know? That thing. It's like.... pffft, who cares?

These protests are about police brutality, police overreach ignoring basic human rights and endangering people.

And because the cops are arresting people faster than the judges can see them, they're throwing out basic Constitutional rights in a way that is endangering the lives of the arrested protesters (and anyone caught up with them).

And to be very clear, "suspending habeas corpus" sounds very wanky and pedantic compared to shooting someone 19 times or kneeling on them until they die.

But people could well die from this, too.

And it's the first step towards a lot of awful things. Disappearing people.

Maybe "disappearing people" sounds like hyperbolic paranoia, but. So does "suspending habeas corpus and holding people indefinitely not just during but because of a deadly pandemic".

And I keep thinking about Sandra Bland.

I say "disappearing people" and I feel like I should be making a tinfoil hat, but the NYPD doxxed a public official's daughter and since then everybody has been kissing up extra hard to them. There's an extra fence around the White House and DC is patrolled by unidentified goons.

Those of us who have been called alarmists for years -- and you know me, I'm the optimist of that bunch! -- have been told "It's not like they can just do [whatever] and people will accept it."

But. We mostly do, because it happens in bits that make sense at the time.

I've said this before: there's not actually conclusive evidence that Hitler had anything to do with the Reichstag fire, and more to the point, it doesn't matter if he didn't. The actual exact official story he used could be 100% true and it doesn't legitimize what he did next.

But the story, true or false, allowed him to do it. Enabled it. Excused it. Explained it. Moved it from the "How dare he who does he think he is" column to the one labeled "needs must when the devil drives".

We wouldn't NORMALLY suspend habeas corpus, you see, but these are not normal times. It's not even about the protests so you can't call it punitive, it's just technical limitations with the COVID precautions, so, you know, you do what you got to do.

They could instead slow or suspend arrests. New York City has a thing called a Desk Arraignment Ticket which is basically you get a summons for an appointment to be arraigned later. They could be doing those.

They've got other options up to and including just chilling and dialing things down a notch, de-escalating, but they're not considering those options and they don't want anyone else to consider them, either.

The suspension of liberty is being phrased as a necessity.

And all of the supposed Patriots who are all about standing up for liberty, all they can say is "THEN DON'T BREAK THE LAW OR YOU GET WHAT YOU DESERVE".

And, it's like. Guys? Guys? We fought a war over this. Those people are innocent until their day in court, at a minimum.

If the government is allowed to detain people without charging them then it doesn't matter who breaks the law or who doesn't. There is no difference as far as being held without charges. One person breaks into a store. What's their charge? Nothing! Hey, *YOU* did nothing, too!

And when they're masturbating to the thought of fighting NWO soldiers or whatever off, every single one of them understands this! They all know this! They all get this! The whole concept of civil liberties is very familiar to the so-called patriot crowd.

On that note: President Obama talked about setting up a civilian service, like a peace corps/volunteer thing that would sort of parallel the military service and the right-wing hate machine acted like he was planning his private army.

What's Trump doing?

https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1268570177484001287

On one level, he's just selling hats and preying on his followers' gullibility and bloodthirstiness by acting like the hat is both some exclusive member perk and a badge of membership in his actual personal army to make actual bloody war on their fellow citizens.

On another level... I mean, actually, just read that first level. Even if he personally wanted nothing more than to dupe his followers out of money, the story he's using to sell it still gets us to a point where a bunch of camo-hatted "patriots" are looking to murder people.

But we've already seen people who buy hats from him being willing to take him at his word when he talks about enemies and civil war and all that. Now he's getting even more explicit, while building a private army in view of the public in DC.

And the NYPD already IS a private army. They're not his, they're brigands. Mercenaries out for themselves. But willing to support him as he supports them.

Things are getting more dangerous by the day and I really, really hope that some of those Republicans who are "struggling" and some of those current and former military leaders who've been speaking out reach their breaking point soon, or it will be too late.

Because here is something that Donald Trump definitely understands and most of the players here do not: the military is more likely to go along with him, the more apparent it is that not doing that is going to be a shooting war between themselves and forces loyal to him.

If last week Donald Trump ordered the military to march their way into the halls of Congress and arrest the Democrats, shooting anyone who got in their way, I believe they'd have said, "No, sir, I'll pretend I didn't hear that if you don't say it again, but we won't do that."

But if Trump consolidates his personal paramilitary power to the point where he's got a force that could do that and he orders the military to support him... well, at that point, it looks like going against him is going to cause a fight.

Whereas if they go along with him, who's going to fight them? It's a "You and what army?" situation. They'll go with the situation that doesn't lead to a fight against the so-called president of these benighted states, because that looks like a coup. That smells like politics.

In order to remain apolitical, in order to avoid the appearance of a military junta, the military is almost certain to pick the side that is least likely to involve an immediate gun battle, with the tie going to the president because possession is 9/10ths of the law.

If there's the kind of constitutional crisis that involves military power or an argument about who is actually president, the military's number one priority will be, "Whatever happens, it can't look like we *picked* the president for the country."

And I don't know all the heads of the military individually, there might be one or two really fascist ones who super wants a military takeover, but the culture of the US military, the myth-making at the top, however much they grumble about civilian bureaucrats, it matters to them

It matters to them that the military doesn't make political decisions and that the military has civilian control. And even when they don't like it they know they're better off if it looks like they're not being political or taking control of the country.

So yeah, I care about habeas corpus in New York City because of COVID-19, and because of the likelihood that this one civil rights abuse will enable others, and also because of the general trendline of how the norms around policing are disappearing and merging with military stuff

And yeah right now it's a specific number of people detained from a specific event and they're holding them supposedly literally only until they get all of them processed, and I'm sure that's the answer anybody in charge would give to all of my worries.

But if no one complains?

If no one's raising a stink, if no one's making noise about this? If they feel like nobody outside of the detainees and Legal Aid even knows or cares about it?

Well, it's convenient this way, so why not keep doing it? No one cares.

I keep saying that the limit on Trump's behavior is what he feels like he can get away with. That's not just him. It's everybody. It's the whole system. Most people also have other limits. He has far fewer of them, that's the real difference.

If the NYPD and their allied prosecutors feel like they can get away with holding people without charges, why would they stop? Why would they not expand it?

I'm very curious if the dingbats of QAnon are even paying enough attention to real life to notice that New York is suspending habeas corpus due to mass arrests of protesters. I am sure they would conclude this is The Storm.

My saved searches are a little cluttered, though.