The Idea of Order at Davis

John Pike is just an instrument, a tool.  The servant of a system.  He has no power (that’s actually his problem – deep down he knows this, he fears this, he hates this; it’s why he became a police officer – not in order to serve and protect the public, but rather to enforce (and occasionally to inflict) the law).  Perhaps he imagines that he does possess power – he does, after all, carry a gun and a stick and a can of noxious gas – but he is in reality just an instrument.  He is simply following orders, carrying out a standard procedure, performing the will of an authority which he serves, and as such he is without dignity, since the system he serves, whose will he performs, is unjust.  Whom – what – does this system serve? Ostensibly the people.  But actually?  The idea of Order.

(photo by Louise Macabitas)

We don’t know what was going through Officer Pike’s mind.  But we know that he knew he was being watched and being filmed.  He must have felt that he was fully justified, at least by the law.  He carries out his assault on the protesters in a manner that is entirely casual, that betrays not a hint of reluctance or ambivalence.  His manner is so matter of fact that it suggests he has no sense that what he is doing is in fact momentous.  Not just momentous because it would be captured on video and broadcast around the country, which he may or may not have imagined at the time, but momentous because it was the moment at which he knowingly, willingly, unreluctantly, perhaps even eagerly, used his disproportionate power to inflict pain and humiliation on a group of unthreatening, defenseless young people.

What must have happened to a man’s character when he becomes capable of acting in this way? What is this authoritarianism that reacts to the mildest threat – actually not even a threat, simply a refusal to comply – with overwhelming force?  And what is it with these authoritarian types who possess all the power, who control all the means of force, and yet feel themselves perennially threatened?  This is the psychology of Dick Cheney and John Bolton.  Some profound sense of essential weakness that drives one to extreme overcompensation.  This was true of the foreign policy of the Bush administration, just as it is true of the police department that deploys dozens of paramilitary police officers in full riot gear to dispatch a crowd of unarmed, unresisting, defenseless citizens, who happen also to be kids.  What is this mentality, this psychology?  How can you use force and inflict pain on a defenseless person simply because she has refused to do what you say, or, as the police would no doubt have it, “failed to comply”?  How can you do that and feel not only justified but actually righteous?  What sort of fetish for power and authority must one have in order to think and feel and act this way?  This, I suppose, is the essential psychology of the bully – the sort of bully who dreams of growing up to become a storm-trooper.

So pray for Officer John Pike, and all the unfortunate servants of a totalitarian idea, those who have chosen order over liberty.  The partisans of control.  The minions of authority.  What must it be like inside their hearts, their minds?  What must have happened to their souls?