As I left home here in Pernambuco’s capital, Recife, the prevailing sensation was that nothing had changed. Pernambuco is one of the most violent states in the country, and Recife is the 39th most dangerous city in the world, with 36.82 homicides per 100,000 people. When the police function normally, we are in constant peril. Without them, was it actually more dangerous or had little changed?

What actually changed was people’s perceptions. They thought no one could be punished for crimes anymore. People took the streets and plundered. Big retail stores moved their merchandise and were able to protect themselves, but many small businesses lost everything. The situation seemed to have gotten out of control, but government decided to exercise its monopoly of violence radically and put army tanks on the streets. I imagine they hoped to blast some people who were getting away with stolen TV sets — the World Cup is less than a month away, TVs are valuable right now.

But the perception that there weren’t any police was much stronger than reality: The truth is that Pernambuco never actually has a police force. When it does, it’s seen as a threat, not as protection, by 80% of the population. In our everyday lives, we hardly ever feel protected by the police and nothing had changed in that regard on Thursday. If, on any given day, people decided to do the same they did then, they would be able to and would go unpunished. They just haven’t realized their power yet, but the police are nothing but a small group of people, incapable of dealing with a much larger number of people who are not willing to obey them.

The fact that the police stopped working and everything came crashing down so quickly was supposed to show us how essential the police really are, but the message seems to be the very opposite. In Recife, 1,416 people died in 2013 — almost 4 each day. On the 15th, when anomy and anormality supposedly reigned, there were 7 deaths. The police strike should make stop and think for a moment that, ultimately, the Military Police are an exercise in futility, an institution that survives on stated purpose rather than results.

Order only survives when people believe it will survive; if people believe that it is government’s enforcement branch that keeps order, this order will only subsist while government does. Thus, order is not sustained by force, but by culture — and the same goes for rulers. If people, collectively, stop thinking that the police are needed, there will be order and freedom without looting, depredation or deaths. Power is just a public fiction, something that does exist, but which can disappear with a simple change in public opinion.

Ayn Rand would say that power only exists by the sanction of the victim. La Boétie asks us which power our rulers have, if not those we give them. David Hume concludes that power is sustained by little more than opinion; while Gramsci knows that any order is created and maintained by a cultural system that legitimizes it. And, as Lord Varys puts it, on Game of Thrones, “Power resides where men believe it resides.”

On Thursday, people took the power they always had and used it for evil. And, by the end of the day, they decided to hand it over to the police, that announced the end of their strike — but if the people didn’t want to hand power back over, what could the police do? When cops announce their next strike, maybe the people will realize they don’t really need them and will keep on living normally. Because order exists where people believe it exists.

Quasi mai il coraggio fisico è la virtù suprema. Non è neanche particolarmente legato ad un qualunque altro valore morale. Ma è ugualmente una virtù, e una virtù che purtroppo oggi scarseggia tra gli individui dei dipartimenti di polizia, che si nascondono dietro una buffa schiera di macchine da guerra e fanno fuori chiunque, di qualunque specie o età, provochi il più flebile fremito di paura nei loro deboli cuori. Animali domestici, malati di mente, vecchi: apparentemente, tutto quello che si muove è in grado di terrorizzare l’ardito poliziotto; lo colma di abietta paura, presumibilmente se la fa addosso, è spaventato al punto che tira fuori la sua arma e fa fuoco, volente o nolente, su tutto quello che batte i denti per il terrore.

A luglio a Hawthorne, in California, un agente di polizia alla vista di un cagnolino meno di un quarto le sue dimensioni è stato sopraffatto dalla paura al punto che non gli è rimasta altra scelta che sparargli cinque colpi davanti al suo padrone. Ovviamente, nessuno può biasimare il poliziotto in questione. Con lui c’erano soltanto tre suoi colleghi. Non avrebbero mai potuto nulla contro quella bestia feroce, che sulle zampe posteriori arrivava quasi all’altezza della sua cintola. Lasciare che il padrone lo calmasse era chiaramente fuori discussione, visto che quest’ultimo era un pericoloso malfattore colpevole di un crimine orrendo: offesa alla polizia in stato di negrezza.

A gennaio in Maryland un ragazzo di ventisei anni con la sindrome di Down e un quoziente intellettivo pari a 40 è stato assassinato non da uno, non da due, ma da tre poliziotti fuori servizio perché osava cercare di vedere un film due volte senza pagare un secondo biglietto. La possibilità che una tale trasgressione non valesse la vita di un uomo non è passata per la testa dei nostri impavidi agenti. Quando gli hanno chiesto di andarsene, la sua reazione irata fu tale che gli agenti si presero una paura tremenda per la propria vita, e furono costretti a immobilizzarlo e “tenerlo sotto controllo” finché non morì asfissiato. L’aspetto tipico di una persona affetta da sindrome di Down è così facile da riconoscere che anche un profano riesce a diagnosticarla sui neonati. Ma apparentemente i nostri eroici agenti non hanno mai visto “Johnny Stecchino”. Chi può biasimarli per aver avuto paura? La loro vittima era alta un metro e sessantatré e pesava 130 chili. Di muscoli, immagino.

Di nuovo in California, a giugno, alcuni agenti del dipartimento di polizia di Los Angeles, credendo di sentire l’odore inconfondibile di qualcuno che si fa un prodotto chimico illegale, hanno sfondato la porta di casa di un ottantenne che, spaventato dall’intrusione notturna di sconosciuti, ha tirato fuori un fucile ed è stato immediatamente ucciso da una scarica di piombo dei nostri eroici agenti, che coraggiosamente hanno giustiziato un vecchio sul suo letto. Si ignorano le ragioni per cui i nostri agenti non siano riusciti a farsi identificare. Non si sa neanche come abbiano fatto a schivare il fuoco del vecchio. Ma una cosa è certa: ora che un ottantenne non può più brandire la pistola contro sconosciuti che irrompono nella sua camera da letto nel bel mezzo della notte siamo tutti più sicuri.

Quando si parla di abusi della polizia, si finisce solitamente per discutere di politiche e procedure da cambiare e della necessità di una maggiore responsabilità. Cose importanti, ma è importante anche discutere dell’incredibile livello di codardia che tolleriamo negli agenti di polizia. Se il pericolo ti spaventa al punto che sei un pericolo per gli altri, non ci fai nulla in un lavoro pericoloso. Dovresti prendere in considerazione un altro lavoro da qualche altra parte in un bell’ufficio confortevole. Il coraggio fisico non è la più grande virtù, ma è pur sempre una virtù.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

Physical courage is hardly the highest virtue, nor one linked particularly closely with any other measure of moral worth. But physical courage is a virtue all the same, and one sadly lacking today in our cowardly police departments, who hide behind a comical array of war machines and gun down anyone of any age or species who inspires the slightest tremor of fear in their faint hearts. Family pets, the mentally disabled, the elderly — seemingly anything that can move can terrify our brave police officers, so overwhelming them with abject, presumably pants-wetting fear that they draw their weapons and open fire willy-nilly on whatever has their teeth chattering in terror.

In July in Hawthorne, California, a police officer was so overcome by fear at the sight of a little doggy less than a quarter his size that he had no choice but to fire five shots into the animal in front of its owner. Of course one can hardly blame the officer in question, as he only had three of his colleagues there with him and could not possibly have prevailed against the ferocious animal, which reached nearly to the officer’s waist when on its back legs. Letting the owner calm the animal down was also plainly not an option, as the owner was a dangerous villain guilty of a heinous crime — annoying the police while black.

In January in Maryland, a 26-year-old with Down’s syndrome and a reported IQ of 40 was murdered by not one, not two, but three off-duty police officers because he dared try to see a movie twice without buying a second ticket. The possibility that such an offense might not be worth taking a man’s life over never occurred to our fearless officers, who were put in mortal fear of their lives by his anger at being asked to leave that they were forced to tackle him and “subdue” him until he asphyxiated. Down’s syndrome has such a classic, easy-to-spot presentation that even lay people can readily diagnose it in newborns, but it seems these heroic officers had never watched “Life Goes On.” And who can blame them for their fear? Their victim stood all of 5’6” and weighed nearly 300 pounds, presumably all muscle.

In June, back in California, police officers with the Los Angeles Police Department thought they smelled the trademark smell of someone enjoying an illegal chemical and burst into the home of an eighty-year-old man who, startled in the night by strangers in his home, drew a gun and was immediately killed by a fusillade fired by the heroic officers in question, who boldly executed an old man in his bed. Why these officers could not explain who they were or back out of the room to avoid the old man’s fire is unknown, but one thing is certain — we are all safer now that this eighty-year-old man cannot brandish a pistol at strangers who burst into his bedroom in the middle of the night.

Discussions of police abuses usually turn back to policies and procedures that should be changed and the need for increased accountability. These things are important, but also important is addressing the unbelievable degree of cowardice we tolerate in our police officers today. If you’re so afraid of danger that you’re a danger to those around you, you have no business in any kind of dangerous job and should consider going to work in some nice comfy office somewhere. Physical courage isn’t the greatest virtue, but it is a virtue all the same.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, I Migliori in Città: Armati, Brutali e Codardi.

The first problem is real but misunderstood, while the second is pure baloney. It is baloney since the NPT is nothing but a multi-state attempt to keep the knowledge of how to make nasty nuclear bombs within a small group. The overall aim of the treaty is not to save human kind from the horrible effects of nuclear war; it is to save the nuclear power oligarchy from competition. There is no reason why “new” nuclear powers should be trusted less than current nuclear powers. Unless you wish to keep the trump card while playing it over and over in international politics.

The problem of North Korea (and other countries) violating the NPT thus has nothing to do with us as individuals or citizens of the civilized West. It has only to do with “our” heads of states wishing to protect their special powers.

The other problem is the real one: the North Korean government isn’t to be trusted with lethal weapons. And to be honest, Kim Jong-Il seems like a real nut. But on the other hand, there are there any Prime Ministers or Presidents who could or should be trusted with such things? Most of them cannot be trusted with limited powers in government or even with small amounts of money.

The problem here has nothing to do with the specific nature of the North Korean government, which, I’m sure, is one of the most screwed up on the planet. It also has nothing to do with the North Korean leader, the cultified Kim Jong-Il. And it has nothing to do with the official ideology of his totalitarian state, “communism.”

Rather, it has to do with a much deeper problem. It has to do with the problem of rule and specifically the structure of government itself. As Lord Acton so wisely stated, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The problem of corruption should be obvious, be it the obvious corruption of “banana republics” or the more “civilized” campaign contributions and dealings in parliament. Corrupted people cannot be trusted, who knows who placed the higher bid and thus gets the full worth of the bribe?

Judging from our politicians, not only does power corrupt; the corrupted are obviously also attracted by power.

A North Korea with the recently acquired knowledge and ability to produce nuclear-based weaponry simply points to a much greater and widely spread problem: the problem with government per se. Since power corrupts, we cannot trust the ones with power. Then how can we trust them with the weapons to protect us from foreign threats; especially since we are at the same time forcefully disarmed by our “protectors.”

The real question here is: Can we trust political power with weapons to destroy us and our earth? Can government be trusted?

The questions are radical, but it should be obvious we, i.e. humankind, are in need of some radical change. We have, as a species, had more than a thousand years of experience of political government. What has it given us?

On the world level the result is at best racism and international “tension,” but wars and world wars as well. On the domestic level we’re experiencing excessive taxation and regulation, violations of constitutional rights and personal integrity, as well as executions and government control of young people’s minds through public schooling. In other countries, and during wartime, we’ve seen work camps, torture, and persecution.

The answer should thus be obvious. No, we cannot trust government. Perhaps we should abolish it altogether and get rid of the danger once and for all.