Dystopian prediction becomes reality without anyone noticing
Almost everyone knows about Orwell's 1984. Fewer people are familiar with Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
However, one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time generally gets overlooked.
I'm speaking of The Trial by Franz Kafka.
The main character, Josef K., is "unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime". Josef K. never learns what crime he is accused of breaking, nor which agency is prosecuting him, nor even how he can defend himself.
Kafka's novel is what I thought of when I saw this recent headline.
On Tuesday, the supreme court issued an order requiring the Biden administration to reinstate the Trump-era policy that required asylum seekers from Central America to stay across the border in Mexico while their claims are adjudicated.
...
On Thursday, the court blocked an extension of the federal emergency ban on evictions, gutting a 1944 law that gave the CDC the authority to implement such measures to curb disease, and endangering the 8m American households that are behind on rent – who now, without federal eviction protection, may face homelessness.Both of these orders last week were issued in the dead of night. Their opinions were truncated, light on the details of their legal reasoning, and unsigned. Vote counts were not issued showing how each justice decided. And despite the enormous legal and human impact that the decisions inflicted, they were the product of rushed, abbreviated proceedings. The court did not receive full briefs on these matters, heard no oral arguments and overrode the normal sequence of appellate proceedings to issue their orders.
Welcome to the “shadow docket”, the so-called emergency proceedings that now constitute the majority of the supreme court’s business. Minimally argued, rarely justified and decided without transparency
Shadow docket is a very cool sounding term, but it amounts to a secret ruling.
Between 2001 through 2016, the DOJ applied for "emergency relief interventions" from the court only eight times. During the Trump’s presidency, the DOJ applied 41 times. The executive branch almost never loses these emergency "interventions.
What does it mean for popular sovereignty when the unelected supreme court can overturn the actions of elected officials seemingly at whim, without reading briefs, without hearing arguments and without having to assign judges’ names to their opinions or make any effort to explain their reasoning?
When someone asks the question like that it sounds very dystopian, does it not?
Maybe even Kafkaesque?
Now let's bookend that story with this one from a couple years ago.
On June 8, 2004, The Washington Post revealed the existence of a previously secret memorandum drafted by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which concluded that the laws prohibiting torture did not bind officials interrogating suspected members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. This was the first in a series of legal opinions that became known as the “torture memos.”
...
Nearly a decade later, The Guardian broke a different story: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also known as the “FISA Court,” had been secretly authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect the phone records of all Verizon Business customers — and almost certainly the customers of every other major telephone company — since 2006.
...
What these stories had in common was the government’s reliance on “secret law.” Both the OLC memos and the FISA Court opinions were authoritative legal interpretations: while they were in effect, they had the same legal force as the statutes they interpreted. Both were concealed from the public and shared with only select members or committees of Congress. And both construed the law in a way that was at best counterintuitive, resulting in a dynamic where the law on the books misled the public, rather than enlightening it, as to the rules the government was actually following.
So, we have secret laws, from a secret court (the FISA Court operates under completely different rules).
Make no mistake, the two examples above are just the ones you may know of. In 2019, the public became aware of 13 new "laws" that were previously secret. Most of these "laws' were a decade old or more.
When these "laws" involve spying on literally everyone, or torturing people, you get the idea of how important this is. Is there any secret laws out there, issued by a secret court, with a secret ruling, that could throw you into a secret prison tomorrow?
Probably!
BTW, if you are wondering how The Trial ends, Josef K. is executed in a random quarry with a butchers knife.
Comments
Huh.
A couple weeks ago I posted about the road to totalitarianism and got shot down cause the guy uses hyperbole to make his point. Pretty much the only one to get it was the rooster.
Here we are.
It’s a shame
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
There's a reason for that
Do you not see the difference between mask mandates and vaccine passports versus unlimited torture and spying through secret laws?
There is a reason
to not see the difference - because there is none. Supporters of the death penalty always use Charles Manson or Ted Bundy to justify the execution of unnamed getsway drivers - and ultimately random protestors when a police officer executes another random person. There is always a justification, and it is always more arbitrary and absurd than the last.
On to Biden since 1973
OK
So you can't see the difference between mask mandates and vaccine passports versus unlimited torture and spying through secret laws.
That allows me to understand where you (and others) are coming from.
There is nothing I can say to convince you of what is obvious reality to me.
Don't despair gjohnsit...
I get what you are saying and how you are trying to get a refocus going on the issues of true conspiracies and true attempts and actions to rob us of our individual rights. Mask mandates and vaccine requirements are so pale in comparison to what we are losing in the rights arena, it's not even discussable to me. When I applied for a job years ago as a teacher's aide in a public school, a physical and certain shots were required to have the job. Now everyone is all upset about their "rights" and "freedoms" regarding what is simply public health wisdom?
Anyway, I think the issue of the state of Texas passing a law that puts bounties on the heads of women and doctors who are trying to exercise their legal rights to abortions, AND the Supreme Court in a secret docket backing this bounty situation up should be screaming in the headlines regarding rights.
I think you would really enjoy the book Perilous Times by Geoffrey R. Stone. What you are discussing has actually been going on in this country since the Adams administration. I was so affected by this book, I wrote an op-ed in the Louisville paper titled "Recapturing Individual Liberty".
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
Uh, you’re
Kinda proving my point , here.
What part of ‘Hyperbole to make a point’.dont you get?
Some of his links go directly to laws that have been passed as ‘emergency measures’ during this time that most people would define as ‘over-reach’.
Except for the fear factor.
Ymmv
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Thanks TB&U
I couldn't have said it better, except for that part about hyperbole. It always starts with a justification that cannot be disputed - first 9/11, then a cocaine cartel, then Edward Snowden, then an Amish sewing circle. (really happened, except that in real life the sewing circle happened before Snoeden)
I did not mean to sound accusatory, I was just saying that that's what we mean by "kafkaesque."
On to Biden since 1973
"We hold these truths to be self-evident...
...that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.
He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People."
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Far right hate speech penned by extremists / domestic terrorists
Flagged as problematic and a sign of possible radicalization by Big Tech A.I. under government contract.
Who are we to question our professional-managerial betters?
Fine then; try this one:
"If this be treason, make the most of it!"
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
While we fight one another
over tribal issues, our Constitutional rights are being shredded behind closed doors. Basically the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments have become so compromised as to render them meaningless. Now we are looking at the Sixth Amendment which guarantees the right to a public trial. The Sixth Amendment:
The security state is systematically destroying all of our rights originally under the guise of fighting foreign terrorists, but now like every exception and every war, those chickens eventually come home to roost and eventually will be used against every one of us. These rights are supposedly guaranteed under the Constitution, but their destruction is happening without so much as whimper by the American people. Essays such as this one are important to our understanding of the big picture attack on our basic and guaranteed Constitutional rights.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Technical point
I think it actually started with drugs. I could be remembering it wrongly (it was from the mid 90s) but I think William Reinquist wrote (in a decision) that drug use (just not his?) was "so heinous" that the 4th Amendment "does not apply."
On to Biden since 1973