The Course of Human Events

Last night my roommate (an English professor) and I had a fascinating conversation, spurred by our Book of Mormon reading (Alma 11:3, I think), about the currently formulated possibilities for police reform. My mental library of dystopian fiction asserted itself, and I realized that most of these stories focus on the moment when some system no longer serves the people, and must be destroyed or deconstructed. Mostly, they get destroyed because the change necessary must be radical in order to avoid falling back on the same ills as the system had rested upon. Deconstruction tends to be rhetorical, and doesn't always filter down to practical application from the social critics and academics who disrupt language.

As a fiction writer, I enjoy worldcrafting. I like thinking of different patterns, structures, and systems and how they might function broadly and specifically. I described a few alternative police systems to my roommate. They were radically different and sought to undo binary distinctions like the criminal/non-criminal classification of behaviors. Such black-and-white thinking tends to criminalize behaviors that do not need to be punished, but rather possibly addressed in more nuanced ways or on different scales than "misdemeanor" or "felony" or "civil dispute."

I asked, "What about fiction that depicts the rebuilding? What about stories that re-form systems after destruction?" I can think of a few dystopian fictions that show the result of such re-formations. They're mostly overly-simplistic and appallingly badly written (not to mention impractical, unrealistic, and the reason that these stories are "dystopic"). This type of fiction tends to assume that the systems, as reconstituted, are oppressive and often (selectively) violent: some by necessity (as in zombie apocalypses) and some by choice (The Hunger Games). But they don't depict how the system was established.

And then, while in the shower, I had shower thoughts. "The American Revolution!" I thought. It's only partly fiction, depending on whose account you read, but that's what it looks like when a people (through their elected or appointed leaders) discard one system of government and then hash out a new one more or less from scratch and then are willing to die for it. And I actually believe that what we got was better than what we would have had under British rule. I applaud the parliamentary system and all, but I'm strongly opposed to monarchy, aristocracy, and other non-republican institutions that would set some people above others (especially legislatively) on the basis of heredity.

The Declaration of Independence talks about the circumstances that spur such revolution, and the Washington Post gives a pretty comprehensive reading of it. The part that sits in my consciousness is: 

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.

Now, by disbanding, defunding, or abolishing the police (however radical you think this is being), nobody is suggesting that we rewrite the constitution. The ability to change our forms of policing are already written into that document because among the ideals that this country established itself on, the need to "alter or abolish" any structure that "becomes destructive of these ends" is NOT the least.

This particular part of the system, this "form" has become destructive. People are hurting and dying. We should not be afraid to not only imagine something that serves all of us better, but to create it! What if we returned to real principles of equality advocated by men like George Mason, and using the same resources we currently use for our hammer of a police force (many of the same employees, for instance), create something more adaptable, more equal, and more complex? What if our system had multiple centers of executive power? What if our system demanded a total rewrite of the criminal code to include things that were neither criminal nor non-criminal, but functioned in a different pattern entirely? What if . . . 

But the consensus is that what we have will no longer suffice, even for white people whom the system has "served and protected." If we can shout loudly enough and long enough to bring the old building down, there are architects waiting with the skills and imagination to put something else much better in its place. It would take courage, but we are Americans. If we could be a family, we could find the courage to make something new from the diversity of experiences and transgenerational traumas of all of us; black, indigenous, immigrant, survivor, or pioneer. I think that our diversity could be our advantage, if we could just learn how to use it properly.