It's the institutions, stupid

And while it's his finger pulling the trigger, the police system is what put him in the position to be standing in front of those students. I am sure that he is a man like me, and he didn't become a cop to shoot history majors with pepper spray. But the current policing paradigm requires that students get shot in the eyes with a chemical weapon if they resist, however peaceably. Someone has to do it.

And while the kids may cough up blood and writhe in pain, what happens to the man who does it is in some ways much, much worse.

Read the whole article at The Atlantic

Why I Feel Bad for the Pepper-Spraying Policeman, Lt. John Pike

by Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic

(h/t Mario in the comments)

We ask now how the holocaust could ever have happened. Those who study the history realize full well how the German people could allow such a thing to be perpetrated in their name. First, Nazi propaganda pictured the Jews as vermin. The obvious next step was to exterminate them.

This iconic picture of non-violent students — in police lingo when protestors sit it is a signal that they are non-violent — being prayed with pepper gas like bugs is only too reminiscent of humanity's dark past being replayed in the present. 

Pepper gas and tear gas are outlawed for use in war under Article 1.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, but apparently use of them to control citizens of one's own country is OK. In fact, the police official in charge justified its use as "standard procedure."

Something is deeply wrong with our institutions. Our intelligence services and military tortures, our financial industry commits massive fraud, and our domestic security forces violates the Chemical Weapons Convention, all with impunity.

America's moral authority in the world is being trashed, and American "democracy" is made mockery of by officials sworn to uphold it.