uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote
... The Lerner posts seemed to echo a bit of Jon's and your objection to bureaucracy, but also evoke a larger argument I've had with several people about institutional/systemic knowledge. And Jon mentioned "jury nullification" awhile back, which is a similar subject. *Where* is "the law"? Not only where is it defined, but also where is it executed/computed? This strikes me as an unsettled question ... even a couple hundred years on in this experiment.
It seems trite but I'd say the law was *everywhere* and *nowhere* at the same time. Jacob Blake was killed *by the law* because he was presumed to be afoul of "the law", but many felt that the "lawmen" who killed him were operating outside or above "the law". When "the law" couldn't hold them accountable for this presumed "unlawful" action, a large portion of the citizenry decided to *push the law* by expressing their *lawful right* to demonstrate but then with some of them stepping over some lines of *the law* with various acts of property violence (and perhaps violence against police in a few cases?) When Rittenhouse obtained a semi-automatic assault rifle he did so *outside the law* and then when he showed up on the street claiming (in his mind and after the fact to the jury) to be there to *enforce the law*, it seems that he is at least *pushing* the law as hard as the protestors on the street *threatening* violence with their mere presence/posture. Carrying a (n apparently) loaded weapon in public (especially during civil unrest) is nothing less than a *threat* of violence and a strong risk of breaking *the law*. "Don't take your guns to town" as Glen has invoked before.
The police who drove past Rittenhouse, even offered him a bottle of water *after* having shot 3 people were "being the law" in some sense (doing their job as they understood it?)... and then when he was collected (on his/family/lawyers') terms rather than hunted down (like the Antifa-presumed fellow in WA about the same time) and executed in the street (apparently within the law because the officers/shooters felt they saw he might have a weapon?) The jury trial (starting with charges, continuing with judge assignment and jury selection) was all an exercise of *the law*. The courtroom scene unfolded "according to the law" even if some of us might question some of the activities/postures the judge adopted, I don't believe he exceeded his authority or jurisdiction. The jury exonerated Rittenhouse on *all counts* precisely as the system is designed to work, even if I am personally concerned about various implications of that decision. For the most part, the protests in WI and across the country *after* the decision were executed *within the law*, but as with the initiating protests, have an overtone of threatening violence, threatening to break out of the confines of "the law", as did Rittenhouse when he swaggered down the street with a loaded military style assault weapon at-ready.
So, while I sympathize with Nick's ideation that "well crafted, executed, and defended laws" *should* yield a kind/gentle/just/healthy society, I think virtually everything we are seeing today indicates that the limits of that have been exceeded. Unfortunately, this circumstance just feeds the authoritarian ideation which is that one *must* clamp down as hard as necessary to obtain compliance with *the law*. I say unfortunately, because history indicates that such exercise of absolute power, even within the constraints of well-designed laws, becomes it's own problem pretty quickly.
Add in the "authority" of God (or similar) and it gets yet-more-squirrely because in fact one can justify anything under that kind of absolute authority. At best, it seems we get religious wars as absurd as Swift's Big/Little-enders in Lilliput under the edicts of Lunderog and the Blundecral.
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