Shadow of a police state

A little over 12 years ago, when I was a little more naive, I had a rude awakening during a telephone conversation with a political operative in Pacific. She told me the individuals who were fighting a proposed detention center in Pacific for undocumented immigrants had a private detective doing background checks on people who were “behind” that center. I had initiated the telephone conversation, hoping that I could persuade the opposing camps in the forthcoming election to agree to be civil with one another regardless of the outcome of the election. Within about 30 seconds of the start of the conversation, I realized I was talking to a disturbed individual, and when the conversation turned to the use of a private investigator, I decided it was well past time to get off the phone. Based on what has transpired over the past 12 years, I frequently wonder whether people are still using private eyes to get the goods on political opponents in Pacific.

With the announcement that, many years ago, one of Pacific’s council members had killed his wife (possibly as a result of post traumatic stress syndrome) I openly raised the question on this blog site as to who dug up this information. I noted that for about $15 I could get the background history on anyone, if I had the individual’s social security number. And I also noted that a police official in neighboring Algona once told me, while I was a news reporter, that he performed background checks on everyone who moved into that town.

Hmmm.

After Cy Sun was elected mayor, there was an effort to discredit him, first by claiming his war medals weren’t legitimate. That didn’t work. Now we have these resurrected claims of sexual abuse from  44 years ago. They came to nothing then, but are now conveniently introduced again at a time when a significant segment of the Pacific community wants to lynch the mayor. This occurs at a time when the head of the city’s police division, who was found by an outside police agency to have abused his authority, is challenging his termination.

This brings to mind two stories from the world’s great literature. The first is Les Miserables, the saga of a man hounded by a fanatical official throughout his life for once having stolen a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. The second story is Cancer Ward, a novel about the Soviet Union, written by a victim of Stalin’s prison system. This writer proved useful to Premier Nikita Khrushchev, because his writings were used to denounce Stalin and throw off  part of Stalin’s poisonous legacy.

Under the current circumstances, I think it would be useful to take a moment to read the following passage from Cancer Ward, because it is chilling, indeed. Please note that what the writer says can be applied to every one of us.

The nature of Rusanov's work had been for many years, by now almost twenty, that of personnel records administration. It was a job that went by different names in different institutions, but the substance of it was always the same. Only ignoramuses and uninformed outsiders were unaware what subtle, meticulous work it was, what talent it required. It was a form of poetry not yet mastered by the poets themselves.

As every man goes through life he fills in a number of forms for the record, each containing a number of questions. A man's answer to one question on one form becomes a little thread, permanently connecting him to the local center of personnel records administration. There are thus hundreds of little threads radiating from every man, millions of threads in all. If these threads were suddenly to become visible, the whole sky would look like a spider's web, and if they materialized as rubber bands, buses, trams and even people would all lose the ability to move, and the wind would be unable to carry torn-up newspapers or autumn leaves along the streets of the city.

They are not visible, they are not material, but every man is constantly aware of their existence. The point is that a so-called completely clean record was almost unattainable, an ideal, like absolute truth. Something negative or suspicious can always be noted down against any man alive. Everyone is guilty of something or has something to conceal. All one has to do is look hard enough to find out what it is.

—Alexander  Solzhenitsyn, Cancer Ward (Chapter 14, Justice)