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Why You Should Never Sleep On The Public Sidewalks
Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a man was sleeping on a public sidewalk because he was homeless, and it was hot, and he was very tired.
POLICE: Hey you, wake up! You’re coming with us.
MAN LYING ON PUBLIC SIDEWALK, AWAKE BUT GROGGY: I’m not bothering anyone!, so why are you arresting me?
POLICE: You can’t sleep on the sidewalk just because that’s the law and we’re empowered to arrest you for it, and also to choke you or shoot you if you resist arrest. But actually, that’s not why we’re arresting you this time: it’s because you fit the description of Mr X, and Mr X is a known criminal, so you’re a criminal!
MAN BEING ARRESTED: Wait a minute, I’m Mr Y! I’m not Mr X!, I’m not Mr X!, I’m not Mr X!
POLICE: Yes, you are Mr X!, just because we say you are; and the more you deny it, the worse we’ll treat you. So shut the fuck up and come quietly!
(Several weeks pass.)
MR Y IN A STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION: Why am I still here? I didn’t do anything except sleep on the public sidewalk! Let me out! Let me out!
STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION DOCTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS: Mr X, we know that you’re a criminal, precisely because we say that you’re a criminal and we have the power to detain you, using force if necessary; and you’re also constantly having delusional episodes insisting that you’re not Mr X, so we’re detaining you indefinitely; and because you’re delusional and shout a lot, your case will be decided without your being actually present, in a democratic, legal, and therefore just way, and then you will be forcibly kept here in this State Mental Institution until you’re able to face reality again, so that you can stand trial for your crimes.
MR Y: But I’m Mr Y! I’m not Mr X!, I’m not Mr X!, I’m not Mr X! (Waves his arms and accidentally knocks a plastic cup off the table, spilling some kool-aid on the floor.)
STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION DOCTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS: There you go having delusional episodes again Mr X, and now you’re also manifesting violent tendencies, so we’ll have to sedate you heavily from now on.
(Two years pass.)
STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION DOCTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS: Mr Y, it’s come to our attention that you’re actually not Mr X, which is an unfortunate bureaucratic error. Our system is democratic, legal, and just, precisely because we say it is, and we control the means of enforcing your compliance—but hey, everybody makes mistakes! So you can leave today, and go back onto the streets as a free, homeless man with the fifty cents that were in your pocket when we legally detained you, in this democratic and just nation of ours, The Land O’ Liberty. So long, and good luck!
(A few weeks pass.)
MR Y, HIDING OUT AT HIS SISTER’S HOUSE SOMEWHERE IN NEW ENGLAND: Why did all this happen to me? Sis, I’m scared shitless that they’ll do it to me again, if I ever leave your property! I never want to go out into the world again!
(Two years pass.)
JOURNALISTS BANGING ON THE DOOR: Can we interview you and take your picture multiple times? We just found out about this “miscarriange of justice,” and it’s is going to be a really, really important human interest story on news feeds and social media for exactly one 24 hour news-and-social-media cycle!
LAWYERS ALSO BANGING ON THE DOOR: Can we handle your case? We’ll take it on for free, and then you can sue the people who did this to you, for millions and millions of dollars, and become rich and famous, so that you can have your own reality TV show filmed inside your sister’s property-boundaries and her house, and then you won’t have to go out into the world ever again!
MR Y, EATING BIRTHDAY CAKE: I don’t feel so good.
***
Now, if you haven’t already seen it in your news feed or on social media, then it’s important to know that, in all its essential details, with some allowances for the creative allegorical imagination, this actually happened.[i]
Moreover, precisely this sort of “miscarriage of justice” could happen at any time to anyone who dared wantonly to sleep on the public sidewalks, or who knowingly or unknowingly violated any other arbitrary morally and rationally unjustified law or command of the State’s government.
Therefore, according to the classical principle of argument-by-allegory,[ii] not only is it self-evidently the case that (i) the police and the State-run mental health system are destructive, deforming social institutions, that systematically oppress people by means of authoritarian coercion and systematically frustrate and warp the satisfaction of their true human needs,[iii] but also and more generally, it’s equally self-evidently the case that (ii) dignitarian anarcho-socialism is true.[iv]
NOTES
[i] See J.S. Kelleher, “Mistaken Identity Lands Man in Hawaii Mental Hospital For Over 2 Years,” Honolulu Star Advertiser (3 August 2021), available online at URL = <https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/08/03/breaking-news/mistaken-identity-lands-man-in-hawaii-mental-hospital-for-over-2-years/>.
[ii] See, e.g., Plato, “The Republic,” trans. P. Shorey, in E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds.), Plato: Collected Dialogues (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 573-844, at pp. 747-772 (book VII).
[iii] See M. Maiese and R. Hanna, The Mind-Body Politic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), esp. chs. 3 and 5, also available online in preview HERE.
[iv] See R. Hanna, “Radical Enlightenment: Existential Kantian Cosmopolitan Anarchism, With a Concluding Quasi-Federalist Postscript,” in D. Heidemann and K. Stoppenbrink (eds.), Join, Or Die: Philosophical Foundations of Federalism (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 63-90, also available online in preview HERE; R. Hanna, “Exiting the State and Debunking the State of Nature,” Con-Textos Kantianos 5 (2017), available online at URL = <https://www.con-textoskantianos.net/index.php/revista/article/view/228>; and R. Hanna, Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism: A Theological-Political Treatise (THE RATIONAL HUMAN CONDITION, Vol. 4) (New York: Nova Science, 2018), also available online in preview HERE.
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