In the kill zone

We don't know the details yet. But I imagine Doug Georgianni as another struggling, underpaid guy trying to find that illusive Arizona dream. Now he's dead, a young 51. Three months ago he took a job servicing the speed cameras on Phoenix freeways. Sunday night, while parked on the Loop 101 near 7th Ave. in a marked Department of Public Safety photo enforcement van, Georgianni was shot multiple times. The suspect, since arrested, is a white male (of course) driving a Chevy Suburban (of course).

I never completely understood the loud controversy over speed and red-light cameras. Metro Phoenix has a horrendous problem of major traffic violators, fatal and often spectacular wrecks and pedestrian killings, many hit-and-runs. Meanwhile, the religion of tax cuts and Arizona's unwillingness to fund its public sector to keep up with population growth mean there aren't enough traffic officers. The problem is made worse, of course, by sprawl, huge freeways and eight-lane "city streets," plus a population driving giant vehicles they can't really control on streets with increasing numbers of pedestrians. Even the former Catholic bishop came to grief this way, and in his character-revealing response of driving away from the victim like so many other 'Zonies had done.

Yet to the Kookocracy the speed cameras were the worst kind of "big brother." It's funny, they didn't have a problem with their party's implementation of torture and rendition as American policy, or with the tactics of "America's toughest sheriff." I wonder if any of them -- from the pols to the talk-radio "hosts" -- now regret the years they have spent fighting the cameras with the usual intemperate language?

Probably not. The alleged lack of due process and surveillance society they decried with the traffic cameras could be applied to them. They are out there doing Warp Seven inside their air-conditioned SUVs and pickups, imagining themselves cowboys on the range, the last rugged individualists. Never mind they were often in a rage already because, lacking walkable neighborhoods, close-in employment or transit, they were always running late, always getting stuck in traffic, a hundred-forty degrees surface temperature, a major expedition just to go to Bashas'. But don't infringe their vehicular liberty. Gotta floor it and catch the next bumper to tailgate.

The sheriff's casual attitude toward civil liberties, the state's quick willingness to imprison, the war on the underclass that sometimes, and sometimes not, involves illegal immigrants -- these are things happening to the other. Most of those dead pedestrians were poor people -- why did Biltmore Fashion Park and the Ritz get a tunnel under Camelback when locations in South Phoenix have much worse car-nage? And just like whipping up libertarian frenzy over traffic cams, demonizing the other is very good politics for the Kookocracy. It's especially useful in distracting the many struggling Anglos from the real cause of their troubles (Kook policies). It's divide and rule, in much the way the Southern oligarchs used blacks as the foil of poor whites during Jim Crow.

Unfortunately, many of those poor whites out there take the talk very seriously. They believe somebody's coming for their guns. They believe the other is taking everything they have; one is even president, and he's not even a citizen. Ignorant of American history or civics, they fervently hate government and get fresh injections of paranoia and venom hours every day on right-wing talk radio and Fox "News." They're living in a Mad Max world of auto warfare -- and in a state with such abundant firearms and lax laws that it is a major arms supplier to the brutal drug wars in Mexico.

And not all these guys are living in trailers out in Whitman. Saint Janet knows -- it helped inform her memo on the increasing virulence of right-wing extremist groups. What may be more dangerous still are the wannabes, the guys driving around, at speed, just toasty enough on booze or meth to turn off the last morality receptors in their sun-fried brains. The gun's right there on the seat...

So is it surprising that one of them fired what he assumed was a shot heard 'round the world at the fascist/communist/socialist traffic-cam van? It won't be the last. Wonder if the suspect was at a "tea party" last week -- packing, of course. One can't be too careful.

Comments

[Bob]

I've never understood the double standard of "What about illegal don't you understand?" when it comes to immigration vs. traffic law?

[soleri]

One of the most discouraging things about our media culture is the way our discourse and debates keep getting tugged to the right. As Bob says above, there are double standards that are weaponized in our culture war. Hence, advocating sedition, violence, and secession are somehow patriotic when right-wingers do it. But if anyone on the left criticized Bush, however, and it was aiding and comforting the enemy.

The angry old coot who shot up a Knoxville church last year wanted to rid the world of liberals. Apparently, if something is bothering you, it's the fault of liberals. It doesn't have to be factual, needless to say. The crazy who shot three Pittsburgh cops was certain his arsenal was about to be confiscated by Obama (helpfully suggested to him by talk-radio demogogues).

I sometimes try to explain to people that modernity isn't a conspiracy against the Good 'Ol Days. Political values change partly because people change and partly because the socioeconomic environment itself changes. Civilization is an effort to balance security and freedom. We struggle with it because we tend to value one polarity more than the other. It's a legitimate debate with multiple variables, but once the "other side" is deemed the enemy, anything is permitted, including murder.

I'm not sure how many leftists have killed innocents from ideological conviction over the past several decades. Maybe you could make an argument that Ted Kacynski was a lefty - the kind, sad to say, who mocked leftists. Still, the body count disproportionately favors right-wing killers.

Why isn't that an issue?

[Emil Pulsifer]

Arizona law enforcement agencies have actually delayed the placement of new speed cameras because the Republican dominated state legislature has threatened to shut the program down.

What's amazing about it is that speed camera tickets in metropolitan Phoenix are: (a) substantially LESS expensive than equivalent citations given by officers; (b) don't result in points on your driving record, unlike citations given by officers; (c) can sometimes simply be ignored without being served, unlike officer issued tickets which establish a hearing date from the start and which issue a default judgment against you if you ignore them.

Then there is the whole "speed cameras cause rear-end accidents" argument, but the fact is that ANY law enforcement presence on the freeways will cause speeders to brake suddenly when they notice it, whether a flash from a speed camera, a motorcycle cop on the median or embankment with a radar gun in his hand, or a DPS car travelling down the highway. So, unless the argument is to eliminate all law enforcement presence on roadways, I don't see why speed cameras should be singled out.

Or rather, I do, but not on the basis of specious arguments. The bottom line is that speed cameras are more effective because they operate 24/7 and can (at least potentially) cover more ground than patrol officers (who, incidentally, are thereby freed up to handle more important crime fighting tasks than babysitting freeways looking for speeders). That's the real reason why speed cameras are hated by speeders: they work.

There is NO constitutional right to speed. What we're dealing with, where the right-wing is concerned, is a bunch of whiny scofflaws. If you think you're a good enough driver to exceed the posted limit safely, then at least have the balls to pay your fine if and when you're caught instead of trying to wrap yourself up in pseudo-patriotic arguments.

A whole cottage industry has grown up in the media, attacking these cameras. Quite frequently, they quote unqualified amateurs with an ax to grind (Greg Mauz is a name that turns up again and again), citing erroneous (or simply fabricated) statistics from unidentified government reports. Those who take the trouble to contact reporters and track down the reports alluded to, soon find that the data has been misrepresented in such a wholesale fashion that anyone who had actually read the primary source documents would immediately realize the errors. I can only conclude that local journalists (including those at the Arizona Republic) are lazier than sin, unless they share the bias of "libertarian" ramrods like Mauz (possibly, but unlikely).