"Well, oops. Can't say I feel sorry for the idiot, we have a justice system in this country for a reason - if you're charged with a crime, you can't just choose not to obey the legal system."

Why not? It's called "self defense" from a corrupt legal system with corrupt enforcers.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is history in this country. Victimless crimes, civil asset forfeiture, "street justice" by cops, punitive arrests, false convictions, prison torture, prison rape.. the list goes on.

The result is that the innocent are often punished without conviction, or convicted and punished without having done anything wrong when "illegal" and "wrong" commonly fail to overlap, and even the genuinely guilty are often punished beyond what is legally proscribed and morally deserved.

Tell me, what crimes justify Corcoran State prison guards intentionally placing a small time pot head
alone in a cell with a large, violent gay rapist, as revenge for the victim criticizing the guards?

Why should any innocent person submit to such arbitrary and unpredictable abuse?

Sure, many real criminals could call themselves innocent.

But the system calls many innocent people guilty, and abuses them accordingly. The system is defective. Police are part of the system, and a LARGE part of that abuse.

The Sicilian mafia still enforces their own laws in some cities and countries. Some of those laws are just, some are a bit heavy-handed, and some are unjust outright.

The American Justice mafia is not much different.

Enforcers are no more holy, no more beyond question, and no more beyond resistance, than the laws they enforce. Bad laws are not enforced by good men - that is part of what makes them good men.

Should everyone just decide for themselves what is right and wrong, and let civil society break down into survival of the fittest, natural law, and anarchy, giving rise to arbitrary tribal law and the strong victimizing the weak?

We've already done that. It's where we are today! It's become very centralized and heirarchial, but it has never been just.

Over time new rights flourish while older ones fall out of fashion, but the overall level of injustice committed by the system isn't changing.

And all the while the enforcer leadership keeps its finger on the pulse of the public's pain threshold, wary not to push the cattle so far that the entire herd stampedes at once.

Why should Bill Cooper have submitted to this?

I don't believe Bill Cooper was an idiot. Like he predicted, sooner or later this nation of too many laws found an excuse to come after him for no good goddamn reason.

And as he promised, he fought back. He was tired of the bullshit so he sent his loved ones overseas for their own safety. Then he drew his line in the sand, and when it was crossed he fought back.

Police will shoot and kill civilians even for jaywalking. Bullshit, you say? But police already have their own OFFICIAL term for it. They call it "minimum necessary escalation in the force continuum".

Suppose I refuse to show ID and sign for that ticket. He'll try to take me prisoner.

Suppose I refuse to be arrested for that jaywalking ticket. He'll try to overpower me.

Suppose I successfuly resist being overpowered and arrested for that jaywalking ticket. He'll draw his gun and attempt the arrest again.

Suppose I continue to successfully resist. He'll shoot me. Shooting to kill, emptying his clip into my chest towards my heart as per his official training.

He'll never stop, never back down, never decide that regardless of any validity in the citation a jaywalking ticket is not worth killing someone. He'll just kill me.

For a jaywalking ticket.

I'm not saying it's their first choice. In fact, Im sure it's normally the last thing they want to do. But they are willing to do it, and that is just sick.

It doesn't take much to be killed by police. No capital crime, no horrible victim, no victim at all even.

Just a cop who thinks he has the authority of god, which is most every cop out there.

Same attitude that white supremists had towards blacks in old America, as they enforced "God's law".

Same attitude that the noble class of older Europe once had towards the peasant class, as they enforced "the King's Law".

Now it's the Fraternal Order of Police, as they enforce "the Law".

Same people, different badge.