Official language is always going to be stilted because it is written by a committee, and each of the various stakeholders (see?) who produce any officialese must write it in such a way as to make sure they don’t offend against the opinions or sensibility of any of the others. Common denominators make for bad copy. There are exceptions to this, such as the Declaration of Independence, which shows real artistry while also doing the work of law and government. But usually not. If you give infinite monkeys infinite time to tap the keys of infinite typewriters, supposedly, you’ll eventually get Hamlet. But if you give the typewriters to their aides, you’ll just get U.N. resolutions condemning Israel.
I have been reading in the MinnPost about Minneapolis’s “explanatory language saga,” which is a legal fight over the wording of the ballot measures designed to do what we are no longer supposed to call “defunding the police.” Hennepin County seems to be overrun by control freaks who are not content to let the people research how to vote and decide. The police defunders are trying to put the ballot question in absurd, activist jargon to goad voters into voting for their side, preferring the ballot to ask whether “to strike and replace the Police Department with a Department of Public Safety that employs a comprehensive public health approach.” To counter this, opponents insisted that it carry an “explanatory note.” Everyone thinks the voters are stupid.
The original ballot question was longer, demanding six bullet points about defunding the police. One would create a “Commissioner of Public Safety” outside of mayoral supervision. Another would disempower the city council from levying property taxes that fund law enforcement. It turns out its phrasing was wildly illegal, as you can’t argue for your policy on the ballot itself. A replacement phrasing, post-lawsuit, also contained an explanation. That was ruled illegal, too. With the deadline to finalize the phrasing looming at midnight, a council settled on a shorter last-minute compromise version, asking: “Shall the Minneapolis City Charter be amended to strike and replace the Police Department with a Department of Public Safety, which could include licensed peace officers (police officers) if necessary?”
The phrase “peace officer” is so obviously dystopian that I am surprised it got through. But that’s why I am not on committees like this. It’s fascinating and funny that they knew that the phrase was meaningless enough to need a parenthetical “(police officer)” to explain what it meant, but not enough to know to cut it.
Similarly, it’s darkly hilarious that the people writing this simply couldn’t see their way to dropping the language of “Department of Public Safety,” with its glaring redolence of the French Revolution’s “Committee of Public Safety,” a different group of squabbling leftist utopians bent on power. The location of the Tennis Court Oath that started the revolution was selected by one Dr. Guillotin, who would soon have an execution device named for him. Leadership also included such lovely peace officers as Maximillian Robespierre and Georges Danton, who organized the Reign of Terror as a “public safety” measure. Usually, woke people wish to avoid even verbally recalling historical horrors, though I suppose only the right-wing ones.
If the ballot passes, and if Minnesota creates a system such as New York’s Excelsior Pass vaccine passport, perhaps Minneapolitans may soon live in a world where their bars can be raided by “peace officers” from the “Department of Public Safety” asking whether they have the proper papers to enjoy a public accommodation. Then, finally, progressives will have defeated the menace of police overreach.
