Dear John Mitchell: You're no longer the worst AG in memory

I saw the headline and wondered if Barr is just trolling us.  He isn't:

Barr then recalled a scene in 1971’s Dirty Harry where Eastwood’s character – a loose-cannon cop – confronts a serial killer who has surrendered, but buried a hostage alive. Eastwood’s character has seconds in the movie to act to find and rescue the hostage, but the serial killer won’t give up the information.

In the attorney general’s telling, Dirty Harry “shoots him in the leg or something and the guy tells him where it is.”

“I say, now, was that an unjust or morally repellent act? Is the reason that the audience applauds when that happens because the audience is morally bankrupt?” Barr asked, incredulously. “Or is there something else going on there?”

Let me stop there and say:  yes, it was an unjust and a morally repellent act.  So is kidnapping and live burial, but this isn't an argument of "becoming like them."  This is the argument that, in the movies, the scriptwriter gets to determine who the hero is and what his actions precipitate.  In real life, if you shoot someone in the leg, is it truth serum that makes them confess without prevarication, or is it more likely to make them tell you whatever you want to hear?  After all, in that scenario the cop had an obligation to tell others where to dig, and to get the prisoner to a hospital.  If the prisoner was lying, was the cop gonna shoot him again in the hospital?  This isn't even a serious argument about criminal justice; this is just third-grade nonsense. It's offensive a man in his position speaks this way.

Barr’s response on the podcast came immediately after a discussion about the ongoing response to documented instances of police brutality around the country.

Antholis had asked Barr about his belief in the so-called “Ferguson effect,” the idea that anti-police brutality protests following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, have led to more timid police and increased crime rates.

“If police feel that they are going to be unfairly treated or unjustly disciplined for something they felt was a righteous act of self defense, and there’d be what they feel is unfair Monday morning quarterbacking, they will not take those risks,” Barr said.

So there are only two alternatives?  Let police run wild and do as they please, because after all if you're a bad guy you deserve it?  Or tie the police's hands so they can do nothing and we all descend into criminal anarchy?  Again, this isn't even a serious dichotomy, except to people who think all movies are news documentaries.

In response to the next question, about his love of the TV show Banshee, Barr said that he enjoyed the show in part because it delves into a “basic tension between justice in the sense of the ultimate outcome versus justice as a process.”

“Americans have tended recently to view [justice] more as a process, as if the criminal justice process is justice, and it isn’t,” Barr said. “It’s a process that’s supposed to achieve justice, but very frequently doesn’t.”

“That’s the theme in the Dirty Harry movies,” he added, before also referencing Death Wish.

"Justice" defined here as being "the bad guy gets what's coming to him."  Notably, these two movies (full disclosure, I don't know the TV show) don't involve the criminal justice system at all.  Nobody ever gets to court. It's just white guys with guns shooting anybody they please because:  white guys with guns.  Further full disclosure:  I like "Dirty Harry," but even I recognize that as a reflection of the world, it's a nightmare, not wish fulfillment.  Besides, at the end of the movie, Harry throws his badge in the water and walks away.  He's done with the criminal justice system.

Is that what Barr is advocating? Strong men with guns are society's saviors? Isn't the name for that fascism?