Whereas the Georgia in North
America has been a member-state of the U.S. from that union’s beginning, the
Georgia in Europe was still not annexed by the E.U. slightly more than 30 years
after that Union’s beginning. Whether to join an empire-scale union of states
is a political decision, as a union of states is a political animal. When a
prospective state government criminalizes political protest and public discourse
on that decision, such a government violates the federal requirement that the
state governments adhere to democratic principles, which exclude criminalizing
the political opposition. The government of Georgia in Europe crossed this line
when a politician of the opposition was arrested for insulting the state
police.
Just days after protests
against the pro-Russian leanings of the ruling Georgian Dream group began in
May, 2025, police detained Nika Melia, “one of the figureheads for Georgia’s
pro-Western Coalition for Change” and who was in his car at the time rather
than at a protest.[1]
That “he was bundled away by a large group of people in civilian clothing . . .
on charges of verbally insulting a law enforcement officer” undercuts the
government’s claim that the arrest was of a criminal rather than a political
nature.[2]
Typically when a motorist is given a speeding ticket, a large number of people not
wearing police uniforms does not deliver the ticket and haul the driver away.
As for the charge of verbally insulting
a police employee, which is distinct from assaulting such an employee, not
even municipal employees are gods (although generals on a battlefield may come
close). In fact, Nietzsche’s expression human, all too human sadly
applies all too often to police around the world because such power as in being
legally permitted to use a club, taser, or gun is all too tempting for human pride
and presumptuousness to abuse. In other words, police itself can be said to be
a necessary evil because human nature itself is not strong enough to responsibly
and proportionally use police power.
Continuing on the distinction
between verbally insulting and physically assaulting someone, only the former
can fall under free speech (i.e., political speech). Only the former brings to
mind the thought police in George Orwell’s book, 1984. In other words,
to make insulting a state functionary a crime comes dangerously close to making
certain thoughts or beliefs illegal if they are verbally expressed. Even
criminalizing publicly insulting a deity, which no police employee has been, is,
or ever will be, essentially makes certain thoughts or beliefs, which are
interior to a mind and thus inherently beyond the reach of the state, verboten.
The contradiction is in making something inherently beyond the reach of the
state to control subject nonetheless to such control. Totalitarianism itself
may be said to end in such a contradiction.
Georgia’s chances of being
annexed by the E.U. were thus being lessened by the criminalizing of verbally
insulting police employees, who are, after all, taxpayer funded, and the detention
of Nika Melia in particular. His criticism of the pro-Russian ruling Georgian
Dream group was also a criticism of that government putting on hold the
annexation process. Russia’s President Putin had made no secret of his strong preference
that the E.U. not extend eastward, and the Georgian Dream group in
Georgia’s government may have been doing Putin’s bidding in literally arresting
pro-E.U. political beliefs. If in fact the vast majority of residents in
Georgia were in favor of their state being annexed by the E.U., then the
Georgian Dream regime was on tenuous grounds from a democratic standpoint not
only in unilaterally bringing that process to a stop, but also in arresting
pro-E.U./anti-Russian politicians. Interestingly, most of Serbia’s residents may
have been opposed then to Serbia being annexed by the E.U. because of the higher
prices and decrease in population (and increase in immigration) that had occurred
in Croatia since it had become an E.U. state; and yet, Serbians tended to
oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So being against annexation by the E.U. did
not necessarily come from pro-Russia sentiment.
2. Ibid.
