I’ve noticed lately that the number of people advocating violence to achieve their goals has increased at a truly alarming rate. What’s really disturbing is that it seems equally in play, both on the Right and on the Left. Why is this phenomena so present in today’s political and social atmosphere? . I’m not sure,, but it seems to me that it is the result of a breakdown in our social and criminal justice systems, coupled with a modern communications system that informs all of us, of what is going on, almost immediately.
We have been told, in this country, that our justice system is second to none, but when outside organizations rate us on a scale of livability we find that we are down in the teens on the list, a good part due to the way we officially treat people and how we go about upholding or ignoring our laws. There may be no concept more unsettling to the individual than unequal justice under the law and right now that devastating disease has reached epidemic levels in this country.
When out Attorney General states that some big businesses are too big to jail and when his idiotic statement creates a furious backlash, instead of doing something to show how wrong he was he changes his statement to; no they aren’t, it makes every person in the country that isn’t too big to jail, furious. When a bunch of heavily armed red-neck half wits, many claiming to vow allegiance to Nazi principals create an armed standoff in support of a defiant deadbeat racist, about whom, the best thing that can be said, is that he only owes the government a million bucks and no one in government does anything about it, it really pisses off anyone who has been the perpetrator of some minor offense and has had the government come down on him with both feet.
I sat in a courtroom in the South Bronx a couple of weeks ago and watched as around a hundred defendants were paraded in front of a judge in a six-hour period. Probably 70% of them were possession cases that had been instituted by stop and frisk actions by street cops., a ridiculous process that isn’t aimed at taking criminals off the streets but at building up personal arrest totals for later promotion. This, in an age where intelligent states are legalizing pot. As I sat there, I began to understand why, when I had brought chargea against a bill collector who had collected a substantial amount of money for me and then absconded with it, the ADA told me that they were too busy to deal with it. This, even though she knew the thief and had already had other complaints against him.
But the system thought it was more important to pick up black teenagers on possession charges that hurt no one, than to go after a thief who had actually stolen from someone.
Of course, anyone who is familiar with the system knows that those pot arrests were made to protect the cops that made them from having made to many stop and frisks without reason.
In a courtroom where hundreds of defendants and their friends and families came and went in that six-hour period, aside from court personnel, I was the only white person in attendance. This is as much a way to build resentment and hatred in a community as to have a drone drop a bomb on a wedding in Afghanistan.
Anyone who attended the Occupy rallies in Zucotti park in Manhattan two years ago knows the burning anger caused by the futility of experiencing the injustice of trying to do something good, doing it calmly and with restraint, and still being attacked by police bullies under a commissioner who had no understanding of what was going on and a mayor who sided with the target of the demonstrations, the banks and Wall Street thieves who had already brought down the world’s economy.
I stood and watched these kids, trying to do things the right way but being bullied, beaten, gassed and abused by uniformed thugs, directed by uniformed Nazi’s all of whom were supposed to be upholding the law but all of whom were actually doing the bidding of those power brokers who had already done their best to destroy the nation. As I watched these storm troopers, whose salaries wee paid by my taxes, abuse a hunch of kids who were peacefully demonstrating their moral outrage at what had been allowed to happen to our country because there really are businesses that are politically too connected to fail, it occurred to me how much damage that I could do a that moment with an AK47. Fortunately I didn’t have one but on later recollection I understood how others, maybe younger, maybe angrier, maybe less in control of their own personal demons, could easily move in that direction.
The point I’m trying to make is that nothing makes us angrier than perceived injustice. This is a good sign for us as a species. But it is also a harbinger of disaster for a country that seems too busy being greedy, too busy acquiring power, too busy ignoring those with true grievances to do the right thing.
A young woman named Cecily McMillan was convicted in Manhattan court yesterday of assaulting a police officer during a Occupy demonstration. She claimed that he grabbed her from behind by the breast and she reacted by hitting him in the eye with her elbow. The fact that the officer involved had a record of abuse and that he had already abused several other women that night was not allowed in evidence. That alone will call for an appeal but how much easier and fairer for the judge to let the jury see these facts when making their decision. It was a ruling based on some insignificant point of law, when the judge’s ruling should have been based on what was right. That’s only part of the problem with the court system. I have been in many courts in my long life for many reasons and although I have heard a lot of talk about the law, I have never heard any discussion of justice. What are the courts for, what is the law for, except to serve justice? When the law becomes the goal instead of the means to reach the goal, the system fails utterly. And that’s what’s going on. That’s why a significant segment of the public feels that it has been betrayed, that’s why people all around he country have given up; that’s why they are picking up guns.
The problem is, that having lived with the thought process of our government for almost eight decades, am forced to the conclusion that the government will not meet this approaching wave of trouble by fixing the problem but by raising the level of violence. The BLM did the right thing in Nevada by backing off, but it can’t be left that way or even more people will see the injustice. The government must now, deal firmly with all those who drew weapons against the Park Rangers. The government must see the stupidity of the Manhattan judge and dismiss the case against Ms McMillan on appeal. The government must throw bankers who break the law in jail.
Injustice breeds violence. We have already experienced enough injustice in this country in the last decade to start another civil war. Let’s hope that cooler, stronger heads will see the problem and move to deal with it before it festers and destroys the nation.