Sunday, November 25, 2007

Find the Globe Today

The Boston Globe has a couple of interesting, corr sent-related stories up today that you might want to check out as you start your diet. One is a story that proves that "justice" indeed is irrelevant to our system, just as defense lawyers have been telling us now. If Jesus wanted us to treat prisoners humanely, just imagine what he would think of how we treat the innocent folks we wrongly send to prison after we find out and let them out. Jefferson trembled for America when he feared God was just because of slavery, he must be twirling in his grave right now about innocent inmates. And add to that the lack of attention paid to actually reopening the cases that the guys were sent to prison for and you can see that our "justice" theater play is about chest-thumping and self-exaltation, not justice and the legitimacy of law. Just shameful and sad.

The other is a book review essay on fear and how insane we've become after 9/11 in how we've reacted. As one of the books notes, elements of this country have thrived on fear and undermined our creation for our entire existence, and it's hard to see how our current cowardice in the face of terrorism and criminals and failure to address them both forthrightly and with character and integrity isn't just a continuing offshoot of our McCarthyist past and shivering at commie boogeymen who turned out to be about as incompetent and self-defeating and short-term as any satans in history. Lose one boogeyman, find another when you have strong trends toward paranoia and self-doubt. The applications to our counterproductive overreactions to crime and to druggies and sex offenders are obvious as you read. Again, it's just sad to see a country founded so enthusiastically on the average person's ability to self-govern intelligently and to face challenges head-on has turned into such a quivering mass, blustering wildly with its massive weapons but weak and getting worse at its core. And reading this, you understand again how "smart on crime" will get its butt kicked every time by "tough on crime" in a nation that's lost the ability to stand up for itself against the real problems that face us.

Man, bet you didn't expect such sunniness this soon after a long weekend, did you?

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