I’m watching the news (always a mistake), and I’m seeing allegations against Roy Moore, an Alabama judge accused of sexually assaulting an underage girl (one of several, as it turns out). Moore is known around the U.S. as a bigot, a racist, a morally bereft man who uses his power and authority to destroy the lives of innocent people while profiting from their misery. Unfortunately, he’s also rather popular in the state of Alabama, where he’ll likely be elected to office once again.
It got me thinking about how so many of the people put in charge of our justice system end up being those who would sit behind bars were their roles reversed. Lawmakers, law enforcers, legal interpreters, people who play with the system to get their desired outcome can so easily manipulate it to send innocents off to have their reputations abused, their bodies abused, their hearts and minds abused, and then wipe their hands of the blood and call it a good day. It does more than bother me, it incenses me.
Our legal system is designed to protect the powerful and privileged. Those who do not have the money or influence are subject to the whims of human avarice, greed, and opportunism. It is a dangerously flawed system, one that relies upon the ignorant complicity of a populace that equates morality with legality.
In short, we have left the foxes in charge of the hen house, and we’re letting them cart off the hens to slaughter, all with our blessing. The United States is a nation stocked with some of the kindest souls you’ll ever meet. We are a generous, loving people, but there are areas where we fall, and fall hard. That is, we have a penchant for jingoism. Toss a flag up in the air, say a few pretty words about patriotism, the troops, and freedom, and we’re starry eyed and ready to let go of hard earned rights in order to “stop the bad guys,” whomever they may be today.
I believe that we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by a team of foxes; men and women who prey on the ignorant and innocent. We open ourselves to their authoritarianism, their fascism, and we accept it as a part of our own ideology. There is resistance, right now, but how long until resistance becomes annoyance, and until that annoyance becomes mild inconvenience, and then just “first world problems,” and finally it becomes relegated to small pockets, incapable of pushing back against a militaristic juggernaut that has the consent of a people who think they are free, and on the right side of legal morality.
We already see flavors of propaganda here and there, it’s practically built right into our news media. It’s easy to deploy on our social media, as the 2016 election quickly proved. We live in a dangerous time, where someone’s life can be utterly destroyed because of a rumor, or due to a smear campaign. There was a time when engaging in such campaigns was costly and risky for the deceiver, but these days it’s as easy as pressing the “post” button, and it can be done by the richest or the poorest, who will eat themselves alive to please their wealthy masters.
I worry because I know where I stand on things, and some of those stances are not popular in the United States. I’m a socialist, I’m an atheist, I am a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, and while people at large are okay with these things, those in power who hold the keys to every locked door do not necessarily feel the same. We live in a growing police state, in an electronic surveillance state. This isn’t my (admitted) paranoia at play, this is the country in which we live today, a country that offers the illusion of choice, a nation that supplies dreams to the masses, ones tailored to the benefit of those who seek to hold on to their ill-gotten power.
They will ride the legality of morality, and continue to be seen as the best of our nation, and true patriots, while those who defend the weak, who work to protect the innocent, who seek only to do good, to benefit humanity as a whole, they are smeared, their reputations destroyed with the wisp of a whispered word, and the mobs will go along with them because it will be gifted to them in a pretty package, flashy, and bright, with lots of noise to distract and discombobulate.
The foxes are in charge of the hen house, and the hens offer up their throats for the taking. I am concerned about what our future holds here in the U.S.