Unjust America: Metering The Casualties
By Robert S. Becker
24 August, 2010
Countercurrents.org
As rightwing distemper feeds the frenzied run-up to the midterms, 'refudiating' today's mounting degrees of American injustice is nearly impossible. Not that all injustice accrues to GOP reactionaries, only most, and certainly the most extreme wedge issues: Islamophobia, racism, nativism (especially towards Latin guest workers), threats to amend Constitutional mandates, militarized religious crusades, and the successful defamation of our Christian, American, pro-corporate president as "foreign other."
What we need, beyond the pathetic "Homeland Security Advisory System" (colorized terrorist threat levels) is a national Justice-Injustice Meter, pointing us towards a more just society or the opposite. What kind of instrument would otherwise unify the cacophony of chaos that plagues radio and TV? As instructed by our Homeland Security website, "All Americans" should 1) "stay informed about what to do during an emergency" and 2) "continue to be vigilant, take notice of their surroundings, and report suspicious items or activities to local authorities immediately."
Isn't that what we of the contested "professional left" perform with ardor - stay informed and vigilant, declare (Constitutional) emergencies, notice surroundings and reporting suspicious (subversive, anti-American) activities to local authorities? Are we to blame when White House "authorities" consider us "insane," or crazed, drug addicts?
When Injustice Rules, Justice Flees
One can ferret out conditions that still favor an arguably just, at least orderly society: our electricity works, dying from disease or starvation is uncommon, Medicare and Social Security function, we pay taxes and elections confirm officials. Despite two years into a scary Great Recession, are there reports of major, violent uprisings by the unemployed? Certainly, there's more bluff than battle from voices favoring secession or bullying insurgencies against minorities. Okay, we need more variety of political street protests, but that's another topic. There's some justice in having no more serious crime than during good times.
Notably, gay rights are inexorably slogging ahead, making significant legal gains, fighting off prejudiced opponents, and benefiting from demographic shifts (as oldsters depart). That "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" still penalizes loyal soldiers - yes, that undermines progress, but orientation dismissals are doomed, we hope, before 2012.
And yet injustice rules: our Constitution, hardly restored from eight years of Bush-Cheney's depth charges, absorbs body blows, with grossly insufficient defense from Democrats. GOP propaganda undercuts the Bill of Rights, seeking to redefine citizenship while misrepresenting established protections on speech and religion. Both racist profiling and presumption of guilt driving Arizona's immigration law affront long-held traditions of fairness and due process - rightly challenged by the Obama administration. Likewise, polarized attacks targeting the misnamed "Ground Zero mosque" reverse our core rights to worship, plus impugn law-abiding Americans who honor all local zoning rules while separating themselves clearly from 9/11 betrayers of Islam.
Cynical rightwingers who invoke "hallowed ground" condemn their own intolerance, for they contaminate a sacred national trust by demagoging our first, most hallowed right - uncensored worship. That this unjust ambush dominates the media shames our history and broadcasts to the world our latest hypocrisy. Equating law-abiding Muslim citizens with terrorist murderers besmirches our nation's moral standing, a low point even for ruthless Gingrich-Palin-FOX reactionaries.
Faux First Amendment Claims
Likewise, it's outrageous (and egregious law) for Dr. Laura to cast herself as a First Amendment victim: she was unloaded by sponsors, not slapped by government. Ditto Palin's idiotic defense, telling her don't "retreat, reload." What, reload hate speech against mortified public opinion? You'd think by now the unhinged hussy from Wasilla would learn this Amendment protects speech from official control, not public horror at bigotry too easy with racial slurs.
Further injustices: most Americans challenge the ominous Supreme Court decision that opened corporate floodgates to commandeer our elections (the Citizens United decision). If the richest entities can openly procure unlimited influence, government will become less open and far more limited. Especially unjust is News Corporation's million-dollar campaign donation to Republicans, which undermines the press' special role as educator and investigator of private and public concerns. Special legalisms shield reporters (and sources) to encourage independent checks on organizational power, secrecy, and/or duplicity. Freedom of the press withers when media owners own politicians - or, if the Sharon Angles of the world reign, foster a press only for fundraising and softball questions.
Equally permanent blots on the American injustice meter are two, seemingly endless, forever misguided, preemptive Mid-east invasions. We can casually rename Iraqi "combat troops" as "military advisers" (echoing Vietnam) but it still feels like changing chairs on the Titanic. That the Iraq War was draped in deception defines an unjust war, and no one has yet justified what national security was at stake. That Afghan militarism means predatory drones kill non-combatants, especially women and children, doubles the injustice and brutality. That a bloated, industrial monolith called "counterterrorism," with its own perpetual life-span, speaks to more (and every expensive) injustices carried over from Bush-Cheney.
That makes Obama no innocent when totaling injustices, adding his own collusion with BP to cover up oil spill liability and the indictment by his Justice Dept. of courageous whistleblowers. Add in the White House assassination program for unindicted American citizens, plus extending permanent incarceration, rendition (virtual torture) and secret prisons. The injustice of abruptly firing Shirley Sherrod was only partly redeemed by quick reversal.
Justice, requisite of civilization
Finally, cracks widen in our criminal justice system, as Rod Blagojevich walks on 23 counts of what he trivialized as mere "political horse-trading." Don't Blago's own taped admissions confirm him the poster child for corruption, conspiracy, extortion, racketeering, and corrosive slime? If Blago walks because corruption is considered common practice, per one key juror, that indicts our entire system of government as unjust, a lurid hothouse of extortion and conspiracies. Of course, we can't invoke blameless retirees like Dick Cheney because Speaker Pelosi took impeachment "off the table" for Congress - and President Obama, mistakenly following suit, took an administration's crimes "off the table" for all of history. Justice deferred, or buried, is no justice at all.
Appalling court outcomes, whether reflecting celebrity, big bucks, or power, blast away at John Adams' noble sentiment, "we are a nation of laws, not of men." If we can't make examples of the stupidest, most narcissistic, criminals like Blago, we have no chance against the Cheneys, whose masterful connivances match greater savvy about rigging the system - and walking away scot-free.
Ultimately, justice isn't one optional convenience value but the "crowning glory of virtues" (Cicero), the "firmest pillar of government" (Washington), nothing less than the "first requisite of civilization (Freud). Alexander Hamilton elevated justice as "the first duty of society," anticipating M. L. King's wonderful summation, "the moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice." That elbow in America has broken down, its blood flow starved by a system so overrun by money that jurors excuse provincial wickedness because Washington boasts more noxious schemers, overtly buying and selling senators, even candidates and elections, without oversight, let alone penalty.
Tea Partiers whine about wanting "their" country back without knowing "their" history or Constitution, without realizing "justice for all" means just that - a privilege not only for white, small-town, rather Christian ultra-conservatives. If we don't starting talk about the plague of injustices, they will expand further. That means American standards for justice will dissipate like an oil slick on open water, and we will have government for the special interests and by the special interests. Nor exactly what A. Lincoln or the Founders had in mind.
