The best and the worst
The Ahmaud Arbery case clearly shows how good our justice system could be. That’s until you actually pay attention to everything that went into that case. You had someone from law enforcement (though retired) taking the law and throwing it down on its ear.
You had a prosecutor using judgment so outrageous that they ended up being charged with a crime. You had someone filming the whole incident in what could be described as either the height of foolishness, act of real foresight, or strategy gone wrong. You had the trial itself that was anything but smooth. We obviously have high-minded ways of describing this collision of misshapen events, but the kids probably have pegged it best. They call it a “shit show.”
Yet, after all of that malarkey, justice was somehow served. The guilty parties were actually found guilty. While that explanation seems so far out of whack to Arbery’s friends and family, it is far better than the alternative up in Wisconsin. It hardly qualifies as the best of times, but in comparison I guess it will have to do.
In the background somewhere off camera is the debate over critical race theory. On the one hand, one can easily say that justice was served, so why the need to discuss race? Except we can’t avoid looking at how it was served. We can’t avoid looking at why it was served. We can’t avoid the feeling that it would very likely have not been served at all save a little stupid luck along the way. If the footage of the murder had not been captured on camera and sent to the right people it would have never been served.
Sometimes these things are captured for posterity sake and justice still isn’t served. More often than not it isn’t. When we were young, our elders taught us that character is made up of the things we do when no one is watching. Maybe we take the extra cookie or slack off at work when the supervisor is out. That’s small potatoes. If we pervert justice because we can, then do we really need a high-minded academic theory to tell us we’ve done it? Is it really that difficult to imagine it happening more often?
Most people are smart enough to take only one extra cookie from the cookie jar. They don’t raid the whole thing because that would be too obvious. Justice isn’t grotesquely biased on most occasions. That would be too obvious. We eat around at the corners until the advantage is clear. We do it so that we have plausible deniability. So yes, justice was served. It was only served because the whole world was watching. Still, there are times when even that is not enough.
It was also served because (since the world was watching and the case got assigned to her) a middle-aged woman was smart enough to argue the facts of the case, giving a local jury the chance to do the right thing, and the judge wasn’t a completely biased a**hat.
I’m not going to feel all pissy about it. I’m just going to feel relief that there are still reasonable people in responsible positions, sometimes in unexpected places.
1So, is Ronnie Jackson in a race to the bottom of the Texas QGOP to see who can say the most outrageous piece of stupid. I don’t think he was born with enough natural talent to compete with the Gomerts /Cruz level of nutzy.
2CRT is wasicu’s way of not hurting wasicu feelers. They did unspeakable horrors to POC and now want to erase that history so present day and future wasicu’s don’t have to live withn shame and embarrassment.
On a bright note, Mathew Macolywhat’sitsname is not running for A-Butt’s job.
3I know this is mostly OT, but I’ve been percolating on it for awhile. We’ve talked a lot about how ammosexuals’ dream come true is permitless carry. They claim it’ll make us all safer, having guns in the hands of all the good guys.
4All the time.
IMHO, one of the most important things illustrated by the Rittenhouse trial and the Arbery trial is something that may not be apparent to a lot of people. (Folks here excluded)
I imagine lots of folks realize that those guys thought of themselves as some sort of protective heroes.
Some think they went looking for somebody to shoot.
How much the second thing is true probably varies from one ammosexual to another.
But I believe that the core thought that runs through their heads is constant. They put themselves into those situations.
The situations will start being more commonplace the more guns are carried. And the carriers will start applying the mantra to more people whether they’re armed or not, because of the situation the ammosexuals themselves have created.
And the core thought is.
“Don’t make me shoot you.”
There’s a reason Barney Fife wasn’t allowed to carry a loaded weapon. When guns interact with racism it can be a horrific sight to behold. Fife wasn’t racist but he was an idiot. An idiot and a gun also creates horrible situations. Then you get the racist idiot. We could go on and on.
I suppose the kernel that ties it all together is self defense and what exactly that means. There’s the law and there’s common sense. Thomas Paine is somewhere rolling around in his grave. If I initiate a conflict then self defense doesn’t exist any longer. That’s common sense. If I see a big gun I’ll either react or not, but I’m doing something to react to a provocative stimuli. Therefore I’m defending myself either by acting or avoiding. You cannot be the aggressor and defend yourself at the same time.
5This should be self explanatory….
As flagged by Judd Legum on Twitter, Moms for Liberty filed a complaint with the Tennessee Department of Education asking it to remove several books from the elementary school curriculum, including Frances Ruffin’s book “Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington” and “Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story” by Ruby Bridges.
In the filing, the group objected to the Ruffin book for showing “photographs of white firemen blasting Black children to the point of ‘bruising their bodies and ripping off their clothes'” and of showing segregated drinking fountains.
These photographs, according to Moms for Liberty, imposed extreme emotional hardships on students despite being historically accurate.
6Again sort of OT, but as much as we’ve heard about foreign actors like Russia, China and Iran meddling in our affairs, I can’t help but wonder about the timing of some current events. We know that hatred has been massively stoked on social media. And so many times there’s no way of knowing who’s behind it. Foreign actors, domestic terrorists, or just instigators who think it’s hilarious.
7But does anybody else find it interesting that these smash and grab robberies started happening all in multiple places shortly after the Rittenhouse trial?