We have rules in society, and for the most part, generally speaking and at their most basic level, they are good ones: don't rob, steal, kill, set your neighbor's house on fire, etc. But not all rules are equal, and while playing by them is usually good and the right thing to do – that's not always true.
“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”
Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes a rule or law is wrong in and of itself, like prohibition or Jim Crow laws. Sometimes people can change rules that are wrong and sometimes they can't, for a whole host of different reasons. Most often, I would say, because someone in power doesn't want it changed, likes it just the way it is, maybe even designed it to be just that way via lobbyists, lavish Big Money donations, gerrymandering, voter suppression, the usual republican machinations or such underhanded abominations as ALEC.
“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Martin Luther King Jr
So not all rules or laws are equally good or just. They are also not equitably enforced. Ask any poor person, ask any minority. Practically speaking there are different laws for different folks. I shouldn't need to provide evidence that drug laws, as merely one example, have been used against African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos so disproportionately as to make the notions of justice or fairness laughable, and not in a good way. The same is true of capital punishment ten times over. Our legal system is anything but just. And that means our society is anything but fair...as most of you know.
“It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”
Aristotle
The facade of legitimacy long-enjoyed by our 'justice' system has been unraveling for decades. Not that we were ever a paragon of legal virtue, but from my standpoint the great unraveling started with Nixon, accelerated with his pardon, continued through the Reagan debacle and all that followed, and the coup de gras was the complete wash re: the Bush Administration's war crimes and the concomitant Wall Street robbery of the world. Laws are now openly for the rest of us. At the top level there is no law.
When it comes to doing the right thing in our greed-driven pie-fight nation it becomes a question of what the right things are in the eyes of which powerful special interest. What monstrosity of a corporate/militarist agenda will reign?
Humanity needs to become its own special interest group before it's too late.
Our present scorched earth policy regarding planetary rape and human exploitation must end. Somebody must come to the rescue of the earth and its inhabitants. If humanity is worth saving, we need to act like it and step up to all the ecological, humanitarian and existential challenges we face as a species. We need to focus on these matters with the intensity of a thousand splendid suns. This is so much more important than going to the moon ever was, or another bogus war will ever be. We've got to get focused on the right things, and soon. We can't keep doing what we're doing. It can't keep being about the Benjamins and the Bombs. We've got to make it about something else. The survival of the human race works for me.
It's Simple
I'm not rooting for the home team anymore. I'm rooting for the humans.
People grow up with varying degrees of loyalty or allegiance to their country for various and sundry reasons. We are taught of course that loyalty to country is a good thing. We are taught that as an absolute value. That's what we are supposed to believe. It's not supposed to be contingent. We are supposed to embrace our country and support her equivocally. We are expected to love her unconditionally. That this is drilled into us from cradle to grave is why those most susceptible to propaganda, the least thoughtful or reflective among us, react so viscerally when our country's policies are criticized or questioned. In the 60s such folks used to say, “Our country, love it or leave it!” Questioning it simply was not an option. How dare anyone not support the home team?
Never mind that the home team was secretly and not so secretly murdering millions of mostly innocent people, and feeding thousands of unoffending American youth into a meat-grinder of their own contrivance - and not in the interest of democracy as they claimed but in the interest of capitalism – which was classified.
What should a person do if they discover that their country is shining on the whole world, lying through its teeth and shamefully killing millions for crass economic gain? What is the right thing to do in such a situation? That was the question Daniel Ellsberg had to wrestle with in the course of his life. Not all of us will have to deal with that question in such a personal way - but some of us will. Some of us do. Many of those are now on the run, in hiding or seeking asylum in foreign lands.
Killing people for profit is an evil thing to do, and yet that's what the people who run our country are up to. To support them in doing it or to believe what they say about virtually anything is a betrayal of everything that is right, just or true. Stubbornly refusing to believe it changes nothing. Things have gotten quite serious.
“America has no functioning democracy.”
Jimmy Carter
We live in a world where playing by the rules is not always the right thing to do. Sometimes we have to improvise. Sometimes we have to use our own best judgment, be guided by our conscience. It's not always right to follow orders. It's one thing to not go by the rules for personal gain or for some other nefarious purpose, but quite another to break the rules in order to do the right thing. We should always, to the best of our ability, do the right thing. No matter what. Not even a (usually) good rule should keep us from doing what's right.
Don't confuse the symbol (law) with the reality it symbolizes (justice).
It comes down to the question of what is the right thing to do. Can we just let people answer that for themselves all willy-nilly? With books as thoroughly cooked as our own, with a corrupt and unjust system such as we have, with selfish and greedy billionaires driving us all to global ecocide, we better hope they do. And we better hope they're well-equipped for the task. This is where allowing public education to flourish would have helped. Let's make a note of that for the future.
“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”
Howard Zinn
“Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. ”
Arundhati Roy
“If we don’t rebel, if we’re not physically in an active rebellion, then it’s spiritual death.”
Chris Hedges
Between the Trayvon travesty, the many disturbing and tragic consequences of flooding a society with guns and unreality, the droning and the bombing, the on-going screw-job we call an economy, the hounding of medical marijuana patients, the tazing of taggers and children, the NSA revelations (thanks Edward), the fracking and the looting, the lying and the shafting, people are getting a bit miffed. The sleeping masses are threatening to become restless...at long last.
Have they finally gone too far? When they (the 1%) begin to ask themselves that question the response is frequently to start working the pressure relief valves – to throw the mob a bone or three.
They might say things like, 'we welcome the debate.' They might propose changing some of the wrong they've done in some small or symbolic way. They might decide to ease up on the gay thing the pot thing and some other things too. Maybe ease up on the mandatory sentencing. They might allow gays in the military or endorse gay marriage. But be reminded that these things cost the 1% nothing. Are they welcome developments? Yes, undeniably, most emphatically, absolutely yes! But don't let them use such tactics to lull us back into complacency. The things we need to happen now will cost them and cost them dearly - and they won't do them willingly.
I speak of course of the interrelated issues of clean renewable energy, climate change, resource preservation, wealth allocation, agricultural and ecological sustainability, preservation and distribution of potable water, world health, global peace and humanitarian justice. All of these closely related and intertwined things are crucial to a reasonable future for humanity – or a future for our species at all.
We must take these things seriously and not let them be drowned out by human folly, selfishness or greed – or get glossed over by the rich and powerful who are insanely content with things just the way they are. We must take the present opportunity to begin to resolve these existential problems for posterity. Shame on us if we don't.
I am not ungrateful for any positive movement toward long overdue change, but don't be fooled by gestures, empty or otherwise. Don't let them lie and tap-dance their way out of this. Don't be easily mollified. Our work is not done.
Sen. Ron Wyden On NSA Spying: It's As Bad As Snowden Says
If we do not seize this moment in history to reform our surveillance laws, we will all live to regret it.
And all those other things too, Senator. Now is the time – the time to do the right thing.
I believe in the good things coming.