Does Crime Pay?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

George Bush the Lesser remains unrepentant for his crimes against the economy and unprosecuted for his crimes against the Constitution. Wall Street bankers smile all the way to the Bahamas to visit their money, celebrating the steady rise of CEO salaries back to pre-2008 levels. The legislature is obsessed now with removing money from the system rather than pumping it up to provide additional stimulus, even though the newest reports indicate that in a nation of over 300 million, only 18,000 jobs were created this month. We have not forgotten that Bush left Obama with unemployment rates at a 14-year high, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to see them rise further. Will Obama have to pay for Bush’s crimes? The jury is out.

With virtual unemployment at 18 percent, rather than the 9.2 percent being announced, I’ll still take Obama’s record on job creation over the grand decline attributed to Bush during his eight-year reign, but we remain in a state of fiscal emergency that has yet to bottom out. Coming to grips with job loss might have taken a different turn had Republicans not obstructed every opportunity to prop up the market.

After two terms of Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility and seven uncontested increases to the debt ceiling, the Pubs have suddenly become purists, damning those who would spend a dime to grow an eventual dollar as demon seed and worse. They will attempt no rescue of this economy.

As Poppy Bush would say, it wouldn’t be prudent at this time, not with a campaign beginning. It seems as though our political system is standing on its head, unable to turn the gyroscope right side up or to stop the onslaught of ridiculous rhetoric. We can’t seem to slow the gush of wealth trickling no farther down than that infamous one percent, and if Washington were any more tone-deaf, we’d have an actual Tea Party rebellion based on taxation without representation. Obama has taken hits from the right as a socialist and is called a wimp by the left, but from what I can tell, he’s a man who still has full confidence in the systems of the US of A. In that, may I say he’s a better person than I.

As president-elect, he promised stimulus, auto industry corrections, and the bolster of economy through new policies of clean energy, health care, education and middle-class tax relief. Almost immediately, what might help the nation proved too much for conservatives, and what might help the President became anathema for Republican leadership. That he’s accomplished so much, given the machine he’s facing, is miraculous; that he’s accomplished so little, given the emergency we suffer, is tragic.

As it is, rumors of a financial “recovery” have sent Wall Street back to their old “creative bookkeeping” tricks, leaving the rest of us to scratch our heads in dismay. When one digs into specifics, the tale becomes evident: with upwards of 88% of profit going back into corporate hands, after deductions that leaves a feeble 1% for the rest of the American public to share. While entire cities go dark and state parks close around the nation, I don’t hear calls for jailing anyone. Hell, I don’t even hear anyone ask why the poor and middle-class should be held responsible for picking up an exorbitant tab they didn’t incur. And down here below the rarefied air of power and privilege, the news is rich with the scent of hypocrisy. Don’t worry, citizen, we really ARE a nation of accountability. Justice will be served. Willie Nelson will finally be locked up for his chronic love of doobage and a fifteen-year old cocaine addict has earned a lifetime in prison for the miscarriage of her fetus.

Now there are some who will think that’s just fine and dandy, but I have questions. Why Willie and not Charlie Sheen? Charlie gets a pass on hard drugs, prostitutes, violence and property damage, while Willie can’t roll a fatty to mellow out before a performance? More, with a criminal class insulated by wealth and prestige against prosecution, what purpose does it serve to mess with these little fish? Does it soothe those who think somebody — anybody — should pay for the social heartburn we suffer? Apparently that’s part of it, if we look at the ruckus Casey Anthony’s pending release has provoked.

What the Anthony trial lacked in evidence it made up for in family dysfunction. For those who love a good train wreck, voyeurism couldn’t get much better. I didn’t follow the case, but the rest of the world did, day by day, helped out by CNN’s Nancy Grace and the folks at Court TV. Like O.J., Casey Anthony has been tried in the court of public opinion and will become a social pariah for what the legal system was unable to prove. Some restaurants in the Florida area are refusing to serve the members of the jury that freed Ms. Anthony to smirk another day. We want justice in this country, but we’re not real particular. If we can’t get Dick Cheney, let’s have Casey Anthony. And given our somewhat surprising inability to walk and chew gum at the same time — to hold complicated issues in mind long enough to REALLY grapple with them — a year from now my money’s on Casey Dancing With The Stars and hosting her own cosmetic line on QVC.

Another question, if you will. If Paris Hilton had lost a baby due to drug use, what would her sentence look like? Life? Unthinkable! Ten years? Would the heiress even see the inside of a courtroom? But then Paris isn’t a throw-away; she’s a socialite, a golden girl. She may need the same amount of rehab our young cocaine addict needs, but her ability to get it, and to live a productive life after its completion, is starkly different from the prospects of a teen in Mississippi accused of “murdering” her unborn child.

I’m not trying to simplify the psychology behind our compulsion to jump on the weakest while giving the strongest a pass. It is understandable that we turn to those we think we CAN punish to relieve our tension over injustice. It’s the wrong signal, both sent and received, but it is similar to our crankiness with friends and co-workers when life is dumping on us; someone needs to know we’re upset and it’s usually the one closest at hand. It’s sleepy consciousness, but we do it continually. We seldom weigh the cost of mistreating those close to us, while saving our best behavior for those we wish to impress. Upside down and backwards: those closest to us are always more important than those whose ass we chronically kiss. This kind of thinking has gotten us in an enormous pickle.

Over the years we have allowed our penal system to erode into a vast, heartless storage space for those whose lives were ruined by our aggressive war on drugs. A shameful amount of citizens reside in this nation’s prisons, and issues of overcrowding have become “cruel and unusual.” In the last decade, the system has further devolved into a for-profit system of slavery, exacerbated now by Pub governors who are replacing blue-collar union workers with unsalaried prisoners.

You might be shocked to learn that we have incarcerated more of our citizens (and many thousands of illegal aliens awaiting deportation decisions) than any other country in the world. Let me say that another way: we have more folks locked up than does the People’s Republic of China. Some 2.3 million Americans are jailed within our increasingly privatized penal system, costing states over $50 billion yearly, and the Fed another $5 billion. I find it startling and shameful, but that’s not the worst of it. We cannot afford to ignore this much longer because it will come back to bite us, sooner rather than later. If we don’t know anyone in the system, we might put the issue far away from our consciousness with a shake of the head or cluck of the tongue, and that would be unwise. The growing problem of militarization and brutalization within the justice/penal systems could well become personal to each of us at some point in the future.

This is a serious issue, and before Pluto gets too far into Capricorn, it will come front and center. Bush’s cry of “us or them” has now split itself into our larger consciousness, not only political and religious, but financial and penal. This is hardly “liberty and justice for all.” We don’t hold the government accountable, and we don’t penalize the rich who can buy their way out of any scrape. Even closer to home, when cops can tase at will, or judges sentence inappropriately and without oversight, we’ve already lost control of a critical aspect of our liberty.

This is a bit of a departure from the purely political pieces I’ve been writing lately, but if we are to take advantage of this new, self-defining eclipse energy that allows for cause, not effect, we must have a very clear picture of how we’re operating in the cosmos. One of the earliest affirmations in A Course in Miracles* is, “I’m never upset for the reason I think.” If we begin to live within this possibility, everything will change for us. Once we start questioning WHY we’re upset, especially when we’re miffed at each other, we begin to get a completely different picture of our emotional reality. Constantly challenging ourselves is the first step to self-awareness, one that — optimally — begins long before challenging others. Being honest with each other begins with our being honest with ourselves, and that’s not something we can afford to put off one moment longer: personally, professionally or politically.

The chronic problems with our criminal justice system are an important topic I can’t begin to address here and now, but before we untangle the snarl of information, we should first consider how we’ve come to treat those we’ve judged in this nation. If we take some kind of glee in their punishment, we are the losers, not them. The liberals are all about prison rehabilitation, the conservatives about deterrents to criminal behavior; the differences in philosophies are legion and the results of their programs would vary dramatically, as well, but we never get that far.

Time and again, reports from overcrowded facilities tell us tales that seem impossible in a nation that considers itself civilized. We have rarely tried fully humane penalties for our prison population, including remediation of behaviors and education. Every attempt has been throttled by some hysterical cry for vengeance, tough love and no mercy. Surely there is some kind of in-between we have not yet considered. We cannot continue to lock up much of our citizenry without paying an enormous price.

The bottom line, especially as advertised in this country, is that the unyielding notion that justice is the same for one and all is simply no longer true, if ever it was. Money makes the difference, always has, but now it makes ALL the difference. That, my dears, is what we call “class war,” and, as unlikely populist, über-rich Warren Buffet has famously asserted, so far his class is winning. I don’t know about you, but it makes me wonder who the criminals really are.

*A note: I recently read a comment here on the blog indicating that A Course in Miracles is just another religion. As a student/teacher of ACIM for over thirty-five years I couldn’t disagree more. It’s an anti-religion, one of many paths to becoming more conscious. ACIM doesn’t worship anything. Its goal is unconditional love. It is a philosophy that changes how we see the world, because it comes at life with an operating system completely different from the one approved by society. It breaks comfort zones, challenges ego, solicits spirit and hangs with you even when you want to ignore it. Despite the language, which is off-putting to many, it is not about Christianity; it’s about Christ consciousness. Ultimately, ACIM is a game changer. That’s why I feel free to quote it here, without explanation or, in this case, further defense.