Sunday, August 15, 2004

Justice is blind ask the DC sniper

Justice is blind; she carries a sword and a scale.

The current U.S. adult correctional population reached a record high according to CNN. According to this report, 6.6 million men and women were incarcerated at the end of 2001. With an increase of 147,000 from the year 2000. We have no room for these two bothers, they must be executed. Sure ya right.

Am I right? No, I am wrong. I am so wrong that I should ask all those so-called Christians in the land of the free and the brave, are you really a Christian? Are you really an American? Or better yet, what is American? And where do we place our values and our beliefs? Are we not hypocrites and parasites caught in a tangled web of misinformation and miseducation, over weight and under nourished, happy with our false sense of superiority and nuclear proliferation. These brothers will pass.

What I worry most about is our growing lack of brotherhood, and our inability to reach out and help the most in need. People we are falling short in this nation. Many of you may look at this as a joke, a riddle or a puzzle. But people, we are on a collision course with anarchy and despair without recourse. All great civilizations come to a close. Look it up. Why aren’t we listening to each other anymore? We can talk all day, Oprah, Dr. Phil, Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, everybody has a talk show! Rush and the O’Reilly factor from the right or so called right, to Imus and Dan Rooney. Most of us love our country dearly; we would die to defend our rights. Our Patriots resemble the American spectrum, coming from wide views of ideologies and politics and economies. But we must be careful. We must not pre-judge, we must not guess, we must separate fact from fiction, and most of all we must be conscious at all times of subliminal propaganda and dereliction of truth. These brothers will receive the full extent of the law. No doubt.
You do not maim and kill a human being in the state of Virginia. The commonwealth does not play that. You will be punished to the full extent of the law. The commonwealth is second only to Texas in handling its business with murderers. So, all of you out their wishing for these brothers to hang by tomorrow. They will. Trust me.

But the issue is larger than just an eye for an eye or in this case two for ten. Let ask ourselves this. Why do we continue to let our system fail? Why do we accept these aberrations in our American society? Do we not profess these Judeo-Christian values and place them as our center piece to our Americanisms? Our penny says “e pluribus Unum”; do you know what that means? It means, out of many, one. Many cry foul, the blacks, the Hispanics, the whites (Scottish, Anglo, Saxon, Irish, German, and Franco) origins European, the Asians, the islanders. There are only three races of mankind, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Caucasoid. So lets not go their. Why do we fail to understand the world in which we live? A world that is changing, a country that is changing and evolving into a free spinning, sputtering mess of chaos and clutter. I ask you, can you make a change? A change to speak to your neighbor, a change to better identify with your world. Can you make a change today? A change to understand our fellow brethren, thru interfaith, thru open-ness. The “macho” stance will only continue to deprive our citizens of a true democracy. But has this ever been a democracy? Have gun will travel. Is it not a republic? Isn’t our history as nation full of examples and creations similar to the heinous acts committed by these brothers? Do we not continue to talk out the side of our necks, say one thing and do the other, and then profess our love of God and Country? A good many men and women gave their lives for our freedoms and liberty. To be able to express ourselves, and believe in what we choose to believe in and to think any way we damn well please. Men and women of European and African origin, from all over the globe contributed to the American ideal. So, can you make a change today? Can you dig deep inside that programmed psyche and make a change today? Can you extend your hand, your knowledge, your experience, your wisdom and make a change today? When you see a wrong can you step up? Why does it always end in some one losing their job, their marriage, their business, their children, their health, their sanity, their dreams, their
Innocence? That’s what I am charging you with America. Our inner-city public schools are dysfunctional, without the help of corporate America in some cases totally unmanageable. Our marriages in this country, the bedrock of our society, our foundation for the formulations of family at best have a 50/50 chance. Our youth are drug plagued, or over exposed and under pressure to succeed from aggressive and competitive middle to upper middle class parents, the best schools, my child must do it all, at all costs. Our homes have become huge mini mansions in suburban America, equipped with everything to supply a third world nation, and a gate and cameras to keep out the unwanted. Our very faiths are challenged; we continue to question what is of value? Among us, there are those that believe it’s their way or the highway! But our world is changing. It is a much more inclusive and demanding country and world. The people want their influence herd and when no one is listening, be he or she of whatever persuasion, they try to reach out. And sometimes when they aren’t being herd, they commit violence and they kill other people. And we see this happen continuously throughout our history, be it political or sociopath. So, can you make a change today? We have all these wonderful freedoms, and we forget that freedom is not free. You don’t need to be to the right or left of the political continuum to understand that. Once in this country another man could hold and sell other human beings as slaves, strictly economics. Once in this realm women could not vote, strictly sexism. Once in this country men and women of African origin could not eat or sit next to or be educated or live next to a Caucasian person or person of European descent, once in this country each colony did its own thing, under the rule of a King. There were Dutch colonies, English colonies, Spanish colonies, Portuguese colonies and penal colonies. Once again our country is changing. Our population is more yellow and brown, the roles of women are expanding, our youth ever more challenged and frightened. Our country is entering a new millennium. Still carrying baggage from the last century. Still searching for itself and confused as ever, still pretending and in full denial of its role in the world.

Things we can’t do anymore. We can’t lock up everybody. We can’t edify a few and leave the rest ill-equipped to face the future. We can’t dismiss the hurt and pain we may have caused others directly or indirectly. We can’t simulate to be citizen-passives, but citizen activist. After all it was good truck driver who made the right call. We can’t judge people and have them guillotined or hung; people have a right to be herd, we can’t pre-judge anyone. We can’t defend our interests all over the globe all the time, especially when its none of our business anyway. We can’t require persons around the world to like us when we don’t even like ourselves. We can’t consume and throw away everything just because we have it like that. We can’t burn petrol for another 100 years just because its convenient. We can’t just shove our elderly into retirement farms and hope that they’ll disappear. We are growing older, but we don’t have any common sense.


We can’t expect everyone to respect the use of a firearm or weapon, when we continue to lock up more people than any other country in the world other than South Africa. We can’t continue to be arrogant and ignorant and less tolerant of one another. We can’t continue to believe that our entertainment community can work outside, while polluting us on the inside with concealed messages and disrespecting us and our families. We can’t rule the world and then blow up some ones home and send them care packages, then slowly let our population become expendable. We shouldn’t rebuild another house when our house as grand as it is, is falling apart. How do we justify that? Isn’t that old school twentieth century thinking? Shouldn’t we be about the business of solutions? Why can’t we come to some sort of resolution with our friends? We don’t practice what we preach very well. And it sets a very bad example. The eyes of the world set her sights to us, and we continue on the path of self destruction, with the healing being hard to expend.


No our country is not perfect, but we can do better. Our companies can do better. Our schools can do better, whether university or elementary. Our citizenry can do better. We all are not super rich and leave this country at a moments notice. We gotta make with what we have. And what we have is a changing country. The faces of prosperity and wealth are changing; the old guard leads to a new. Some do not like this transformation, they will fight it with there lives. Some are intelligent enough to understand that change and transition is good. Justice is blind and she carries a sword and scale, and she is waiting on us to make a change. So, can you make a change in your existence? Some of us get it, a lot of us don’t. The majorities of us don’t get it and wish back to the way it was. Some of us want to keep it going as long as it fits their liking. Some of us believe we are up and above the rest, but like that truck driver in Maryland…we know what we need do to make a contribution, to lend a hand.