(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[Marc Aramini]

Oddly enough, short story 18, how the whip came back, deals with what to do with prisoners!  The prisons in that story really do sound like hell, and Wolfe's concerns that when religious sentiment and charity fail and lose the faith of the people in favor of belief in the government, only power politics will remain, seems to me to be belied by the tone of our discourses in this thread.  Good timing,  It actually fits perfectly.

--- On Sat, 4/14/12, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:

> From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Saturday, April 14, 2012, 8:40 AM
> On 4/13/2012 9:03 PM, Marc Aramini
> wrote:
> > In the United States I feel like those who are
> completely blameless are very rarely incarcerated unjustly,
> unless it be for "he said, she said" cases of
> rape/molestation.  It is a straw man argument in some
> sense to justify treating dangerous and repeat offenders
> with kid gloves.  I am not an administrator of justice,
> because I would always err on the side of mercy, but I think
> it is a weakness in my character, where I would fail to live
> up to what should be done.  I would want a more stern
> administrator of justice than myself.
> 
> And I know you would want that administrator to be more
> impartial than you as well. Unfortunately, the American
> justice system is blind to its own racism. The situation is
> far worse than you think. Blacks are always robbed of the
> benefit of any doubt, and but that same benefit is always
> awarded to whites. I could accurately rewrite your statement
> as follows:
> 
> In the United States ... those who are *white *are very
> rarely incarcerated unjustly, unless it be for "he said, she
> said" cases of rape/molestation.  It is a straw man
> argument in some sense to justify treating *black *offenders
> with kid gloves.
> 
> And so on.
> > 
> > There are innocent casualties in every battle, but
> sometimes the end justifies the means, or all those who gave
> their lives for something did it for naught.  Justice
> is much the same, though it lacks the nobility of World War
> II.
> 
> I'm just glad our republic (such as it is) was not founded
> on these theocratic principles. Rarely enough does it live
> up to its standards as it is.
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