Justace...no wait, justish...shoot! Alright, alright, alright... J-U-S-S-T-A-C-E. Still wrong? Man, I can't even remember how to spell the word. And I'm not even trying "accountability." The words of late I can spell are "good," "bad," and "blame the Dems for everything even though they have no real power."
Here's how bad things are of late on the justice front. The only case supporters of true justice can celebrate happened over forty years ago with the long-overdue conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for manslaughter in the killings of civil rights activists Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner.
And here's the worst, the guy was in a wheelchair with an oxygen tube up his nose. It's no fun to put guys in wheelchairs in jail even when they're guilty racists. It's like convicting a fluffy bunny of arson.
The only slightly promising exchange I've heard lately was done in interview style on TV and went like this:
MAN: It's better to be a Good Guy. That's why we won. We work together and we're not selfish.
FEMALE: Being a Bad Ass isn't necessarily good. That's why we lost. We argue and we don't work together well.
MAN: Good always works better...
This exchange was on MTV's reality show the Inferno. Yup. The show pitted two teams against each other, The Good Guys and the Bad Asses, in a series of silly beach games for cash prizes. One group was mean and petty and the other was fairly cool. The fairly cool team didn't argue on the rubber raft race so they got to the beach quicker and opened the treasure chest with the combination clues in it (I'm 37 by the way).
Does anyone remember victories like civil rights? Or the 40-hour work week? Or Watergate? Or even Afghanistan? Man has it been awhile.
So now we've got a forty-year-old murder conviction and a reality show victory. But meanwhile soldiers die for a war that was based on lies, the environment is raped for profit, and tax breaks are funneled to the extreme wealthy while the federal and trade deficits soar. Etc. Etc.
Wow.
What happened? If you're a "loyal" right-winger then according to other right-wingers you are never wrong or capable of corruption. You are a voice of a pro-gun and pro-war God and 'free trade' not extremism, intolerance and greed.
As Arianna points out in yesterday's piece "When Quitting is the Best Thing to Do," these new nationalists don't ever resign or admit mistakes so they can become lessons for future generations. They don't share information with the taxpayers who paid for the paper or computers the information is stored on. And best of all, these corporate right-wingers own the TVs and papers. And the ones they don't they out-sex and out-tabloid so their sales go down.
Man. The justice bubble has burst.
It is slim pickings. MTV and 1960's murders.
Forget the 20,000 U.S. casualties in Iraq. And don't you dare mention the 100,000 Iraqi dead. And if you bring up what will be a war bill of easily 400 billion after withdrawal costs then you're really being "out there."
Torture? Zzzzzzzz.
And if you mention that the whole world hates us then you're just being a weak-kneed U.N. worshipping liberal. God forbid we ever need cooperation from any other country in the world for anything ever.
Oh wait! I just thought of another triumph of justice.... This is an example of good triumphing over secrecy and corruption: when the really cool fireman won the last season of Survivor instead of the kind of mean lady who lied a lot.
Cue the trumpets.
And turn on the TiVo. The truth will triumph... so long as it’s from half a century ago or hosted by Jeff Probst.