When exceptions have become the rule, it's time to change the rule.
Fairness is a concept so simple you don't even have to be human to perceive it. Try to give one pet a treat while ignoring another. Even in laboratory experiments, a low level reward is fine...until another test subject gets a better treat for the same task. Then all hell breaks loose. The concept and perception of fairness is fundamental to anyone with awareness.
Justice is a little more abstract, but it's another step on the same road, and most people recognize it when they see it. And recognize its absence.
America is so supportive of fundamental fairness & justice for all that we have touted and enshrined it in multiple places. In our Bill of Rights, in our Pledge of Allegiance. In our amendments to the Constitution. Equal protection under the law. Liberty & justice for all. That's what's supposed to make us great. Those ideals that we hold up and cleave to. Those values.
Those are what's supposed to make us exceptional, if we're going to be so. We have to earn that. And maintain it, we can't coast along and allow what we claim are our values to crumble. We have to live them, not just point at them and claim them to be true.
We are guaranteed equal protection under the law. We are purported to live under the rule of law, where all are supposed to be equal and who one is doesn't matter to the law. The law is supposed to apply equally to every one. We are guaranteed a right to bring grievances for redress.
Our Founders were adamant that we be ruled not by men, by the shifting winds and changing cults of personality, but by laws. Equal for everyone. That's law & order.
Homicide, murder and manslaughter have legal definitions. And legal consequences. There are defined circumstances under which they are allowable. But not outside those. Theft and fraud have legal definitions. And consequences. Torture has legal definitions. And consequences. Corruption has legal definitions. And consequences.
The rule of law. Where the same law applies across the board. Regardless of who your daddy is. Or who your uncle works for. This is America, it's not supposed to matter if your family are cops or mobsters or senators, the law is supposed to apply to all of us equally.
And we have come to a place where it very obviously doesn't.
And Americans are getting damned tired of that being the case. Damned tired of that being the case being the rule, rather than the exception. Of course there are going to be exceptions. But when exceptions have become the rule, it's time to change the rule. Or the enforcement of the rules.
One law. For all people. No second tier of justice.
No justice. No peace.
Hands up. Don't shoot.
I can't breathe.
One law. One People. No second tier.
.
.
.
Thieves, murderers, torturers, frauds, bigots. It's past time for the rule of law to deal with them across the board. At all levels.
Law & order. Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. For Americans, not corporations. Liberty and justice for all. Fundamental fairness. For all. What we were founded on.
Criminal justice. Economic justice. Equal justice.
To live without those things is to live under actual tyranny. To have to walk in the cold with hands visible. To know that the police are able to kill you, or your child, without cause or accountability. To have your family's home or life savings targeted and stolen. Without accountability. To have your earnings wrung out of you to support a corporation or local thugs instead of your family. To know that you could be accused and disappear, be held incommunicado, beaten, tortured or killed. Without accountability. To have your right to object to unlawful treatment obstructed, taken or beaten out of you. That is living under tyranny. And we have a history of throwing off tyranny, again and again.
You want people to vote? Promise them justice. And then deliver it. That's what Hope & Change were supposed to mean. That's why we got out and worked our collective asses off. And elected the first black President. It wasn't possible. But we did it. Now it's time to pay up. Now it's time to get up out of your cushy chairs and come in off the golf course and get to work.
Dig in. Grab a mop. There's plenty to do. We could put an awful lot of people to work enforcing the laws and regulations we already have. And training people to take over for those who have been toiling for years in obscurity, holding the fort as the foundations erode.
No justice. No peace.
Hands up. Don't shoot.
I can't breathe.
One law. One People. No second tier.