I am easily perturbed by my country's self-perception. As Americans we grow up with this idea that we are the greatest country on earth. We are the white hats of the world and we stand for everything good and honest and wholesome. Whenever I feel the presence of this notion, I feel an anger rise inside of me along with a massive compulsion to dispel such mythology. In fact I love this country but I would prefer we as Americans were honest with ourselves about our past, present and future. In that way I think we can attain some of these ideals we merely profess to embrace.
This anger tends to be perceived as some form of self-hatred, (or anti-Americanism anyway,) instead of being recognized as sheer disappointment at how little of our potential we realize.
I suppose I have been conditioned in ways which define me and make me who I essentially am. My world view came from never having met my Father, from growing up with my Mother incarcerated, from living with grandparents and aunts and uncles, (all on my Mother’s side, of course.) This world view came from the methadone clinic, from oldies but goodies, from going out on Halloween as a “beer belly.”
This world view came from a dearth of familial intimacy, from a detachment from any cultural identity amidst a society so overwrought and overblown and supremely over-interested in their race and ethnicity and color and background that their heads are stuffed with pounds and chunks of self-aggrandizing local color and flavor, which serves to occupy the mind like Cops or American Idol or the TV Land reruns, dulling and stupefying like a bulldozer of mediocrity, pile-driving the shit out of sensibilities, so people are unable to connect with one another, unable to discern truth when it confronts them, unable to feel or empathize with those less fortunate and by less fortunate I do not mean that cute, starving vision of innocence in the pamphlet for your favorite charity, I am talking about the freaking murderer who seems so heinous and evil but who obviously had some crazy stuff happen to him to render him inclined to do the nasty and dark deeds he committed, unable to imagine anything outside one’s own realm, outside borders or economic strata, unable to organize and fight back against naked powers that be, be they simple propaganda or long held fallacies, unable to make a fucking move.
This world view came from speaking in tongues, a late blooming sex life, deprivation of the classics, the jockacracy, Ronald Reagan, "I Found It!", Christian schools, John Hughes, Josh McDowell, beach cruisers, La Puente, Covina, and Cardiff by the Sea, The Six Million Dollar Man, and smog.
This world view came from waking up in a perpetual frat party existence and realizing I neeeded to start reading the great writers. It came from giving up on my faith at 28 followed by 10 charming years. It came from being poor and nurturing the anger of youth. It came from spending a few days in LA County, booked on irresponsibility.
From all this, this life, I offer justice as something to speak on or of. It is what interests me and I think you might find it interesting in the same way.
Justice is like a rare, stolen, underground Picasso to me. It’s like a million bucks or anything perfect. It is nearly intangible, but it does exist and I love it as much as I love life itself. When Andy Dufresne pulls his shirt off in the driving rain after crawling through a tunnel of sewage to his freedom, and the warden blows a hole in his own head at the end of Shawshank Redemption, that’s the kind of justice I crave.
And that’s just the phony stuff. When it is real life, when I. Louis Libby gets convicted of a crime and is disbarred, my heart soars in spite of the knowledge it is not nearly enough justice for Libby. For a moment anyways, I cannot be bothered by the fact Libby will continue to lead a life of financial comfort, never coming close to the measure of justice he should know. (My world view suggests Libby feels the rest of the justice he deserves in an unseen, karmic sort of retribution.)
I rejoice when big corporations get it right in the pocketbook.
I love it when little towns in New England or countries in Europe legislate Donald Rumsfeld's fate to be arrested for war crimes if he ever sets foot in their territories. That is sublime to me, if only a stopgap unit of joy meant to tied my otherwise angry and dissatisfied person over until the next morsel of justice happens along.
I see justice in how the puritans who conducted the Salem Witch trials are viewed today. I see justice in Nuremberg. I see justice in Pinochet's legacy, how he will be remembered as the despotic military dictator placed in Santiago by Washington DC who ruthlessly killed his people, villifying him and those who supported him from abroad. I see justice too, in Reagan's legacy. Reagan will be remembered for taking the solar panels off the white house and restoring our dependence on foreign oil, for authorizing the sale of arms to Iran to supply a ruthless regime in Central America, (or two,) for using the bully pulpit against the college kids of People's Park as well as hoses, gas and clubs, for marketing propaganda more effectively than any person in his time with his nine most terrifying words in the English language, ("I'm from the government and I'm here to help,") and his "War on Drugs," for telling the air traffic controllers to go screw themselves because he could and because of the message it sent, for trickle-down clearly not trickling down, and for lying like Nixon.
Justice makes me smile. It sets my mind at ease. I am not referring to the justice that occurs in court rooms, though I am sure that justice plays its role. The justice I adore occurs more organically and is closer to truth.
I am happy to exclaim I see plenty of justice. It seems always at the heels of injustice.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-Martin Luther King Jr.
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