I’m about to say something that will make some people angry.
Sometimes cops beat people for bad reasons or no reason. Then they arrest their victim. That’s because a victim convicted of a crime-against-a-peace-officer is unlikely to sue the officer for, say, crushing the victim’s eye socket, or giving the victim blood clots in his legs. The officer will have to lie to get the conviction. It happens.
If this makes some folks angry, fine. Let’s sit down with that anger and peer into it. They're angry for a reason that I think they don’t know. Their anger is like the anger of three men in the book of Job.
1. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were good men. They were righteous. They were Job’s three friends in, well, the book of Job.
Job also was a righteous man. But God let Satan kill Job’s children, steal Job’s riches, and ruin Job’s health. Job was left in pain and sorrow. Denuded of wealth, health, and children, Job sat in ashes. He scraped his sores with potsherds.
And that’s where Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar come in. They sit with Job. They sit with him in silence for seven days. It takes a very good friend to sit with someone for seven days. Few of us are lucky enough to have one friend like that; Job had three. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar were standup guys.
But in the book of Job this kind comfort of quiet companionship collapsed like an overloaded pack animal.
The collapse happened after Job defended himself. He told his three friends that he didn’t deserve what happened to him. He told them that his affliction was unjust.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar tried to beat down any talk of Job’s righteousness. They took turns defending God. They took turns telling Job that Job must have deserved the demolition of his happy life.
And every time they told him that, Job defended himself. And every time he defended himself, he stirred the fury of his friends. For 28 chapters, Job defends himself, and his friends accuse him; Job accuses God, and his friends defend God.
Bildad forgets to be kind:
How long will you say these things,
And the words of your mouth be a great wind? [Job 8:2 (NRSV).]
Zophar is harsh:
Should your babble put others to silence,
And when you mock, shall no one shame you? [Job 11:3 (NRSV).]
Eliphaz accuses Job of breaking the foundation of religion:
But you are doing away with the fear of God,
and hindering meditation before God. [Job 15:4 (NRSV).]
Bildad is insulted by Job’s wrong-headed arguments:
Why are we counted as cattle?
Why are we stupid in your sight? [Job 18:3 (NRSV).]
Zophar admits that Job agitates him. (Job 20:2.)
Eliphaz even catalogues Job’s specific sins, which he somehow knows about:
Is not your wickedness great?
There is no end to your iniquities.
For you have exacted pledges from you family for no reason,
and stripped the naked of their clothing.
You have given no water for the weary to drink,
and you have withheld bread from the hungry. [Job 22:5-7 (NRSV).]
But Job was righteous. The reader knows, but Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar don’t know, that Job’s righteousness was the reason that Job became the target of a bet between God and Satan. God bet that Job would stay faithful even after bone-crushing calamity; Satan bet that he wouldn’t.
2. The anger of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
In chapter one, Satan accuses Job. In chapters three through twenty-eight, his three friend speak for Satan. Why?
If you cut the surface of anger, you find fear underneath. When an opposing lawyer yells at me, I often know then that my position is stronger than I knew before.
Job’s three friends are afraid.
They’re afraid because they’re righteous, and they count on their righteousness to protect them. They expect to prosper because they are good, and God rewards the good.
And Job is a threat to their happy hope of blessings that flow from their personal blamelessness. If Job is righteous and God flung him into the fire, then for all they know God could do the same thing to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. And to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, that idea is a demon howling in the wind at night.
The book of Job defies the idea that we can always make ourselves safe by doing right. That idea heartens us, and it’s perpetuated in our time by stories like the Three Little Pigs. Even if they didn’t know that story, Job’s friends embraced its theme. Their own goodness, their own personal righteousness, was their own house-built-of-bricks. They thought that, try as he might, the big bad wolf couldn’t huff and puff and blow it down.
But Job and his plight stand for the idea that bricks are weaker than Job’s friends thought, or that the Big Bad Wolf has breath like an angry god. So they stridently try to argue Job into accepting his own fault. But they really are trying to convince themselves.
3. Our own houses made out of bricks.
We moderns are like Job’s friends. We also expect that we can build a house of bricks that nothing can shake.
We think that if we eat right and exercise, we won’t get sick. But sometimes we get sick.
We think that if we work hard, we’ll succeed. But sometimes we work hard and fail.
We think that if we spend time and take trouble with our children, our children will grow up and be, well, righteous like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. But sometimes they don’t.
4. Beaten.
And we believe that if we don’t do anything wrong, we’ll never have trouble with the police.
But for about two decades, I’ve been a civil-rights lawyer. I’ve seen that that isn’t always so.
And one generation of injured clients after another has learned that blamelessness (or relative blamelessness) isn’t always a barrier against police abuse. Sometimes they are vindicated in court. Sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they win money from a jury. Sometimes they don’t.
5. What it takes to win.
One reason that victims don’t always win is that a civil-rights lawyer has to do more than prove his case. He has to persuade jurors to give up a safety-blanket – the belief that they can protect themselves against police abuse by being good.
Before they can return a judgement in favor of a civil-rights plaintiff, jurors have to do what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar couldn’t do. They have to throw away the comfortable idea that they are safe in their house of bricks with bricks made from their own blamelessness.
The same is true in a criminal trial where a victim is accused of a crime-against-a-peace-officer. It’s not just a matter of showing that the officer is lying. The jurors have to set aside a natural fear. Police officers have vast power; we trust them. It’s scary to think that they might abuse their power and violate that trust.
Every time that a civil-rights jury gives judgment to a plaintiff, every time that a criminal jury frees a victim of police abuse, the jury faces the fact that their blamelessness won’t always protect them. They face the fact that what happened to the victim could happen to them. It’s an unsettling thought.
6. Be Job.
The book of Job is about of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar’s fear. But it’s also about Job’s courage.
Job’s friends came to him when he was weak. Job had been rich, well, and surrounded by his children. Now Job was poor, sick, and lonely. Job easily coul have let his friends overwhelm him. Crushed as he was, he might have gone along with the ideas that his good friends so violently argued.
But he didn’t. That took courage. That took wisdom.
The book of Job was written so that we can have Job’s wisdom and courage without suffering Job’s catastrophes.
7. A plea.
This is my plea: if you sit on a jury, know what Job knew. Know that fault does not always sit on the injured and afflicted. See the evidence with an open mind.
Showing posts with label Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justice. Show all posts
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Capsizing
1. Ships that can’t be righted.
A large capsized ship can’t be righted.
As a wave pushes a ship over, it’s crew might hold their breath in mute terror, waiting to see if the ship reaches the point of no return, the point when all is lost. Sometimes the ship returns to upright to take on the next wave. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I say this because the right wing in America risks to capsize the country. It risks this for political gain. The odd thing is that they seem to think that when they capsize the country, only the Democrats will get wet.
2. Capsizing the economy.
So with the debt ceiling.
The dollar is the world’s premier currency. It has rivals in the yen (Japan), the yuan (China), and the euro (Europe). China, particularly, agitates for countries to "balance" their foreign reserve holdings with other currencies aside from the dollar. China hopes to start a trend that ends the dollar’s supremacy.
China has allies in America. They aren’t moles in banks who cut secret, treasonous deals for their own enrichment. They are the Republicans in Congress.
Congressional Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage to their own uncompromising position on debt. They use the vote to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way -- and get their way 100% -- on the budget.
The debt ceiling is the legal amount of indebtedness that America can have. If we reach our statutory debt limit, we cannot borrow more. Then, we cannot pay our debts. We’ll default on something: our sovereign debt (what creditor countries lend to us); soldiers’ salaries; social security checks. The damage from this will ripple through the economy.
Ripple might not be the right word. Tsunami might be more correct.
The Economist is a socially-liberal but fiscally-conservative magazine ("newspaper" in British English). They champion debt reduction. They have criticized Obama for not doing enough about debt. Even this week they said, "Mr. Obama had been deplorably insouciant about he medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit."
But here’s what The Economist says in an article in this week’s magazine called "Shame on them."
The Obama administration proposed an 83%-17% ratio of cuts to increases. They basically said Yes to the Congressional Republicans’ own proposal. But The Republicans wouldn’t take Yes for an answer. They walked out of discussions.
The New York Times speculated that the Republicans might want to exploit, for political gain, the economic turmoil that will come after a debt-ceiling default. That might be. They might stick to that plan, unless they can get something better. If they follow that plan, then they are making all of us – all of us who aren’t rich – unfortunate pawns in their grand strategy to rise to the top.
3. Capsizing political debate.
The Russian-roulette game over our economy isn’t the only way that the right wing gladly risks disaster.
Political debate is in recent years sullied. But Republican leaders and Republican media reached a new low by whipping up fervor against "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors).
Nobody can point to death panels in that bill, because they aren’t there. The closest thing to that was a part of the law (taken out) that paid doctors to do what they have been doing for free: advising patients about end-of-life choices.
Most people don’t want to be irretrievably comatose and on a feeding tube or a heart-lung machine. Advanced directives that come from these doctor-patient discussions keep a patient’s children or spouse from being burdened with the guilt or expense of making that decision without a clear statement of the patient’s preference.
Accusing the Democrats of legislating "death panels" to "pull the plug on grandma" so poisoned political conversation in this country that I don’t know that it ever can recover. It went far toward capsizing political debate.
4. Capsizing the legitimacy of the Republic.
And Republican media and Republican politicians take aim at the Republic itself. Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Republic. Here’s a guy who literally would fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; "indivisible"– not so much.
This attitude has trickled down. On Facebook, I have seen a post that compares democracy to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
It’s funny in its way, but it’s more frightening than funny. After all, democracy is fair, and fair is the opposite of wolflike-ness. It’s the ultimate way that a government can have legitimacy. Democracy reflects the will of the people – or at least most of the people. That’s right and just. It’s more right and just than any other form of government.
And there are safeguards against the so-called tyranny of the majority. Under the Constitution, majority rule is subject to checks and balances. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional – as might happen to the Health Care Reform Act, which will one day come before the Supreme Court. And before a bill can become law, it has to pass in the House of Representatives (where congressmen are elected by districts that have roughly equal population to each other – this give more power to large states); and the Senate (where each state gets two Senators – this gives more relative power to citizens of smaller states). Then, usually, the President has to sign a bill into law (but Congress can override his veto).
This is the most perfect (but not perfect) form of government. Other forms are less fair.
And we have a vigorous press in which all opinions can be expressed, And, compared to most of the world, we have little official corruption.
But the right wing is revving its chain saw at the base of the living American tree – disputing the fairness of our democracy – because they aren’t happy with political outcomes. When they do that, the right wing risks much to our Republic. Because when people dispute our Republic’s legitimacy, when they urinate on our Constitution, they weaken the Republic. But the right wing seems willing to risk this capsize.
5. Capsizing justice and political restraint.
As much as the right challenges the legitimacy of government under Obama, the real scandals of governance have taken place under Republicans.
In the Bush administration, U.S. Attorneys asserted that they were fired for partisan reasons. David Iglesias, for example, refused to politicize prosecutions. He said under oath that Republican politicians directed him to target Democratic officeholders because they were Democratic officeholders. When he refused, he was fired. The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General backs his assertion.
An official from the Bush administration asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself in the investigation of the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal. After getting immunity, she admitted to feloniously using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs. She also testified that many Bush-administration officials had lied under oath about the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal.
The Wisconsin Republican governor and the Wisconsin Republican legislature passed a law to weaken public-employee unions. Now, there is in Wisconsin no counterweight to corporate money. Other Republican states are following.
Under Bush, America was Ukraine. And under Republican governors, Ukraine continues among us.
6. Capsizing freedom of speech.
A former ambassador investigated the charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellow-cake from Niger. He published an editorial in the New York Times that accused the Bush White House of knowingly lying to the American people. In fact, the Bush White House did not know of his report; the report didn’t travel up from the CIA, which had sent him on his fact-finding mission.
But that’s not the point. The point is that high Bush-administration officials swiftly retaliated against the former ambassador by disclosing to several reporters that his wife was a CIA employee –Valerie Plame. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak outed her. In fact, Valerie Plame was a covert operative who specialized in nuclear proliferation. America became less safe after she could no longer do her job.
7. Speak up!
Some of my right-wing friends are adamant that Muslims must renounce the terrorists who share some form of their own religion. Where are my right-wing friends when their political brethren threaten our welfare and disparage our Constitution?
Unless you hate Obama more than you love America, speak up.
________________________________
Selected sources.
A conservative columnist for the New York Times says that Republicans should shake hands with Obama and declare victory on the budget. He says they’re nuts not to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
A neutral referee discusses so-called "death panels" in the Health Care Reform Act. It’s hogwash:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/
Governor Perry wants to lower Old Glory in Texas forever:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html
U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General report on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. It says Rove and others wouldn’t cooperate with investigators about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0809a/final.pdf
See, especially, p. 186-187; 190
U.S. Department of Justice official Monica Goodling invokes the Fifth Amendment in Congressional hearings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html
Monica Goodling admits using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052300728.html
The outing of Valerie Plame (Book):
James B. Stewart, Tangled Webs (The Penguin Press 2011)
A large capsized ship can’t be righted.
As a wave pushes a ship over, it’s crew might hold their breath in mute terror, waiting to see if the ship reaches the point of no return, the point when all is lost. Sometimes the ship returns to upright to take on the next wave. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I say this because the right wing in America risks to capsize the country. It risks this for political gain. The odd thing is that they seem to think that when they capsize the country, only the Democrats will get wet.
2. Capsizing the economy.
So with the debt ceiling.
The dollar is the world’s premier currency. It has rivals in the yen (Japan), the yuan (China), and the euro (Europe). China, particularly, agitates for countries to "balance" their foreign reserve holdings with other currencies aside from the dollar. China hopes to start a trend that ends the dollar’s supremacy.
China has allies in America. They aren’t moles in banks who cut secret, treasonous deals for their own enrichment. They are the Republicans in Congress.
Congressional Republicans are holding the debt ceiling hostage to their own uncompromising position on debt. They use the vote to raise the debt ceiling as leverage to get their way -- and get their way 100% -- on the budget.
The debt ceiling is the legal amount of indebtedness that America can have. If we reach our statutory debt limit, we cannot borrow more. Then, we cannot pay our debts. We’ll default on something: our sovereign debt (what creditor countries lend to us); soldiers’ salaries; social security checks. The damage from this will ripple through the economy.
Ripple might not be the right word. Tsunami might be more correct.
The Economist is a socially-liberal but fiscally-conservative magazine ("newspaper" in British English). They champion debt reduction. They have criticized Obama for not doing enough about debt. Even this week they said, "Mr. Obama had been deplorably insouciant about he medium-term picture, repeatedly failing in his budgets and his state-of-the-union speeches to offer any path to a sustainable deficit."
But here’s what The Economist says in an article in this week’s magazine called "Shame on them."
This newspaper has a strong dislike of big government; we have long argued that the main way to right America’s finances is through spending cuts. But you cannot get there without any tax rises. In Britain, for instance, the coalition government aims to tame its deficit with a 3:1 ratio of cuts to hikes. America’s tax rate is at its lowest level for decades: even Ronald Reagan raised taxes when he needed to do so.Here’s more from The Economist:
And the closer you look, the more unprincipled the Republicans look. Earlier this year House Republicans produced a report noting that an 85%-15% split between spending cuts and tax rises was the average for successful fiscal consolidations, according to historical evidence. The White House is offering an 83%-17% split (hardly a huge distance) and a promise that none of the revenue increase will come from higher marginal rates, only from eliminating loopholes. If the Republicans were real tax reformers, they would seize this offer.The Economist expects serious damage to the economy when America defaults on its debt.
The Obama administration proposed an 83%-17% ratio of cuts to increases. They basically said Yes to the Congressional Republicans’ own proposal. But The Republicans wouldn’t take Yes for an answer. They walked out of discussions.
The New York Times speculated that the Republicans might want to exploit, for political gain, the economic turmoil that will come after a debt-ceiling default. That might be. They might stick to that plan, unless they can get something better. If they follow that plan, then they are making all of us – all of us who aren’t rich – unfortunate pawns in their grand strategy to rise to the top.
3. Capsizing political debate.
The Russian-roulette game over our economy isn’t the only way that the right wing gladly risks disaster.
Political debate is in recent years sullied. But Republican leaders and Republican media reached a new low by whipping up fervor against "death panels" in the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare" to its detractors).
Nobody can point to death panels in that bill, because they aren’t there. The closest thing to that was a part of the law (taken out) that paid doctors to do what they have been doing for free: advising patients about end-of-life choices.
Most people don’t want to be irretrievably comatose and on a feeding tube or a heart-lung machine. Advanced directives that come from these doctor-patient discussions keep a patient’s children or spouse from being burdened with the guilt or expense of making that decision without a clear statement of the patient’s preference.
Accusing the Democrats of legislating "death panels" to "pull the plug on grandma" so poisoned political conversation in this country that I don’t know that it ever can recover. It went far toward capsizing political debate.
4. Capsizing the legitimacy of the Republic.
And Republican media and Republican politicians take aim at the Republic itself. Republican governor of Texas Rick Perry talks about seceding from the Republic. Here’s a guy who literally would fight to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; "indivisible"– not so much.
This attitude has trickled down. On Facebook, I have seen a post that compares democracy to two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
It’s funny in its way, but it’s more frightening than funny. After all, democracy is fair, and fair is the opposite of wolflike-ness. It’s the ultimate way that a government can have legitimacy. Democracy reflects the will of the people – or at least most of the people. That’s right and just. It’s more right and just than any other form of government.
And there are safeguards against the so-called tyranny of the majority. Under the Constitution, majority rule is subject to checks and balances. The Supreme Court can declare laws unconstitutional – as might happen to the Health Care Reform Act, which will one day come before the Supreme Court. And before a bill can become law, it has to pass in the House of Representatives (where congressmen are elected by districts that have roughly equal population to each other – this give more power to large states); and the Senate (where each state gets two Senators – this gives more relative power to citizens of smaller states). Then, usually, the President has to sign a bill into law (but Congress can override his veto).
This is the most perfect (but not perfect) form of government. Other forms are less fair.
And we have a vigorous press in which all opinions can be expressed, And, compared to most of the world, we have little official corruption.
But the right wing is revving its chain saw at the base of the living American tree – disputing the fairness of our democracy – because they aren’t happy with political outcomes. When they do that, the right wing risks much to our Republic. Because when people dispute our Republic’s legitimacy, when they urinate on our Constitution, they weaken the Republic. But the right wing seems willing to risk this capsize.
5. Capsizing justice and political restraint.
As much as the right challenges the legitimacy of government under Obama, the real scandals of governance have taken place under Republicans.
In the Bush administration, U.S. Attorneys asserted that they were fired for partisan reasons. David Iglesias, for example, refused to politicize prosecutions. He said under oath that Republican politicians directed him to target Democratic officeholders because they were Democratic officeholders. When he refused, he was fired. The U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General backs his assertion.
An official from the Bush administration asserted her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself in the investigation of the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal. After getting immunity, she admitted to feloniously using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs. She also testified that many Bush-administration officials had lied under oath about the U.S. Attorney-firing scandal.
The Wisconsin Republican governor and the Wisconsin Republican legislature passed a law to weaken public-employee unions. Now, there is in Wisconsin no counterweight to corporate money. Other Republican states are following.
Under Bush, America was Ukraine. And under Republican governors, Ukraine continues among us.
6. Capsizing freedom of speech.
A former ambassador investigated the charges that Iraq had sought uranium yellow-cake from Niger. He published an editorial in the New York Times that accused the Bush White House of knowingly lying to the American people. In fact, the Bush White House did not know of his report; the report didn’t travel up from the CIA, which had sent him on his fact-finding mission.
But that’s not the point. The point is that high Bush-administration officials swiftly retaliated against the former ambassador by disclosing to several reporters that his wife was a CIA employee –Valerie Plame. Right-wing columnist Robert Novak outed her. In fact, Valerie Plame was a covert operative who specialized in nuclear proliferation. America became less safe after she could no longer do her job.
7. Speak up!
Some of my right-wing friends are adamant that Muslims must renounce the terrorists who share some form of their own religion. Where are my right-wing friends when their political brethren threaten our welfare and disparage our Constitution?
Unless you hate Obama more than you love America, speak up.
________________________________
Selected sources.
A conservative columnist for the New York Times says that Republicans should shake hands with Obama and declare victory on the budget. He says they’re nuts not to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/opinion/05brooks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
A neutral referee discusses so-called "death panels" in the Health Care Reform Act. It’s hogwash:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/palin-vs-obama-death-panels/
Governor Perry wants to lower Old Glory in Texas forever:
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html
U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General report on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. It says Rove and others wouldn’t cooperate with investigators about the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0809a/final.pdf
See, especially, p. 186-187; 190
U.S. Department of Justice official Monica Goodling invokes the Fifth Amendment in Congressional hearings.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032600935.html
Monica Goodling admits using political criteria to fill non-political Justice Department jobs:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052300728.html
The outing of Valerie Plame (Book):
James B. Stewart, Tangled Webs (The Penguin Press 2011)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)