The Courts - Our Injustice system

As promised, a follow up to the last post, which characterised "Legalism" as a mental illness. There is no better illustration of this than the courts, at all levels. Judges often seem oblivious to common sense and reality, if they conflict with "the letter of the law." Prosecutors seek their job because they enjoy bullying the facts of a case in order to achieve as many convictions as possible. Some are just human pit bulls, some are hoping to become judges, some are just amoral and mean-spirited. When a trial requires a jury, the process becomes truly bizzare, as the judge and the lawyers conspire to empanel a group of airheads who have no opinions, don't read the papers or watch the news on TV, becausse otherwise "they may prejudge the case." The concept of a "jury of one's peers" was abandoned by English jurisprudence a few centuries ago, because they couldn't trust "peers" to be "objective." The result is a kind of chess game, in which prosecutors and defense attorneys do their level best to manipulate the jury with every trick they can muster. In ancient Greece this was known as Sophistry, and it was the primary reason early attempts at democracy failed utterly.

A recent Bizzaro cartoon summed up the inherent dishonesty of our court system as follows: When asked if he would swear "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," he replied, "Only if the lawyers do the same." Badda-boom! End of discussion. I keep praying that I'm never forced to stand in that jury box during the empaneling process, because I could easily end up in jail for contempt of court. They say that Shakespearre was only "kidding" when he wrote "Kill all the lawyers." You think?

Equal justice under the law? Whether or not you can afford to hire the "best" lawyers? Don't insult my intellligence.

Of course, we have courts of appeal, all the way up to the Supremes. Good luck there if you're not a right-wing Republican Corporation. The current Supreme Court acts like a board of directors; that's exactly how they came to subvert our democracy in 2000 and APPOINT George II as President. Even if the spineless Democrats actually held him and his criminal cohorts responsible for their lies and malfeasance (not likely), you can be sure that this Court would uphold his monarchial privileges.