The reason American prisons are full to capacity with hispanics and blacks have absolutely nothing to do with race or racism. it is pure opportunism. One of the largest money-earners is the business of locking people up: it feeds lawyers, judges, prison-owners, food industry and the list is endless. And the easiest, cheapest groups to incarcerate are the poor and the disadvantaged; people who will not be able to hire sleek lawyers to drag the process; people who are almost certain to keep reoffending – to keep coming back to jail. Their cases last a few minutes in court and the sentences can be harsh, as there will be no public outcry, nobody will protest and the money-making machine rumbles on.
You only have to look at the number of people in jails for selling drugs. If you round-up and imprison the people who buy these drugs – rich, affluent doctors, lawyers, politicians and their kids, the sale of drugs will come to a grind. But NO, for decades, we have continued to ignore those responsible for generating the DEMAND for these banned substances, while concentrating solely on the unfortunate fools who get caught-up in the vicious world of supplying these drugs
The people who go around torturing others in the name of protecting the rest of us, believe they are doing the right thing, the most expedient thing and they go back to their families, sleep well at night, because they have built-up those excuses. The vile lunatics who go around killing people in the name of religion, tell themselves they are doing so, because God told them to do so or to right some supposed wrongs – do we think that if God wanted all of us to be muslims or Christians or Hindu or whatever other religion, that he couldn’t have just done it? Do we really think an all-powerful God needs a bomber to help him spread a religion?
You look at armed robbers; they probably tell themselves society is rotten and you should take what you can; afterall, banks cheat us all, politicians lie to us etc. People wish to leave something for their children etc. But surely, if we all decide to become robbers, none of us will survive right? But individuals will always find the appropriate excuses to permit the evil they decide to engage in and justify their need to do so.
We create countries, we create borders, we create a need to stratify society: rich, poor, educated, illiterate, etc. Some go as far as to create castes: ”untouchables”. How vile. To label another human being as an ”untouchable”. Some countries are safer than others because people choose to observe certain rules. You take for instance, speeding on roads: we all know the speed limits right? And ABUSE – and I do not mean racial abuse; I mean ALL forms of abuse, be it those based on race, body size, age, sexual orientation etc. People engage in hurling abuse for a number of reasons, each with an excuse attached…
But we continue to create these excuses.
You look at the Covid-19 pandemic and the way wealthy countries have monopolised the vaccine. Discarding millions of doses as they expired. You would think that a common adversary such as a virus, would bring us all closer together? instead, it has shown us off for what we are: travel bans on non-consequential countries that governments do not see as capable of standing up for themselves. Fit young men & women shoving old people in supermarkets to grab (and stash) rolls of toilet paper. And we pile up the explanations and excuses..
You will always find a volunteer for any crime, regardless of how heinous. And they will have their reasons: “it was an order and I cannot refuse an order” or ”I did it for my country”. Why has the Biden administration not reviewed & dropped America’s pursuit of Julian Assange? ok, he revealed classified information. I haven’t read the story in full, nor do I know the full details, BUT surely, some compassion could be applied? Try him in absentia, sentence him to a few more years in jail (which he could complete where he is now, in the UK) and that should be ample deterrent for anyone else trying to leak classified data. Assange should of course apologise unreservedly to America – regardless of the efficacy of the data that his organisation leaked, if they are classified, there could be other risks to leaking them and recklessness is never true journalism. As for whistleblowers in general, yes, it is noble to flag up an issue, but breaking laws to do so, is also not right is it? There has to be legal means to object to actions perceived to be wrong – what we cannot have, is a society where people are hired into sensitive jobs, sign an agreement that bar them from leaking security/sensitive information, and then go out there and plaster it all over the internet. There is a great deal going on out there, that individuals should simply refuse to do, but go ahead by making excuses to themselves for doing it and we end up with sale of humans, world wars, holocaust, hate etc. Be it in the name of religion, God, governments, dictators, race (e.g. genocide) etc. At the bottom of it all, you will probably find: financial gain, mental health issues etc.
We are simply who we are: dreadful beings largely.. and we’re bloody good at coming up with excuses….
Humans are possibly the vilest form of life on earth: we are very destructive (also apparently excusable..) and need very little reason to hate on each other (with plenty of excuses to hand..)…
Knowledge can improve the world we live in 