Tuesday's Travesty

At this quadrennial Season of Folly, Woodchip's endorsement is simple: Don't Vote.

The standard, hectoring saw is that if you don't vote you don't have any right to complain. In fact, it is the other way around: if you do vote you haven't any right to complain about the systemic unfairness your vote perpetuated. Any vote, whether for one candidate or another, serves one fundamental function: it legitimizes the system; and, in America's case, such a vote simply legitimizes oppression.

Take it from the top. Any vote for Trump or for Biden assumes that there is a difference worth voting for. But beneath that assumption lies another: that the democratic system in which one participates is itself a meaningful reflection of something called “popular will.” Neither of these assumptions are correct. Let me quote an erstwhile revolutionary,

It is interesting to examine the life in [countries which espouse] democracy, which means the rule of the people by the people. Now the people must possess some means of giving expression to their thoughts or their wishes. Analysing this problem more closely, we see that the people themselves have originally no convictions of their own. Their convictions are formed, just as everywhere else. The decisive question is who informs the people, who educates them? In those “democratic” countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.' By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital and in its use. This is really what they mean when they speak of liberty.

These capitalists create their own press and then speak of the 'freedom of the press.' In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless slave of the owners, molds public opinion. Public opinion thus mobilized by them is, in its turn, split up into political parties. ... But [these parties] are always one and the same. .... The opposition in [these democratic countries] is really always the same, for on all essential matters in which the opposition has to make itself felt, the parties are always in agreement. They have one and the same conviction and through the medium of the press mold public opinion along corresponding lines.

One might well believe that in these countries of liberty and riches, the people must possess an unlimited degree of prosperity. But no! On the contrary, it is precisely in these countries that the distress of the masses is greater than anywhere else. There is poverty - incredible poverty - on the one side, and equally incredible wealth on the other. They have not solved a single problem. The workmen of that country which possesses more than one-sixth of the globe and of the world's natural resources dwell in misery, and the masses of the people are poorly clad.. In a country which ought to have more than enough bread and every sort of fruit, we find millions of the lower classes who have not even enough to fill their stomachs, and go about hungry. A nation which could provide work for the whole world must acknowledge the fact that it cannot even abolish unemployment at home. For decades this rich [country] has had ... ten to thirteen millions unemployed, year after year....

It is self-evident that where this democracy rules, the people as such are not taken into consideration at all. The only thing that matters is the existence of a few hundred gigantic capitalists who own all the factories and their stock and, through them, control the people. The masses of the people do not interest them in the least. They are interested in them just as were our bourgeois parties in former times - only when elections are being held, when they need votes. Otherwise, the life of the masses is a matter of complete indifference to them.

The people as a whole definitely suffer. I do not consider it possible in the long run for one man to work and toil for a whole year in return for ridiculous wages, while another jumps into an express train once a year and pockets enormous sums. Such conditions are a disgrace.

It is unimportant who this politician was. What matters is the truth or untruth of the thing stated. Does anyone in the United States, whether of the left or of the right, dispute that the “mainstream media” -- that is, the media with the broadest influence -- is controlled by a handful of corporations? “But oh,” it will be said, “these corporations are only interested in selling paper. As long as paper sells, as long as advertising revenues are up, they don't care what is printed and they allow “editorial independence” to the staff. Anyone who believes this nonsense ought to go into the business of buying bridges.

Papers (and we include social media) very much care what gets published on their platforms. It was the hope and promise of the internet that it would extend the “freedom to publish” to broad masses of people, finally freeing so-called “public discourse” from the clutches of a few who asserted the right to print only such news as was “fit to print.” But what has happened to this new “freedom to publish” ? It is has been “moderated” into un-freedom under the pious excuses of “safety” and “truth-in-decency” that censors and despots always resort to.

One has to focus carefully on what is at issue. The printed pages of the New York Times are no different than a 280 character “tweet” on Twitter. Of course the Times will say: “Oh no! We are a newspaper! That is just chatter.” But what the First Amendment guarantees is the right to chatter. From a constitutional point of view there is no essential difference between a pompous, stentorian editorial on the august pages of the Times and a tweet from some yokel in Wisconsin. They are both stating a point of view or asserting a fact. They each engage in the process of forming the opinions of others; and this is precisely what the First Amendment is about. The difference is only in the reach and influence of the one or the other. Stated another way, there is no “freedom of the press” that is different from “freedom of speech.” When, therefore, Twitter or Facebook memory-hole a single tweet from a Wisconsin yokel, they are seeking to control the freedom of the press. And that is indicative of just how totalitarian this control is. It was taken for granted that despots in foreign lands would suppress “opposition newspapers.” One couldn't have a paper with a readership of 200,000, informing and influencing 200,000 people in way contrary to the interests of the regime! Fine and well. But for Wisconsin, Richard? For a single, yokel in Wisconsin whose tweet will soon enough be lost in the vast, interminable babble of the internet?! The same analysis applies to mainstream media who have moderated “comment sections.” No... the people who control information and opinion in this country are not only interested in “selling advertising”... they very much care what gets published on their platforms.

“But oh!” it will be said, “the very fact that the press has become so virulently partisan and polemical gives proof of the vitality of democratic discourse!” Not so. As our Unknown Statesman said: “Public opinion thus mobilized by them is, in its turn, split up into political parties. ... But [these parties] are always one and the same. ....” It was another un-named statesman who observed that censorship could be accomplished in two ways: first by cutting out the offending paragraph and second by flooding the public sphere with so much information that it all become meaningless. The manipulators of liberal democracies follow an intermediate course. They allow the public sphere to be flooded with contentious but ultimately trivial points of view.

James Madison talked about this in Federalist Paper No. Ten when he summarized how “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle [peoples'] unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.” If Madison were alive today he would be bowled over by the heated and hate-filled passions today stirred up over the most frivolous and fanciful issues each of which is jacked up into something crucial, critical and of fundamental importance. And this is what gets extolled as a “vibrant market place of ideas.”

However, Madison immediately went on to state: “But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” What is truly astonishing is how for all the issues that get bandied about in the press and argued over by politicians, the one issue that is seldom mentioned is the 401k issue. Gentrified Liberals in particular are adept at emoting over all sorts of humanitarian and cultural causes absolutely none of which impact on their investment in the system.  The systemic or structural distribution of wealth remains untouched and unaffected. In other words, “on all essential matters in which the opposition has to make itself felt, the parties are always in agreement.”

In the last year there was a tepid -- and by European standards -- centrist attack on this country's entrenched “liberties” that is on its “uncontrolled economy, and ... the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it.” Bernie Sanders proposed a few moderate limitations on the absolute Freedom of the Few. He suggested increased taxation on the wealth, a sustainable minimum wage for workers, and of course “health care as a right not a privilege.” The reaction of the press both of the left and the right was swift and furious. The right branded Sanders the socialist Anti-Christ who threatened to “abolish our liberties....” The pseudo left, epitomized by the New York Slime, CNN and MSNBC adopted another tack: they blanked Bernie out. He just didn't exist in the “real world” of “serious” politics. Oh but Kamala! Oh but Pete! Oh but Warren! Oh but Amy!!!!! When they were finally forced to take Sanders into account, he was labeled a “threat.” The Slime publicly anguished over how to “stop” him. And stop him they did.

I do not say democracy is a farce. I say American democracy is a farce. It is a game controlled by a few for the benefit of the few and all the sound and fury that accompanies it signifies....nothing.

And what has this farce produced? What is the product of our wonderful, exceptional democracy? It should not be necessary at this point to state what has been obvious -- not just during the Trump years -- but for the last five decades? Since 1970 every single objective metric on the quality of life for the majority has declined. This is not an opinion; it is a fact. The percentage of the population that benefits from the system continues to shrink. A smaller and smaller plutocracy at the very top control more and more the country's wealth, but

“The people as a whole definitely suffer. .... one man to work[s] and toil[s] for a whole year in return for ridiculous wages, while another jumps into an express train once a year and pockets enormous sums. Such conditions are a disgrace.”

That indictment was made 80 years ago. And so what has changed? Nothing, except that for a 20 year interlude during the 50's and 60's the United States made a passing effort to erase the disgrace. What the “neo” in neoliberalism stands for is a full throttled return to the days of disgrace.

That the system was failing to produce for the majority was recognized back in the 90's which is why Alan Greenspan deregulated banks and flooded the market with cheap credit. Of course this produced a “miraculous” boom only to be followed by an entirely predictable bust. "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan. But notice how even in the debacle Greenspan didn't give a crap about protecting ordinary would be home-owners or retirement savers.

The failure of the system is not a failure of policy. The performance of an engine can be enhanced by good fuel, good lubricants and good maintenance. But a system can't do more than it was designed to do. When there is a systemic failure the failure lies in the system itself. This semantic point is made in order to avoid talking about “a systemic failure in the system.” Such pleonasms confuse the issue. When a particular “disgrace” has existed for over 70 years, we are no longer talking about a failure of policies but of the system itself.

To put it in concrete terms, the election of Biden over Trump is not going to change a damn thing for the masses of people in this country. We stated back in 2016 that Trump's election was not a “disaster” but a “manifestation.” He represents the system unmasked; whereas Biden and Obama represent the system with masks. Either way the system remains unchanged.

The Democrats herald a return to yesterday's normalcy. “Let us go forward, back!” It would be a hilarious clown act were it not so sordid and tragic.  Normalcy, as Biden would have it, was not so great for 80% of the country. The “economy” -- by which pundits, press and politicians mean the “economy of the ten percent” -- was doing great. The metrics for them were off the chart. For anyone not invested in the country the metrics were also off the chart, only in the other direction. Under Trump it has gotten worse, but going back to less worse does not equate with good.

In fact, there is no going back. Precisely because both Biden and Trump are symptoms of the system, neither himself has the power to control causes. By definition, a symptom, which is the result of a cause, cannot cause things. The system marches to its own tune on its own time. If one looks at a graph of the stock market over the past 70 years one will see continuous peaks and valleys one after the other. But the “stock market” is the economy of those who own stock. If one looks at a graph of real income over the past 70 years one will see a continuous uninterrupted absolute or relative decline over the same period. “Income” reflects the economy of the working class.

To be sure, there are a myriad ways to measure income and wealth, even without taking into account non-tangibles such as zip codes and “being born with connections.” But there is no dispute in the general trend. The upper 10 percent have seen their wealth increase, the next 10% or 20% have seen minimal increases or stagnated, everyone else has flatlined or declined.

What this objective metric means is that despite the revolving door election of republican and democrat presidents and members of congress the economy remains the same. The election of one party or another may correlate with a bump or dip in the economy of the rich, but it has no effect on the economy of the working class. In fact if one were to graph the asset accumulation of the rich over the past 70 years, one would see a continuous upward trajectory.

One chart of particular interest was the disparity between the minimum wage and productivity.

The chart shows that since baseline 1970, the minimum wage worker produced twice as much in value as he or she received. And one does well to remember that “productivity” represents someone's “profit” and hence wealth. Marx called this the “economic alienation” of the worker; which was to say, that the worker was “alienated” from the wealth he produced.

But do the Democrats talk about economic alienation? Hardly. They yap about all other sorts of “alienation.” The alienation of a woman from the right to control her body; the alienation of blacks from the Wonderfulness of Amurkan Life; the alienation of gays from wedding cakes of their choosing; the alienation children from parents at the border... One alienation after another except the systemic alienation inherent in capitalism. The 401k Issue.

The Republicans, speaking through the hideous mask of Senawhore Lindsay Graham, say that they are opposed to raising the minimum wage because to do so will make workers too lazy to slave away 12 to 14 hours a day. {CRACK} The best one can say is that at least Lindsay is upfront about his economic sadism.

But on what reasonable basis, can one say that the election of Biden will produce a systemic change? Oh, to be sure, there might be some of the usual fringing -- tinkering around the edges that shaves off a some chicken feed for the excluded have-nots. But look at the graphs. Where has that sort of “incrementalism” got the working class over the past 70 years? On what basis can one say that Biden's election will even result in a deceleration of the trajectories of income disparity or real wage value? Not only do the Democrats not have a progressive record, the Biden campaign is now trumpeting how it is building a coalition with (supposedly) decent Republicans. Even a person being torn on a rack will hope for change but at some point one has to say that hope is no more substantial than...well...hope.

I have focused on the economy of the matter because all the supposedly inclusionary civil rights in the world don't amount to a hill of beans if you are too impoverished, too desperate, too harried by creditors, landlords and police to even make it too the fabulous “playing field”. The Democrats can “extend” opportunity to one cognized group after the other but the cognized group they ignore is the have nots of whatever gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. When the Democrats do worry about the poor it is only to indulge their self-primping by adding some “program” to the Sado-Show of America's so called “safety net” the real object of which is to force the poor to rub their own noses in their social failure and the abjectness of their condition. Contrast the typical 12 page (small print) welfare application with the one page TARP application: Name, Title, Corporate. Address, Phone & How much do you want? Sign and date. What kind of sadistic country taxes unemployment benefits as “income” and then turns around and revokes food assistance on the ground that the “recipient” is now making “too much” money?

There are of course other issues, most notably climate, on which neither party will do anything remotely sufficient to avoid the impending ecological catastrophe. Obama himself said so explicitly. The Paris Accords, he said, “will help avoid some of the worst effects of climate change.” That's three weasel words in one sentence. If you don't get it when he said it, think now of the recent month long fires in California. What part of “some” and “worst” was that? And those fires took place even before that treaty has gone into effect.

Democrat Jerry Brown's response to those fires was typical of the ruling class. “Millions,” he said, in the wake of the fires, “will be heading north to Canada.”  Which “millions” was Brown thinking of? The two million which represent 10% of California's working population? Canada is certainly not going to open its doors to millions of America's huddled masses and wretched refuse yearning for bread. But it will open its door to investors from other lands as it did to China's nouveau riche. Yes, Jerry Brown will arrange for a real estate swap of his 2, 500 acre ranch in the California foothills for something equivalent in the Canadian Rockies... but the millions of Californians in the 90% will be left to suffer “some” of the “worst” effects of climate change. But hey! “I got mine Jack; fuck you.”

This is the way our “progressive” Democrats think. Benjamin Appelbaum of the New York Slime, writing about the housing crisis from his second home in The Wherevers, no doubt. Elizabeth Warren talking about “jes' folks” from the enclosed garden veranda of her home in Cambridge. And of course, there was always Nancy Peelousy talking about the Comfort and Joy of her designer chocolate bon bons while millions lined up for “food baskets” choc full of cheap carbs and yesterday's produce.

No. I have focused on the economy because in the end, there is no freedom without economic wherewithal and there is no country without economic equality. As I have said before, you can't commit treason against the United States because the United States does not exist. What exists, in the form of “government” is a user interface for corporations. What is called “country” is simply a class -- a class to which the vast majority of Americans simply do not belong.

So no. Woodchip has no recommendation except abstention. Anything more simply endows, the predators among us the legitimacy they desire. It was said that path to the Forbidden End always begins with a first step. Likewise, when the Forbidden End is finally reached, the way out also begins with a first step -- a Step of Repudiation. 

©wcg2020

High Priests of Sacrificial Rites

Unlike other prosecutors who worked themselves up into a fury over how the defendant was the worst possible person who should be given the harshest possible sentence, I really never gave a shit about sentencing and I can't recall ever arguing over it.

My rationale was that it was the judge's job to fashion a sentence as best he saw fit and he didn't need any back seat driving from me.  But the truth of the matter is that the whole thing seemed rather pointless, rather like swatting flies at a picnic.  Of course, society couldn't be expected to do nothing at all when its rules were flaunted; but a longer or shorter sentence wasn't going to make any difference and wasn't going to cure anything. If one miscreant was "taken off the streets"  there would, as sure as the sun rises, be another one on the street on the morrow.  So let others argue over pointlessness.

I may have opposed waiving a fine or something in drunk driving cases.  I recall one attorney arguing that I should give his client a break on the fine because he had already paid a hefty legal fee. My reply was: "Why don't you give him a break on your fee?" 

I just liked winning trials, but i never deluded myself into thinking that I was doing much, if any, good.

Most prosecutors did not share in my laissez aller attitude.  They saw themselves as Lord Protectors, upholding the very foundations of society and, worse yet, cleansing the world of evil.  The defendant on trial became the object of their crusading wrath and inflicting pain (which is what poenishment is) on him became their overriding purpose and raison d'etre. 

For them, every criminal at bar was the worst of the worst who deserved the worst society could meet out in retribution. "They are just animals!."  This attitude seemed to me to be lacking in all discrimination.  I tended to agree that the men (and it was mostly men) we prosecuted were just animals.  But that, it seemed to me, mitigated in their favour.

I remember one morning riding the elevator up to the courts.  Crowded into the box were: myself, one of our judges, a defence attorney, a criminal in chains and his jailer.  We all stared away from one another as if ashamed of something.   Indeed.  We were all equally human beings trapped in a box headed to the same place.  "What shall I be pleading when the just are mercy needing?"  What, I asked myself, was the difference between us, the difference that made for the difference in our fated positions?

I took a quick look at the defendant -- a young, somewhat pleasant, ordinary looking man. He certainly didn't appear to be a Saturnian monster. The thought suddenly crossed my mind, in one of those intuitively clear ways, "He's missing a screw."  A screw most of us have that enables us to .. to what? to understand causality? the difference between impulse and consequence? 

Some people say that criminals lack empathy. I am reluctant to put it that way.  Criminals often have highly structured senses of right and wrong and loyalty.  It is rather that their sense of identification with a fellow human being fails to fire at the right time.  The criminals who consistently and periodically fail to empathize with their fellow human beings are the big time racketeers who are engaged in the crimes known as "banking," "commerce" and "business." Most prosecutors don't go after those criminals and, if they did, they would bring the country down.

It occurs to me now that "Criminal Justice" is really just a form of sacrifice, like ripping hearts out for Huitzilopochtli or tossing babies into the fire for Moloch.  It is something we have to do because... because...because it we don't the heavens will fall.

At the time, my attitude then was that it was just a game like cops and robbers. The gist of the matter was to keep the whole thing -- on both sides -- within reasonable, sporting bounds.  So long as the crime was not utterly depraved and cruel there was no point in getting all worked up over it.

In fact, before the irredentists got hold of it, the system as a whole operated on a kind of sporting principle. Most felonies were punished by a range of 16 months to six or seven years, with the mid-term of 2 or 3 the most common. With good conduct half time, that resulted in a prison sentence of about a year and half or less with credit for time served prior to trial.  It wasn't that different from tackling the robber and making him eat some grass.

All that changed when MADD -- Mothers Against Drunk Driving -- hit the scene.  Their intent was to "tighten" the screws against drunk drivers, not only by increasing the penalties but by making it impossible for a jury to acquit.

It had been the law, that no matter how high a driver's  blood alcohol was, the jury could still acquit if it believed that, pickled as he was in alcohol, the driver's driving ability was not impaired.  No more.  After MADD got hold of the system: three drinks and you're out.

There was only one small problem with this approach: it rendered the entire process of jury trial utterly irrelevant.  If you were going to punish people on the basis of a machine read out, why bother with all the rest?  In fact, why criminalize it at all? 

What MADD did, in a subtle but ineluctible way, was set the criminal justice system on a course where it was regarded as a mere mechanical device for wreaking ever harsher punishment in the name of victim vindication.  There was a direct line from three drinks and you're out to three strikes and you're out.

The entire system got calibrated so as to find more and more lockstep ways to inflict maximum punishment with minimal chance that someone might -- oh horror of horrors -- fall through the cracks.

It would require too many pages to detail all the ways that this policy of irredentism took place.  It was, suffice to say, the result of persistent efforts, by prosecutors, legislators and judges,  geared to inflicting maximum punishment on as many occasions and for as many reasons as possible. 

Not only were sentences increased, but a form of creative accounting allowed them to be doubly and triply increased.  For example, in California it is a crime to assault a person with a gun. That crime is "enhanced" with an extra additional term of imprisonment for "personally using a gun during the commission of a crime."  The courts see no problem with this.

Half the time, when I was prosecuting, we had only half an idea whom we were prosecuting.  Records in general were, to put it, lax. People could easily get multiple drivers licenses. Interstate records were laxer still.  Every D.A.'s office had its teletype machine which rattled out a "yellow sheet" of a name's criminal record.  To say it was "incomplete" would be an understatement. 

With the advent of computers in the 80's, things got "tightened up."  Not only was there no place to run, there was no place not to have come from.  People were tagged for life and could never escape their past.  This enabled the system to punish them for their past. 

It had been a commonplace dictum that "do the crime, do the time."  It was a pay-as-you-go system.  Now, it became a payment with compound interest.  For every crime committed, the defendant paid for that crime, plus a kind of surcharge for the previous bought and paid for crime.  The courts had no problem with this either.  Pages of sophistical burble blathered away "double jeopardy" issues.  On no! he's not being punished for the prior crime. Fie! Fie.  He's being punished for being an habitual criminal, in addition to being punished for the current crime.  

In this manner the system subtly shifted from punishing for crime to punishing the defendant for being a criminal type.  The doctrine of criminal types has always been resorted to by the most totalitarian of regimes and once that became incorporated into our criminal law, our courts lost their liberal character.

One of the rationales used to justify this prosecution on steroids was that the "rights of victims" were being ignored.  Actually they were, and rightly so.  The entire theory of criminal law -- in England deriving from Norman times -- was that public crime violated the "King's Peace."  It had nothing to do with violating Ethelred's enclose or trespassing on Tristan's wife.  The harm was not to an individual but to that abstraction called the peace of the realm.

In the older Saxon system, all "crime" was personal.  If you stole someone's cow you paid for it and for the doing of it.  Alternatively, you got to be the victim's slave for a term of years doing all sorts of humiliating things at his beck and call.  Or, he had the right to cut off your hand.  But whatever the case, it was between miscreant and aggrieved.  There was a lot of practicality and wisdom in this system and it still survives in our civil law. 

The idea of some abstract crime to "society in general" is a very tenuous one indeed.  It is hard to see how the robbery of a gas station harms everyone.  The syllogisms to extract a harm that "everybody pays for" if only in the amount of 0.00072 cents per occurrence is rather stretched to say the least.

Alas, the law of the King's Peace is here to stay.  But, if so, then one ought to be consistent.  The role of the criminal law is not to vindicate the victim or to give the victim his revenge (or as it is more evasively put, his "closure"). The role is to restore the King's Peace and the victim is but a witness in this affair.  If the victim wanted to pursue his or her personal revenge he could take the case to civil court and sue for damages.   And this was the traditional view up until the 1980's

The problem was that as the sentences got longer and longer, the chances of getting damages from the defendant became more and more remote.  Instead of limiting the criminal side of the system, it got extended so as to incorporate and represent victims as such.  Private "restitution" got built into the criminal penalty scheme. 

Worse yet, "victim advocates" began to participate in the trial and "victim comfort poodles" got to accompany the victim to the stand -- all of which tended to turn the trial into a victim weepfest. Still worse, in certain types of cases, cross examination of victims was legally limited and "expert testimony" which effectively vouched for the "truth" of the victim's story to admitted into evidence. 

The ultimate result is a system which maximizes the criminality of any misconduct and which strives to impose the maximum amount of punishment for that enhanced criminality, all the while turning the trial into an emotional cleansing process of Victim Vindication. 

What good does this actually do?  None that I can think of except that it enables prosecutors to sleep snug and sound wrapped in the conviction that they have brought God's justice down from Heaven to Earth.  The attempt to do, like Satan's original pride, only creates hell on earth. 

 ©