On the morality of punitive justice

A visit to the K-Mart bargain bin

Currently between 30 and 40 thousand children die every day from the effects of malnourishment. In my neck of the woods, Amnesty International is currently in the midst of their latest campaign, publicizing the many thousands and thousands of murders of street kids that take place every year, with the crimes being committed by off duty police officers for whom hunting down and murdering children is a part time job. Their wages are paid by angry upper middle class and rich people who are sick and tired of hungry street kids in what is called ‘the second' or ‘third' world practicing prostitution and theft in order to hold together skin and bone for just one more day. This same social layer has benefitted the most from the policies of the last couple of decades, as what is referred to as ‘neo-liberalism' has destroyed what few social programs did exist in poorer nations, and not surprisingly the statistics show a massive transfer of wealth to the top taking place during the same time period.

The United Nations usually comes out with programs that always go nowhere, such as the one about how the world will halve then number of children and adults going hungry and starving to death by the year 2015. The latest report, like every other report of its type over the course of the previous century, states that, unfortunately, as is always the case, the goal will not be met given how far, far behind the world is falling in meeting its ‘obligations'. (See the story on the BBC site, ‘World going to slow on poverty' ). One bright spot noted in the report is that United States, ‘which gives the least aid as a proportion of GDP of any major country, has recently announced an increase in its aid budget by $5bn per year.'

The ending of hunger is a ‘social program' and like all ‘welfare programs' requires taxes, and so it is out of step with the prevailing global ideology (which has been destroying social programs world wide for several decades). It is interesting to note that programs for simple human beings are a lot less costly than much of what we are seeing happening in the world lately. As far as the price goes, this could be compared to going bargain shopping by visiting the cut rate bins at a K- Mart. This does not get funded. On the other hand, transferring wealth to the top, another form of social program, another type of ‘welfare state policy', which is much like a visit to Tiffany's, receives monster infusions of cash. Just the monstrous infusions of cash into this program over the last few years, which must be described using the ‘T' word (‘trillions') dwarf the price of a visit to the reject bins at a K-Mart. When you add on the price tag for decades of ‘neo-liberalism' and the many trillions of dollars transferred to the top during these decades, you wind up with a richly funded, multi-trillion dollar state welfare program, a form of ‘social assistance' which proves that there is nothing wrong with welfare and social programs in and of themselves, but rather what is really important is who the individuals are who will be the beneficiaries of such largesse. The projections for the coming years are the diversion to the top of further trillions and trillions of dollars in state sponsored benefits, funded by the don't tax and then spend policies of the Republican party of the United States as one example, and we can at least see one positive sign and that is that in the midst of the multi-trillion welfare program currently underway in the United States, someone, somehow, managed to ring another five billion dollars out of Washington, five billion that will be used to work against the agenda of neo-liberalism, and thus we can imagine just how difficult it really must have been to pry loose that five billion dollar donation.

A pestering gadfly, a chronic complainer

Lately I have been taking a look at my possible futures. One alternative time line features myself, one of many, playing the role of the pestering gadfly, the chronic complainer, who shows up periodically to complain about something that is obviously unjust. After having stated the obvious and protested vigorously, I can then go away and things will pretty much go on as they always have. By showing up periodically to complain and nag I can actually help out the modern day status quo, by giving this system of mass murder and violent oppression the gloss of democracy. After all, its not like they are crucifying me for flapping my gums, as inconvenient or annoying as that might prove to be. You see, the human race has come a long way since those more primitive times and we now live in what is known as a democracy, and I, the chronically complaining gadfly am certainly the proof of that simple fact.

Now it is a simple fact that no matter what we do, someone will wind up crying at the end of it all. At the present, children do a lot of the crying, and I know they will still be doing all that crying in 2016. Perhaps the game will begin again in 2020, when, once again we will set a target date, perhaps 2040 is far enough away, and a report can come out in 2030 detailing how far behind we are falling in our goals. Some chronic complaining will follow, along with some pestering. The process can be repeated again in 2050 this time targeting the year 2080, with chronically complaining reports being issued in 2060 and 2070. After all why should this (the New American) century be any different from the century that preceded it? There are those who might wonder why anyone would be opposed to the Imperial Empire and its lofty sounding rhetoric and what are supposed to be its glorious ideals, but when you stop and think about it, those who are determined to fight the empire, like those ‘criminals and thugs in Iraq' (to quote Bush in his recent speech on MLK day), well these people would be more or less on the right track (as the saying goes one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter). They say you can ‘be with the terrorists or you can be with Imperial Rome', and given a stark choice like that I guess I am with Iraqis on this one, at least with that two thirds majority of the population who want the Americans out of their country.

Now it strikes me that the problem with the poor, those who can't eat every day, and those little children who wander around for a few short years starving to death on this planet, is that they are not rich. This would be stating the obvious, but if they were rich, then I can only imagine the richness of the social programs put in place globally that would all work in tandem to their benefit, all of it richly funded by the government, even if they government has to borrow heavily, and then stick Joe Six Pack with the bill for it all later. That huge river of money heading north during the closing decades of the previous century is not suddenly going to be changing direction. The pattern is to entrenched, the agenda to obvious, and someone will have to pay and I think we can pretty much guess who that someone will be. First the poor will pay. No schools, no health care, no natal care, no welfare or social programs. Later on the bill will come around and land in the mail box of ‘Joe Six Pack and Sally Housecoat' (to quote Mr. Burns description of ‘the middle class' on the Simpsons). I find that the world unfolds in a manner that is no big surprise, and the real surprise is to see that people can actually be surprised by what happened to them, as though it suddenly came out of nowhere.

Just the massive tax cut spending spree, this massive trillion dollar transfer of wealth to the creme de la creme over the last few years would have more than paid for that trip to the bargain bin at the K-Mart. It would have also ‘stimulated the economy' (as could have been expected of any so called ‘Marshall Plan'). That, however, is water under the bridge, and so is all those other trillions of dollars yet to come, as more and more water flows under the bridge, because, you know, we just can't afford it.

On the righteousness of the concept of punitive justice

In a previous piece I briefly discussed the concept of a ‘California EarthQuake' as a metaphor for punitive justice, as a metaphor for the strong using their strength to punish the oppressors and assist the weak and the helpless. I will not waste electrons justifying this strange concept here, since I have already gone on and on about this matter previously and will instead post a link to this ‘strange' discussion here -> Prophecy 2004.

I will assume then, that whoever might be interested is then familiar with my justification for pursuing such a strange concept, so I need not waste my time attempting to justify the attempt at this time and I will move on now to discuss what I will call the ‘morality of punitive justice.' Let us assume that one could encourage the strong to rescue the weak and the helpless and save them from the ripping claws of the wicked. Would this be wrong? Would it be preferable to pursue the more ‘respectable' option, which as I see it, is to work patiently for a long, long time in the hopes of someday, somehow, achieving ‘social justice.' I assumed, as I was writing the previous piece that there would be those who would consider the idea of ‘punitive justice' to be abhorrent, even primitive, although, speaking for myself, I consider the alternative even more ghastly (setting multiple dates on into the 23rd century as target dates to ‘cut starvation in half', and then complaining about it every ten years).

One must suppose that what qualifies as ghastly depends on one's point of view. For example, if one were to drive home the point that a trip to the bargain basement at K-mart is in fact, a real bargain, perhaps that might be one way forward. What I propose here is that the policy of fighting fire with fire is probably the best tactic to employ. The quickest way into the wallets of the world is to offer the world the ‘lesser of two evils.' The evil I am speaking of here is paying taxes and funding the required social programs, so that ‘no child gets left behind.' The crappola about ‘leaving half the kids behind' just doesn't wash with me, and leaving half the adults behind doesn't cut it either. I realize that would be half as expensive, but then, as I said, it could be seen as a real bargain, depending on how one wishes to look at things. People regularly are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. So, for example, spending money to hire cops to murder thousands of hungry street kids every year is evil, because it costs money, but it is cheaper than taxes and social programs, and so the painful choice is made to open a wallet. Similarly funding bombs and bullets because the world is restless and dangerous is a trillion dollar expense for the world every year, with most of the money going into internal conflicts driven by the violence of poverty and fierce competition to survive rather than feuds between, say, Mali and Chad. Even these petty squabbles between neighbors are just a distractions, something to use to channel anger out of the country, and thus safely away from the wallets of the nation. Hitler's Nazism performed the same function, targeting ‘foreign workers who were not German Aryans' or blaming ‘rich Jews who ran the world's banks and all the good businesses', such scape goats then becoming the target of Joe Six Pack in a brown shirt (and is the way that the extreme right always manipulates the rage in society and then perverts it for its own purposes).

The only argument that one could make against ‘punitive justice' is that someone winds up crying, but then, in this world, someone is always crying. Typically, if we maintain the status quo and go on with business as usual, the poorest of the poor, and the weakest of the weak can do their assigned crying, while respectable people complain about it while always remembering to do so politely so as not to be rude to the wicked and the cruel, because, you know, you don't want to alienate the wicked or the violent oppressor.

Now there are certain advantages to playing the crying game, and since someone is going to be crying no matter what happens, I can see how it would be greatly advantageous to play a game of musical chairs. Around and around and around we go, and whoever gets stuck when the music stops will be crying. Given that I am referring to a form of punitive justice here, it would of course have to be a rigged game, so as to ensure that someone cries long and hard who was spared before, since those who have been stuck with the crying chair up to now have already done more than their fair share of crying, having been repeatedly given the shaft in what is after all a rigged game that they can't win.

And so, certainly, a California Earthquake is really going to make some people cry, which is unexceptional, since people cry all the time. If there is to be anything offensive about targeting California in my ‘lobbying efforts' as far as I can see it could only be that it is offensive to make certain people cry. Rather, we should just hope that things carry on as before, and those who have been assigned the crying chair can remain there, while the massive welfare state known as the United States of America continues to transfer trillions of dollars in social benefits, and the rest of the world marches behind in lockstep, because, after all, you don't want to ‘discourage international investors' and thus get severely punished with ‘capital flight'. The game is rigged and for that reason there is nothing that any country determined to ‘protect its national sovereignty' can do. I am a Canadian, so I here that doomed bit about ‘protecting Canada's national sovereignty' all the time, even though no such is possible, because the game has been ingeniously rigged, and thus national resistance is futile.

Previously I stated that I was going to ‘not write on this matter anymore' and just go away and ‘lobby' privately. However I have reason to question the wisdom of that approach. Lobbying publically has one distinct advantage that I can see, for it has occurred to me that I am laying it all on the line. Everything that I have ever had, and everything that I will ever receive, depends on my effort to successfully lobby in high places, as I mentioned in the previous piece. So it has occurred to me that I am not only challenging earth, but I am also challenging ‘heaven' as well and it is faith and justice that are going into the crucible here. On the Saturday before that ‘Eden Wing' event on Earth Day 2001, I was ‘sweating blood'. I was more afraid and in torment on that Saturday that I can ever remember being in my life. Faith went into the crucible, as well as everything I had ever received, not to mention everything that I was ever going to get. And in recent days I have felt the same feelings, as once again I feel myself being pulled towards the crucible, the smelting furnace, and once again everything goes on the line.

So then, what is the value of ‘saving face' when it comes to one single individual. What is one person when compared to all this? Is faith something to be scorned and mocked. Then let us decide now, and bring it all to a conclusion, and let faith either be tested by fire, or let it be discarded. Either the heavens are just, or they are not. Either heaven is ‘with us or heaven is with the terrorists.' I can see an advantage here in challenging heaven directly by laying it all out, and putting it all on the line. Is my faith a worthless thing? Up to now all the signs have been favorable, but in spite of it all, I have exhausted myself and all for nothing. Wicked people continually hurl defiance in my face each and every day, and they carry on with their plans unhindered. They have made a fortune doing so. And now it is time to call for a decision. Who would dare to deny the justice of my cause? Let them come forward now, and confront me. I am not afraid, for one who helps me is at my side, and I stand on my faith, and I know that justice reigns supreme, and so I will not be put to shame. Who is there who disputes the cause for which I struggle. Let us confront one another. Has anyone ever done anything like this before? Could anyone have believed some of the things we have seen and heard? Who are these people who keep hidden in a place of deep darkness astonishing things, those amazing sights which would open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf. Powerful people know that of which I speak (I saw it myself on live television immediately after Earth Day). Now if they are so corrupt that they would have the gall to hide something like this, who then could really know what else these oppressors have kept hidden, so that eyes might be sealed and ears remain unopened. Who is there who would declare me guilty. Let them speak their minds now, and then together we will go to the place of judgment.

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The Unified Field Theory
is also available as a zip file -> unified.zip

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