Sir,
Our country currently has the largest prison population in the world, larger than China's...(I'll give that a second to sink in...), and I consider this to be crap of the highest and smelliest degree. This is a subject that has been burning in my belly for quite awhile, but I didn't think complaining to G.W. would help much... didn't his administration sentence the Enron guys to two weeks of summer camp...(or something equally ridiculous)? Anyway, the current administration seems to think we're all just being a little overwrought when we all wanted to lynch the AIG executives. But maybe lynching's too good for them, maybe we should at least start by calling them what they are: Scheisskopfs!!! If you can take a few minutes away from negotiating the drug wars, let me tell you a little story about my Grandma...cc to www.whitehouse.gov
It strikes me that justice, like charity, is best begun at home. That's how Grandma would have seen it, I believe. Growing up in a forested community outside Washington, DC was an idyllic childhood, but even more heavenly was spending summers on Grandma and Grandpa's farm in Ohio... the sights, the sounds, the smells (!) it was an 8 year old's dream. It was at the farm that I learned, by example, that when you see scheiss in an unexpected place, it's ok to point and say "Schiess!!!", and then either laugh, or cry, or curse some more, whatever the situation called for...(Zach and Haley, that's "Merde!!!" to you). God bless you, Grandma, and thanks. You might even say that my chief hobby in life has turned into a process of pointing and saying, "Schiess!"
When touring the world and touting Amerikan ideals, be sure to mention that little statistic about prison populations; ideals without facts to back them up are a little like Faith without acts: a hollow premise. And then ask yourself one simple question. Is our country really raising that many maladjusted sociopaths, or do we just have some really bad laws?... One might even say that in the last century, our justice system has been misdirected, and that our laws have been written by shysters (pls see the etymology...). How else to explain that in the current banking crisis, no laws appear to have been broken! At least with the S&L crisis and others, we could point to the bad guys and say, "Schiess!" Instead, we find out that the gov't fell down on the job by removing some regulations and not enforcing others... failing to do one of the principal job that we hired them for. So while the rich criminals were being protected, what was happening to the little guy?
People used to point at the percentage of minorities in prison and say, "What a shame!!!"...(scheiss!), but recently it's become more and more evident that it's the color of your money, not skin (see OJ), that determines your odds of landing in jail, and that strikes me as an unfair way to play the game. Add to that morality laws on victimless crimes and an unproportionately powerful corrections lobby, and you have a country that has turned justice on it's ear. Grandma, your cuddly little boy has grown up to be a criminal (sorry,kids), and though I wake up every morning feeling neither maladjusted, nor sociopathic, the laws of this country declare that I am, just by existing and practicing my own brand of "civil disobediance". This has haunted me my whole life, and pisses me off to no end. Grandma, they're scheissing on the poor people down here,... should I laugh, or cry....? God Bless America, Robert Leatherman