I was reading the headlines last week about the four police officers killed in the coffee house in Washington. The alleged gunman, Maurice Clemmons, 37, was painted as a very bad man. It seems to me, that authorities handled the public, much like dog handlers training tracking dogs. Tracking dogs are taught to identify a person by their scent. We have been taught to ascertain a person’s character based on Authorities’ use of certain buzzwords and phrases: “violent criminal history,” “child rapist,” “robber and thief;” “armed and dangerous.” These are the buzzwords, which at some point have been placed in our collective subconscious and are designed to trigger an acceptance of the devaluation of human life, in this case the life of Maurice Clemmons. At least this is the only theory that I could come up with to explain why no one raised questions and no one was outraged when Maurice Clemmons was denied his right to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Clemmons was shot and killed by someone who took it upon them self to be Clemmons’ judge, jury and executioner. Clemmons was entitled to be tried in an impartial court of law by a jury of his peers; but this didn’t happen and no one, not you or I raised an eyebrow.
I believe it was tragic what happened to the slain officers and my heart goes out to their families. And I have to admit; I had pretty much joined the status quo and accepted Mr. Clemmons’ fate without question … until I sat down and watched the Geraldo show on Fox news. Mike Huckabee was a guest on the show and apparently had come under fire for allowing Clemmons to leave jail early. But, based on what Huckabee said , I came to the conclusion that the 37 year-old Clemmons was not always a monster, but had developed into one after he had been victimized by a corrupt justice system.
According to Huckabee, at age 16, Clemmons was given the equivalent of a death sentence for possessing a small amount marijuana or some drug of that sort. According to Huckabee, if Clemmons were another child, he would have just recieved a fine and community service, so Huckabee apparently felt he had an obligation to correct the injustice perpetrated against the 16 year old Clemmons.
Unfortunately, it appears that by the time Huckabee reached out to save him, 21 years later, the damage had already been done. It’s not far fetched to think that Clemmons’ alleged “violent criminal history” was a response to the unjust treatment that he received at age 16. So we can’t condemn Clemmons without also condemning the flaws in the American justice system. This raises another question. Is society really getting a benefit from our courts’ existence, or is society and grieving families just paying for the fallout of the greed and corruption that permeates the American justice system?
We should also be frightened by what appears to be emerging as a new class system, where officers of the court are in one class, and everyone else is in another. I say this because I would like to know when it became okay to circumvent the jury and kill an alleged police killer? Meanwhile if someone takes the life of an average person they get a plea deal and we are lucky if they get, a smack on the wrist. This is true even at the highest levels. For example, a quick internet search will reveal that people have been jailed for allegedly threatening what they believed were corrupt Judges. Some of the alleged threats don’t seem like threats at all to me. I read where one man posted his opinion that a Judge had done something so egregious that he felt the judge needed to die; and allegedly, he also posted the courthouse address and a diagram of the courthouse layout on the internet. These items are already public knowledge, but apparently he was still arrested and thrown in jail.
The scary part is that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, doesn’t even get this level of protection. News reports say secret service for this President has had to increase significantly to keep up with the rising number of threats against his life — yet, I haven’t heard of anybody being jailed for threatening the President. When the penalty for threatening a Judge is harsher than the penalty for threatening the President of the United States, we should pause and ask ourselves why?
If we don’t challenge a corrupt judge’s power to lock people up in private prisons so that he may enrich himself, like the Pennsylvania judges did earlier this year in the kids for cash scheme, then we are just polishing the stepping stones for the next holocaust; a holocaust not based on purification, but a holocaust based on corruption and greed.
We tend to think bad things happen to other people, and not us. But if we allow Maurice Clemmons’ to be shot and killed for being suspected of killing four police officers, and we don’t even raise our voice to ask why this man was not treated as innocent until proven guilty and taken before an impartial court of law, then I am wondering, if in remaining silent, are we implicitly sanctioning the devaluation of our own life and facilitating the manifestation of a new way of living … life under a second holocaust?
Before I say anything else, let me disclose my bias. I believe that corrupt elements in the American justice system create criminals. I believe corrupt officers of the court are enriched by the creation of criminals. I believe that America’s trend toward building more prisons and privatizing them are a dangerous direction to be moving toward. I can envision the second holocaust occurring as a logical progression of privatizing prisons. This opinion was cemented, after I read about the “kids for cash” scandal.
So now that I have disclosed my bias, let me tell you what has been on my mind … the mechanics of the first holocaust. I think in understanding the logistics and mechanics of how the first holocaust came to fruition, we can identify leading indicators to alert us to the formation of a second holocaust.
I did some preliminary research to discern the evolution of concentration camps as they compare to the evolution of our courts and prisons today. According to accounts, the holocaust didn’t happen overnight; it was implemented in stages over time. It started when Jewish people were stripped of their citizenry, and placed in ghettos called Jewries, they were later moved to concentration camps; and the concentration camps evolved into death camps.
The American justice system is evolving into something chillingly similar. Corrupt American Judges are depriving citizens of their rights (i.e. stripping them of their citizenry). We have UPL laws to block people from gaining the necessary resources to assert their rights intelligently.
We have innocent people being thrown into jail, DNA testing has freed some innocent, but how many more innocent are trapped behind bars, or worst, has been killed behind bars? Jail, after all, is just another ghetto.
The jail ghettos like concentration camps are owned and operated by the government. We don’t have to wait until the government privatizes jails to know that American run jails can also evolve into death camps. We need not look any further than the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib to understand the potential; and if we speak to some activists they will tell you that Abu-Ghraib-like conditions and scenarios exist right now in some U.S. prisons.
But what I really found interesting was that citizen complacency was an important factor and key to the enabling of the holocaust. Once Jewish people had been removed from society (i.e. put in jail), it became easier for the Nazis to demonize them and for Germans to ignore what was happening.” Out of sight; out of mind.
It is no different here and now in America. People are suffering at the hands of corruption in the American justice system and no one seems to care. People are removed from society and placed in prisons, where it becomes easier to demonize them, like the demonizing of Clemmons, because after all they are criminals.
Without any first-hand fact checking, I was receptive to the fact that Clemmons was a demon. The truth is, he might have been, but don’t I owe it to my fellow man to inquire into the matter first-hand? In helping to preserve Clemmons rights, I am actually helping to preserve my own.
For example, according to accounts, the Polish sat comfortably to the east while Jews in Germany were annihilated. But who can blame the Polish, after all they were living comfortably, Hitler wasn’t bothering them; besides what could they do? But then Hitler came for the Polish. By that time it was too late to rethink their position. The Polish and the Jews would have been a lot stronger if they had taken a collective stand when Hitler first targeted the Jews.
Human nature is infused with a characteristic called self-preservation. Mindless people think self-preservation means to use others to help ourselves. Thinking people understand that self-preservation means to help others, because in doing so we are also helping ourselves.
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