Crime and Punishment in America

As we sit and wait in dread for the results of tomorrow's election to be - hopefully - agreed upon, it's worth looking back and thinking about the character of the campaigning that led up to this point.

Republicans are running largely on three basic themes, none of which they offer any concrete proposals to address:

(1) Inflation is killing us all, and President Biden and the Democrats are responsible.

(2) American cities, particularly those with Democrats in power, are lawless, crime-ridden hellholes where fearful ("white Christian") citizens cower in fear for their lives while angry mobs of Antifa thugs rampage unchecked through the streets, burning and looting all in their path and exposing decent, law-abiding ("white Christian") citizens to the horrors of Critical Race Theory and economic fairness, all encouraged by President Biden and the Democrats.

And ...

(3) An enormous, unstoppable wave of destitute, disease-ridden, wild-eyed criminals, each carrying hundreds of pounds of fentanyl, bales of phony ballots, or both, is pouring over a border left wide open by President Biden and the Democrats.

All of these are idiotic arguments, untainted by evidence and targeted at people who respond only to visceral bumper-sticker messages. It's much easier to cuddle into the warm and comforting embrace of far-right scare media than to do any critical thinking or demand any actual evidence that these things are real.

I would call your attention to two wonderful things I wish every screaming GOP supporter would listen to:

First is a brilliant dissection of the responsibility for inflation, presented by the Politics Girl. I couldn't do a better job of pointing out that the Republican Emperor has no economic clothes.

Second is a very interesting look at actual crime statistics presented in an NPR broadcast report. You can listen to the report (it takes about seven minutes) or read a transcript here. One of the most interesting parts of the analysis is that what is reported as "crime" is based on a decision made nearly 100 years ago on what types of crimes would be reported and tracked by police. Today, however, much - perhaps most - of the most lucrative and socially damaging crime is being committed by criminals who will probably never be prosecuted or spend so much as a day in jail. Why? Because they are white, rich, can afford expensive lawyers, and are able to manipulate laws and government policies to make their crimes hard to prosecute. Plus, their "victimless" crimes (embezzlement, graft, theft of public property, blackmail, etc) fall outside the "Index One" crimes (murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, larceny, burglary, auto theft, and sometimes arson) that police and lawmakers formally track.

Of course, those are all crimes that are terrible and worthy of punishment, but they ignore a vast landscape of crime that is seldom seen, even more seldom charged, and still yet more seldom punished. The worst criminals, the ones who cause all of us the most economic and social damage, are laughing at the ones who deflect attention away from their crimes ...

And finally, no one doubts that there is an immigration crisis in this country. What is never actually admitted is that neither party has a particular interest in solving it. For Republicans, it's useful for whipping up their supporters' fear of the replacement of privileged, white, Christian Americans by terrible brown hordes. For Democrats, it's an opportunity to posture themselves as caring and righteous (not to mention that many of those immigrants tend to vote for Democrats). Neither side is willing to address the fundamental problem, which is that our immigration system is totally broken and out of sync with the actual economic and social needs of the country. Republicans refuse to consider any new immigration legislation that doesn't begin with sealing the borders and deporting the millions of illegal immigrants already here. Democrats refuse to consider any new legislation which doesn't address the problem of dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants already here by providing some pathway to eventual citizenship. And so nothing gets done. Nobody has a reasonable plan to address the problem. Except me, of course, but my proposal has been stored in the "Send Him an Earnest Letter, Then Ignore" file of every one of my elected officials.

And so the ass clownery goes on.

Tens of millions of us will go to the polls tomorrow and cast our votes on the basis of our fears, rather than our hopes. A Republican victory that seizes control of one or both houses of Congress will result in a government that does nothing except exact political revenge for perceived slights, the party having published no plans to address the problems they rail about. To the extent a Republican-dominated legislature does anything, it will benefit the GOP's wealthy and big-business supporters, not you and I.

Author Octavia E. Butler expressed it well in her novel "Parable of the Talents":

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and foresight.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears;
To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool;
To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen;
To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies;
To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”

Wisdom and foresight are what we need. Exercise them carefully when you vote tomorrow.

Have a good day. Choose wisely. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo