Powerful Punishment

If there's one thing the powerful have excelled at throughout history, it's to shift blame for the problems they cause to the powerless. Divide and conquer. Aim the anger of the declining middle-class to the most powerless groups in society as to make them fight each other instead of the powerful.

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Look no further than the rising far right political parties and politicians in the global north, and you'll see this strategy deployed in full effect. Concentrating on the world's most prominent example of this, the United States of America, we see the Republican party wage war against the poor, the migrants, the women (pregnant women and feminists in particular), civil rights movements (BLM in particular), transgenders and other LGBTQ+ people; anyone with even less political power and less of a voice than the white cisgender males are targeted. And any institution that shows the kind of progressive politics aimed at helping these groups, like "woke" Hollywood or "neo-Marxist" schools and universities, will hear their war cry: "I will Strike Down Upon Thee With Great Vengeance!"

Yes, that's where we are now: it's a war, a holy war at that. So much so that their strong masculine leader is now painted a new Messiah among the most virulent evangelicals in Trump's base. In the meantime, and in the real world, Trump has been served with yet another lawsuit: New York attorney general lawsuit accuses Trump of ‘staggering’ fraud. That's because he's a criminal, and we all know it. His supporters know it too, but they just don't care because in their eyes he can do no wrong. Trump once said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"; that's how untouchable he fancies himself, and to be perfectly honest he is that untouchable. Or at least he has been until now.

It's not just Trump though; all powerful and wealthy people are harder to prosecute and convict. There seem to be two sets of rules; one for the powerful and wealthy, and one for the rest of us. Today's video discusses that phenomenon; Jon Stewart interviews Geoffrey Berman, a former U.S. Attorney from New York's southern district, on this topic. Jon is fully aware of the division between rich and poor with regards to the legal system, but Geoffrey defends the legal system, which is to be expected. And yes, we do need laws and regulations, but no, the law doesn't treat everyone the same. Just like there don't have to be explicitly racist laws for them to explicitly target non-whites, there don't have to be laws explicitly aimed at poor people for them to target poor people.

The simplest example is that any crime punishable by paying a fine, is in effect legal for the rich. If the amount of money you have to pay for a crime doesn't bother you, there's no incentive to not commit that crime. This applies not only to individuals, but to companies as well, as is illustrated perfectly by the Ford Pinto case in the early 1970s. The Ford Pinto was unsafe due to a design flaw in the gas tank; a 20-mph rear-end collision would cause the tank to rupture and catch fire. And Ford knew this, but they calculated that it was cheaper to pay for the lawsuits that would result from the deadly accidents than to redesign the vehicle. If you're interested, you can read all about it here.

We definitely live in a two-tiered system in which it's difficult to get powerful and rich criminals behind bars. The irony is that this causes much of the discontent among the right wing voters who support the "law and order" party in America, while it's in fact the party of maintaining and bolstering the strict hierarchy that causes the two tiers. But they'd much rather blame the powerless for their discontent; it's so much easier to kick down than to kick up. And their party, full of strong men, eagerly provides them with the targets to aim their anger at. Anyhow, watch the below linked video; it's an interesting discussion on why it's so difficult to punish the powerful.

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