Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 9)

 [Continued from Our Police State, 9-11-2010 to 9-12-2010 (part 8). sch 3/26/23.]

Why do the politicians not talk about alternatives to prisons? Come on, folks, if they told you not everyone needed to go to prison, then you might wonder if they had lied to you about their crime-fighting credentials. If you started questioning their methods of fighting crime, you might want a new set of politicians running things. Then where would the old politicians be? Looking for a new job. No, what I see now is a lot of fraud perpetrated on the public by all sorts of politicians and bureaucrats and pundits. I cannot say what I write here will not harm me during the next 12 years. However, if I remain silent, then I am complicit. Writing about this lets me make atonement for an earlier silence.

I do hope that those reading will think and work to change our American ways. I have no hopes of any changes in my status - my fate is quite sealed. I think Americans can do better than we have in the past 30 years. I still thrill at the American image pout forth by Walt Whitman and Lincoln and FDR. However, America will never achieve its fullest possibilities until all work together, instead of being set against one another through fear and mistrust. An American police state lacks any possibility of tapping our national potential. Yet, we live on the edge of such a police state. The choice lies with you.

ANGELO

    Then must your brother die.

ISABELLA

    And 'twere the cheaper way:
    Better it were a brother died at once,
    Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
    Should die for ever.

ANGELO

    Were not you then as cruel as the sentence
    That you have slander'd so?

ISABELLA

    Ignomy in ransom and free pardon
    Are of two houses: lawful mercy
    Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

ANGELO

    You seem'd of late to make the law a tyrant;
    And rather proved the sliding of your brother
    A merriment than a vice.

ISABELLA

    O, pardon me, my lord; it oft falls out,
    To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean:
    I something do excuse the thing I hate,
    For his advantage that I dearly love.

ANGELO

    We are all frail.

Measure for Measure 

sch