Written by Don Washington   

If you came to the Tutorial last week hoping that I would have something to say about possibly the worst week in the history of 2013 and Jesus people it’s not even hurricane season yet… I couldn’t… I was busy and when I’m busy it probably means the world is experiencing a week like last week. If I stop writing for a month or so that means the zombie apocalypse is in full swing but worry not… I’m on it.

That said it’s not last week that should worry you it is all the insanity that things like last week portend for the future and on the bright side it has not one thing to do with zombies… vampires and demons on the other hand… well people you can’t have everything damn it… stop cryin’, find some stakes and human up on the holy water we’ve got work to do.

Last week a disaffected loner with a history of violence against women, from a home that sounds about as broken as can be got his brother to help him bomb the Boston Marathon. They killed three people and maimed 170… which would be less people that were slaughtered in a grade school in Newton and less people than were blown to pieces in Texas by criminal corporate activity. This is not a comparison of evils, evil is not the sort of thing that can be compared. I'm not a Libertarian, I can't just blithely decide that lives don't have infinite value so we live at our risk... be careful and sue if you survive.

Naw, I'm not carrying on about the evil I'm a little wound up about the reactions to said darkness. I'm concered about what they tell us about the world we live in and the values of say… our entire country. Follow along and whatever you do don’t panic, that will only make you have to reread the last sentence and that will send you into something between irreducible shame and infinite levels of anger… two states I cannot suggest you sample but each to their own.

The response to the Newtown shootings was one for the ages. There were more votes in the United States Senate to eradicate the common sense concealed carry laws of states that have less shooting deaths; 57 than to pass a watered-down, symbolic to meaningless background check provision that would have not stopped the Newtown shootings from happening, 54. The excuse here, the Constitution gives us the Second Amendment right to be armed to the teeth in case the government takes our rights away. Fair enough, the psychotics on the Supreme Court seem to agree with that point of reflection who am I to disagree?

Meanwhile some of the same Senators feel the need to deny the surviving alleged criminal miscreant in Boston the 5th Amendment right, not incriminate himself and they would like him, as an American citizen stripped of his 14th Amendment due process and equal protection of the law rights. Notorious Southern Belle Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been rambling on about a separate legal system for terrorists… because you know, the best legal system in the world, if one is believe the hype is not robust enough to prosecute a common criminal for murderous mayhem.

Take a breath and realize that we've reached the point where in a democracy we have not one but two legal systems... three if you count the military justice system. There was another country that had a multiplicity of legal systems for its authorities to decide to toss its citizens into but that was in the 20th Century and just bringing them up makes people say you've gone to far. Do some research and join me in my less than quiet worry... it'll be fun honest.

I think it even more notable that none of these legislators are troubled that a major American city got turned into a ghost town without invoking Martial Law. Martial Law has rules, what just happened in Boston was more... arbitrary. Don't lose sleep over this those same legislators who are worried about the government taking over the streets unless we are armed to the teeth were unconcerned by militarized police, or maybe soldiers or maybe federal agents going door to door without warrants to look for a guy who turned out to be on a boat miles away from where they were looking.

Then there was Ricin guy, a right-wing nut that no one is considering a domestic terrorist or suggesting he be tried as an enemy combatant in spite of his anti-governmental and pointedly political act of trying to murder Congressmen, Senators and the President... surely his friends, family and church need to be interrogated... is there not room in GITMO for his deadly network of possible accomplices?

I am joshing here but trust me when I say the choice to treat the Boston crime spree differently than the avowed political motives of a man with access to and the skill to deploy a chemical weapon of mass destruction ought to cause you some concern. Maybe there are thousands of letters still out there... see how when you apply the same rubric to him it feels slightly uncomfortable. Well, at least all three of them look white, right?

What are we to make of all this? The American legal system is anemic and can’t work when nasty push comes to ugly shove? Makes one wonder why we have such laws at all if such is the case. We have the right to gun down children in grade schools but not to legal protections if we’re… Muslims? Did we learn that if we suspect Muslims it's terrorism but if organized white nationalists gun down federal prosecutors it's a run of the mill murder case? If it's two federal prosecutors not just one killed by Aryan gangs with legally purchased guns it's a 2nd Amendment remedy to some bad judicial service but still not terrorism?

Why didn't they lock down half of Texas... that would have been something to see. Perhaps we’ve learned that the 2nd Amendment is inviolate but the rest of the Constitution is on a more catch-as-catch can basis? So many questions and all the answers should alarm you.

Quick note, the Constitution is designed mostly to protect those we find most odious from our well-intentioned and perhaps justifiable urges to form lynch mobs. It also protects us from defaulting to xenophobia or stoning people whose views we find objectionable… in fact it is there to protect those people from the wrath of upset majority more often than not.

Mindful of this there was an explosion in Texas that made the Boston thing look like a grade school scuffle. If Muslims, however, had been suspected in this event the whole country, Chicago, LA, Memphis, Atlanta, Salt Lake City etc. could have looked like Boston… you know, a ghost town, let that settle on you. I am not saying it could have happened but remember how quiet the sky got after 9-11 and how fast the PATRIOT ACT happened afterwards? I do and I suggest that you don't forget.

Fortunately a huge corporation was responsible for the explosion in Texas… a state whose oversight is on par with wrapping bloody pork chops around a toddler’s neck and dropping her into a shark tank… prick-rat-bastards. The response to these silk-suit wearing murderers has been… well Gov. Perry would like some federal money to clean up what happens when a plant is storing 1350 times the amount of explosive product across the street from an elementary school and an old folks home has a harmless fire and no sprinkler systems.

It would take 98 years for OSHA by the way to get back to that plant if they ever looked at it, so strapped for cash and investigators are they and the Sequester is not helping. Sorry for connecting a dot but I am mindful that no elected official is talking about stripping these vampiric jackasses of anything. Rules are different for rich folks; that’s why they call it plutocracy. How different are the rules for the rich and powerful... get a load of two other things that happened this week. They are after all far too connected to what I was saying earlier.

The Constitution Project pointed out that the highest officials in the Bush Administration, that would be ALL of them from “Dick” Cheney to guys like Addington, were aware of and responsible for creating and implementing a system of torture. Okay, you knew this and you also know that they need to be prosecuted because that’s how crime works. I shouldn’t have to tell a Constitutional lawyer, our President, that crimes take place in the past, so you “look back” and prosecute them so that in the future this kind of thing won’t happen again. The fact that I have to say such a thing and use small words so that the President and Attorney General Eric Holder can understand what I’m laying down screams that something is wrong.

Guess what it is yet? Sure you already know but let’s say it out loud. For these rich powerful guys no one is going to even get a hard talking to for killling a low number of 100,000 civilians for maybe the oil or maybe just because or maybe for some grand idea of empire. Evil people have motives that shame the rest of us upon any reflection.

To keep our train of thought together here people, just like the big corporate explosion, just like the tar-sands train, the broken pipeline in Arkansas and the Congress and their staffs once again being allowed to engage in insider trading... Say again, what the hell isn’t that frick-frackin’ illegal?

Well technically sure but the GOP was so flagrant about it that after the 2008 meltdown someone had to do something so they passed the STOCK Act. Technically speaking the Congress still cannot engage in insider trading but just like the defeated gun legislation we can’t have a good law get in the way of stealing or murderous mayhem for profit. Such a thing would not be American. Oops, I digressed into near diatribe... I'm back.

Here’s what the President and the rest of the Congress for sale did. They repealed key components of the STOCK Act so that it could be a good piece of Obamaesque compromise. There will no longer be a publically searchable database, there will no longer be any requirement for electronic filing of said financial disclosures at all. So now you and I will not be able to discover if they have a financial stake in a piece of legislation.

Basically if they break the law only a Justice Department looking backwards FOR specific wrong-doing will have a chance of discovering anything. Immunity from scrutiny for the handmaidens of organized money and prosecution to the nth degree for governmental whistle-blowers. It's almost as if our government has been captured by powerful corporate entities... wait a minute...

Now remember that these are people, the President and Congress, who supposedly can’t agree on what color the sky is. We are told this is why we budget on Cliffs, crash through Ceilings, face Crises and Sequester things. This thing, the STOCK Act repeal got out of House and Senate Committees, passed on a voice vote and was signed by the President in something like two days.

You’d almost think that millions of Americans had lost their houses and almost a quarter of their children were living in poverty but nope, this was important. President Obama and the Congress are perfectly willing to protect our rights to slaughter each other but not have legal protections… unless we are rich enough or powerful enough and then we are entitled to endanger or take as many lives as we wish with impunity.

On the plus side if you want the freedom to blow softball sized-holes in someone you believe is a threat, unless you're a Muslim, those in power will make that easy enough after all you will not be killing them and their agents are expendable... just like you and I are... the explosion in Texas proves that doesn't it?

Hell of week but it makes things so clear.