Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The U.S. Constitution

I am going to write a blog on the U.S. Constitution, the people who ignore it and the people who uphold it. I seem to have figured something out recently. I am told by Christians that they consider humans sinful and that anything that we enjoy, which would be entertainment, posessions, food, sex, drinking, getting high, art, or anything else people do to please themselves is sinful. There are some who only believe that pertains to the supposed sins that they don't enjoy. I believe a look at history would reveal that sexual indiscretions committed by the clergy caused many of these "rules to live by" to be instituted by the clergy.
Therefor, when it comes to sin, a sin is anything that I don't partake in that is enjoyable. That means anyone who believes that we each are to be able to judge another person is WRONG. I am tired of hearing about how "it is written", because my argument is, "BY WHO??" It was written by you to make me feel or appear less than you and to make you feel or appear to yourself as superior. Go Away! You don't have the right to decide right from wrong for everyone else.
Television shows like "Law and Order" that I find myself enduring at times feed into the ego of people like that. Christopher Meloni who plays "Elliot" and "Mariska Hargitay" who plays "Olivia" are so over the top that the Special Victims Unit part of the show has been ruined by unrealistic portrayals of the police as obsessed moral control freaks with no respect for the constitution. Every episode entails them breaking rules, breaking laws, entrapment, an extreme lack of ethics, and loads of unconstitutional behavior. They act like individual rights are a nuisance to them. Those damn things are to be disregarded for you to do your job properly, right. I believe shows like this are a big part of why the police are hated and disrespected in the communities where people get arrested frequently.
They should be regarded as bad for your child to watch as porno or violence. The constant breaking of the rules of their court according to the law and the constitution are supposed to be something that is the odd occurance instead of the norm and instead, shows like this are given a disclaimer written on the screen in the beginning of the show. Their present disclaimer says, "The characters and scenes depicted in this film are fictional. Any resemblance to any individual, living or dead, is purely coincidental." I would like to see that the disclaimer also includes the words, "Any procedures of the police on this show are also fictional and the idea that the police are supposed to figure out how to ignore or 'get around' the constitution in order to do good police work is also fictional." I think this message is a good thing for the police to understand also. I believe this sends a message to the police that we wish for them to break the law in order to obtain a conviction in any criminal case.
Some of them think it is 'honorable' or 'proud' to break the law or be dishonest in their apprehension, detention, indictment, conviction, and incarceration of any citizen of the United States is wrong. We are human, it is easy to get caught up in the moment and tell ourselves that what we see on Television is a good thing. We might even think that television is the source for our knowledge of right from wrong. This is an "ENTERTAINMENT" media and not to be considered serious or infallibly correct.
In the case of this show, like many others, if we are correctly seeing reality, we realise that we wouldn't want policemen who ignore who is guilty, what the facts really are, the fact that torturing a suspect who only happens to have been in the area where a crime was committed by questioning them without food, sleep, water, a bathroom break, etc. is the way to obtain a confession of whatever they want to hear but NOT how to get an actual confession. The word DURESS should come into play here. If every suspect is to be denied his right to an attourney, his right to one phone call, his right to be confronted by his accuser, and his right to explain his side of things, is fundamentally more than wrong, it is inexcusable and should not be condoned, allowed, or even given merit to for reasons of the fact that if the police didn't do things wrong to do the right thing, we wouldn't have the prisons in the United States making prison industries into a cottage industry. If you go to states where the majority of office furniture, the majority of computer work, the majority of printing, the license plate manufacture, etc. is all done at the prison, then you will see a direct correlation between the need for prisons becoming the driving factor for discrimination and false arrests. They need to fill the prisons up, so they arrest more than average, indict more unfairly and with disregard for the constitution and other laws, and imprison all they can, The minority community is most hard hit by this. If it weren't for greedy politicians putting this first then, there would be no corruption in the prisons on the legal side. They would all treat prisoners fairly and without extreme conditions.
After all, they are sent to prison AS punishment, not FOR punishment. Prison is the punishment. No matter how much one thinks they are coddled by the system, they can't be with their families, they can't earn a decent living, they can't plan for their future, and they can't find a decent job anywhere in the continental United States ever again. They have the right to vote taken away and they have to fight in the court to have some of them restored. They can't vote, they can't own property in some states, and they can never feel vindicated because the majority of Americans doesn't care for them rehabibitating themselves, they just want exoffenders locked up from now on. That not only is NOT realistic, it is fundamentally wrong.

No comments:

Post a Comment