Who Do You Trust? How Do You Know?

The four most insidious words presently bandied about where the public trust is involved are "We follow the law". See, it's all legal. Move along.

Attention spans measured in minutes do not help when terms in office are for multiple years. Timing is everything. Memory is suspect. Poster boys and girls dot the landscape. The collective uproar is real. The effect dissipates almost as quickly as it builds. Our newsfotainment industry dutifully aggregates and reports the available details, along with the disclaimers, then moves instantly on to the next incident.

Nobody is fooled, yet justice, such as it is, can only flail around. Perhaps delivering on a sliver of a percentage of the cases deserving of injunctive relief. Even isolated incidents develop a pattern of recidivism that undermines attempts to apply the necessary deterrent force.
Absent relief, the logical coping methods run quickly to indifference and uneasy shrugged acceptance.

Over the last 30 years we've made previously unthinkable, unspeakable things legal, or to be more precise, not technically illegal. Bank robbery, tax evasion, bribery, extortion, fraud, theft by deception, usury, drug dealing, invasion of privacy, detention, property seizure, even manslaughter, murder and eugenics... are all perfectly legal as long as the practitioners FOLLOW THE LAWS as written. As long as "legitimate" methodology is employed, the justice system of the United States of America will stand behind and defend the perpetrators.

It's no wonder that Americans are confused about who we are and what we stand for. Why we appear tacitly complicit in the pervasive crime spree.

Black is white. Up is down. War is peace. Bad is good. Play the National Anthem. Wave the flag. Turn off, Tune Out. Mission Accomplished. A million Don Quixotes can tilt at windmills and battle apparitions. The business of business marches on.