There isn’t anything that can get-our-goat like injustice. It makes us livid thus setting off rage against the machine, hence the hippy rant (see vocab). Unfortunately, the ultra-Right has taken our shtick and is using it against us so goes their gerbil cage (see vocab) tirades. And what is Justice anyway? Is it fair for all or a system of white, straight privilege defending itself?  

Justice or Just Us.

Each side thinks they got the right – the right to bitch, the right to stand and fight, the right to yell injustice. So now, everyone is yelling. It’s making the hip reconsider their ways. We have become quieter, more thoughtful, lowering our voices. We can no longer just complain and protest and wear groovy tie-dye t-shirts that say fuck the system or Anarchy because now the ultra-right is wearing this same message on their old navy T’s. We must no longer be subject to the system run by those whose minds are still in the 1950s. We must rise and be the ones running the system, for the system is impartial. It is only as good or as bad as the people running it.

The Supreme Court is stacked. Justice hasn’t been handed out to those who need the protection of laws. First, it was women’s right to choose and now, the latest infringement of unbelievable injustice is to the Navaho Nation. We thought we were done breaking treaties and screwing the Indigenous peoples but nope. Doesn’t matter what the treaty said, they don’t get water. Another case of Just Us.

Even on a local level, the courts are stacked with old white guards that sway toward the Just Us policy. If you are friends with any cop or a D.A. or a judge, you will win. Doesn’t matter if you suing someone for ridiculous reasons, have abused someone, or sexually assaulted a child; if you’re white and male and have a friend in the system, you’re the winner.

Makes people wonder what’s the point of having a system if it doesn’t work. Seems like the justice system on every level needs a purge and retraining as well as the police departments. Throughout history, we have seen the human tendency to seek power and then share it only with friends and contributors. It is an age-old pattern of butt-kissing. But Democracy has a system for revamping without revolution. It is possible to overhaul without bloodshed.

On so many levels, we are teetering toward fascism. Our future is precarious, the next election will be telling. Will people be able to truly vote? Will sanity humanity win? If the populous lose and those who want a racist, sexist, book-banning system for Just Us prevail, they will get their white knobby fingers around the throat of liberty and strangle it to death. There won’t be democracy or justice here. And if it isn’t here what will give hope to other countries struggling for this ideal?  If we lose it, if justice doesn’t work here, the irony will be that the birthplace of democracy and equal rights is where it will also die.