Slept early last night, but still woke up tired. Tonight I'm gonna aim to sleep even earlier. No chores, just totally get into bed after dinner and stay there. I don't want to face the world or anyone. I've lost all motivation for this life. Can't my being just be made redundant? I'm not fitting in with this planet.
What concerns me is the hypocrisy of American justice. Relatively minor crimes and the implementation of the three strikes rule has resulted in a large number of prisoners serving ridiculously long sentences. America's prisoner rate is growing almost exponentially. Let's not get into the talk of race or what not, but I do want to talk about the skewed facts here. A lot of people (i.e. Yahoo commenters) and right wing idiots like to point out that African Americans are represented more in prison because they tend to commit more crimes. What a load of crap and right wing media conditioning. The simple fact is that if a black guy in America gets in front of a court for a minor offence (whether warranted or not, let's not bring the racism of the police force into this, aka the Government's sanctioned KKK force), they will go to jail for it. Whereas a caucasian in the same position may get a slap on the wrist. Therefore you can't rely on prisoner statistics to be an accurate representation of criminals. They're looking at the wrong data sets. Then you get all these incredibly wealthy traders being convicted of Insider Trading, banking CEOs engaging in deceptive conduct, yet they're all just given extremely lenient sentences. There's no equity in that situation. How can you be the land of the free and just? Those in power, those with all the money are left to ride all over the rest of you, and you're expected to sit there and take it, because that's just how the system is, and if you don't support it, you're unpatriotic. What a scam. I call for a revolution. A serious shift in how people view the world and how they interact with Government. So tell me who deserves to go to jail for longer? The guy who was caught with drugs in his glovebox, or the guy who defrauded everyday hardworking citizens out of 500 million dollars? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Another interesting facet of life in America is the two-facedness and rampant fear and stupidity among conservative circles. This is something Stephen Colbert lampoons so expertly in character (and we're going to miss him once he takes over the Late Show slot). One example of this relates to Cliven Bundy. For us Australians not in the know, he is a cattle rancher in America (Nevada to be exact) who was told not to graze his cattle on public land. The relevant Agency sent armed agents to tell him to move off, but he apparently got a bunch of supporters who were also armed in protest. Apparently he was all about not recognising the Federal Government and advocating for his freedom to graze wherever he chooses. So of course the conservatives and right wing talk show hosts all bandied around him and called him an American hero and patriot for standing up to Government and what not. Then things got a little strange as Cliven started making insanely racist remarks and the conservatives had no choice but to denounce his remarks and his cause. Why can't Americans agree that right wing views and racism go hand in hand? If you support those wild conspiracy theories and what not, then it's an easily very slippery slope to race hate and what not. Why can't these commentators just outwardly say that they are racist and they hold racist views? That's how all conservatives are, that's how they want to view the world, so why are people so surprised?
Been reading the latest stuff on the Glenn Greenwald/Ed Snowden stuff. I won't re-state my views, suffice to say that Snowden and Greenwald are heroes. But I feel that with Greenwald and the former Guardian colleagues collecting the Pullitzer Prize, they are sort of leaving Snowden out in the cold. What is he supposed to do? He needs proper asylum somewhere, or at least to be able to return to America a free man. He exposed war crimes and Government level espionage on a grand scale. Anyway, apparently the NSA were installing backdoor programs into American made routers. That's gigantic news, and also very hypocritical, given that Americans were all up in arms about Huawei installing the same sort of software into Chinese made routers or telephony. What a joke. How can Americans stand for this? Their own government is spying on them. The biggest threat to security and freedom in America is their own government. They want to keep all people under tabs, and remove any threat or opposition or voice of dissent. This is truly a terrible time to be alive unless we can reverse the direction that history is currently taking. We are moving to a totalitarian society full of facism and hate. This is the tipping point. This is the point where we need to stop and think about our actions. There are people somewhere profiting from all this exercise of power and grose government ineptitude. I'm angry, upset and betrayed. And you should be too.
I'm jonesing big time right now, and I'm not even an addict! Or a recreational user. In fact, I don't do anything, so why the hell am I jonesing? Ah cause I'm tired, that's why. At least it's only an hour to go until I'm out of here, and it can't come soon enough. I just need sleep. Nothing more, nothing less please. This has been a better effort than previously. I guess the thoughts pile up after a while and then I'm forced to actually write something meaningful. I don't really think I can accomplish anything today. I don't want to talk about these theories because I will have to talk about silly things otherwise.
I'm done with the day.
Joaquin out.
