How close you are to the edge is subjective. Maybe it won't cause financial ruin...maybe just heartache. Maybe it can snowball into a missed opportunity, an unwarranted choice affecting your mental well being, or maybe even as simple as having to say no to your child when they ask if they can be on the basketball team but you can't afford the tuition. Any number and/or degree of sacrifice should be made for the good of our country, but should it be made just so that you can decide whether a criminal will be let loose to commit another crime, or just placed in an institution that you (as the law biding citizen) pay for....to feed and shelter the criminal, until the criminal comes out to do it again? Ok, I know that was a long sentence...
Point is, there are issues that need to be fixed before I will be willing to make sacrifices. My sacrifices hookahs go to supporting our terribly executed judicial system.
Wah wah wah. My kid's gonna miss basketball-to hell with that guys entire life, I need to pay for basketball practice for my spoiled kids. "Sacri-fucking-fices" in the name of "justice" for others than me. It has flaws but I'd rather seek true justice in America than most other countries on this Earth.
OK so what happens when your teenage son is walking home late one night after basketball practice and some guys he knows from school pull over and offer him a lift and he gets in the car which is then pulled over by the cops and they are busted for the armed robbery of the 7/11 where the cashier was shot which the others just pulled? True fact: happened to a friend of mine. He did 5 years in Huntsville. He was a 24 year old convicted felon when he got out. (He's a black man (or Mexican, or rag head or alky or dope fiend or whatever punk du jour you don't like), oh, no wonder. musta been guilty, they all are, huh?**)
You gonna want a bunch of pissed off whiny jurors who walk in to your son's trial whistling 'Hang Em High' and don't give a shit about any stupid little trifles like evidence or testimony or extenuating circumstances, or god forbid actually having to think and weigh potentials: all they wanna do is hang the little bastard 'criminal' (your son) and get back to making their living to pay for baskeball practice. Or hot rod car parts. Hell, just shoot him with a .22 in the back of the head in a stadium its cheaper than rope and more fun to watch on a weekend afternoon with a beer & nachos in your hand. Gyolly, I'd pay a days wages just to watch that, yep I would.
I believe in the death penalty for more than it is currently used for--but more importantly I believe in swift justice--and those are the keywords---'swift' (not drawn out by lawyers for profit) and 'justice' (not knee-jerk revenge but thoughtful, deserved justice.) Too many actual criminals get off---but its lawyers who buy them off for profit. A jury of thoughtful peers can make a profound difference to a life which may yet well have good potential.
Yeah, it always goes wrong sometimes, we are but fallible humans. If it was you, or your loved one, which way would you prefer? Knee jerk reaction to accusation, or thoughtful deliberation of evidence?
**I met Dock (yes 'Dock' with a k) at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard where he was one of the most honest hardworking respectable men I have ever met. Straight out of prison he joined the Army. Almost lost a leg in Viet Nam from a mortar shell but they saved it and he walks with a limp but that never stopped him and he never ever whined about it. "Shit happens, John. Learn from it, shut up, and get on with life."
Wah wah wah You all got a million excuses for your thought patterns and prejudices. That too is a fact of life. Me too, I have my thoughts & prejudices and because they are mine, I see them as truth. Deal with it: "I ain't gonna change you and I ain't gonna save you." Oh I know that one so well, I'm so sad to say.
Why are you whining about a few days of missed work if the accused whose case you are to help decide is actually INNOCENT and he has been in jail for weeks or months? What about his "income", his life, his family? "Heartache"."A missed opportunity"'"An unwarranted choice"
Oh that's right, he was caught in a situation--therefor he must be guilty, let's don't waste no time thinking, just kill him. It ain't me, after all.
God forbid YOU ever get "caught in a situation". Yeah yeah yeah, I know, "I would never do anything wrong." Shit all you gotta do is have a bicyclist smash into your car on a dark rainy night, or someone slip & fall on your sidewalk in the snow (I know that one!!)--and you may well be in a "situation" the likes of which you never dreamed..
I'm proud to be an ACLU supporting citzen because they also defend so many of your (OUR!!!) rights which you don't even know about because they are not splashed in the media unless they cross your particular ideas of "liberty" and "freedom". Or prejudice. If that makes me a scum-sucking "liberal" in your eyes, then so be it.
But goddamit, jury duty is an honor that any true American will """suffer""" with honor, dignity and AN OPEN MIND.
OK, I've been ranting in my typical way on and on. Let me leave you with a little 'thought exercise'.
Me and Gene and Turtle are all looking at the same object.
I see a rectangle.
Gene sees a circle.
Turtle sees a section of a radius.(he's a fuckin engineer--it ain't a curve, its a fuckin section of radius)
Who is telling the truth, and so therefore by deduction who is lying? We are all looking at the same object.
So what is truth? And what is fact?
We are looking at a cut out section of exhaust pipe on a bench from different angles.
Gene looks at the end and sees a circle.
I look from the side and see only the rectangle.
Turtle looks from above and sees a section of radius.
We all are telling the truth, but the fact is more than that.
The opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of a truth may well be another truth.
