The Fence Kept in the Whole State
I just dropped off LOML at the county pokey. Goddammit, I have no idea what to do with myself. The only thing that keeps me from feeling too goddamn sorry for myself is the fact that he's in there and having a much more direct (meaning much worse) time of it than I ever could.
But then there's the self-responsibility thing. His mess, his clean up, and all of my worrying won't change the basic nature of the situation and in fact, the immutability gives me infinite latitude in wailing and kvetching, doesn't it? He's off being self-responsible, and I'm just being self-indulgent.
LOML tells me repeat offenses for DUI, which in this "zero tolerance" state means that a given cop has broad discretion in deciding if this driver or that is "impaired in the slightest", bring increased fines, fines which go directly to build more prisons, the labor for which is supplied by....wait for it....prisoners.
Fuck the sanctimonious assholes who are going to call me a bleeding heart liberal over this. To me, this smacks of back in the ancient UNcivilized times when they used to make the doomed man dig his own grave. What's next? Pre-Golden-Age Dutch water tortures?
But then again, what am I saying here? We live in America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the fair haven of the valorous, right? We'd never ever allow it to reach the point where torture was an approv—oh. I forgot.
And that "broad discretion for cops, I talked about? LOML gave me this story from his alcohol counseling session: an african-american guy was pulled over because the cop "determined" that he appeared impaired in his driving. The man blew a 0.0 on the breathalyzer and so, unconvinced that he wasn't already guilty, they dragged him into a 7-11 and made him give them a urine sample. A sample which, by the way, was out of the man's observation between there and the testing facility.
Yeah, I trust any cop whose criterion for driving "impairment" is too much melanin in the skin.
So the Great State of Arizona has progressive punishments for repeat offenses. Remember the days when someone went to prison and paid their debt to society and supposedly that was that? These days, it's with you forever. Spend the rest of your life in prison for that armed robbery where no weapons were actually used, and the sanctimonious opposites-of-bleeding-heart-liberals still won't let you off the hook, still won't give you another chance at redemption. Who is redeemed these days? Who actually gets to pick themselves back up by their own bootstraps to start over? Who forgives?
So here in the oppressive desert we have prisoners paying to have other prisoners build more prisons. Sure, it's harsh, I guess, but the system works, the system would never overdo or overstate or make mistakes or be suborned by corruption, right? By extrapolation, if you've committed unlawful acts of any kind, you're a criminal of the worst kind.
The system said so, that system that starts with the cop and the non-white and the 7-11 and the urine test.
God bless Arizona, the Prison State.
[yes, I'm personally angry and frustrated right now, but sometimes the best use of such energy is to redirect it into something useful]