I have to start by saying the internet is full of fail today. This blog will be no different. Those who come here expecting to be entertained today will be sadly left with hurt feelings and a sagging funny bone. Today I am putting on my Social commentator hat and wondering WTF?
I started my day with a friendly jaunt through some funny videos. This sounds great at first but in the end, I was left with one unmistakable reality punching me repeatedly in the face. The internet is for porn and swearing. It's ok, that link is not to porn or egregious swearing, it's just me attempting to spice things up with a little multi-media up in here.
What I am going on about is the fact that wherever I went there was talk of porn, links to porn, swearing, lots of swearing and more swearing. As a dude who believes the world is for experiencing and the use of language conveys great and small ideas, you would think this wouldn't bother me so much, but it kinda does. What I mean by that is we have shifted our entertainment in to shock mode exclusively. All I seem to be able to find is seriously vulgar humour. Ok, I can live with this....mostly because it amuses me, but where oh where is the entertainment for others? Where can people go to be entertained and not be grossed out at the same time?
Well here is the problem....while our entertainment is going to one extreme, so is theirs. We have our Kevin Smiths and so on, and they have...well Snark toons or whatever. As we push to our extreme, they push to theirs. I generally blame this on the American political machine and media because in their world there is only black and white, there is no room for healthy debate on any subject.
What bothers me is that we end up with nothing in the middle. No common ground with which to work from or connect with.
That brings me to my main point. Today's newspaper
I must start by saying there is no defense in the world for this woman, and I am not going to even try. Her part in the deaths of at least three people and support of a man accused, if not convicted of a long series of rapes leaves little room for one to justify her actions, so I will not even try. This is not about that, and if even one internet troller attempts to say I support her they will be flamed to the ends of the earth.
That being said, this case puts a tremendous strain on social justice and in fact justice in general. At face value one finds it hard to argue for this person to receive a pardon. But in the end we must examine what pardons are all about.
They are about a person paying their debt to society and attempting to rejoin society in a fashion that allows them some small measure of dignity along with some semblance of benefit to our community as a whole.
The government has decided, through sentencing guidelines and laws what paying a debt to society looks like. We have guidelines for offenses for the purpose of saying, if you injure our community in this way, you will pay in that way.
In this specific case, I understand, since she received a plea bargain for testimony used to convict another person she has technically not served what would normally have been given to a person who injured society in the way she did. That being said, she has, as many others have served her time and is shortly eligible for a dispensation that all Canadians are eligible for.
If there is a problem with the system, then we as a society must voice exactly what that problem is. If it is a problem with a specific case, then we must shut the heck up. why? Because the system is designed not to deal with the individual case so much as what is best for us as a whole. More on that latter.
The proposed legislation in this case is laughable. I say this because it gives even more power to a barely accountable group of individuals to make life altering decisions about other people based on public opinion. This is a travesty of justice.
I say that because public opinion is not only fickle and ever changing, but it is also controlled by the media and social pressure. The media in this and many other cases tends to frame everything in the harshest light to appeal to our most base emotions of self preservation and fear. Want to know more about that? Watch this movie.
What that means is that we can be manipulated in to an emotional response that may or may not be the truth in a situations. What is worse is that this form of social manipulation makes it nearly impossible to voice a contrary opinion.
That is in fact exactly what happened here.
The original legislation suggested would have denied this person pardon. Anyone convicted of 3 indictable offenses would have been denied the ability of applying for a pardon. This would have allowed for this case and any other case to be summarily disposed of without the chance that a number of people in the media or community could have swayed the opinions of the parole board in any way. Essentially we would say to criminals, it is not ok to commit that many serious crimes, and if you do, we are simply warning you now that it will not be tolerated, so offend at your own risk. That I believe is the point of a punitive justice system is it not? Do this, and these are the consequences.
Here's the problem. Not everybody feels that this is a good way of dealing with criminals. That means there was no way the legislation would pass. So there are politicians in this case who obviously feel that the idea was not appropriate.
Flash forward to this specific case. No one wants to be seen as the person that said it was ok for this woman to get a pardon because they know it would be incredibly unpopular, and ensure that they would never be elected again, simply because any election in the future would be based solely on this one issue. I can see the attack adds now. Do you want to vote for the person who let a sex offender and murderer out and free to play with your children? Heck, it is people like me who write the damn things.
That being said, what are we going to do about this political hot potato? I know, let's write a law that says we can deny anyone we want a pardon if we think it might make us look bad. Style over substance. It doesn;t matter what the person did, it only matters if we would lose q rating if we did it.
We are allowing people to make decisions based on popularity and public perception, not on facts or what is right or wrong.
This is the very essence of what I was talking about earlier. We are entertained in many different ways, we are shown messages constantly, but all we tend to see are the messages that stand out. Those messages that live at one extreme of the spectrum or the other, and we then tend to be pushed around by the emotion of the situation, forgetting that real lives, real people are effected by these things in ways we insulate ourselves from.
I can't admit that I find SMODcast funny for fear that someone will judge me for it based on their own beliefs or taste.
Likewise, I can't admit that I disagree with this legislation as it stands is a gross miscarriage of justice for fear that someone will say I support this woman. Hell no I don't support rape and murder, and anyone that would suggest I do doesn't know me, or even the character I play on the internet.
What I do support is a justice system free of pressure from the whims of public opinion. A justice system that seeks redemption and rehabilitation. A justice system that says, we don't like what you did, so here's a time out, and now here are some supports to allow you to return in some fashion to society in a way that is better for everyone involved while protecting those that need protection.
But then again, I am just a porn loving, fart joke spewing, mad, frustrated writer, social activist with too much time on his hands.
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