Adventures in the Labyrinth Part 2: Real Talk

--Robert Langellier

There was just no room for scrawlings of social discontent on my post above, so I decided to post twice! Take that, last week! This second post would be a great read for those bored in traffic court, if only they allowed reading.

Anyway, court makes me angry! Grr! In my opinion, the judicial system of processing…well, anything (especially the itty bitty infractions) has become a joke. Judging guilt or innocence in America is based on knowing all the facts and balancing them on a preset and complex moral scale, a well-intentioned process in theory. Gray area, though, is the bane of the moral scale. This defendant needs a jury - It will take months to assemble an impartial one! This victim was given different reparations than that one; what if they find out? How do you convict a man of murder when he fired the bullet with a second gun pointed at his own head? How do you ticket a speeder trying to get their kid to the hospital before he throws up again or passes out? Is that rapist accountable for his actions if he has a mental disorder? There's obviously a million scenarios like this where the moral lines are less than clear.

Nothing can be subjective in the court of law, and so everyone must be treated more or less as documents until everyone can officially be the same and gray area can be systematically destroyed. For every hint of question, there must be 2 bylaws to categorize it, each with 2 pages of size 2 fine print to cover any possible loopholes (in Helvetica of course; serifs space the letters out too much). Pretty soon you have the caricature we have today: an ever-expanding monster of legal babble and empty ritual trying to justify every possible outcome for every possible scenario in a state of 13 million citizens, or a country of 3 hundred million inhabitants. A common trial will take at least a half a year to get going. Like said, all in good theory, but in practice the intent quickly disassembles itself. When I was a baby I learned that my little square toys just wouldn’t fit in that round hole, no matter how hard I tried. I don’t believe you can squeeze something as fundamentally subjective as moral code into an objective frame without warping the borders a bit.

I wish I had a better alternative. Since I don’t I’m just a childish complainer ripping out the rotting beams of an old building without replacing them; I don’t actually have anything productive to offer. Thank god for free speech, right?