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Our legal system does not punish crimes committed indirectly: only crimes in which there is a clear causal link; X decided to do Y, or hired Z to do Y. Thus, our legal system tends to punish individual behavior without regard for wider forces or powers: social, political, economic, environmental. If a homeless man stabs another homeless man in the middle of the night — odds are he will be tried and prosecuted. If a powerful man leverages all his power (and money) to help himself and hurt other people, but indirectly, through the manipulation of resources, laws, ideas — then he will (can only) go free. I’ve been thinking about this unfortunate inequity in connection to the healthcare *debate* and the climate change *debate*; namely, I’ve been grotesquely fascinated by a political status quo in which congresspeople, senators, presidents, etcetera, can vote, or give orders, that by almost certainly condemn thousands or millions or more, to death, without fear of being prosecuted (the de facto legalization of manslaughter). The votes to repeal Obamacare are one example of this behavior, climate change policy (or the lack thereof) is another. There is no check on indirectly murderous stupidity or callousness; the Republican Party, for instance, has been rewarded for its dangerous bullshit for as long as I can remember (and I was born in 1989). There was no citizens arrest on Bush after the Iraq war, there was no citizens arrest on Mitch McConnell after any one of the Obamacare repeal votes; there will be no citizens arrest on Donald Trump for his environmental and international policies. If Trump is proven to have…
