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One evening this semester, in a criminal justice class, another student was talking about an incident he had recently been involved with, as part of his job. He is a state trooper, who is working on continuing his education. It was interesting to me, because the class gives a lot of different perspectives. He told about some of the problems that result from "holes in the net" between the justice system and human services.
An older woman in the class took the opportunity to engage in a rant about our county’s various human service agencies. At one point, she mentioned my mother by her title (she runs an agency), and then said that Mom’s husband, who used to run "jail groups," was "a real prick." I couldn’t help myself: I said, "Oh, you mean my father," and gave his name. There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Then she said, "I’m sorry. I hate your father. But you seem nice."
Although Dad isn’t a famous person, and has identified his role in life as being a little minnow in a little pond in rural North America, he casts a certain shadow in that pond. And so it is that just as I experienced that shadow in an evening classroom, I was aware of it a couple years ago, when I quietly "signed up" on DU. I already knew that some people here liked Dad, and some viewed him in terms similar to that old lady in my class. And because I’ve forgotten "who" I had logged on as – it was during the third-shift, graveyard hours when I worked at a group home – I’m not able to accept the nice invitation that some people offered here, in response to what Dad called "The Wounded Waterman Threads," to continue to be part of this forum as "myself." Instead, for the time being, I’ll post from this shadow. But, I’m confident that anyone reading this will be able to tell the difference between Dad and myself.
"Shadows" are funny things, really. They are real, but they aren’t. When my brother read the "WWT," he told me to quit copying Dad’s style. I pointed out a term paper he is writing, which he asked me to skim for him? He said that is "different." I guess it’s okay, for an A.
One of my cousins tells a funny story. She is a journalist. She taught journalism at a university. She wrote for a legal journal. But her goal has always been to write about sports. So when she got a job as an sports editor for a newspaper, she was really excited. She showed her father a few of her articles. My uncle gave the proud father praise, but added, "You should have Uncle Pat help you with this one." Just when you think you’ve swam from that little pond into the big lake, you see that small minnow’s shadow.
My cousin is friends with Michael Moore. Some people like him, some people don’t. Either way, I think that everyone should see his new movie about "capitalism." I took my sister and father to it a while back, and it was outstanding. In the past week, quite a few of the threads I’ve read on this forum have reminded me of parts of that movie. For just one example, there was a thread with a title about our country being run by criminals. The people that Moore identifies in his movie are absolutely, 100% criminal. They are involved in a criminal conspiracy.
Some people are uncomfortable with the word "conspiracy." I’m not. Some people hesitate to call a person a "criminal," unless they have been convicted. A television news show can play a film clip of a criminal committing a crime, and they are still careful to call him an "alleged" criminal.
There was a web site that published most of Dick Cheney’s interview with the guys investigating the "Plame Scandal." Over and over again, Cheney lied and said that he could not remember this, and wasn’t able to recall that. Are you kidding me? He should have been prosecuted. The fact that he wasn’t doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a criminal, knee-deep in a criminal conspiracy. It just means that some farm animals are more equal than others.
I was talking to Dad about this last night. This case really gets him going. He had me fetch a few of his books about Robert Kennedy. In one, titled "The Enemy Within," (by RFK), it tells about when Kennedy served with a Senate Subcommittee, that was investigating organized crime’s influence on unions. Kennedy has Sam Giacana, a mobster, on the witness stand. Giancana takes the Fifth Amendment over thirty times. How is that different than Cheney’s memory problems?
This mobster is quoted as saying that there is really nothing wrong with "the mob." He said it’s just a couple businessmen getting together, making decisions. He really believed that he was justified, in the exact same way that mobster Cheney felt justified in everything he did, when a few "businessmen" made decisions. So a few thousand people die as a result? Business is business.
I’m trying to get Dad to read two books by John Perkins, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," and "The Secret History of the American Empire." They are excellent books, that reveal the dark side of many of those businessmen’s decisions. These two books go together with Moore’s new movie. Just as you owe it to yourself to see that movie, you should read those two books.
One of the good things about Moore’s movie and Perkins’ books is that they don’t stop after identifying the criminal conspiracy. Each one provides an outline of some of the steps that Moore and Perkins think that we need to take, to confront the serious problems that are ruining our country. These are the types of things that I think people on the internet need to be talking about – and doing. It doesn’t matter if you are a minnow in a small pond, or a small fish in a large lake. As Perkins has pointed out, although corporations are extremely powerful, and the businessmen running them are without conscience, the united efforts of common people have forced them to clean some of the toxic wastes that they used to dump into our water supply, and we can continue our efforts to regulate them now and in the future.
As Dad frequently says, "Keep fighting the Good Fight." He’s doing some better now, at least compared to how he was a week ago. I’ll continue to keep you updated from time to time.
Corey
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