Hollywood, using the latest computer generated animation cartoon techniques, finds it profitable to juxtapose the age of reptiles, dominated by its gigantic vegetarians and ferocious two-legged carnivores, with the age of mammals, in which the mildly rational little Homo sapiens has lately starred. The viewer is reminded of a predation threat that might have been, but was not. Or almost not, because there are still beasts quite capable of taking human life.
Tigers and lions openly roam the plains of Africa and the jungles of Central and Southeast Asia. Humans are still being taken in the world’s rivers by those remaining dinosaurs, the alligators and crocodiles. In the oceans sharks are a risk not always accepted by swimmers. When combined with the potential for losing an argument with a lion or a tiger, these unpleasant facts reveal that predation is a fact of daily life in more areas than is generally supposed, so it cannot be said that the species Homo sapiens has no predators.
Urban life is not free of fret. For most the automobile is the major menace. Much distress comes directly from other humans. There are people who are capable of killing you for the little cash you carry. They don’t hate you. They don’t even know you. These predators are called criminals. Generally they are not intent to cause a commotion. Unless provoked they will not carve your carcass. They are causally unconcerned, even innocently indifferent to your discomfort. The thief usually just wants your valuables with a minimum of fuss. Perhaps his bairn are hungry and he is too proud to beg.
Other humans will kill you because they need your mortality to make a morbid message for others. Your death is just a means to their end. There is nothing personal. They don’t hate you; they just need some deaths as theatre to create an unsettling fear in others. It draws audience to their play. The intent is to influence behaviour or attitudes which are considered intransigent. For lack of a more accurate and descriptive term they are called terrorists. Please focus, for the moment, on the suffix, the ‘ists’ part of the label.
Another type of human who will kill you is the dictator. It is safer to escape their attention. If you object to their behaviour, they might kill you. They don’t hate you. They don’t even know you. They kill you because you have become a threat to them. You may expose their crimes and lies. They don’t want their crimes and lies exposed. They especially do not want such exposure if it threatens their position of power. The dictator is thus a form of predator who preys, so to speak, on other humans. The term cannibal is apt.
It can be convincingly argued that such creatures are out and about, more here than there. The intended prey is we, and that is mildly disturbing. The Earth of late has suddenly become filled with more predators. It is no longer such a safe place to live. There is now no place to hide, and everyone is required to line up and sign a loyalty oath saying we support the local ism, along with the dictator who heads it.
We must also denounce the anti-ism, and indicate a willingness to be an anti-ist. The pros and cons are interchangeable, depending on geography and cultural history, almost all of which is beyond the individual’s control. Lack of control or responsibility is not an allowed excuse for refusing to sign. Refusal is tantamount to membership in the opposing faction. “'Tis a puzzlement,” as Anna’s King said.
The rights of the criminal are reasonably well defined by the criminal code, and it is generally agreed that the man who is to be labeled ‘criminal’ must be shown to have contravened that code. A defendant has a right to reject the charges brought against him, and must be allowed to offer a defense through a competent legal representative. Unless the evidence convincingly favors guilt, it cannot be asserted, and no punishment is meted out.
In the interests of maintaining basic human rights for all, some parties who are actually guilty will inevitably escape deserved punishment. The failure of the law to convict them does not mean they are not criminals. It does mean that there is not enough evidence to prove them guilty, and thus they are entitled to benefit from the lack of proof. This is the proper legal procedure, and it must be maintained as a manner of principle to avoid injustice to the innocent.
Though a known criminal freed is a continuing threat to others, freedom of movement must be restored, even though there is risk to society. The interest of the public in human rights for everyone is deemed to supersede the desire to provide absolute security through preventive detention. This provides protection to the innocent. The alternative, preventive detention, always proves too strong a temptation to the dictator, who abuses the executive authority that is given to him so he can carry out his duty to enforce the law. He always argues against the legal princicple that a defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
The safeguards are not rigorously in place. Recently in separate cases, each of two men convicted of rape were released when new DNA evidence established their innocence. They both had served over twenty years imprisonment. This shows there is always a chance that an innocent person will be labeled ‘criminal’ and given a punishment that fits the crime. Society tries to minimise these mistakes, and when error is found, the innocent are freed, frequently with redress. There is no redress that can repair the damage done by time spent in unfair incarceration.
The guilty are thus freed when there is not sufficient evidence to convict. This is a failure of prosecution, not a failure of the justice system. Such releases must be allowed to occur, in order to maintain appropriate safeguards to carefully protect the rights of everyone who is charged. But no false evidence must be fabricated to remedy the matter. When the police and other officers of the court violate the rules of investigation and legal procedure, the defendant must be released. The accused must not be held without bail for purposes of extracting incriminating information, and certainly jailhouse confessions are highly suspect.
Dictators favor preventive detention because it presents a ready opportunity to dispose of major political foes. If the dictator is himself a criminal, as is usually the case, and those who have evidence to prove this guilt cry out loudly for justice, the dictator can silence them by incarceration. The convenient charge is that the person arrested is an ‘ist’.
The dictator uses the authority of the police to protect his usurped power. Providing a semblance of law and order attracts public support for the police action. The citizen, not wishing to have criminals at large who might act against property in which he has a personal interest, does not object. Thus the dictator is unopposed when he orders the police or military to confine the opponent, and little protection is available to the defendant once he is under detention.
The arrest itself is proffered as evidence of guilt. This is intolerable abuse. If allowed, then conviction becomes instantaneous. The arresting officer is allowed the prerogative of the judge, and the arrestee has no right of appeal. The ignominy attaches at the time of arrest, with the immediate loss of freedom of action, accompanied by loss of dignity and public humiliation. The dictator says this procedural system is justified by its avoidance of any necessity to create a purgatory for suspects. Once arrested, guilt is automatic, and in the absence of a trial, judgment and sentence, incarceration can be indefinite. As in the Monopoly board game, you “Go directly to jail, do not pass Trial.”
Dictators abhor public trials, dispensing with them wherever possible. But if there is widespread interest in an arrest, a show trial must be staged, with any missing evidence required for a convincing conviction fabricated by the dictator’s prosecutors. From the viewpoint of the dictator it is a reasonably efficient process and usually there is not much public protest. The dictatorship proceeds smoothly in the absence of any outcry from those convicted. Once locked up in their cages, they are no longer a threat. Only the dinosaur is a threat.
We come now to the terrorist. The ‘ist’ is the suffix attached to someone said to be associated, or in some manner supportive of an ‘ism’. Notice that no ism need necessarily exist. It may be a fictional construct concocted for convictional purposes. Or it may serve as a pretext to move forward some secret ambition. The purported terrorist connection need not be real or direct. It may arise simply by an accident of geography or parentage. Once a country or family is said to have the odor of the ‘ism’, then everyone who resides within its purview may be officially declared an ‘ist’ without further and closer inspection. Once the label ‘terrorist’ is attached, all further appeal to human rights falls fruitless on fallow ears.
The roaming dinosaur on the hunt does not recognise borders, but snaps up loose ists on sight on-site at will. A dictator is not immune from predation by the dinosaur. He takes pains to divert attention from himself as a deserving morsel by making votive offerings of his citizens. They are chosen at random from among his opponents, coated with necessary identifying garb, and offered up to the dinosaur for mollification and pacification.
It is a form of tribute dictators pay today, competing with each other for first favors. “My terrorists are more terrible than your terrorists,” they boast. “No, my terrorists were intending to tamper with the dinosaurs toes,” is the retort. “The dinosaur likes me better. Look, he is building a nest in my yard.” “That’s nothing. My terrorists are so dangerous, the dinosaur is staying over to assist me in training my policemen.”
When the local form of ism is dominant and popular, there are strong incentives for all residents to join as card-carrying members, or at a minimum to keep quiet about any misgivings they may have. Silence is security and survival. The unpopular ism is to be avoided, as its ists become bait for both the dictator and the dinosaur. To the outside observer there is this caution: the label ‘ist’ is an injustice if painted with a brush too broad.
Like the detrimental effects of excessive mala prohibita, too many ists in tow can undermine public respect for the law, interfering in its duty to oppose mala in se. The presence of too many innocent inmates condemns the warden, and degrades the system he protects. In extreme cases the public will revolt, coming to open the gates and release the prisoners. Sometimes they behead the jailers.
Much of the human record on Earth makes sense only if the isms and the behaviour of their loyal and motivated ists are studied. Once an ism becomes established, with positions of power and privilege attached, local opposition must quietly acquiesce or suffer the unfortunate consequence. Only within fairly recent times has dissent against a prevailing ism become possible, and this is true whether the ism has idealistic or spiritual foundations of humanism and justice, or instead flagrantly flouts the condemnation of history. Pragmatists say, “Nothing succeeds like success,” and nothing is so abominable.
The Earth, so far as the recent rise of Homo sapiens is a matter of concern, abhors the absence of an ‘ism’. The vacuum created by the collapse of the latest ‘ism’ invites a new one to take its place. It is nice to think that the succession is a kindly one, and that there is some improvement in mankind’s battle against disease, famine and injustice. Unfortunately, all ism’s have a poor human rights record, and when a dictator/leader is allowed the additional presumption of infallibility, predation of the potential opponent proceeds apace.
What is apparent at the moment is the lack of sanctuary. The dinosaur, in search of its prey, strides over boundaries with insouciance, snapping up offered ist’s with a casual indifference to previously accepted norms of behaviour. In the absence of evidence of an overt act, or a criminal conspiracy to act, there is no way to know for certain who is an ist and who is not.
Anyone who objects or defends an ist immediately becomes suspect. The ist’s are allowed no friends. Those who counsel caution are immediately labeled with odious terms, such as ‘left wing liberal’, ‘soft on ism’ or ‘fellow traveler’. The alleged ist may be subjected to public vilification and scorn, and accused of having dark powers. Ists are often subjected to imaginative tests to prove guilt or innocence. More often they are just held in some gitmo gulag without representation or trial.
Dunking in water is a favorite form of frolic with the ists from the past, along with burning them when they are tied atop a tent of tender. Many are subjected to sadistic rituals of corporeal stress, such as being pulled apart by a team of horses, or stretched on a table while the limbs are pulled from the sockets with a winch. Bystanders do not object, simply because to do so means they will be next.
When a country or group of countries, smarting from a hurt, embarks on an ist hunt, they act like a dinosaur, exibiting the same mentality. Dictators who fear disfavor come running with an armload of juicy ists, complete with dossiers dripping with confession and blood. The intent is to prove the dictator’s dedication to the ideals of the dinosaur. Dictators are always odious ists of one flavor or another, and this fact must be concealed behind the bodies of the victims.
The dinosaur doesn't care who is offered up, all ists look alike. They are accepted without question; the dictator's word is enough. The digestion of the disturbed dinosaur is insatiable. Even its young are not safe. Room can always be made for another ist; such cages are cozy and collapsible. Dedicated warders are not scarce. A few good men are readily recruited and trained for the robotic role of keeper. They are decorated as defenders of democracy through unlawful detention. The zeal shown by these scrubbed-clean and shorn short sentinels shines from their eyes like a true believer, showing them to be suitably chosen for an innate ability to instill docility in the enclosed ists with a demonic insensitivity.
The great cataclysms of the Earth follow the fateful footfalls of various contemporaneous isms and the inevitable contests that occur between them. The actors mentioned in history are the ists who found them, lead them or oppose them. Some are labeled martyrs, some are labeled great. Jesus was murdered, and is labeled a martyr. His offense was to advocate love and peace among men. Alexander, the Greek general, is called great, which means he was adept at the slaughter of his fellow humans.
All people are ists, to one degree or another, surrounded by isms and caught up in questions of fealty and fear. The labels they bear are sometimes tacit, sometimes suggested by others, and sometimes supplied in the complete ignorance of all parties. The battles between the isms and their ists are damnable, scattering the hearth and the heart of the family of man. Human rights and liberties won at great price are jettisoned as burdensome baggage when the battle between two isms is joined.
Successful isms survive for centuries, contending with the anti-isms; the ists and the anti-ists, like small mammals underfoot, endure the insanity of the battle. The suffering is sometimes in silence, sometimes in stealth, sometimes seething below the surface. It is the impotence that rankles and wrinkles the bones. Good men watch to see the dinosaur, like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, become morose in the mire with a myriad of miniscule moorings making every movement a mighty effort. Women and children picnic in his pocket, while pretty girls play on his nose.
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