Criminality

This is an age of increasing popularity of criminals. It would be easy to blame rap music for this, but I think that is simply blaming a symptom for the disease. The disease is injustice. Injustice, based in the inequity of wealth, has been big news for decades. Criminals who raped the savings of poor customers in the Savings and Loan Scandal skittered under the public radar with the help of the Reagan administration. O.J. is still free. His lawyers became pop heroes. The current President and his cadre stole an election in 2000. The Republican majority still shuffles funds in the form of tax breaks to the same breed that brought us the Enron Scandal. It is perversely American. There is a history of criminality culture here which goes back to the earliest days of the nation. If your daily life is based on a belief in an afterlife, controlled by fictional deities, who can be conjured up against your own conscience, then taking part in the criminal culture with self indulgence is quite easy. Part of my practice includes respect for the law, because the law, when justly applied, is the only protection we have in society from our own greed and inhumanity.