Trials

While the government is wasting my money on an overextended show trial for Whitey Bulger and on a lifelong state pension ( $198,205.92 annually) for his brother, Billy Bulger, Bradley Manning is quietly sequestered away with the likelihood of spending most of the rest of his life in prison. Edward Snowden, tried and convicted by the Obama administration in the media, is brushing up on his colloquial Russian. His perseverance in the face of the full weight of U.S.-government bullying is admirable, no matter how one views the N.S.A.'s role in geopolitics. 

I am learning that idealists motivated by conscience and personal ethics are bad in the eyes of the U.S. government. They are to be captured, imprisoned, tortured and silenced. Failing to do this makes those in power crazy. However, lifelong murdering, criminal bastards, like Bulger, can hide in plain site in a lovely beach-side community in California for 16 years. They can be provided a world-class defense. They can be lionized by the media for years. Their relatives can pretend they never knew anything or colluded in any way with absolute impunity.

The word "trial", it seems to me, is what the U.S. citizens are being subjected to by a government which is mismanaged and sold out to corporate and criminal interests.