'of thee i sing'

i watched 'sons of anarchy' last night with hubby on the netflix. we seem to be drawn to gritty dramas like that- we also enjoyed 'deadwood' and 'the shield'. what struck me- i was rooting for the bad guys. now, i am sure that's what the writers intended- as they make the bad guys partially good and the good guys- well, bad. the atf agent is played quite well by ally walker and she gave me much to think about in this age of border wars with canada and mexico- and the fact that we still have the odious guantanamo bay.

what is it in the american psyche that allows the dissonance between innocent until proven guilty and gleefully watching someone arrested and tased on 'cops'? from the nightly news to the dozen or so 'law and order' episodes to the ads on the sidebar on facebook calling for fbi applicants, our nation has become a police state. oh, most of us don't believe so- but in america, we hold people without legal counsel and we trick them into talking without one. i am most definitely not pro death penalty- not because some of these folks who did indeed commit heinous crimes shouldn't pay the ultimate price--- but because our track record with jailing innocent folks isn't good.

our justice system is beyond flawed- when you have the patriot act and the military commissions act and hundreds of other laws on the books like the draconian 'three strikes and you get life' laws- well, appeal is tough. and if you do the crime, i absolutely believe that you should do the time. i guess i just have an outmoded sense of justice- i believe that if you are innocent you should be set free.

and, i don't see things in black and white. i see myself sitting in that chair- and know that i wouldn't want to be interrogated for hours on end without my legal counsel or forced into a van in the middle of the night to be spirited away while my loved ones didn't know where i was. guilt isn't supposed to be proven in the streets by arresting agents or officers- or in an hour's time on a tv show. but it is- and america is not a land of liberty.