The Gotcha Gestapo

There has not been a day in my adult life when I felt comfortable supporting police sting operations. They are often fraught with abuse of power and violate the intent of law.

Most laws and law enforcement officials in the United States spend trashy tax dollars creating a criminal class and then trapping many many innocuous victims whose sole crime is being human and flawed.

The American prison system is disgusting and criminal. No arrested and untried person should ever be stuffed into a small cubicle with more than one other person. I speak from experience. For nearly two weeks before my release and subsequent acquittal from the King County Jail in Seattle many years ago I was forced to sleep inches from the base of a toilet with four others in the holding cell.

The reason why those cells are jam-packed is because American laws are meant to entrap rather than protect their citizens. Drunk driving kills, yet we allow bartenders to serve until the patron pukes. Drinking gets a wink, unless we kill someone in our car or in a drunken rage.

Marijuana possessors, on the other hand, can be sent to jail for twenty years for mere possession, although statistics clearly prove that a) marijuana does not lead to stronger, more lethal drug usage nor violence even remotely approaching that of the arbitrarily legal drug of alcohol and b) marijuana overwhelmingly tends to make a person more passive and less likely to commit a crime other than smoking the stuff or sharing it with some friends.

Prostitution – the oldest trade in the world – is also demonized when it should be made legal and regulated. The “criminal” once again may be flawed or desperate to put food on the table, yet if fornicating pays the bills, that means one less welfare mother or vagabond. The pimp is unnecessary when we stop creating laws that cover up the inability of the government to take care of those unable to do so. Quite often the law enforcer or legislator is or has participated himself in the illegal solicitation of sex.

The tragedy of 2001 also brought out a series of abusive laws which entrapped people who happen to have the wrong skin color or country of origin. The Bush Administration and law enforcement officials horrifically violated the human rights of countless innocents under the pretense of homeland security. The abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq were just a continuation of the excesses of law enforcement officials in the United States domestically and through proxies throughout the world.

This is all about the Gotcha gestapo mentality which is all too prevalent in the United States and countries which follow America by creating zillions of totally unnecessary laws which put flawed yet harmless individuals behind bars. These imprisoned people – perhaps eighty percent of them – pose no threat to society other than being guilty of stupidity or carelessness.

Laws should only be made to protect us from thieves and violent individuals who act out their aggression. Everything else should be forgivable, and mandatory counseling or community work encouraged over jail time. Putting non-violent people in jail creates a new, totally unnecessary flock of angry, aggressive people wanting to exact revenge on an unforgiving, gotcha society.

Paying taxes is another pet for the gotcha gestapo.  The codes are so complex and so lengthy that the poor and middle class alike cannot afford to understand their legal rights and obligations. The tax authorities audit us for the gotchas and then fine us like hardened criminals or put us behind bars so that we will become like them.

In a world that preaches the Sunday gospel of Christ and redemption, why is it that we want to entrap each other because we don’t like what others do or don’t do. We wave our Bibles around as a just cause for human rights abuse and penning law after law that reflect our moral upbringing and current mores, yet does nothing about getting the violent sickos off the streets.

Ayn Rand was right 50 years ago when she wrote: “There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

Let us finally evolve from preying on the weak. We want to balance budgets more than balance laws. My sense is that 80 percent of the laws on the books should be reduced to a book of common sense. The gotchas are for primitive people.