The "Radical Wrong's" Philosophy: Punishment

An Ohio inmate who brought an issue of astonishing unfairness to the Supreme Court - so it could make things right - has learned that punishment has replaced fairness as a part of our highest court's agenda.

A lower court told Keith Bowles that he had until Feb. 27 to appeal his conviction. He filed the appeal on Feb. 26, and was ready to argue why he was wrongly convicted. But it turned out the district court made a mistake. The appeal should have been filed by Feb. 24.

In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States, now skewed with radical right-wing appointees, has given this logic - worthy of the Queen's in Alice In Wonderland - its stamp of approval.

What should have been a no-brainer decision to correct an injustice based upon a trivial clerical mistake has, instead, emerged as proof that whatever the radical right does, its actions are based in a philosophy of punishment.

It's time to realize that the mean spirited infliction of punishment has become an embedded American value. So, how long until we revisit our Puritan heritage of throwing sinners into the stocks, forcing them to remain in uncomfortable positions for hours and hours at a time in-between torturing them?

Oh, that's right. I forgot. We just call that Guantanamo now.

Seriously - the philosophy of punishment is the basis of the Radical Wrong's politics. Look at the issues:

Denial of Global Warming - the Radical Wrong has been fighting the truth on this issue for decades. Why? From the perspective of the Religious Wrong the sooner the "the end times" come - and punishes all of us for our selfish, consuming ways - the better. We all "deserve" punishment anyway - just for being born - because we are "born as sinners."

Yet the secular, profiteering branch of the Radical Wrong also relies on punishment, but for different reasons. Corporate supporters - who have never been opposed to using a big stick to smash poor people down, punishing them lest they get too uppity and want a share of the profits - have sown the belief that poverty itself is not punishing enough, but is deserving of further collective punishment through deepening.

So who cares if the poor don't have water and die like flies?

If you look around at the policies being promoted by the Radical Wrong, you quickly see that, if you are poor, you are judged unfit to live.

Punishing the poor for being poor has been programmed into us as an "American value" by Republicans for the last sixty years, as revenge for The New Deal.

Denial of Health Care - You remember, surely, why Hillary Clinton was originally demonized? She wanted the men, women and children of America to have access to doctors and medical treatment. That was her big "sin." That's what got her branded as "crazy."

Imagine, wanting the sick kids pf the working poor to have health care. What an insane idea. To paraphrase Scrooge: Are there no workhouses? Let them die, for it will reduce the surplus population.

Hillary didn't want kids - or any American - to suffer and die needlessly.

But the Radical Wrong loves punishment. And they heaped it - and are still heaping it - on Hillary's head in retribution for challenging their heartlessness.

The Rape of Mother Earth - So who cares if Mother Earth has given us a home and nurtured us? According to the Radical Wrong, it's okay to rape your mother if there's a buck in it.

They are thrilled to blow the tops off mountains, so that streams, communities, and ecosystems alike are destroyed, and seem oblivious to our steady gallows march toward killing every other animal in the world.

The proof? Bush changed 90% of environmental laws so there's more lead in the air and more mercury in the water. No doubt the Radical Wrong seeks to punish us - the impudent non-rich - as well as other "lower animals" for breathing and taking up space where condos could be built - and perhaps even for not having opposable thumbs.

Anti-Gay Rights - How dare gays aspire to be happy? How dare they want lasting relationships and families? The Radical Wrong believes they deserve to be punished.

Yet you can almost understand this one when you consider that, from an insecure, frightened woman's perspective, it's a no-brainer as to whon to hate. Male homosexuals often are better looking and offer more frequent - and exotic - sexual favors for their partners than up-tight heterosexual women.

Well, what woman wants competition like that which puts her at such a disadvantage?

Really - I sympathize. It must be hell for the ugly to average-looking woman - who has already been told by our youth driven culture that she doesn't cut it - to realize that she not only has to compete with other women for a male partner, but that she has to compete with better looking males.

And for insecure, testosterone drive men - who refuse to acknowledge that they have an inner female - they'd rather bash heads than get in touch with their own feelings.

Who can blame them? After all, it's so much quicker.

Thus they "dis" every man who exhibits feelings and sensitivity - and a different sexual preference - as "unnatural." {Right. Homosexuality's been with us since the species began, but it's "unnatural.")

It's all part of the old story. When people are threatened, they like to dole out punishment to those by whom they feel threatened.

That is, after all, what got Jesus crucified.

Those who threaten a person's sense of his or her own self, values, morality, ethics, life style and - yes - sexuality will be punished by those scared of their own selves. Yet - and here's the rub - it's always projection, and of the person's own shadow. And who brings up issues of sexual identity faster than a homosexual?

Naturally, if you don't want to deal with your own issues - your own lack of love for yourself, your own sexual fears, your own self-doubts - then you'll punish everyone - and anyone - who brings up things you just don't want to deal with in yourself.

Iraq - Pure punishment heaped upon Saddam - and the Middle-East - for controlling the oil wanted by western oil corporations. Despite the rhetoric, this wasn't revenge for 9/11 because neither Iraq nor Saddam had anything to do with this "New Pearl Harbor."

Instead, 9/11 was an excuse - welcomed by the Radical Wrong - to channel America's entire economy toward feeding the maw of corporate America, to include Halliburton and global arms manufacturers.

The irony here, of course, is that it's no longer just the Middle-East that's being punished. Ask the families of the soldiers who have been killed and maimed. Ask them if they feel blessed or punished by the war.

Anti-abortion movement: not so much a "right to life" movement (since the mother's life is expendable and anti-abortionists tend to be in favor of the death penalty) this is revenge for the women's movement, revenge against the audacity of women controlling their own reproductive lives.

Those who would decide their own fates by using birth control and, yes, abortion - if they cannot tolerate the idea of sacrificing their own lives to pregnancy and parenthood - are shamed and manipulated with punishing strategies.

Remember, the practice was to bomb abortion clinics and kill doctors, but being outright terrorists has become less practical for those who want to punish others since they began to be sued in civil court for damages and found themselves bankrupted.

Yet, more than punishing women for the right to choose to have a child or not, the movement embodies a principle of punishing others for thinking, for raising awareness that the world is already overpopulated and that, to have a child, may well be an irresponsible act that threatens habitats, people and animals that already exist.

Regardless of the realities of living in a finite space, on a finite planet with a finite amount of soil and natural resources, we still have an expansionist policy promoted by those who seek to promote religious and corporation interests.

Popes have always wanted more Catholics in order to amass even more power and money. Is it co-incidence that their religious dogma (which the Church has had no scruple in changing over the years when changes suited its agenda) would punish those who would promote a decreased or stable population?

Since their power is likely to diminish with a declining Catholic population, does it not make sense that shaming and threats of excommunication for the use of contraception or abortion might simply - as crude as it sounds or as disguised as it might be behind lofty words - be part of the business plan?

Corporations are always looking for more and more consumers - and more and more growth no matter how unsustainable and impossible that is the long run.

Yet stock market profits depend on the illusion that growth can continue forever without coming up against a wall.

Large corporations have funded the Republican party - and thus fueled the culture wars so a global movement doesn't actually gain enough power to achieve economic equality and policies of sustainability. This, in itself, is punishment enough in that people are spending their lives hating and arguing with each other over political abstractions instead of learning how to compromise and live in harmony.

Worse, megacorporations have a history of punishing the poor with everything from funding anti-worker armies in third worlds to making the collection of rainwater illegal, as Bechtel did in Peru.

Bottom line, if you examine all the issues raised and promoted by the radical "right" - which is more correctly named the Radical Wrong - it becomes evident that punishment is the connecting factor.

It is punishment that guides this wrong-wing government as a guiding principle, and which translates to an utter lack of regard for the lives and rights and suffering of not only the people that it governs, but the people of the world.