It is a testament to the human condition that our fear and respect for pain and our very mortality has remained virtually unchanged since the birth of the Word. More revolutionary than tools or clothing, the invention and possession of the “associative property” was to a critical degree, prerequisite to the genius of our collective inheritance, namely consciousness and subsequent "humanity". Our Hominid debt lives through a healthy legacy of instinctive fears; events which still fascinate and disturb; like thunder, scorpions, violence and fire. Given the Word, our models were built; virtual landscapes gave birth to anticipated events; "results" so to speak for the better or worse.
- every time the dark clouds roll in, a cold rain follows.
- the dark clouds are rolling in and we want to stay dry and warm.
- we will find a place to hide from the rain, now, before the clouds reach this spot.
Models were refined by increased data-collection and a vocabulary grew to file it all more efficiently. As the file grew so did the Game. Words arose for intangible events; concepts beyond the tactile restrictions of the pre-lingual society. Concepts like time and rudimentary geometric references for example. Toward the prevention of an unpleasant consequence, our enlightened ancestor stretched the virtual world to include a time "before", a time "now" and a time "after". This quantum leap forward was so elegant that increasingly sophisticated models of the world were inevitable. And with this growing number of models came an increase in the number questions. As predictions became increasingly reliable, the society learned to live with less and less vulnerability. The capacity to "make" yielded to a new ability to "fashion". Words were needed to file the changes and improve the virtual "meta-world" in which we began spending more and more of our time. And here it got weird.
Not every prediction was correct and not every situation presented with a prediction. One model might have had numerous and often conflicting results. As the community grew in population so did the gap and spread of intellectual prowess. Names like Shaman, Medicine man, and "Chief" were ascribed to the cerebral cream of the tribe, individuals whose record of successful analysis out-paced the remaining group. These individuals were statistically few in number. As the model became more comprehensive the vocabulary grew proportionate to the task of organizing it. This outsized model now left fewer and fewer members of the community able to digest its full complexity and the subtleties which pepper its true dynamic. An industry arose from this new need to help organize the vast majority into a coherent unity; the society needed a new form of order; an unconditional need to respect, if not trust, the guidelines prescribed on the edicts of an understanding and analysis of the newest model from some intellectual elite(s). This is the story of us. Little has changed.
This new "industry" had a mission statement: Give the people what they want, when we say they want it.It has worked pretty well for the past six or eight-thousand years, for one simple reason: The vast majority of the tribe are either uninspired, lazy, insecure or some combination thereof. A man does not instinctively share outside his circle of trust; "eat what you kill" made perfect sense before the introduction of these confounding models as their numbing vocabulary challenged the pre-existing order. Sharing and restraint are two of civilization's most vexing inventions and lie at the core of the creation of government. And what is "government" if not the severest display of vocabulary's muscle, come of age? Fundamental issues like competition for reproductive rights, food distribution and real estate, left unchecked will inevitably disrupt the order of the community, and herein lies the irony.
Our collective health has matured to challenge our most basic impulses. How are the general population expected to incorporate the concept of sacrifice into a diet of wish fulfillment? The two most effective techniques are punishment and propaganda. The first method I would assume, predates the second by hundreds of thousands of years. Starvation, violence and exposure were the harsh consequences of an individual's incapacity to support provocative or insubordinate behavior. In this model it may be seen how an individual's physical prowess might unseat the moral code of our more "contemporary" sensibilities. Group or collective thinking, decisions based on a consensus logic, would eventually supplant individual impulse gratification and codify specific consequences for specific trespasses. Fear is used this way to keep the community from destroying itself. A formidable society would best ensure victory over resource competition against another people or tribe. The Shaman must simply keep the tribe together for its own advantage by replacing the strong natural impulses of each citizen with a discomforting set of new restrictions and values, all rooted in the meditations of some virtual reality, some revolutionary model landscape of abstract words, metrics and ideals . . . and a strong touch of menace.
The second approach, "propaganda", will jettison our past from the successive, recorded period with a profundity unsurpassed by puberty. Councils of the trusted grew from a lineage of seemingly intelligent individuals, each with an interest in both the tangible world and also some level of meditation on the vocabulary of the virtual "meta-world", the "Model". Plato sought a "philosopher King" for this role. Sadly, history is very stingy with successful examples of them. It is a tribute to the immense complexity of the human mind, the modest complexity of the Model and the infinite complexity of the universe that the deductions or conclusions of these characters should vary to the degree of occasional conflict. Some might be faulted for their incomplete or inaccurate set of postulates (Priam, Plutarch, Chamberlain), other's praised for their pragmatism (Henry V, Lincoln, Charlemagne) while yet others wholly corrupted by the power and reward of influence (Napoleon, Nero, Kim Jung Il).
Now imagine all three at council. On what ground can each walk with firm footing while still agreeing to disagree? The answer lies in the primary directive: Coherence of the society. Tell the masses anything that will guide the society toward “peace” and prosperity. Focus the intelligence; write the scripts and monitor the feedback. If the people can't compress the logic needed to subscribe to "H.R. 3200", simply lend them a myth to substitute for the math. Welcome to Hell.
Need a reason to pay taxes, tithe or send your son to war? Peddle enough fear to cultivate a town hall chorus of "God Bless America". Give them God. Give them someone or something to collectively hate that they might prove their own surpassing worth to the society. No greater Love hath the Greater Good than for he with the greatest hate for the greater Evil.
Just one catch: after six-thousand years of this game, the Genie no longer fits in the bottle. Twin roads, one of logic, one of intuition, have driven many millennia through the chaos of the cosmos; winding at the mercy of transition, describing identical events in observance to the vocabulary of their independent objectives, navigated by a dichotomy of independent attitudes. One might even detect a mass philosophical schizophrenia at work on the better percentage of the society. Creationism is a vital political tool in the United States (a nation presumably dedicated to the principles of a Republic) five-hundred years after Columbus disproved (again) the model of a flat Earth. Physics and religious scripture serve on equal standing as sources of reference to the analytical process of the average discerning American citizen/voter. Is it any wonder that we can’t seem to pass legislation protecting science’s right to explore cures to horrible diseases like Parkinson’s or Autism yet still celebrate the fortieth anniversary of landing a man on the Moon? Tell that to the child born in Salt Lake City or Waco, Texas. I don’t suspect you’ll be invited back.
Religious solutions to the Shaman’s dilemma have kept the community from digesting itself for many thousands of years, but as the level of general sophistication among a society continues to chase the rising intellectual avant-garde, one wonders at the level to which the forces of pure propaganda might resort during the mythical moment of final confrontation.
Until then, it’s perfectly legitimate to let the Stock Brokers continue to “eat what they kill”, provided their collateral crumbs continue to support an economy that provides a standard level of modest living among the herded majority population. It’s apparently also acceptable to illegally send our young men and women into a foreign society to protect our gluttonous “addiction” to oil in the name of God and country. I expect no better from a system of government framed on the ballots of a population whose intellectual diet consists of television, religion and consumerism.
Michael Vick can throw an oblong ball-toid made of a black rubber bladder covered in stitched leather. Many Americans, citizens who send their sons and daughters to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; who work on Wall Street, own hardware stores, car dealerships or shoe factories; who weld oil rigs seventy-five feet under the sea or wash dishes in a no-name diner, many of us spend our quality free time watching the very game which utilizes his unique skill. His ability to throw a ball adds considerable value to an activity (an industry) that generates over sixty billion dollars every year. This industry, the one that makes a lot of cash for tossing a ball, is responsible for allowing tens of millions of average Americans to escape from the grind of everyday life by providing an exciting place where nothing of any lasting consequence happens. Michael Vick is paid an obscene amount of money from these profits to throw that ball. A lot of people, who also make obscene amounts of money, like the fact that Vick can perform his unique trick. His sudden failure to throw the ball would hurt these people right in the pocket book. These people have been groomed and albeit rewarded to “eat what they kill”. Their progress is good for America; it entertains without informing while the crumbs of obscene profit pepper the general economy. We don’t want to make these people sad.
The decision by the Philadelphia Eagles to hire Vick after the completion of his sentence, eighteen months for running a dog fighting ring, has disturbed a great number of Americans. I’m about as disgusted by the news as anyone, but for reasons which have been out-shouted by the chorus of protests against his amorality. This out-pouring of “humanity” reaffirms both my confidence in this society and my frustration that its very lack of depth works right into the playbook of the corporate quarterbacks who simply calculate the brief loss of yardage and tickle the scoreboard with a punt.
Of course Michael Vick is an arrogant low-life. This much should be understood by any four-year old by now. What America’s four-year olds need to learn however, to witness, is America’s justice system, that grown-up world of Mommys and Daddys, treating all low-lives with equanimity, showing intolerance to class distinction and preferential treatment. The first of many travesties in this story occurred in relative silence; setting up the remainder of the drama to effectively anesthetize all subsequent outrage. Where was America when this man’s privilege-card was punched by the court?* Watching baseball no doubt. The community’s desire to know, its need of accurate and comprehensive reporting has been so artfully disrespected and manipulated over the past half century that we compulsively defer our attentions, time and again, to the very industry which plays us for a nation of four-year olds.
Insulting a population of citizens conditioned to believe in their own impotence by scripting an insincere apology means little more than gambling on the life span of the outrage before herding the sheep back into the pen. No one loses a dime because no one actually cared enough to stop spending. Michael thumbs his nose at the press and America retreats once more to its familiar and divisive cultural bunkers. Thank god Football survived.
There is no question that the primary business of any society is its collective bond before the exercise of individual rights. Plato’s error was in his trust of the intellect as an agent of stickiness; that the Philosopher-King could rule, with equal wisdom and compassion, over a grateful and educated people. The division of industry along strict lines of discipline should then occupy the rabble to their useful distraction while ensuring the economy runs at maximum efficiency. Hobbes on the other hand knew better than to think that Joe the Plumber would find life’s fulfillment keeping his nose under the sink and out of public affairs. His solution worked for Stalin, briefly. The people it seems demand more individual freedoms than the Philosopher/Tyrant can suppress indefinitely. Neither model took the force of human will and multiplied it by realistic numbers. At risk is the very cohesion these systems claimed to ensure.
The case of Michael Vick has joined the strange collection of anecdotes history might one day use to illustrate where Jefferson and the boys went soft. The United States is no different than every society to grace the planet since the dawn of civilization. It must “preserve the Union” at the cost of periodic, collateral injury to individual freedoms. Lincoln understood this. Our free-market economy seemed a subtle improvement on the Platonic model, buying a young nation time enough to tease out specific bugs in the Federal attitude to municipal rights as well as our international identity. But something unpredicted evolved while privileged, white human-rights advocates were busy monopolizing Federal attention, freeing the blacks, justifying the detention of our indigenous hosts and placating the suffragettes. Oil was discovered and the railroad and automotive industries were helping to create a hole for Joe the Plumber to pour it in. Then came T. A. Edison; welcome to the brave new world.
The cohesion of the new America would draw vitality from a population accustomed to a quality of life so revolutionary in its ubiquity, so decadent in its creature-comforts and locust-styled consumption, that history can offer no model. Without a model, how do you even begin to pull the needle out of the junkie’s arm? A society so weakened by its softness would trade its soul in pieces to maintain the status quo, and hence its cohesion. The society that went to fine schools together, that shops at the same malls together, that drizzles unconscionable amounts of clear potable water on its decorative lawns; a society that watches football together; this is not a people who would place discipline before purpose. The question as to whether we can afford community stability and unsurpassed individual freedom in equal measure, indefinitely, is one for which no pre-existing example is available; and most ominously, one for which every scientific prediction bodes disaster.
Tell that to a people who argue for a market solution to obese consumerism. Tell that to a people who believe in socialized education and law enforcement but fight socialized health care. Tell this to a people who recycle the empty bottles and bags of weed and insect killing chemicals they have just poured into the aquifer. Tell this to the people who use the bible to prevent their neighbors from expressing their own individual freedoms (i.e.: gay unions), yet feel threatened by the mere hint of gun registration.
A society so soft that it sub-contracts its wars cannot be faulted for allowing an animal torturer to leave prison and seek employment. I just wish we were honest about our collective complicity. It would sure help a lot of four year olds out there.
* note: Michael Vick's sentence of 18 months needs to be understood in some context. Although Glen Albert White (Georgia, 10 yrs. prison, 10 yrs. probation), Peter Byrne (Yonkers,NY, 2-6yrs prison), Anthony Gonzales (up to 12yrs. prison), Kris Crawford Webb (TX, 2yrs. prison, 5 yrs. prob.), Alfred C. Taylor, (MS, 3 yrs.) and Maurice T. Collier (MS, 3 yrs. prison), might have all benefitted from the name recognition and celebrity that Vick brought to the bench, my review of the crime and sentences was pretty depressing. The sympathy our society expresses for these creeps confounds the very humanity from which it arose. Stories of the tread mills, syringes, wound staplers, lice, maggots and squalid, over-crowded pens seem to meerly emphasize the dog's complicity and the defendants role as the true victim. Enough said.
© Jeff Thomas 2009
- every time the dark clouds roll in, a cold rain follows.
- the dark clouds are rolling in and we want to stay dry and warm.
- we will find a place to hide from the rain, now, before the clouds reach this spot.
Models were refined by increased data-collection and a vocabulary grew to file it all more efficiently. As the file grew so did the Game. Words arose for intangible events; concepts beyond the tactile restrictions of the pre-lingual society. Concepts like time and rudimentary geometric references for example. Toward the prevention of an unpleasant consequence, our enlightened ancestor stretched the virtual world to include a time "before", a time "now" and a time "after". This quantum leap forward was so elegant that increasingly sophisticated models of the world were inevitable. And with this growing number of models came an increase in the number questions. As predictions became increasingly reliable, the society learned to live with less and less vulnerability. The capacity to "make" yielded to a new ability to "fashion". Words were needed to file the changes and improve the virtual "meta-world" in which we began spending more and more of our time. And here it got weird.
Not every prediction was correct and not every situation presented with a prediction. One model might have had numerous and often conflicting results. As the community grew in population so did the gap and spread of intellectual prowess. Names like Shaman, Medicine man, and "Chief" were ascribed to the cerebral cream of the tribe, individuals whose record of successful analysis out-paced the remaining group. These individuals were statistically few in number. As the model became more comprehensive the vocabulary grew proportionate to the task of organizing it. This outsized model now left fewer and fewer members of the community able to digest its full complexity and the subtleties which pepper its true dynamic. An industry arose from this new need to help organize the vast majority into a coherent unity; the society needed a new form of order; an unconditional need to respect, if not trust, the guidelines prescribed on the edicts of an understanding and analysis of the newest model from some intellectual elite(s). This is the story of us. Little has changed.
This new "industry" had a mission statement: Give the people what they want, when we say they want it.It has worked pretty well for the past six or eight-thousand years, for one simple reason: The vast majority of the tribe are either uninspired, lazy, insecure or some combination thereof. A man does not instinctively share outside his circle of trust; "eat what you kill" made perfect sense before the introduction of these confounding models as their numbing vocabulary challenged the pre-existing order. Sharing and restraint are two of civilization's most vexing inventions and lie at the core of the creation of government. And what is "government" if not the severest display of vocabulary's muscle, come of age? Fundamental issues like competition for reproductive rights, food distribution and real estate, left unchecked will inevitably disrupt the order of the community, and herein lies the irony.
Our collective health has matured to challenge our most basic impulses. How are the general population expected to incorporate the concept of sacrifice into a diet of wish fulfillment? The two most effective techniques are punishment and propaganda. The first method I would assume, predates the second by hundreds of thousands of years. Starvation, violence and exposure were the harsh consequences of an individual's incapacity to support provocative or insubordinate behavior. In this model it may be seen how an individual's physical prowess might unseat the moral code of our more "contemporary" sensibilities. Group or collective thinking, decisions based on a consensus logic, would eventually supplant individual impulse gratification and codify specific consequences for specific trespasses. Fear is used this way to keep the community from destroying itself. A formidable society would best ensure victory over resource competition against another people or tribe. The Shaman must simply keep the tribe together for its own advantage by replacing the strong natural impulses of each citizen with a discomforting set of new restrictions and values, all rooted in the meditations of some virtual reality, some revolutionary model landscape of abstract words, metrics and ideals . . . and a strong touch of menace.
The second approach, "propaganda", will jettison our past from the successive, recorded period with a profundity unsurpassed by puberty. Councils of the trusted grew from a lineage of seemingly intelligent individuals, each with an interest in both the tangible world and also some level of meditation on the vocabulary of the virtual "meta-world", the "Model". Plato sought a "philosopher King" for this role. Sadly, history is very stingy with successful examples of them. It is a tribute to the immense complexity of the human mind, the modest complexity of the Model and the infinite complexity of the universe that the deductions or conclusions of these characters should vary to the degree of occasional conflict. Some might be faulted for their incomplete or inaccurate set of postulates (Priam, Plutarch, Chamberlain), other's praised for their pragmatism (Henry V, Lincoln, Charlemagne) while yet others wholly corrupted by the power and reward of influence (Napoleon, Nero, Kim Jung Il).
Now imagine all three at council. On what ground can each walk with firm footing while still agreeing to disagree? The answer lies in the primary directive: Coherence of the society. Tell the masses anything that will guide the society toward “peace” and prosperity. Focus the intelligence; write the scripts and monitor the feedback. If the people can't compress the logic needed to subscribe to "H.R. 3200", simply lend them a myth to substitute for the math. Welcome to Hell.
Need a reason to pay taxes, tithe or send your son to war? Peddle enough fear to cultivate a town hall chorus of "God Bless America". Give them God. Give them someone or something to collectively hate that they might prove their own surpassing worth to the society. No greater Love hath the Greater Good than for he with the greatest hate for the greater Evil.
Just one catch: after six-thousand years of this game, the Genie no longer fits in the bottle. Twin roads, one of logic, one of intuition, have driven many millennia through the chaos of the cosmos; winding at the mercy of transition, describing identical events in observance to the vocabulary of their independent objectives, navigated by a dichotomy of independent attitudes. One might even detect a mass philosophical schizophrenia at work on the better percentage of the society. Creationism is a vital political tool in the United States (a nation presumably dedicated to the principles of a Republic) five-hundred years after Columbus disproved (again) the model of a flat Earth. Physics and religious scripture serve on equal standing as sources of reference to the analytical process of the average discerning American citizen/voter. Is it any wonder that we can’t seem to pass legislation protecting science’s right to explore cures to horrible diseases like Parkinson’s or Autism yet still celebrate the fortieth anniversary of landing a man on the Moon? Tell that to the child born in Salt Lake City or Waco, Texas. I don’t suspect you’ll be invited back.
Religious solutions to the Shaman’s dilemma have kept the community from digesting itself for many thousands of years, but as the level of general sophistication among a society continues to chase the rising intellectual avant-garde, one wonders at the level to which the forces of pure propaganda might resort during the mythical moment of final confrontation.
Until then, it’s perfectly legitimate to let the Stock Brokers continue to “eat what they kill”, provided their collateral crumbs continue to support an economy that provides a standard level of modest living among the herded majority population. It’s apparently also acceptable to illegally send our young men and women into a foreign society to protect our gluttonous “addiction” to oil in the name of God and country. I expect no better from a system of government framed on the ballots of a population whose intellectual diet consists of television, religion and consumerism.
Michael Vick can throw an oblong ball-toid made of a black rubber bladder covered in stitched leather. Many Americans, citizens who send their sons and daughters to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; who work on Wall Street, own hardware stores, car dealerships or shoe factories; who weld oil rigs seventy-five feet under the sea or wash dishes in a no-name diner, many of us spend our quality free time watching the very game which utilizes his unique skill. His ability to throw a ball adds considerable value to an activity (an industry) that generates over sixty billion dollars every year. This industry, the one that makes a lot of cash for tossing a ball, is responsible for allowing tens of millions of average Americans to escape from the grind of everyday life by providing an exciting place where nothing of any lasting consequence happens. Michael Vick is paid an obscene amount of money from these profits to throw that ball. A lot of people, who also make obscene amounts of money, like the fact that Vick can perform his unique trick. His sudden failure to throw the ball would hurt these people right in the pocket book. These people have been groomed and albeit rewarded to “eat what they kill”. Their progress is good for America; it entertains without informing while the crumbs of obscene profit pepper the general economy. We don’t want to make these people sad.
The decision by the Philadelphia Eagles to hire Vick after the completion of his sentence, eighteen months for running a dog fighting ring, has disturbed a great number of Americans. I’m about as disgusted by the news as anyone, but for reasons which have been out-shouted by the chorus of protests against his amorality. This out-pouring of “humanity” reaffirms both my confidence in this society and my frustration that its very lack of depth works right into the playbook of the corporate quarterbacks who simply calculate the brief loss of yardage and tickle the scoreboard with a punt.
Of course Michael Vick is an arrogant low-life. This much should be understood by any four-year old by now. What America’s four-year olds need to learn however, to witness, is America’s justice system, that grown-up world of Mommys and Daddys, treating all low-lives with equanimity, showing intolerance to class distinction and preferential treatment. The first of many travesties in this story occurred in relative silence; setting up the remainder of the drama to effectively anesthetize all subsequent outrage. Where was America when this man’s privilege-card was punched by the court?* Watching baseball no doubt. The community’s desire to know, its need of accurate and comprehensive reporting has been so artfully disrespected and manipulated over the past half century that we compulsively defer our attentions, time and again, to the very industry which plays us for a nation of four-year olds.
Insulting a population of citizens conditioned to believe in their own impotence by scripting an insincere apology means little more than gambling on the life span of the outrage before herding the sheep back into the pen. No one loses a dime because no one actually cared enough to stop spending. Michael thumbs his nose at the press and America retreats once more to its familiar and divisive cultural bunkers. Thank god Football survived.
There is no question that the primary business of any society is its collective bond before the exercise of individual rights. Plato’s error was in his trust of the intellect as an agent of stickiness; that the Philosopher-King could rule, with equal wisdom and compassion, over a grateful and educated people. The division of industry along strict lines of discipline should then occupy the rabble to their useful distraction while ensuring the economy runs at maximum efficiency. Hobbes on the other hand knew better than to think that Joe the Plumber would find life’s fulfillment keeping his nose under the sink and out of public affairs. His solution worked for Stalin, briefly. The people it seems demand more individual freedoms than the Philosopher/Tyrant can suppress indefinitely. Neither model took the force of human will and multiplied it by realistic numbers. At risk is the very cohesion these systems claimed to ensure.
The case of Michael Vick has joined the strange collection of anecdotes history might one day use to illustrate where Jefferson and the boys went soft. The United States is no different than every society to grace the planet since the dawn of civilization. It must “preserve the Union” at the cost of periodic, collateral injury to individual freedoms. Lincoln understood this. Our free-market economy seemed a subtle improvement on the Platonic model, buying a young nation time enough to tease out specific bugs in the Federal attitude to municipal rights as well as our international identity. But something unpredicted evolved while privileged, white human-rights advocates were busy monopolizing Federal attention, freeing the blacks, justifying the detention of our indigenous hosts and placating the suffragettes. Oil was discovered and the railroad and automotive industries were helping to create a hole for Joe the Plumber to pour it in. Then came T. A. Edison; welcome to the brave new world.
The cohesion of the new America would draw vitality from a population accustomed to a quality of life so revolutionary in its ubiquity, so decadent in its creature-comforts and locust-styled consumption, that history can offer no model. Without a model, how do you even begin to pull the needle out of the junkie’s arm? A society so weakened by its softness would trade its soul in pieces to maintain the status quo, and hence its cohesion. The society that went to fine schools together, that shops at the same malls together, that drizzles unconscionable amounts of clear potable water on its decorative lawns; a society that watches football together; this is not a people who would place discipline before purpose. The question as to whether we can afford community stability and unsurpassed individual freedom in equal measure, indefinitely, is one for which no pre-existing example is available; and most ominously, one for which every scientific prediction bodes disaster.
Tell that to a people who argue for a market solution to obese consumerism. Tell that to a people who believe in socialized education and law enforcement but fight socialized health care. Tell this to a people who recycle the empty bottles and bags of weed and insect killing chemicals they have just poured into the aquifer. Tell this to the people who use the bible to prevent their neighbors from expressing their own individual freedoms (i.e.: gay unions), yet feel threatened by the mere hint of gun registration.
A society so soft that it sub-contracts its wars cannot be faulted for allowing an animal torturer to leave prison and seek employment. I just wish we were honest about our collective complicity. It would sure help a lot of four year olds out there.
* note: Michael Vick's sentence of 18 months needs to be understood in some context. Although Glen Albert White (Georgia, 10 yrs. prison, 10 yrs. probation), Peter Byrne (Yonkers,NY, 2-6yrs prison), Anthony Gonzales (up to 12yrs. prison), Kris Crawford Webb (TX, 2yrs. prison, 5 yrs. prob.), Alfred C. Taylor, (MS, 3 yrs.) and Maurice T. Collier (MS, 3 yrs. prison), might have all benefitted from the name recognition and celebrity that Vick brought to the bench, my review of the crime and sentences was pretty depressing. The sympathy our society expresses for these creeps confounds the very humanity from which it arose. Stories of the tread mills, syringes, wound staplers, lice, maggots and squalid, over-crowded pens seem to meerly emphasize the dog's complicity and the defendants role as the true victim. Enough said.
© Jeff Thomas 2009
