Casey Gilfillan

I recently published a short piece discussing the meaning and vitality of rules that are not followed, transgression that is not met with consequence. To summarize briefly, words and laws mean nothing if some can override them with impunity. These things, intangible concepts of civil contract, only contain the meaning we bestow upon them and actively reinforce. Your credit score, for example, only means anything because banks and financial institutions won’t lend to you unless you submit yourself to this arbitrary system; however, if they lent to someone with a bad credit score, or we took up solidarity and boycotted the institutions that swap out your humanity for a risk assesment, it would dissolve the meaning and purpose of this stupid number in one fell swoop.

The same applies with laws. If rape is illegal, and rape of a minor is also illegal (both punishable by jail time), but someone rapes a minor and not only lives freely without punishment, but gets to continue to rule an entire country, I guess it’s not really “illegal” after all, is it? That kind of permissiveness effectively  dissolves the potency of illegality as a whole and creates a logical fallacy.

If everyone operated by the same logic – testing the bounds of illegality by breaking all the laws – the line blurs and you realize there is no line. There are just people doing disgusting things, and some that grab up all the power and resources in an effort to do disgusting things on a larger scale, at the expense and misery of all others. You can have all the moral dispositions you want, mark down your values and print them in a stylized font on a nice sheet of paper for all to see. None of it means anything without action, the actualization of theory. Is it illegal to rape, abuse, and murder? Then prove it by arresting every scum sub-human mentioned on the documents of which we have yet to see the full extent.

Except they won’t, for they are too busy detaining protestors on roller skates and gunning down American citizens in the streets. For this, and for the abused children, for the  young people who have suffered injustice for years, we are not mad enough. For now, the predatory class continues to rule us all and meanwhile we have proven what? Theyhave shown us that nothing means anything – it is not the rule of law that this land is guided by, but the authoritarian decrees of a fascist that have it throttled by the throat.