Just following orders…
Oppression perpetrated on one of us is oppression perpetrated on all of us
In 1982 the bodies of Washington State women started turning up in the Green River outside Seattle. By 1986 the number of bodies found exceeded forty, and police were closing on their man by 1987. They served a search warrant on a monster named Gary Ridgeway, an innocuous-looking character with plastic frame glasses and a thin mustache. But they found nothing concrete and were forced to release him. It wouldn’t be until 2001 when that same Gary Ridgeway would be positively identified as the Green River Killer by DNA evidence. He killed at least eight women after that warrant was served but may well have killed many more.
What is the point of this story? You might ask. Why am I rambling about the killing habits of a Washington murderer? The answer is simple: The United States is a nation predicated upon the presumption of innocence and places a high burden of proof on the government, even when dealing with the most heinous among us. We also place strict limits on how even criminals in our nation can be treated. And we hold these protections afforded the individual as chief among our founding principles.
People not in uniform (like the women mention above) have died because of these values, and it has long been held that government abuse perpetrated on the least of us is abuse perpetrated upon all of us. I know that sounds grandiose, but it’s true. America has been the shining beacon of freedom and liberty for centuries. People have journeyed here to escape tyranny and oppression since we won our independence almost two-and-a-half-centuries ago. People have come from Ireland, Cuba, and Eastern Europe chasing freedom and opportunity and many times fleeing the very persecution to which we are subjecting our political dissenters today.
Right now, today, United States citizens are being detained in the DC Department of Corrections without charge. Access to these people has been denied to their families, attorneys, and even sitting members of Congress for going on ten months. I’ve seen a letter written by one of these citizens, a man named Nathan DeGrave. And it is tough to read.
In this letter he claims to have been under 23-to-24-hour-a-day lockdown. He claims privileged information from his counsel has disappeared, that the limited rec time he does get is subject to the capricious whims of guards who revoke the man’s privileges if his tiny cell is not maintained to their standards. He states these January Sixth political prisoners suffer from nutritional deficiencies. So bad does he claim the circumstances are, that many if not most of the January Sixth inmates are medicated for depression and anxiety. Haircuts are not allowed. Neither are razors.
And what terrible crime did these people commit? What horrors does the government claim of them? They got rowdy at the capitol in the wake of an opaque election where questions were not allowed to be asked. The same nation that guarantees our right to redress grievances with our government was hell-bent for leather to get this controversial election certified and blessed by Congress before too many could speak up.
The American people were abandoned by SCOTUS who (somehow) denied Texas the standing to sue Pennsylvania for objectively violating its own voting standards and usurping the US Constitution in a national election that determined the nation’s executive and the tie-breaking vote in the 50/50 Senate. We were told by the government, the mainstream media, and big tech questioning an election with so many irregularities was forbidden. These were the same people who told us the Antifa and BLM Summer of Love was a fiery but mostly peaceful event and ranted for three years of the “Mu Russia” hoax, a hoax that has now seen criminal charges filed against the initiating lawyer for lying to the FBI, Hilary Clinton’s laywer.
So, these patriots were well within their rights to “petition their government for a redress of their grievances.” Sure, they were angry and disruptive, but so were the patriots at the Boston Tea Party and the crowd gunned down at the Boston Massacre. As most modern-day schoolboards can attest: the face of public outrage is not pretty to behold. But it’s not supposed to be.
No one was killed on January Sixth, except for an unarmed civilian shot by a police lieutenant with a checkered history, a man lionized by a mainstream media who finally found a police shooting it could get behind. No major fires broke out. And very few items of consequence were stolen. These people didn’t travel from all over our nation to profit or pillage. They weren’t gaining any wealth from these activities. They only wanted answers and to protest the flagrant abuse of power they saw occurring in their country.
And for this, they were thrown in prison, without charge and treated in a fashion that would make Stalin proud. No Habeas Corpus. No Due Process. No contact with counsel. Worse, if this letter is to be believed, sworn federal officers are subjecting citizens to mental and physical torture, citizens who haven’t even been charged with a felony! And this is happening, not in Moscow, Russia, not in Beijing, China, not even in Pyongyang, North Korea, but in Washington DC in the United States of America.
This cannot be tolerated! And we are well past the point where securing the release of these people is enough to set things right. This MUST be investigated, and people MUST go to jail for this, not person, people. Every single person from the guards walking the halls of this prison and its warden to any bureaucrat or politician with firsthand knowledge who did nothing must be held to account.
They should all be tried, and (if convicted) thrown in jail for the maximum the law will allow. The Capitol City Police Department needs to be investigated and, if compelling evidence of corruption exists, it should be reformed or outright disbanded. And I do not want to hear “it was my job” or “I was just following orders” or “it wasn’t my decision.” Anyone in government, but especially those in a law enforcement or representative capacity, takes an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
These officers of the state have a sworn duty to act and are charged to stop these horrors as a matter of oath. Is it a hard thing to do when all of your friends and colleagues are involved and your livelihood may hang in the balance? Maybe. But, getting past how cynical and twisted it is to put such considerations over the shattered lives these people are actively or passively destroying, no one said public service was easy. These people are servants of the public, guardians entrusted to keep us safe. They are regarded as the best of us, but when they fail us, or more correctly, betray us, the consequences must be severe.
Make no mistake. This disgusting behavior on the part of our government is a calculated move. It was designed to send a message: “Question our authority, and we will fuck up your life. No rights. No civil liberties. Go straight to jail.”
Well, we must send a message of our own to those who would represent us in government, the discouraged citizenry, and our enemies abroad who would rightfully mock our republic’s hypocrisy: “Defile our laws and betray our trust upon the pain of all you hold dear.” Imprison these people to the max, fine them into oblivion, and pay what meager recompense we can to these living martyrs of freedom who have sacrificed so much to exercise our most fundamental of civil liberties.
In a nation that protects the rights of monsters like Gary Ridgeway, we must not forsake the Nathan DeGraves among us. We must show the world and our people that our values matter, that we care about justice, and establish that there will be a reckoning for those in our government who betray those values and perpetuate injustice.