The Novelist Portent
Johnny E. Mahaffey
July 4, 2018

PRISON INDEPENDENCE DAY

It really is too bad that freedom hasn't turned out to be what the founders of America intended.

I seriously doubt that they could've ever imagined the ways that modern courts would perversely bend the Constitution. How the loss of freedom for millions of Americans would become the bread and butter of an entire prison corporation—financially supporting everyone from street cops, county jails, and courts, to prisons and state courts, and not to exclude the various levels of federal law enforces and courts up to the Supreme. A trillion-dollar industry! Calculate all of the paychecks, resources, land, equipment, utilities, etc.

Which do we realistically spend more on, law or education?

I just watched a documentary on cops and it started with Scotland Yard, setting much of the model we still use today. With the first forensic techniques, even quarantining a crime scene, born from the futile efforts to capture or identify Jack the Ripper.

The first cops were told not to wantonly invade the privacy of citizens—but they did it anyways, in secret. The first year the cops were formed, they were already breaking their own law. The more they got away with it, the more they did it. It's a method they still use today: they skirt what's moral, cross over an occasion, in hopes of more arrests and convictions, more notches in their authoritative career belt. Advancement means more money. Sometimes their efforts are fruitless, and they're forced to step back or even answer for their own actions. Other times, their gamble pays off and they flaunt the arrest, saying, "See, this is why we need to do this!"

Next thing we know, a bill is in the courts and new law is made. Another freedom is taken because of the actions of one person out of a thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even one out of a million. The acts of one individual changes the course of a nation because catching that one person warrants breaching the Constitution's sanctity.

Right now, American politics and laws share a lot with the video game South Park: The Stick of Truth. It's like this giant RPG in which everyone is guiding an avatar-like person, simply going through the motions to collect a paycheck, and constantly dodging Trump's balls before being discovered. Why do we have to have a broken legal system? Doing the right thing is not that hard...

Freedom is a precious thing, and it's an endangered idea. One that's not guaranteed to be around in the totalitarian future we may be creating.

The Mayfly Nimph is born underwater. They live in mud for a full year, come out as fish-like things, shed that body to a dragonfly-ish thing, and have no mouth or digestive system. No way to eat or keep on being—they have only 24 hours of life. They have only one purpose: reproduction. Lay eggs for the next generation. This mostly happens on July 4th, maybe triggered by the fireworks.

Think about that for a moment, animals in America can count on us to do certain things—rituals or decorations—at certain times each year. Marking dates for them.

We've created a world where the mayflies probably know more about life and death than we Americans do. They know their purpose, they don't squander it, and they prepare for the next generation. We Americans are born, we deviate from one purpose to another at the cost of the world around us, and we think more of the now (today) than we do about the next generation's future (tomorrow).

The male mayflies mate and die. The females then fly off to the water's surface where they lay eggs, and die. They live in the moment yet devote their existence to their species' future. If we humans could harness just a part of such devotion into our humanity, then our children would grow into a world without things like what we see today—without needless deaths, addictions, lack of education, or mass incarceration. We could turn America into a land of freedom, not the country that proudly sports the world's largest prison population.