Truth, justice and the law

Good Morning,

    My apologies for there being no letter last week.  I really don't know how Alistair Cooke always came up with one.  I tried to write something ("liquid gold") but it just wasn't good enough so it has been shelved for now.

My topic this week the problems we have here on earth with something which we call "the law".  It's essentially a code of behavior that we are supposed to adhere to.  In most countries on earth, knowing the law is perhaps a little more straightforward.  But here in America we have three, sometimes four relevant "jurisdictions" that can enact separate laws: first, there's International law, although most of us aren't directly affected by that; then there's the Federal law which applies to the nation as a whole; State law; and sometimes more local jurisdictions such as the city we live in.  The whole thing is incredibly complex.

But there's one big problem in applying the law: humans are inveterate liars.  We never tell the truth if it isn't in our interest.  The legal system therefore spends an inordinate amount of time trying to decide who's lying in any particular situation.

One of the laws which applies in most jurisdictions is that of libel, which is essentially saying or writing something untrue about someone (we won't get into the difference between libel and slander).  It's amazing how sometimes it takes only one person to say something bad about another person in order for that second person to lose their job, the political race they were entered in, or whatever.  Often it's entirely unnecessary to prove that fact -- everyone who matters simply takes it at face value.  And, perversely, if a libel victim takes legal action against the libeler, it's often seen as an admission of guilt.

There have been many instances in our history of this sort of thing, sometimes causing the death of the victim (for example the Salem witch trials).  Another recent situation was the period of "McCarthyism" which ended more or less 50 years ago.  All it took to have one's career ruined was for an anonymous person to whisper that you were a communist sympathizer.  One of the journalists who covered the hearings, Daniel Schorr, died this week, breaking a link with that period.  In fact, it's rather surprising that he wasn't on the list, especially as later he made it onto the "enemies" list of Richard Nixon (U.S. President 1969-74).

I was also reminded of the period today while attending a performance of Gypsy, a musical about Gypsy Rose Lee, perhaps the world's most famous stripper [for reasons far too complex to go into here, we humans generally wear clothes: stripping is taking them off as an entertainment].  Gypsy Rose Lee was one of the personalities accused of being a "commie", although she successfully fought back.

We have something here called a "polygraph" which purports to be able to tell when someone is lying.  But it's not 100% reliable so generally isn't used much in the law courts.  If someone could invent a perfect polygraph machine, it would save a lot of time in law trials and maybe protect people from malicious libelling.

These days, the situation is actually far worse than ever before.  We have something called the "internet" which basically allows anyone to say anything about anyone at any time.  There isn't even any provable attribution of who said what.  Amazing!  And if someone calls someone a cheat, liar, whatever, this piece of information can now be "picked up" by the newspapers (even books) and given a sheen of authority.  We had a story just this week of someone losing their job because of this sort of scurrilous activity.  I notice today on Facebook (part of this internet culture), one particular person (no idea who this person really is of course) claiming that Alberto Contador, the winner (again) of the Tour de France (the world's most grueling race on two-wheeled transportation machines that we call bicycles) is a cheat.  He doesn't offer any evidence.  In my opinion, this is just plain wrong!  He should have to quote sources to back up his claim, which in turn would quote sources, ...

For now, we're stuck with a very imperfect system.

From a crazy world,

Phasmid