As hinted at in the previous post, the rulers of California regard the property of the Important as more worthy of protection than the lives of mere commoners.
Another fine example of the stratification of society currently in the news is the tale of the Stanford Rapist.
You can't punish an up-and-coming member of the aristocracy as you would a common thug! Class solidarity forbids it!
Equal protection of the laws? A republican form of government? Mere words! The ruling elite must be protected at all costs!
(And, should you cast a critical eye on the words and deeds of the elite, you'll quickly come to the conclusion that most of them are quite stupid, and incapable of managing their own lives competently, never mind the lives of everyone else. But they're the ones who know all the right people. Plus, they have the dirt on each other.)
Ruling-elite privilege is hardly a new thing; look at any society in any era. But this is mighty blatant, for a society which was founded on the rejection of royalty.
The Stanford incident puts me in mind of the Moriarty of that novel I'm not writing. (Back in the summer of 2011, I thought I might have a go at the NaNoWriMo thing. I had a Concept for a short, snappy, brightly-colored textual comic book. Trouble was, when I started outlining it, I ended up with many pages of bullet points calling for vast, sweeping back-story arcs that wanted to grow into a 600-page Victorian novel even before the actual story could get started. Also, that November ended up being quite a busy time.) The villain, like the hero, is 42 years old, and went to the same high school, though they'd been completely unaware of each other. The highlights of his character and early development:
Portrait of the Villain as a young man.
- Jack was everything Charlie was not. Captain of the football team, voted most likely to succeed, always got the girl, football scholarship to an Ivy League school, degrees in business and in law.
- Not only did Jack always get the girl, rumor had it that on some occasions the girl had taken exception to this. The college administration had hushed up the first incident because there was an important game coming up... and once they'd covered up the first rape, Jack had all the leverage he needed to get anything else hushed up, too.
- All through his life, no one had ever said no to Jack and made it stick.
- Jack had an uncle on his mother's side who had been a long-serving U.S. Senator, until he died about two years ago.
It goes on from there, to his career in Mergers & Acquisitions, and his dealings with international crime syndicates. Inevitably, at the conclusion of the story he escapes to plot another day. Thing is... when I wrote that, I assumed I was just picking up on an exaggerated stereotype.
But, for all the exaggerated statistics, false rape accusations, and spurious claims of "rape culture"... there are very real predators out there. All too often, it turns out the community was covering for them. This case springs to mind. Then there's the sudden outbreak of allegations regarding that guy at the onion-router project. Also: one local community with which I've been out of touch for several years suddenly developed a case of what sounded, at first, like SJW safe-space babble. Came a clarification: over the years, there had been cases of actual sexual predators hanging out with the group, and a recent incident had highlighted the need for dealing with behavior that was almost, but not quite, in call-the-police territory - rather than carefully pretending it didn't happen, as has been the custom.
And need I mention the Clintons?
But never mind how the Important People are largely above the law. We must combat White Male Privilege, such as that enjoyed by the guy who picks up your garbage on Monday morning.
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