EVERYONE is Above The Law
or
Mykel's July 2024 Blog
aka You're Still Wrong
The majestic equality of the law forbids rich and poor alike from pissing in the streets, sleeping under bridges, and stealing bread.
“The
law roasted her to death at a slow fire.
–Mark Twain in
The Prince and The
Pauper
Practically
all laws, whether they forbid me to take your car, outlaw racial
discrimination, or coerce the payment of taxes, impose somebody’s
morality on somebody else.
–Stephen L. Carter
--------------------
I stand with half a dozen people at the northwest corner of Broadway and Houston Street. A cacophony of horns blasts from the barely moving cars and trucks. If this were a symphony, every thirty seconds or so, a conductor would cue a VROOOM VROOOM screaming from motorcycles... and cars that wish they were motorcycles. No one looks at the traffic lights. The red-handed DON’T WALK sign hides behind the school bus blocking the crosswalk at the corner.
From our standing-at-the-corner crowd, an attractive young woman in twat-shaping shorts, steps from the curb into the traffic. Stepping hard… intentionally… she weaves her way through the cars to reach the divider in the middle of the street. Her move has given me the courage to try it… and I twist and turn my way to the middle divide. So does a mom pushing a stroller. Then a tourist trying to follow his cellphone map.
Slowly we wind our ways through the traffic until one by one we reach the other side of Houston Street. None of us notices or cares about the lights… and it’s the same for the traffic we’re weaving through. They don’t care either.
FLASH TO WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT: I tried asking Google (actually DuckDuckGo) how many federal laws there are. It turns out nobody knows. The last attempt to count them was in the 1980s. The result “was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law.”
Of course, there are also state, city, and local laws… new ones coming and going every day. The laws are constructed –some by accident, some by intention– so that EVERYONE will be a lawbreaker at one time or another.
I haven’t been in high school since 1968. It’s likely things have changed since then. When I was in school, Social Studies taught us that America was a Nation of Laws. Unlike dictatorships… like Russia, where HUMANS rule arbitrarily, in America everyone must obey the same laws. It doesn’t matter if you’re Al Capone or Jane Fonda. The law applies to all of us.
“In America, everyone is equal before the law,” Mr. Greenspan told us. “There is no aristocracy here… no dictatorship.”
Even then, I thought something was fishy about that idea. Al Capone was a gangster. The guy behind the machine gun that The Untouchables were always fighting. But what sent him to prison? TAX EVASION. He didn’t pay the government on the money he stole from those dead guys. It seemed to me that mass murder from the end of a machine gun was a more deserving crime than tax evasion. But that was the only way they could get him.
FLASH AHEAD TO 2325: A teenage Mikhail Boardinov is struggling against the body lock placed on him by Robocop4870-UB.
“You are under arrest,” says the 4870… whose mellow voice is uncannily like that of HAL in 2001.
“What for?” asks Boardinov. “I know you don’t like what I say sometimes. But I have a right to say it.”
“Of course you do,” answers the Robocop. “This is a free country… You’re not in Russia.”
“Then why am I being arrested?” asks Boardinov.
“You know why,” says the Robocop. “You’re not being arrested for your beliefs or your writing. You’re being arrested for breathing without a license.”
“How do you know I don’t have a license?” asks Boardinov, “This wouldn’t have anything to do with my vocal opposition to the merger of AmazAppleGoogleSoft with the US government, would it?”
“Of course not,” comes the reply. “You know about climate change. You know how bad carbon dioxide is for the earth. Humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. You know that the law requires a breathing license for every citizen… and that all citizens must document at least 3 periods of one minute each day… where they stop breathing in order to help save the planet. You are a selfish bastard… not caring about the earth or anyone in it besides yourself… and if you had a license, you’d show it to me.”
FLASH TO 2024: As I write this, Donald Trump has finished his trial about paying a pornstar hush-money®, but like Al Capone’s trial, the reason for the court is violation of some business expense reporting.
Donald Trump is an outsider. Before his previous term in office, he was without experience with the Washington politicos. He was a businessman and an entertainer. And he lived his life according to the rules of those professions. I can’t imagine a successful businessman who doesn’t have an accountant or lawyer he pays to fiddle the books. The pornstar makes the news. Few people know – or care – about the buisiness law.
In Florida, they’re bringing Trump to court for boxes of classified documents on the floor of his bathroom. No he didn’t piss on them, at least not as far as I know. He didn’t do anything with them except leave them in his house. And they raided that house. The Feds tore the place apart looking for… for whatever they could find. A little later they raided Joe Biden’s house too. Found a few classified docs. Poof! that was the end of it. No big deal for Joe, but Donny Trump had to go to court.
And now the Repubs are getting into the act. They can’t get Joe, so they go after his kid… cooking up a violation of some federal gun laws for an ILLEGAL purchase of a revolver... a decade and a half ago… and they’re still looking to dig up some law to prove the kid’s an undercover secret agent for Ukraine or someplace else in The East.
GET IT???
There are so many laws in this country that anyone at any time is guilty of violating something. The function of the law is NOT that all people are subject to all laws. That would mean jail for EVERYBODY. The function of the law is to provide a means for powerful people to GET those they don’t like. It allows good-old-boy cops to arrest black drivers going five miles over the speed limit. Not because they’re black (wink wink), but because THEY VIOLATED THE LAW. They were speeding. Laws allow colleges to break up peaceful demonstrations, not because the big donors don’t like the ideas of the protesters, oh no, ever that… but because the demonstrators were OBSTRUCTING. And that’s AGAINST THE LAW.
Mr. Greenspan was wrong. The purpose of the law is not to make some rules that apply to everyone equally all the time. The purpose of the law is to control or punish people the lawmakers don’t like. American elections have become not who wins at the ballot box, but who stays out of court… and the corollary, who stays out of jail.
Along with the US, other third-world countries have adopted the same system. Pakistan and Thailand have both jailed the “opposition,” using the law as an excuse. Nelson Mandela spent 20 years in prison in South Africa before JUSTICE finally beat LEGALITY and he became president.
Of course Donald Trump is guilty of violating the law. Every one of those people crossing against the light on the corner of Houston and Broadway was guilty of violating the law. Every person in the United States is guilty of violating the law… or a law… or multiple laws.
The law does not “hold violators accountable.” The law provides the violation to punish people out of favor with those in power.
See you in hell,
Mykel Board
LATE
ADDITION: Just
before I’d planned to post this, the Supreme Court issued a
decision saying that “Presidential Immunity” means… er…
Presidential Immunity. Much of the plot to let the courts, instead of
the voters, decide the next president has been lost. That’s a good
thing. Friends and regular readers know I’m a Trump agnostic. He’s
done selfish and serve-the-wealthy things, Can you say cutting rich
and corporate taxes? But
he also kept us out of war, opened up a dialog with North Korea, and
pardoned thousands of non-violent jailed humans. I
don’t think his election will mean DEATH TO DEMOCRACY. Democracy
has been dead a long time.
ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→A FISH LAW DEPT: Hand-fishing without a license is illegal in Kansas. Anyone who plans to hand-fish must first get a hand-fishing license in addition to a hook-biting fishing license. Even with a license, however, it is only legal to hand-fish flathead catfish from sunrise to sunset June 15 through August 31 along the Arkansas River, all federal reservoirs beyond 150 yards of a dam, and the whole stretch of the Kansas River. Everywhere else, you have to keep your hands to yourself.
→ SPEAKING OF FISH AND HANDS DEPT: In Gainesville County, Georgia, it is against the law to eat fried chicken except with your bare hands. As for enforcement: in 2009, a 91-year-old visitor from Louisiana was arrested and charged for eating fried chicken with a fork.
→ GETTING MARRIED ON THE WAY DOWN! DEPT: Unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be fined or jailed in Florida. You know sometime, somewhere, a bachelorette parachuted on Sunday. It was her passion. Then, some unrequited state legislator decided to teach her a lesson. I’ll get you, you bitch! Take THIS law!
There are a ton more of these super-weird laws. You can google them. At first, they seem funny. But there’s something sinister behind all of them.
→ IT MAY BE A CULT… BUT Dept: I’ve been on the LaRouche mailing list for a long time. The cultishness and conspiracy focus have usually put me off them. But they are often so logical, and print news that you just can’t get elsewhere. This is a translation of part of a Putin speech… and it makes a lot of sense
See you in hell (redux)
MB
THE NATION AGAIN:
In the newest issue are a
couple of worthwhile columns: There’s a
good one by Adolph Reed Jr. It’s sumarized in this quote:
Liberal policy offers sympathy to those sleeping on the streets,
but stops fhort of giving the shewhere to live..
And
there’s another
good one by the often right, Jeet Heer, on the necessity of
cleansing
the Democratic Party of the remains of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton,
and building a true alternative to the Republicans. Also
the column talks about the Dems abandoning young people (Hillary
Clinton on young followers of Trump vs. Bernie Sanders fans: “At
least they shave.”)
LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:
I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions many I’d never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.
I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.
Here's a start:
Here’s
Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in
8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The
Dead Air Fresheners.
Also
on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT
SHOPPERS. Featuring pals Seth, superstar comic writer,
Justin Melkmann and possibly the next vice-president of the
US, Charles Bukkake.
Here’s
an update on the current URL for Sid Yiddish’s Dating Game (type)
entry.
And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!
Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.
Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.
Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.
And for a quiet smile and a much needed break for you and the dog, try G.C. Adams’ YouTube entry.
You
already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those
guys who did the Mykel Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and
probably for the better.) Their on-line version is here.
The Clean Boys
from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we
recorded as The
Bend-over Boys. Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I
can say I have a 10-incher!
Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Longtime writer, Randall Fleming, has a new book out about the reversal of flag desecration. In his view, the right And more generally it’s about political violence in the 21st century.
Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brien asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.
Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. mykelboard@gmail.com
