Mom and Dad arrive at the Star Chamber for their 1:30 P.M. hearing about something. They join the tide of humanity waiting in the hall for cases to be called. A sign posted on the door tells them to stay out until they are called. As the hours creep by, a dull stupor sets in. Occasionally they sit up alert when they catch glimpses of their lawyers popping their heads out the courtroom door. Still no sign of recognition from them. Mom and Dad sink back into semi-consciousness.
Eventually, their attorneys come out to talk to them. We have good news, they say. They tell Mom and Dad that the county is willing to amend the petition to say that Amber has made allegations of molestation against her father, that this has caused her severe emotional distress and the family needs therapy to deal with it. The attorneys propose that the parents "submit on the petition" rather than go to trial. It’s the best thing to do, say the lawyers, because the amended petition does not say that Dad actually molested Amber.
The attorneys warn that the Department almost always wins these cases and that the social worker will be unhappy if they go to trial because she will think they are persisting in denial and failing to cooperate. Besides, say the lawyers, we can get more quickly down to the business of reunifying with the children. "What about the boys?," Mom asks. They will stay where they are or go to Grandma’s house say the lawyers. The judge isn’t likely to return them befor a psych evaluation is completed.
The Honorable George Gruff will hear Mom and Dad’s case. Presiding in Department 44, he hears only juvenile dependency cases. Judge Gruff didn’t pick this assignment. He’s the new judge. As the one with least seniority he ended up here because none of the other 65 judges on the county superior court wanted the job.
Judge Gruff’s background as a deputy district attorney and then a defense attorney representing asbestos manufacturers does nothing to prepare him for handling Mom and Dad’s case. He has no experience dealing with the problems of the poor.
The people who come into his court are indeed unfortunate but this fact does not weigh in their favor because Judge Gruff has an unshakable belief that people shape their own fortunes. This belief comes cheap. Born into a legal aristocracy where men in his family have become judges since the gold rush, a judgeship was as natural a destiny for Judge Gruff as having his baby teeth fall out. He cruises into court from his home perched high in the hills to weigh the fates of people who might as well have come from Venus or Mars.
Judge Gruff’s ignorance forces him to depend on the guidance of Mom and Dad’s adversary, the county attorney who Judge Gruff sees five days a week. His honor respects social workers since they’re about protecting children and would have no motive to mislead him. He knows nothing about Title 4-E funding or social workers attracted to the job because they are control freaks with the need to project their own issues on to hapless parents. About the time Judge Gruff becomes seasoned in the job, he will leave Department 44 never to look back.
The attorneys tell Mom and Dad that Judge Gruff is tough. They are well-advised to accept the social worker’s case plan. Mom will get an evaluation and follow the recommended course of treatment. Both parents will take parenting classes. Dad will go into therapy and attend a school for sexual batterers. Amber will get individual counseling. After a while, if everything progresses well, Amber and both parents will participate in joint family counseling.
The Department will select the evaluators and therapists from a list of approved providers who depend on the Department’s continuing largesse to pay their bills. The social worker will furnish her reports to the assigned professionals for their use as background. These reports will tell them what result the Department would like to see. The parents don’t get their own independent evaluators or therapists because they have no money to buy them like the Department does.
Once inside, Judge Gruff calls the case. The attorneys who have never interviewed their clients tell the court the parents are willing to submit on the amended petition. The court asks Mom and Dad if that’s what they want to do. They respond, "yes." "Very well," says Judge Gruff who then takes waivers of the right to a trial from the parents and explains that the court will decide the case on the social worker’s report.
The court then finds the allegations of the amended petition to be true. Mother is ordered to have an evaluation. The social worker is granted discretion to place the children with grandma. The case is continued for 30 days for the results of Mom’s evaluation.
Note about players in the Star Chamber
County counsel represents the social worker and the Department. A different lawyer represents the children. This attorney almost always supports whatever the Department wants to do even if it’s not what their clients want. This disregard for the children's views is permitted in California under Welfare & Institutions Code section 317 which states that the duty of minor’s counsel is to advocate for the minor’s best interests and not for what the minor wants. Section 317 is at odds with ABA standards for minor’s counsel, adopted in most states, which require counsel to advocate for what the children want just as an attorney for an adult would be required to do.
Parents’ counsel are appointed by the court and paid by the county. Usually a small group of attorneys handle the bulk of the cases. They appear regularly in the Star Chamber. They form a collegial bond with the other players. They understand that we’re all in this together to get things done in a demanding, high volume court.
The losers in the Star Chamber are the parents and children whose rights are traded in to maintain the spirit of cooperation and efficiency.
The truth finding process is nullified. The parents and children never get heard. The social worker’s unrebutted warped narrative becomes the foundation for the court’s findings. It’s nearly impossible to undo these findings once they are made. They will continue to haunt the parents for months, even years.
My apologies to conscientious truth telling social workers and parents’ counsel who work hard for their clients and may even meet with them in their offices before trial and talk to them on the phone. Kudos for not succumbing to the excesses of the Star Chamber. There are far too few of you.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Star Chamber in America - Part 2
Mom and Dad are getting ready to return to the Star Chamber for the next phase of the case. After coming home from the last appearance, they immediately sat down at the table to figure out what this was all about. As they read, they became increasingly alarmed.
Their daughter, Amber, age 12, turned in her father for touching her inappropriately. The molest happened on a Saturday night a month before she was placed in foster care, according to Amber. Dad told her not to say anything about it. The night that she was picked up, she had left home against parental orders and gone to her best friend’s house where she revealed the molest to the friend’s mother who made the call, as Amber knew she would.
Dad remembers very well the night that his world turned upside down because there had been a showdown over Amber’s skipping school and hanging out with older boys. Dad couldn’t be sure but he suspected Amber was having sex. After finding a roach in her room, he knew she was smoking pot. For a couple of weeks, Amber steadfastly refused to do any chores or participate in family activities. She spewed hate at both parents when they tried to communicate with her. That night, Dad took away her I-pod, access to the internet, and banned her from going out for two weeks hoping her behavior would improve. These restrictions scuttled Amber’s plans to hang out. She was especially irked because Dad rescinded his OK for her to go with her best friend’s family on a weekend ski trip to Tahoe. Amber was enraged.
Mom and Dad haven’t seen Amber since she was placed in custody. That was the day before the social worker and cops stormed the house to grab the two boys.
They haven't missed a single weekly supervised visit with the boys who are five and eight. They sit around a table in a small sterile room at the Department of Social Services. While parents and children are happy to see each other, the setting is stressful and unnatural. It's even harder for them when the visit ends.
A stern lady with glasses and hair in a bun writes down everything they say and do. There are rules to follow or the visit will be terminated, she warns them. No talking about the case. No talking about when, if ever, the boys will come home. No words to lend hope to them that this nightmare will end. No crying in front of the children. The children are not to cry either. No whispering. The boys are not allowed to talk about their foster home or the new school they attend. This information might give the parents clues about where they are. Any item given to the boys must be inspected by the lady with glasses and hair in a bun. Notes or cards from the parents must be read before delivery. Any violation of these rules will be reported to the social worker who will pass it on to the Star Chamber with the social worker’s conclusion that the parents are uncooperative, sneaky and clearly not to be trusted.
The visits last one hour, usually on Tuesdays but occasionally they are abruptly canceled to serve the convenience of the Department. Sometimes the missed visits are made up and sometimes not. It’s all up to the social worker. The Star Chamber has granted the social worker discretion to set the terms. The children sometimes don’t get to the visits on time because the foster parents have to drive 80 miles each way. Although the parents have not violated any rules, the social worker refuses to expand visits, citing the Department’s scarce resources.
Even thought there’s no allegation that the boys have been neglected or abused, they were taken under the rule of the Star Chamber that if you take one child, you take them all.
Mom and Dad are very scared. They tried to make appointments with their court-appointed lawyers. They left message after message in voice mail but the lawyers never returned their calls. They’re not really sure what’s supposed to happen in court today because no one has explained the process to them. What they don’t know is that today is the day set for the hearing to decide whether the allegations made against them are true and to decide where the children will live.
The petition says that Dad molested Amber and Mom failed to protect Amber from Dad. A small sentence in the petition says the boys are at risk in the custody of their parents. Mom is characterized as mentally unstable and under Dad's control to such a degree that the children are not safe in the home.
The social worker has interviewed all of the collaterals in the case including the children’s doctors, teachers and daycare workers. The worker has also interviewed the estranged maternal grandmother who has held a long term grudge against Dad. She's sure he's a good for nothing. He certainly isn’t right for her daughter. Grandma says she’s not a bit surprised that Dad would molest Amber. Grandma is upset that the parents won’t let her have contact with the children more than once a year. The parents admit this. She's toxic, they say. The grandmother would love to have custody and the social worker has arranged to visit the grandmother's house as the first step in placing the children with her.
The social worker interviewed Amber about the details of the molest. Initially she confirmed that it happened. But after a while Amber started to crack. Eventually, she recanted her story completely. The recantation doesn’t make it into the narrative of the social worker’s report for today’s hearing because the social worker doesn't believe Amber's recantation. Recantations happen, she reasons, because children want to be with their parents, even ones who mistreat them.
The social worker has also interviewed Mom and Dad. She tells them in no uncertain terms that they need to take responsibility for their actions. She says children don’t lie about these things. If you want your children to come home, you will tell me what happened. Mom is in tears throughout the interview. The loss of her children and the cruel allegations against the father have nearly driven her over the edge. The social worker notes that Mom is so emotionally unstable and fixed in denial, that she is not capable of taking care of the children at this time. Clearly, she needs a psych evaluation with follow up treatment and possibly drugs to control her moods. She advocates for this in her report to the Star Chamber.
The social worker has talked to the boys over and over again to get them to make statements damaging to their parents. She tells them that no parent is perfect and that if they want to go home, they will have to disclose everything that is bad about their Mom and Dad.
She accuses them of lying when they stand by their story that they are well treated.
The social worker asks about the grandmother. The older boy says she’s weird and he’s not comfortable around her. She scares him. She makes everyone uncomfortable. The social worker writes this up in her report, informing the Star Chamber that the parents have caused the children emotional harm by alienating them from the grandmother who the social worker has interviewed and found to be warm, nourishing and good for the kids.
The social worker recommends that the children be declared dependents and remain in foster care for the time being while she investigates the grandmother as a suitable placement.
Their daughter, Amber, age 12, turned in her father for touching her inappropriately. The molest happened on a Saturday night a month before she was placed in foster care, according to Amber. Dad told her not to say anything about it. The night that she was picked up, she had left home against parental orders and gone to her best friend’s house where she revealed the molest to the friend’s mother who made the call, as Amber knew she would.
Dad remembers very well the night that his world turned upside down because there had been a showdown over Amber’s skipping school and hanging out with older boys. Dad couldn’t be sure but he suspected Amber was having sex. After finding a roach in her room, he knew she was smoking pot. For a couple of weeks, Amber steadfastly refused to do any chores or participate in family activities. She spewed hate at both parents when they tried to communicate with her. That night, Dad took away her I-pod, access to the internet, and banned her from going out for two weeks hoping her behavior would improve. These restrictions scuttled Amber’s plans to hang out. She was especially irked because Dad rescinded his OK for her to go with her best friend’s family on a weekend ski trip to Tahoe. Amber was enraged.
Mom and Dad haven’t seen Amber since she was placed in custody. That was the day before the social worker and cops stormed the house to grab the two boys.
They haven't missed a single weekly supervised visit with the boys who are five and eight. They sit around a table in a small sterile room at the Department of Social Services. While parents and children are happy to see each other, the setting is stressful and unnatural. It's even harder for them when the visit ends.
A stern lady with glasses and hair in a bun writes down everything they say and do. There are rules to follow or the visit will be terminated, she warns them. No talking about the case. No talking about when, if ever, the boys will come home. No words to lend hope to them that this nightmare will end. No crying in front of the children. The children are not to cry either. No whispering. The boys are not allowed to talk about their foster home or the new school they attend. This information might give the parents clues about where they are. Any item given to the boys must be inspected by the lady with glasses and hair in a bun. Notes or cards from the parents must be read before delivery. Any violation of these rules will be reported to the social worker who will pass it on to the Star Chamber with the social worker’s conclusion that the parents are uncooperative, sneaky and clearly not to be trusted.
The visits last one hour, usually on Tuesdays but occasionally they are abruptly canceled to serve the convenience of the Department. Sometimes the missed visits are made up and sometimes not. It’s all up to the social worker. The Star Chamber has granted the social worker discretion to set the terms. The children sometimes don’t get to the visits on time because the foster parents have to drive 80 miles each way. Although the parents have not violated any rules, the social worker refuses to expand visits, citing the Department’s scarce resources.
Even thought there’s no allegation that the boys have been neglected or abused, they were taken under the rule of the Star Chamber that if you take one child, you take them all.
Mom and Dad are very scared. They tried to make appointments with their court-appointed lawyers. They left message after message in voice mail but the lawyers never returned their calls. They’re not really sure what’s supposed to happen in court today because no one has explained the process to them. What they don’t know is that today is the day set for the hearing to decide whether the allegations made against them are true and to decide where the children will live.
The petition says that Dad molested Amber and Mom failed to protect Amber from Dad. A small sentence in the petition says the boys are at risk in the custody of their parents. Mom is characterized as mentally unstable and under Dad's control to such a degree that the children are not safe in the home.
The social worker has interviewed all of the collaterals in the case including the children’s doctors, teachers and daycare workers. The worker has also interviewed the estranged maternal grandmother who has held a long term grudge against Dad. She's sure he's a good for nothing. He certainly isn’t right for her daughter. Grandma says she’s not a bit surprised that Dad would molest Amber. Grandma is upset that the parents won’t let her have contact with the children more than once a year. The parents admit this. She's toxic, they say. The grandmother would love to have custody and the social worker has arranged to visit the grandmother's house as the first step in placing the children with her.
The social worker interviewed Amber about the details of the molest. Initially she confirmed that it happened. But after a while Amber started to crack. Eventually, she recanted her story completely. The recantation doesn’t make it into the narrative of the social worker’s report for today’s hearing because the social worker doesn't believe Amber's recantation. Recantations happen, she reasons, because children want to be with their parents, even ones who mistreat them.
The social worker has also interviewed Mom and Dad. She tells them in no uncertain terms that they need to take responsibility for their actions. She says children don’t lie about these things. If you want your children to come home, you will tell me what happened. Mom is in tears throughout the interview. The loss of her children and the cruel allegations against the father have nearly driven her over the edge. The social worker notes that Mom is so emotionally unstable and fixed in denial, that she is not capable of taking care of the children at this time. Clearly, she needs a psych evaluation with follow up treatment and possibly drugs to control her moods. She advocates for this in her report to the Star Chamber.
The social worker has talked to the boys over and over again to get them to make statements damaging to their parents. She tells them that no parent is perfect and that if they want to go home, they will have to disclose everything that is bad about their Mom and Dad.
She accuses them of lying when they stand by their story that they are well treated.
The social worker asks about the grandmother. The older boy says she’s weird and he’s not comfortable around her. She scares him. She makes everyone uncomfortable. The social worker writes this up in her report, informing the Star Chamber that the parents have caused the children emotional harm by alienating them from the grandmother who the social worker has interviewed and found to be warm, nourishing and good for the kids.
The social worker recommends that the children be declared dependents and remain in foster care for the time being while she investigates the grandmother as a suitable placement.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Star Chamber in America - Part 1
The star chamber was a court in England for the trial of prominent people whom the monarchy believed would not be convicted by common jurors. The court sessions were held in secret with no indictments, no juries, and no witnesses. Evidence was presented in writing. There was no appeal. Parliament abolished the infamous star chamber in 1640.
For the most part, our system prohibits the worst excesses of the star chamber. Provisions in our constitution secure the right to a public jury trial, the right to confront our accusers through cross examination, and the right against self-incrimination. The right to appeal is guaranteed generally by statute.
Having mentioned the star chamber, you’ve probably figured out that I’m going to talk about the military tribunals at Guantanamo where inmates sit for years not knowing what charges or evidence landed them there. But I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to discuss a different court system that touches many more lives than the few hundred at Guantanamo. It's a system that exists in every county in the United States and it’s called the juvenile dependency court. This is the court where parents go when their children have been taken away based on allegations of parental abuse or neglect.
The juvenile dependency system shares many hallmarks of the star chamber. The allegations are usually drafted in a vague manner subject to revision at any time as opportunity arises. Defending against fluid allegations that may be radically altered at the whim of the court, the parents are forced to deal with a moving target. The proceedings are secret. There is no jury. The entire case can be disposed of by submission on a social worker’s report largely consisting of hearsay. The families have a huge stake in the outcome because it may mean termination of parent-child relationships and transitioning of children into permanent adoptive homes. If the children are very young, the parents have only six months to reunite with them before a permanent plan is made for adoption.
Most of the parents sucked into the system are poor. Living constantly on the edge of financial ruin, they must meet the system’s demand for their time to deal with the disaster that now confronts them. The state has taken the first step to sever the relationship between these parents and their children.
The federal government funds the system through Title 4-E of the Social Security Act. The law rewards state and local governments for each child placed in foster care. The sky is the limit. Only a small fraction of this money ends in the hands of the foster parents. The rest is used to hire more social workers to get out and grab more kids. The feds will pay a bonus for each child successfully placed for adoption. If the child has special needs, the feds will supplement the money. These monetary incentives favoring permanent removal of children infect the bureaucratic culture in such a way that children are often removed for the flimsiest and most trivial of reasons.
The first step in the process is the detention hearing where the court will decide if the children will be kept in foster care until a trial is held. Most of the time they already are in custody having been removed from their homes by a social worker and/or the police. There’s a high probability that the removal was effected illegally because the children were taken without a warrant when they were not in danger. Frequently, the social worker accompanied by armed police officers who know nothing about the case barge into the house without consent. The juvenile court does not care about that.
We will talk about a hypothetical case involving Mom, Dad, their daughter, Amber and two sons. The children were removed and currently reside in foster care. The court will hold a hearing today to determine where they will live until the case is decided. A petition has been filed alleging that Mom and Dad have abused and neglected the children.
The detention hearing (item 26 on the court's afternoon calendar) will likely be over in less than 10 minutes. Mom and Dad have had no time to prepare for it. They were just handed a slew of documents at the door and won’t be able to look at it until they get home. It’s equally likely that their newly appointed attorneys haven’t read it either before they utter the only ten words they'll say during the hearing: "your honor, we'll submit on the social worker's detention report."
The children are detained. Mom and Dad are grieving. The only salve offered by their new lawyers is, "don't worry, we'll have a chance to talk about this later." In a few weeks or months depending on how busy the court is, there will be a trial or as it's known in juvenile court lingo, an adjudication hearing.
For the most part, our system prohibits the worst excesses of the star chamber. Provisions in our constitution secure the right to a public jury trial, the right to confront our accusers through cross examination, and the right against self-incrimination. The right to appeal is guaranteed generally by statute.
Having mentioned the star chamber, you’ve probably figured out that I’m going to talk about the military tribunals at Guantanamo where inmates sit for years not knowing what charges or evidence landed them there. But I’m not going to talk about that. I’m going to discuss a different court system that touches many more lives than the few hundred at Guantanamo. It's a system that exists in every county in the United States and it’s called the juvenile dependency court. This is the court where parents go when their children have been taken away based on allegations of parental abuse or neglect.
The juvenile dependency system shares many hallmarks of the star chamber. The allegations are usually drafted in a vague manner subject to revision at any time as opportunity arises. Defending against fluid allegations that may be radically altered at the whim of the court, the parents are forced to deal with a moving target. The proceedings are secret. There is no jury. The entire case can be disposed of by submission on a social worker’s report largely consisting of hearsay. The families have a huge stake in the outcome because it may mean termination of parent-child relationships and transitioning of children into permanent adoptive homes. If the children are very young, the parents have only six months to reunite with them before a permanent plan is made for adoption.
Most of the parents sucked into the system are poor. Living constantly on the edge of financial ruin, they must meet the system’s demand for their time to deal with the disaster that now confronts them. The state has taken the first step to sever the relationship between these parents and their children.
The federal government funds the system through Title 4-E of the Social Security Act. The law rewards state and local governments for each child placed in foster care. The sky is the limit. Only a small fraction of this money ends in the hands of the foster parents. The rest is used to hire more social workers to get out and grab more kids. The feds will pay a bonus for each child successfully placed for adoption. If the child has special needs, the feds will supplement the money. These monetary incentives favoring permanent removal of children infect the bureaucratic culture in such a way that children are often removed for the flimsiest and most trivial of reasons.
The first step in the process is the detention hearing where the court will decide if the children will be kept in foster care until a trial is held. Most of the time they already are in custody having been removed from their homes by a social worker and/or the police. There’s a high probability that the removal was effected illegally because the children were taken without a warrant when they were not in danger. Frequently, the social worker accompanied by armed police officers who know nothing about the case barge into the house without consent. The juvenile court does not care about that.
We will talk about a hypothetical case involving Mom, Dad, their daughter, Amber and two sons. The children were removed and currently reside in foster care. The court will hold a hearing today to determine where they will live until the case is decided. A petition has been filed alleging that Mom and Dad have abused and neglected the children.
The detention hearing (item 26 on the court's afternoon calendar) will likely be over in less than 10 minutes. Mom and Dad have had no time to prepare for it. They were just handed a slew of documents at the door and won’t be able to look at it until they get home. It’s equally likely that their newly appointed attorneys haven’t read it either before they utter the only ten words they'll say during the hearing: "your honor, we'll submit on the social worker's detention report."
The children are detained. Mom and Dad are grieving. The only salve offered by their new lawyers is, "don't worry, we'll have a chance to talk about this later." In a few weeks or months depending on how busy the court is, there will be a trial or as it's known in juvenile court lingo, an adjudication hearing.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Words Matter
I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately. I’ve been around long enough to witness many new words emerge, drop out, and others take on new meanings in the American lexicon. In some cases these new meanings entirely displaced old ones. Take, for instance, the word "gay." Historically, the word meant merry, happy or carefree, like having a gay time with friends at a picnic in the park. That word cannot be used in this sense anymore. In the past, a gay man would have been mighty attractive to a woman who certainly didn’t want to be stuck with a stodgy and dull one, but should she discover he’s gay today, it’s probably time for a serious discussion about divorce.
The word "google" entered the language in the past ten years as a verb. Only recently have I been able to google information about someone or something. Before that I had to trudge down to the library or hire an investigator to find out what’s what. Now I don’t have to because I can google practically anything I can imagine. I found out that my dog is googleable because his picture was in the newspaper. Last year, my client’s dog, Jade, was shot and killed by an Oakland cop. Now Jade can be googled too.
In the realm of American politics, there’s a darker side to the dynamic change of our lexicon. It doesn't please the ears because it's, well, un-American. We now have a huge bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. When, before 2002, had you ever linked the word "homeland" with anything having to do with the United States of America? Before that, the word had associations with distant places and dark regimes. For one thing, it evokes a disturbing image of Nazi Germany which was then described alternatively as the fatherland and the homeland. During the apartheid period in South Africa, homelands were ghetto territories where the oppressed black population was kept. Similarly, during Stalin’s reign, minorities who were presumed subversive lived in segregated communities known as homelands. Is it a mere coincidence that the utterly alien-sounding name "Department of Homeland Security" came to fruition during the Bush administration which also deceived us into a war in Iraq, ignored the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention, redefined torture to excuse torture, and made its elite base even more appallingly rich than it already was? Too creepy. It's time for a name change.
Another word that bugs me is the word "czar" as in "drug czar." Whatever the czars in pre-revolutionary Russia were about, and some of them like Catherine the Great weren’t necessarily bad, they had nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with autocracy. So why call any government worker in America a czar if you don't mean to give that person plenary power to do whatever he wants even if most of us don't like it? Germany had its autocratic Kaiser before and during World War I and rotting ancient Rome had caesars, all of these titles being variants of the word "czar." America is not supposed to have czars. We’re supposed to have public servants.
Ok, then there's the "war on _______ [insert your favorite thing to declare war on here]." The last good one we had was the war on poverty but that got eclipsed over forty years ago by the war on Vietnam. Since then, we’ve had the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. I think we may have had a few others too, but they were fleeting, more like skirmishes than wars.
To have an effective war on something, you first have to objectify the war's target to obscure the fact that you will be terrorizing, imprisoning, and killing people. That's why the war has to be waged against an abstraction like terror or objects with no nervous system like drugs. It’s also a good idea to set a lofty, unattainable goal so that the war persists for a very long time, like Palestine vs. Israel or the Hundred Years’ War. Next, you want to make sure that there’s a lot of money to be made from prosecution of the war. Otherwise, what's the point in waging it?
A while back, walking down the street, I discovered that my city government in Berkeley, California, has a place called the Customer Service Center. For me, the place was mainly where I would have gone to take care of parking tickets if I didn't have a computer to google my way to the website to pay on line. What disturbed me about the title was the word "customer." Through a devilish linguistic sleight of hand, I've been robbed of my citizenship with its attendant rights and obligations to shape the destiny of my city. Now I'm relegated to a passive consumer of city services who's supposed to shut up and pay. I don't remember a vote on this. And I've looked all over but I can't find any contract I ever signed with these people. Frankly I wish I had so I could look for loopholes. For now though, I'll play the contented customer as long as the City plays by the rule that the customer is always right. For some reason though, I don't see this working out.
So maybe you can google your homeland customer service center and find the right czar to inquire gayfully about getting a war started on something that's bothering you.
The word "google" entered the language in the past ten years as a verb. Only recently have I been able to google information about someone or something. Before that I had to trudge down to the library or hire an investigator to find out what’s what. Now I don’t have to because I can google practically anything I can imagine. I found out that my dog is googleable because his picture was in the newspaper. Last year, my client’s dog, Jade, was shot and killed by an Oakland cop. Now Jade can be googled too.
In the realm of American politics, there’s a darker side to the dynamic change of our lexicon. It doesn't please the ears because it's, well, un-American. We now have a huge bureaucracy called the Department of Homeland Security. When, before 2002, had you ever linked the word "homeland" with anything having to do with the United States of America? Before that, the word had associations with distant places and dark regimes. For one thing, it evokes a disturbing image of Nazi Germany which was then described alternatively as the fatherland and the homeland. During the apartheid period in South Africa, homelands were ghetto territories where the oppressed black population was kept. Similarly, during Stalin’s reign, minorities who were presumed subversive lived in segregated communities known as homelands. Is it a mere coincidence that the utterly alien-sounding name "Department of Homeland Security" came to fruition during the Bush administration which also deceived us into a war in Iraq, ignored the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention, redefined torture to excuse torture, and made its elite base even more appallingly rich than it already was? Too creepy. It's time for a name change.
Another word that bugs me is the word "czar" as in "drug czar." Whatever the czars in pre-revolutionary Russia were about, and some of them like Catherine the Great weren’t necessarily bad, they had nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with autocracy. So why call any government worker in America a czar if you don't mean to give that person plenary power to do whatever he wants even if most of us don't like it? Germany had its autocratic Kaiser before and during World War I and rotting ancient Rome had caesars, all of these titles being variants of the word "czar." America is not supposed to have czars. We’re supposed to have public servants.
Ok, then there's the "war on _______ [insert your favorite thing to declare war on here]." The last good one we had was the war on poverty but that got eclipsed over forty years ago by the war on Vietnam. Since then, we’ve had the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on terror. I think we may have had a few others too, but they were fleeting, more like skirmishes than wars.
To have an effective war on something, you first have to objectify the war's target to obscure the fact that you will be terrorizing, imprisoning, and killing people. That's why the war has to be waged against an abstraction like terror or objects with no nervous system like drugs. It’s also a good idea to set a lofty, unattainable goal so that the war persists for a very long time, like Palestine vs. Israel or the Hundred Years’ War. Next, you want to make sure that there’s a lot of money to be made from prosecution of the war. Otherwise, what's the point in waging it?
A while back, walking down the street, I discovered that my city government in Berkeley, California, has a place called the Customer Service Center. For me, the place was mainly where I would have gone to take care of parking tickets if I didn't have a computer to google my way to the website to pay on line. What disturbed me about the title was the word "customer." Through a devilish linguistic sleight of hand, I've been robbed of my citizenship with its attendant rights and obligations to shape the destiny of my city. Now I'm relegated to a passive consumer of city services who's supposed to shut up and pay. I don't remember a vote on this. And I've looked all over but I can't find any contract I ever signed with these people. Frankly I wish I had so I could look for loopholes. For now though, I'll play the contented customer as long as the City plays by the rule that the customer is always right. For some reason though, I don't see this working out.
So maybe you can google your homeland customer service center and find the right czar to inquire gayfully about getting a war started on something that's bothering you.
This Blog
From the Latin, "res ipsa loquitur" the title of this blog means the thing speaks for itself. This blog is dedicated to free discussion of serious and whimsical topics. Although I am a lawyer with a penchant to wax eloquently or not about legal issues, I expect to publish material on a much broader range of topics with the hope that you will enjoy them and post your thoughtful insights.
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