H.L. Mencken had an idea, which H. Beam Piper turned into the science fiction novel Lone Star Planet (alternate title A Planet for Texans): make killing or otherwise harming a politician a crime ONLY if it can be proven in court that he hadn't done anything rotten enough to justify being killed, beaten up, what have you, by one or more angry citizens. As the book's narrator/protagonist put it, under that system "what is at law a trial of the accused is, in substance, a trial of his victim."
A trial was shown in which the judges not only set the killer free but praised and thanked him for his patriotic actions — except one judge said he'd killed the politician too quickly and painlessly for what he'd done (tried to set up an income tax, the fiend!)....
There are plenty of times nowadays when that strikes me as a very good system of "political justice" to adopt.
Edit: Yes, I know such an arrangement would be abused forty ways from Sunday. But the thought of the bloodsuckers in fear for their verminous lives ... errrr, excuse me, I mean "putting a gentle, whimsical scare into our wise and dedicated legislative and executive branches" ... really appeals to me in my angriest moments.
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.
A trial was shown in which the judges not only set the killer free but praised and thanked him for his patriotic actions — except one judge said he'd killed the politician too quickly and painlessly for what he'd done (tried to set up an income tax, the fiend!)....
There are plenty of times nowadays when that strikes me as a very good system of "political justice" to adopt.
Edit: Yes, I know such an arrangement would be abused forty ways from Sunday. But the thought of the bloodsuckers in fear for their verminous lives ... errrr, excuse me, I mean "putting a gentle, whimsical scare into our wise and dedicated legislative and executive branches" ... really appeals to me in my angriest moments.
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Big Brother is watching you. And damn, you are so bloody BORING.