GETTING EVEN

Pacifica has several graveside memorials. The most horrifying is the memorial by our golf course for the death & injury of several teenagers in a truck driven by a drunken over 16 teen. Two of the children were killed, the others injured and the young man is being tried for murder. This in itself is horrifying and morally wrong to me although it is not legally incorrect. The young man was giving a ride to his friends and trying to do what he thought was a favor to them because he loved them. However, the night was dark, his alcohol level high and he rammed into a tree. The memory of that horrifying night and its aftermath will never leave this child. What good can come from putting him in prison? What will it teach him but that the world is a cruel, hard, unforgiving place where youngsters who don't have friends in high places are punished for good deeds that backfire just to make the parents of those dead children feel better. His conviction certainly will not bring back those who died. The young man is destroyed now and society in its zeal to do what the law says, is zealously crushing him even further. Who gains from this?
Today as I walked my dogs, I saw a young lady standing at the memorial for those who lost their lives in this needless, heartbreaking accident. She crossed herself and returned to her car, her face streaked with tears. My own eyes are filled with tears as I write this. It is not that young man who needs to pay even more for something he never meant to happen. It is our society who defines fun as getting drunk and then when the inevitable happens, punishes our best learners, the ones who paid attention to what the media and their peers told them is cool.
Seeing this memorial and that grief-stricken young woman was a singular Christmas gift to me. I have been forced to realize that our justice system serves only the rich, the powerful and the "in" group at the expense of every kind of minority, racial, physical and social. I am 72 and have enough perspective to handle this scathing revelation. I have survived thus far and I know it will take more than a Richard Romanski playing out his bigotry in the courtroom or a policeman who tells me to ignore the 6-foot bully who is attacking me to destroy ME. This young man, now labeled a murderer, does not have the benefit the living I have done. HE is not the killer. WE are; and it makes us feel good to make him our scapegoat.
I am incredibly sad this Christmas. I know now that the country I thought protected its weak violates every moral imperative I believe in.
Let us hope the New Year will bring compassion to the hardened hearts that control us. Let us hope those who are sensitive to human concerns finally triumph.