More thoughts on the Yorkton Case

*Warning: The following blog post is long and full of potty no-no words and introspection. This may be more relevant as a diary entry to be forgotten in the hard drive files on my computer, in the same section that houses my recipes that I have never used and the fuzzy photographs of my naked children that may one day get me in trouble for harboring child pr0n. Reading this post will cure your insomnia, trust me.

Saskboy posted about this case over at his blog and the discussion that got going in the comments was excellent. This case brings up a lot of issues like drug law reform, legalization of marijuana, mandatory minimum sentencing, prison reform, vigilante justice, the lengths that a parent will go to protect their offspring, and even some deeply disturbing issues related to the infamous Robert Latimer case. I even grocked the nature of my somewhat confrontational style of internet arguing that was finely honed on internet forums plagued with nerds with skin problems. I have to admit that I had difficulty sleeping last night because of all the disturbing ideas that have been running around in my brain. One day they will have to pry my glowing laptop from my fingers before hauling me off to the loony bin. No wonder I don’t have any friends. ;)

I object to vigilante justice for some very obvious reasons. Letting armed thugs unload their weapons on unsuspecting people is wrong under any circumstances. I objected to Saddam's execution for the same reasons. His hanging was surreal, like an episode of South Park. We had school yard bullies taunting the doomed Saddam and shaky footage from a cell-phone that ends up plastered all over the internet despite promises that Saddam's execution would be a private affair. I kept expecting a horned Satan creature to show up and praise the fact that he will be reunited with his lover in hell. And performing it during Eid! If their intention was to turn the Butcher of Baghdad into a martyr, then mission accomplished. Let's get all the Iraqi people to rally around their dead hero who died very bravely, holding up signs and chanting HAIL IRAQ DEATH TO AMERICA! While burning George Bush in effigy. No wonder the world hates America. I had to take a cultural awareness class before I was allowed to work with children and yet you can run a country while having absolutely no respect for a foreign culture. Words can not express my disgust with the entire affair.

I felt this way about a murderous, dirty rotten bastard. So that I would be horrified at the vilification of young James Hayward in the media should surprise nobody who reads my blog or has the privilege of knowing the real me. I was especially disgusted by the way that John Gormley became completely unhinged on the air and referred to Hayward as scum, among many other things. I was so offended I had to shut the radio off. The fact that so many people refuse to see this from the victims' point of view makes me fear for the future of humanity.

But I am certainly not innocent. I had some less than charitable thoughts about Kim Walker. "If I ever get the chance to see that asshole I would beat the fucking crap out of him and spit on him." "I hope Big Bubba stretches out his asshole in jail." "That fucking bastard John Gormley sucks ass. Die in a fire, you fucktarded halfwit!" When it comes to having evil thoughts about my fellow human beings, I am very talented. The internet taught me all about flaming. But here I am bitching about vigilante justice and the insults thrown around about James Hayward, and who am I to judge? What business do I have being judgmental about John Gormley when I am guilty of harboring these thoughts? If I was a Christian I might say that Jesus said "Let the one without sin cast the first stone." But even though I am a dyed in the wool atheist, I can see that the concept of forgiveness is extremely important. Unless humanity can get over this concept that revenge is an appropriate reaction to being hurt or wronged, we are doomed. Doomed I say!

My capacity for violence frightens me sometimes. I am a nice person! I look after children all day long. But yet there was a time when I fantasized about stabbing my ex in the neck while he slept. I was in a stereotypically bad relationship that was worse than jail and with no end in sight. The desire to retaliate against all the pain and hurt was a normal reaction and perfectly understandable. But that certainly didn’t make it acceptable.

I understand exactly how Kim Walker must have felt. He was angry at the system, angry at the Gods that allowed his daughter to become addicted to morphine, angry at James Hayward and angry at the world. Who hasn’t felt that anger?

Yesterday I posted in various places about the message it would send if we gave Kim Walker a light sentence. What I should have realized is this: What message does it send when I use the obnoxious phrase “What message does it send?” Prohibitionists are always talking about the message we would give to children if we legalized drugs. Oh please think of the children, the messages they get are much more important than their health, happiness and safety. Despite the fact that many things far more dangerous than drugs are exposed to children, we must think of the message we send! Then it dawns on me.

Why all this talk of messages? The message that really concerns me is this: James Hayward is a human being. But should punishing Kim Walker really be our highest priority?

I highly disapprove of sending any human being to jail. Jail is full of drugs, disease, slave labor, anal rape, abuse and lessons on how to be a better criminal. Criminals feel angry, resentful and full of revenge during their incarceration. Surely if we want a safe and healthy society, we should start by reforming our unjust and immoral prison system. The only useful function that jails serve is to protect the public, at least until the prisoner is released. The attempts to reform prisoners are laughably inept. When I feel this way about our criminal justice system, why am I so worried about the message being sent by a light sentence for Kim Walker? Am I so blinded by my anger at the denial of James Hayward’s humanity that I have temporarily forgotten what my own values are?

I am very guilty of a contradiction. Here I am advocating for Kim Walker to be locked up in jail for a very long time and I highly disapprove of our corrupt prison gulags. Our natural human desire to punish the wicked keeps people from seeing that the way we treat prisoners impacts our entire society and way of life. Condoning violence in any situation is completely unacceptable. Until we can all overcome our desire to punish people that have wronged us, and who among us hasn’t been wronged, humanity is doomed to war, violence and perpetual strife.