Slate has a collection of cartoons related to Michael Jackson’s arrest. While some of them unfortunately undermine the presumption of his innocence until proven guilty, some of them are pretty funny.
A bifurcation is a logical fallacy, an effort to force people to choose between two options when in fact there are many more.
In contrast, a binary circumstance (a term which I coined years ago when developing a series of paintings) is a genuine either/or situation, where only two possibilities exist. Existence, for example, is binary; things either exist or they do not.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is offering the people of California a bifurcated pathway to fiscal health: raise taxes or pass a “fiscal responsibility” bond:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said for the first time Thursday that Republican lawmakers and California voters would have to approve his still- incomplete “fiscal recovery” plan or face higher taxes because he is unwilling to cut deeply into social programs.
What if the people wanted cuts in social programs? He campaigned as the peoples’ candidate didn’t he? He said he would do what the people wanted him to do before the election but now that he’s in office, he’s offering only two options and eliminating other possible remedies altogether. He repealed the car tax on his first day in office to give the impression that he’s a friend to the taxpayers and presumably to stick them with an even bigger tax bill in the future. What they save on car taxes will be paid back many times over in either higher taxes or delayed taxes to pay off the bond.
“I’m not going to cut dog food for blind people,” he added, referring to state assistance for seeing-eye dogs. “It won’t happen. I’m not going to take prosthetics from people with disabilities and all that stuff. There is a certain point where I stop.”
I have no doubt that if he just eliminated waste from government, stopped spending billions to incarcerate people who smoke marijuana, did away with handouts to unions and corporations, he would not have to take dog food from the blind which is undoubtedly such a tiny portion of the budget that you need a microscope to see it. Reducing the size of government is apparently not an option for CA’s new Republican governor.
Schwarzenegger is already showing himself to be a politician who will not take anything away from special interests. Instead he gives the taxpayers two options: pay taxes now or pay taxes later to pay of the “fiscal responsibility” bond. Doesn’t sound like fiscal responsibility to me. Doesn’t sound like much of a choice either.
After Michael Jackson’s surrender today the media has been abuzz, showing the same video loops over and over again, with legal “experts” and movie stars giving their opinion.
I addition, a couple of reports on TV (it may have been Entertainment Tonight and/or Access Hollywood) said that the current charges against Jackson originated when a therapist reported (as therapists are required to do in child abuse cases) that a 12 year-old boy told him/her on more than one occasion that he had been given wine and sleeping pills by Jackson and then molested. One legal commentator said that if was proven that drugs were involved then Jackson could be looking at a life sentence.
There was also a lot of speculation on the TV about whether Jackson would lose custody of his children. Obviously, the speculation and the hysteria are way out ahead of the facts.
If in fact, Jackson or anybody else drugged a child and then molested him/her, I would consider it among the worst of crimes. But it is important to note at this point that these accusations are largely rumor and speculation being circulated by the media. Neither the accuser or the therapist has appeared on TV to make these accusations directly. There are few facts available to us at this point regarding Michael Jackson’s behavior.
As for the state, however, it’s a different story. There are several facts about those who have made these accusations about Jackson that are already known:
The Santa Barbara County DA, Thomas Snedden the Santa Barbara County Sheriff were having a great time at the press conference where they discussed the raid on Jackson’s Neverland Ranch and the possible indictments that might follow. Their festive, jovial, and cocky attitude seemed almost bizarre considering that they were talking about a man that they wanted us to believe was guilty of sexually molesting a child. Sexually molesting children is not a joke and it is unfortunate that these law enforcement officials treated it like one.
We know for a fact that government workers, including the police and District Attorney Thomas Snedden are paid with money that is taken by force from individuals. In other words, they are paid with stolen property and are therefore the recipients of stolen property. If private citizens did that, they would go to jail; but government workers are a special privleged class who are granted special status by our mystical, irrational legal system. They can do things that would be felonies for private citizens with impunity.
We also know that minors can be forced to testify in California. They can be forced to endure questions about sex and be threatened with punishment if they don’t give truthful answers. Snedden says that he has a cooperative witness in this case. But given that a young boy can be severely punished by the state if he didn’t cooperate, his cooperation cannot be called voluntary. When you hold a gun to somebody’s head or threaten to punish them for not cooperating, their cooperation is coerced, it is not voluntary.
Another fact is that therapists are licensed by the state; they cannot practice without that license. Only the state has the right to grant the license and to take it away. In addition, the state can punish any therapist who does not report suspected child abuse to the state. It is conceivable that if a therapist didn’t tell the state what it wanted to hear, the state could make life very difficult for the therapist.
To summarize, we know practically nothing about what Jackson did with children, but this is what the media continues to speculate about. We do know, however, that the state’s case against Jackson is being financed with stolen property and the those who are rumored to be the primary witnesses are a minor who can be forced to testify by the state and a therapist whose livelihood can be taken away for not cooperating. In addition, the lawyers who represent Jackson are licensed by the state also and can also lose their livelihood if they run afoul of our irrational legal system. What is the likelihood that any lawyer would challenge the irrational legal system that has made him so rich? Both District Attorney Thomas Snedden and the defense attorneys in the case benefit from the corruption of our legal system; the system was created by lawyers to provide themselves with job and a virtually unlimited number of ways to syphon money and productivity from the rest of us. The media doesn’t not mention these facts. The law and the media stack the deck in favor of the state before anything is known about Jackson’s actions with children.
How many black men have spent their lives in jail and even been executed only to be exonerated in recent years by DNA evidence? I don’t think we should forget that in this case. Any evidence short of hard scientific evidence like videotapes or DNA must be considered suspect. Many people have been convicted by witness testimony only to be set free when DNA evidence showed they could not possibly have committed the crime they were previously convicted of.
To people who take a rational look at the evidence that is available right now, Jackson looks like a saint compared to those who have made the accusations against him. The problem for Jackson is that people won’t look at the stituation rationally, they’ll look at it emotionally, like during the Salem witch trials or the Middle Ages when the church could get people killed just by proclaiming that they were evil with no evidence to back up the accusations.
I don’t think all the quotes on Aphorisms Galore! qualify as words of wisdom but this quote certainly does:
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. - Saul Bellow