“Justice delayed is justice denied.”
How Late is too Late?
“Better late than never,” they say. That may be true for non life-or-death matters, but for most pressing things in life, the maxim becomes what we might call a Pyrrhic victory. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” I’d rather say, and I think that’s what most of us get, at least in my part of the world.
You let a parasitic, corrupt, violent, unscrupulous, and inefficient regime go unchallenged for more than a decade and the damage may very well be beyond repair. For every additional decade there is a considerable chance of irreversibility. Reparation is always impossible and at best risible.
Under the visible decay and decomposition lie layers of imperceptible harm; the spirit of the age, if you will. The spirit of the last two decades in Venezuelan history is a demoralized spirit. Unlike the tamed wild animal that is reduced to a circus show, our people do not even need the lash or the scraps to either perform or become a cheerful crowd. They have willingly conform to the new “normal” and assume as an unquestionable truth the impossibility of change. Not just an actually viable political change, but a change in the torn moral fiber that would make any other government be equally corrupt or inefficient.
That is the root of the damage done. That’s why it is already too late for any superficial change. Makeup will not do the trick. Sometimes limbs cannot be saved and even if it is a hard choice, amputation is usually the only solution if you want to save the rest of the body.
Thanks for your reading
This was my entry to @mariannewest and @latino.romano’s 5-Minute Daily Freewrite: Monday Prompt: BETTER LATE THAN NEVER. You can see the details here.
Make sure you visit the Freewrite House!!!
