- You have the right to remain silent.
- Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
- You have the right to an attorney.
- If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.
- Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?
- With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?
These are your Miranda Rights
Many of us have heard them time and time again because they are repeated on the cop drama shows that seem so popular. These shows glorify the police-state and paint a picture of all the "bad guys" being caught and "justice" always reigning supreme. This propaganda seems to sit well with the majority of the population, as these shows are very beloved and seemingly exist without limit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_police_television_dramas
I was going to start listing them off but God damn, look at all those.
The first 11 don't even start with a letter and appear before 'A'.
The 'A' Category has 32 shows that start with that letter.
- Law & Order: SVU (Special Victims Unit)
- Cold Justice
- Ice Cold Blood
These are the shows I can think of that I end up watching the most. Cold Justice and Ice Cold Blood don't really count because they aren't cop dramas. They are based on true stories. Ironically, Ice Cold Blood is more of a joke show that only exists because Ice-T has been in Law & Order so long and comedian John Mulaney made a joke about it in standup.
Then there's Cold Justice, which is just a really talented Cold Case detective running around solving actual crimes. That's leaves Law & Order: SVU, which much more fits the bill of what I'm talking about here.
SVU reference starts at 1:20
Dun Dun!
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that dumb sound.
I think it's around a million by now.
These shows paint a picture of police being held to the highest standard. There is no corruption, and episodes where their is corruption, it becomes the main theme of the episode and is always resolved with the "good guys" winning. There are no blurred lines. People are either 'good' or 'bad' and the 'bad guys' are always prosecuted fairly and they deserve what's coming to them, no matter what path and hardships it took to get there.
If only.
These shows are a sick joke laced in euphoric propaganda. The vast majority of crime in the real world is unknown or unsolved. Cops are corrupt to the core, and everyone seems to be waking up to that fact recently with everything going on. The only reason I find myself watching/hearing them is that the people living here watch them. I've been in so many households where the standard TV show just playing in the background with no one even paying attention to it is Law & Order: SVU. It's almost frightening.
In any case...
So back to Miranda rights.
Anything you say can and will be used against you...
The police and the entire judicial system get to pick and choose which information you say is correct and which isn't. Whatever fits their narrative, that is the truth in court. If you lie and they decide that makes you look guilty, it becomes the truth in court without question. If you tell the truth and that truth does not fit their narrative, they ignore it unless you can prove that truth "beyond any reasonable doubt".
False confessions
The most obvious example of this are false confessions. The logic behind confessions is: "Why would someone confess to a crime they didn't commit?" No one asks the obvious follow up question of: "Why would someone confess to a crime they did commit?"
The absolute truth remains: false confessions are a real thing that happen time and time again and have been extensively studied. More often than not they are taken at face value as the truth. People are strong-armed by police with bullshit manipulation/exhaustion tactics over and over again. Many do not know their rights, and will try to talk their way out of a situation rather than saying nothing or just leaving the room. Many do not realize that in many situations they are not even under arrest and they can just leave the room whenever. Most people think they need to ask permission from the authority and they trust the authority to do the right thing.
Wrong answer.
Nothing can be farther from the truth. The police have a step-by-step playbook of how to get people in trouble. Want to frame someone for murder? Just kill someone close to them (wife) and plant their DNA under the fingernails. How'd that DNA get there? Gee, he must be guilty of murder. Let's throw this guy into a torture chamber for the rest of his life; he deserves it.
And that's what prison is.
It is a torture chamber that makes the world a worse place; not a better one. The people who we send to prison come out worse people. They are not allowed to reform. They continue to be punished long after doing their time and "paying their debt to society". The most common example of this is being forced to lie on job applications just to have a chance of being hired. Our recidivism rates are a not-so hilarious joke.
The prison-industrial-complex is a big part of the spectrum of modern slavery.
I've spoken before on the spectrum of slavery in terms of wage/tax/debt slavery, and I've also touched on these subjects in an old post titled Beware the Police State. However, something I haven't mentioned is the Thirteenth Amendment.
The 13th
The 13th Amendment is usually looked at through the historical lens of the law that made slavery illegal in America. Hurrah for us, aren't we amazing? However, as we can easily see, the 13th simply flipped the page of legacy slavery and transformed it into modern slavery under the prison-industrial-complex.
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted
In the same bill that supposedly freed the slaves, we reenslaved them, literally in the same sentence on the first line.
I shouldn't have to explain how pathetic or conniving this is. It actually reminds me of the same legislation from the housing crisis that made bailouts illegal, and in the same swoop made bail-ins legal. The problem has not been solved, simply redirected, and the majority of the population falls for it every time and we have to start all over again.
It's no secret that the Judicial system is unapologetically racist. In fact, if you were to 'fix' the problem in say Louisiana, the entire economy would collapse due to losing all that free slave-labor and tax redirection. Inmates are literally forced to work for slave wages, and if they refuse they are sent to a torture chamber within the torture chamber (solitary confinement). We habitually engage in activity that will be deemed equivalent to war crimes once the system collapses.
Negative reinforcement
Punishing people who do bad things is not a very effective way to get large groups of people to do what you want them to do. Rule by fear always ends in disaster eventually. Instead, we should be creating opt-in governance models where the biggest punishment possible would be banishment from the community. This idea doesn't fly with a lot of people.
People won't admit it, but they want/need revenge. People need to PAY for what they've done, and they don't care if that makes the world a worse place and the fishtail of violence continues. Real strength requires forgiveness and the ability to reform convicts, not punish them eternally and make an example of them while forcing them underground to continue illicit operations.
I find it extremely upsetting as an atheist that I've learned more from the teachings of Jesus than some of the most devout religious people I've ever met. In fact it seems that the more religious people are (or claim to be) the more full of shit they are. Hypocrites abound, but I suppose that's another story entirely.
The advice of a lawyer.
You don't need a lawyer to have the advice of a lawyer. The advice is simple: don't say anything; don't incriminate yourself or others. It is the professional job of an interrogator to poke holes in your story and get you in trouble. Don't give them a story to work with.
Chess analogy
If you were told you had to play chess against two grand-masters and not lose both games, could you do it? The answer is yes! Simply be the proxy and have the two grandmasters play against themselves. Copy the moves of one grandmaster on one board and proxy it to the other board, and vice versa. It is literally impossible to lose both games this way.
Likewise, giving any kind of information to an interrogator is just handing them free ammunition to fire back at you. Even if your best friend was just murdered, catching the killer and throwing them in a torture chamber surprisingly doesn't make the world a better place; it does the opposite. Our judicial system does not stop bad things from happening. Quite the contrary. Hate and violence grow like a fire, and the "Judicial" system is the gasoline that we tell ourselves is a necessary evil.
Conclusion
Do not engage with this system. Do not give the system validation by voting. Do not speak to police who's job it is to throw people in a torture chamber for profit. Respond to jury-duty with the obvious: there is no such thing as "unreasonable doubt". Reject what you have been taught about how the world should work. Punishment is not an effective means of control, and backfires all the time throughout history; From parenting to government itself.
Hopefully we stand at the precipice of a new way of governance and building reputation within communities. Revenge is easy. Forgiveness is strength. Forgetting is not an option. History is immutable.