There can be no doubt that America is going to Hell in a hand basket. I would rather be a Friend of the Devil than any of those sanctimonious bastards in the GOP who have done nothing while one third of our nation has fallen into poverty, myself included.

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Grateful Dead American Beauty 1970

Friend of the Devil-A Rock and Roll Epistle

By Richard Girard

"I lit out from Reno,

I was trailed by twenty hounds;

Didn't get to sleep that night

till the morning came around."

CHORUS:

"Set out runnin' but I take my time,

a friend of the Devil is a friend of mine;

If I get home before daylight,

I just might get some sleep tonight."

"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,

Grateful Dead, 1970

When I watch the Republican Presidential debates, I am always struck by how such a collection of adulterers, usurers, publicans, wannabe slave factors, and proponents of other types of sociopathic behavior can possibly be considered for the highest office in our land. When I hear them espouse their "high Christian ideals and values," when every last one of them supports the death penalty, I am convinced that I would rather be friends with the Devil than any of those hypocrites.

There can be no doubt that the American justice system's role in the investigation, prosecution, and punishment of crime is seriously flawed. This is obvious from the fact that we have more people incarcerated or under administrative restraint (probation or parole) than any other nation on Earth, as well as the nearly certain judicial murder of people like Troy Davis by the State of Georgia. These facts, combined with the lack of prosecutions for the damage done to America's economic system by members of Goldman-Sachs, AIG, Bear-Sterns, and other large Wall Street establishments, demonstrates this fact by the sheer preponderance of available evidence alone.

As I have written elsewhere (Crime and Punishment, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) the United States has suffered from a two tier system of justice, both in its civil and criminal courts, from its inception. "The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men," was an ideal hoped for by Chief Justice John Marshall (Marbury v. Madison, 1803), but never attained. The reality for our nation has always been closer to the quote of Thomas Jefferson from his Notes on the State of Virginia (Query 18; 1781), "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

The time is coming when the inequities in our system of political, economic, and social justice must be answered for, by those who have used them to their advantage against the majority of the American people for so many years.

"Ran into the Devil, babe,

He loaned me twenty bills;

I spent the night in Utah

in a cave up in the hills."

(CHORUS)

"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,

Grateful Dead, 1970

The Occupy Movement is the first whisper of the coming non-violent revolution against the social, economic, and political inequities and iniquities in our country against the bottom 99 percent of the population economically. As long as this revolution continues to be based on a strategy of non-violence and fairness, it will eventually succeed. This does not mean there will be no casualties: the head injury to former Marine Scott Olson in Oakland all too clearly demonstrates that simple fact.

However, we must consider the certainty that the Occupy Movement's tactics will need to evolve. I remember reading somewhere that the reason the military fiasco that was the basis for the movie Blackhawk Down occurred was the U.S. Army went to the well one too many times with identical plans to grab a Somali warlord. That particular time the Somali insurgents were ready for them, and some of America's best soldiers paid a terrible price.

Gandhi constantly changed his tactics in India, Martin Luther King, Jr., did the same in Jim Crow America. The Occupy Movement must change and evolve its tactics, especially as the oligarchs and their proxies change and evolve theirs. The one constant must be non-violence.

The oligarchs and their surrogates are changing their tactics. The application of "pepper spray" at near lethal levels at the University of California-Davis was, in my opinion, an attempt to find a universally applicable tactic that would make the Occupy Movement give up and go home, without the oligarchs resorting to (obvious) lethal force. The oligarchs know that if they use lethal force (Remember Kent State!), it will not only galvanize more Americans into participating with, but insure that public opinion will swing further in favor of, the Occupy Movement. Even the oligarchs must eventually recognize in their Grinch-like hearts the reality inherent in President Kennedy's March 13, 1962 declaration at the White House, which still holds true today: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

"Ran down to the levee,

but the Devil caught me there,

Took my twenty dollar bill

and he vanished in the air."

(CHORUS)

"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,

Grateful Dead, 1970

The oligarchs have created a system of "justice"--political, social, and economic--that is so heavily weighted in favor of those individuals (as well as their corporate proxies) with a high degree of wealth and social status, that they make the term "justice" extremely ironic, if not completely hypocritical.

The only place that America's wealthy regularly get thrown into prison--and then a disproportionate amount of time for murder--are in TV crime dramas. If one were to believe the television, one-third of people charged with murder in this country are in the upper one or two percent of America's economic firmament.

This I believe is intentional on the part of the money men who control Hollywood: a propaganda device to deflect the 99 Percent's righteous anger from the wealthiest Americans by giving to the American people the false impression that the rich are treated in the same way that the rest of us are. By showing a disproportionate number of the "beautiful people" as heinous criminals, committing murder--often with some unfortunate middle or working class hanger-on as their victim--they try to misdirect the truth of the matter: too often the rich get away with murder, both figuratively and literally; sometimes even at the wholesale level.

Vincent Bugliosi in his book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, makes a good prima facie case for indicting Bush, Cheney, et al., with charges of murder for the deaths of any and all American troops in Iraq resident to an individual state, by the appropriate state court. Mr. Bugliosi's legal basis for these charges is that the invasion and occupation of Iraq were illegal, due to the fraudulent means by which the Bush Administration received the approval of the Congress and the United Nations, through a series of lies and deceptions.

I would also point out that these actions in my mind fulfill all of the requirements for filing charges under the Federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization) statutes, in that the Iraq war knowingly enriched Vice President Cheney through his Halliburton stock options, in addition to the enrichment of friends and associates of the President and other high-ranking administration officials, through the use of fraud and force, resulting in the deaths and maiming of thousands of American citizens, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, as well as the malfeasance of public funds amounting to over one trillion dollars.

I think indictments under the RICO statutes--using the facts that Mr. Bugliosi has stated in his book, which in turn, are the basis upon which I have arrived at the logical conclusion of the need to file indictments under the RICO statutes--of the entire National Security Council under George W. Bush, including President Bush himself, should be brought by a special prosecutor. Among the consequences of these indictments would be the seizure of those assets which were acquired or improved upon as a result of these actions, as permitted under those statues.

I'm not going to hold my breath waiting. (See Justice Integrity Project, " Obama Team Feared Coup If He Prosecuted War Crimes ," Andrew Kreig, September 7, 2011.)

BRIDGE:

"Got two reasons why I cry away each lonely night,

The first one's named Sweet Anne Marie and she's my heart's delight;

Second one is prison, baby, the sheriff's on my trail,

and if he catches up with me I'll spend my life in jail."

"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,

Grateful Dead, 1970

The American "justice" system today is a complete travesty. We have millions of Americans whose lives have been damaged--some irreparably--by being thrown into prison. They are then denied some or all of their rights as an American citizen for the rest of their lives.

The crime rate is down in most of our country--outside of the corporate boardroom--in spite of the economy. This is the first time in the history of the United States that a decline in the economy has not yet been matched by an inversely proportional rise in the crime rate.

Robert Reich wrote the following in his November 29, 2011 OpEdNews article "Restore the Basic Bargain,"

"In the years leading up to the Great Crash, most employers forgot Henry Ford's example. The wages of most American workers remained stagnant. The gains of economic growth went mainly into corporate profits and into the pockets of the very rich. American families maintained their standard of living by going deeper into debt. In 1929 the debt bubble popped.

Sound familiar? It should. The same thing happened in the years leading up to the crash of 2008.

The latest data on corporate profits and wages show we haven't learned the essential lesson of the two big economic crashes of the last 75 years: When the economy becomes too lopsided--disproportionately benefiting corporate owners and top executives rather than average workers--it tips over."

In 1929, the primary criminal problems in this country (outside the boardrooms of investment banks) were those related to Prohibition. Men like Al Capone and Charles "Lucky" Luciano were amassing fortunes in the production, sales, and distribution of illegal alcohol. In the same way the various drug cartels have amassed fortunes today with the production, sales, and distribution of illegal drugs.

George Lakoff in his books Moral Politics and The Political Mind points out one of the primary differences between conservative and liberal political thought: the view of government as either a harsh authoritarian parent, or as a forgiving nurturant parent.

With their view of government having only the role of the harsh authoritarian parent, it is to me self-evident why conservatives want less of it. Government for them is the enemy of their ever having fun, or of getting ahead in life. The parents responsible for raising these conservatives have impressed upon them during their formative years that there is only a finite amount of material possessions and love to go around; thus, they are only sure of having those things which they can secret away, hold onto by force, or acquire by guile or outbidding others. In their formative years, their parents--especially the authority figure father--were the ones most likely most likely to take away their most prized acquisition, whether it was $50,00 they had saved for tickets to their favorite band's concert (which when found went into a college fund), the newest issue of Penthouse, or a stash of pot.

The conservative, with no experience to the contrary, cannot believe that what they blindly perceive as the "authority figure" of government, which does not know them, could act differently or better than their own family towards them. This is one of the reasons conservatives are so often in denial about problems including child abuse, substance abuse, mental illness and individual difficulties that are not the fault of the individual, such as long-term unemployment.

Most conservatives believe that experience, the "school of hard knocks," is the only school that matters, and for this reason they tend to be not only very anti-intellectual but also very dismissive of other people's knowledge. The system of unyielding, black-and-white rules, and--often times--abuse that they received from their authoritarian parents is the best sort of behavior that they believe they can hope for from their "big daddy," the government. Conservative politicians understand this state of affairs implicitly, and intentionally design their policies and messages to fit the underlying fear and loathing of "big daddy" government by their constituents.

These politicians have been using the paradoxical love/hate relationship that conservatives have with their government in order to manipulate the discussion of drug policy (among other things) in America for the last forty years. The "father knows best" attitude of many conservatives, sharply contrasts with their fear of "big daddy" government, especially where punishment of drug users is concerned.

Conservatives love their country, but their love is that of a child for the authoritarian parent: deathly afraid that if they do anything wrong, they will lose that love, and be cast out of that parent's life, perhaps forever. This fear is what is at the heart of their "lock 'em up, and throw away the key" attitude towards America's justice system: What they are afraid will happen to them if they fail to lead a life of moral rectitude, they feel should happen to those who do fail, as a warning to themselves and others.

At the same time, many of these conservatives in America are also very often fundamentalist Christians, whose belief system is (supposedly) based on individual redemption through faith. They should be among the first to seek out the redemption and return to society of prisoners, especially those whose only crime was having too much pot on their persons.

Instead, too many conservatives of every ilk believe in an idea of punitive retribution as the only means to extirpate sin from the sinner, until such a time that the sinner accepts their narrow view of the World and salvation.

"Got a wife in Chino, babe,

and one in Cherokee

First one says she's got my child,

but it don't look like me."

"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,

Grateful Dead, 1970

War "on" a thing is so nebulous, non-specific, and open-ended a term that it can be used to cover a multitude of issues that even its creators can never fully comprehend or understand when it is over, if it is ever over. A war that is against something is specific: whether it is against a nation, a people, or an alliance; when they are defeated or annihilated (or you are), the war is over.

We can never know with certainty if the underlying intention of the creators of these two abominable Wars--on Terror and on Drugs, now ten and forty years after their inception--was actually to destroy the average American's trust in government, together with their belief in the Constitution. We can be certain of the primary effect: a continual erosion of our rights under the Constitution, and a nearly continual playing of the fear card to keep the masses in line. The purpose that they are being used for today, however, seems clear: America is becoming more like the police state one found in the Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, and less like the nation whose ideals were expressed by Jefferson and Madison.

No matter the original intentions of their creators, the War on Terror--like the War on Drugs before it--has rapidly devolved into a war against our rights under the U.S. Constitution. From No-Knock warrants to the indefinite detention of non-citizens by the military without trial (because of the suspicion they are associated with some foreign terrorist group) to the extra-judicial murder of American citizens overseas for belonging to an organization determined by the government to be a group of terrorists. Fifty years ago these were actions that most Americans would have attributed only to the Communist bloc, and perhaps a small number of dictatorships like Franco's Spain, never to the United States of America.

The militarization of law enforcement is another aspect of this same problem. Increasingly police are dealing with problems in their communities by using military style raids and tactics, and using the fear generated by these tactics to oppress those who actively oppose the status quo. The idea of making police a part of and answerable to the community--which began with such promise in the late 1960's and early 70's--has disappeared, and police-community relations have devolved into an adversarial one in most major American cities. The reactions of police to the Occupy Movement demonstrate how far Police Departments have strayed from the ideal of police-community relations in a positive sense forty years ago. It has been replaced by a system of "cooperation" and surveillance that owes more to the East German Stasi than any democratic principles.

A corporation's priorities when they take over the incarceration of prisoners is the third part. When private corporations are brought in to hold prisoners--corporations whose primary interest is to keep the cost of incarcerating human beings down and shareholder's profits up--the first thing that falls by the wayside are the programs to rehabilitate prisoners: education, mental health services, and qualified "corrections officers." The private corporations hire individuals whose qualifications too often times are nothing other than being more brutal than the prisoners they guard.

The fourth part also revolves around the privatization of our prisons. When you turn over what had been a public function to private industry, the interest of the state becomes maximizing the value received for cost incurred. It is contrary to the economic interests of government for there to be empty beds in the privately-run prisons. In other words, keeping the prisons at capacity is more important for the government than seeing that justice is done. Even overcrowded prisons--so long as the government can avoid large judgments against it for the resulting problems--are in the best interests of the state.

Naomi Wolf, in her November 25th article in The Guardian, "The Shocking Truth About the Crackdown on Occupy," mentions three very specific goals that seem to be nearly universal among the people at the Occupy Wall Street site in Zuccotti Park, NYC. These are: 1) Get the money out of politics; 2) reform the laws governing America's banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being mentioned to accomplish this being a restoration of the New Deal era Glass-Steagall Act--which has been effectively repealed by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000; 3) "draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors."

This war against our rights under our Constitution is drawing to its conclusion. The oligarchs are acquiring ever greater power at the expense of the 99 Percent of Americans from whom they wish to steal all hope, all power, as well as the 99 Percent's future.

We have become a nation of fearful citizens who agree to ever greater levels of surveillance in the name of safety. The privatization of police functions in gated communities and large industrial concerns has all but erased the line between law enforcement and the desires of the rich. Many of these private security firms act as much like a private army as they do any sort of law enforcement organization, and are staffed by former law enforcement officers and military men.

Do not doubt for an instant that the actions against the Occupy Movement are being coordinated at some higher level. The only real question is whether they are being coordinated by the Federal Government, or by the oligarchs? The assassination of President Kennedy--as well as that of Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and Fred Hampton--demonstrates the ability of rogue elements within our Government to coordinate with money men outside the Government in order to eliminate those who the oligarchs consider a danger to their power and position. Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh, Vietnam's Diem Brothers, Chile's Salvador Allende, and Panama's Omar Torrijos, simply represent those times the United States Government and the oligarchs fully cooperated to achieve their murderous ends. (See John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man; copyright 2004, for more on the latter incidents.)

The rise of mercenaries and the corporations that rent them out in this country should scare the hell out of anyone who remembers the hated Hessians of our Revolutionary War. They owe no loyalty to the United States or its Constitution, and are a clear and present danger to our representative democracy.

Mercenaries also provide the government that uses them with plausible deniability. This was the reason that the condottieri and their mercenary bands were so popular in Renaissance Italy. The prince who hired them could disavow any overly brutal action by the mercenaries, even those the prince had personally ordered; Then he would pay off the condottieri to take service in some distant--i.e., non-threatening to the prince--land; and cry great crocodile tears at the horrible act against his "beloved people." If you have not read Machiavelli's The Prince, do so. I guarantee you the Koch Brothers and the Walton family have.

In Renaissance Italy, there wasn't even a pretense of law; only the whim of the princes and those nobles who owed them fealty. Even in the so-called republics such as Venice, Florence, or Genoa, only the leading families enjoyed even the pretense of justice, the average shopkeeper or farmer depended upon their guild or patron tor any protection from the tyranny of those self-same families.

The United States is headed for a similar system of justice at a break-neck pace. The Golden Rule of the Cynic: "He who has the gold makes the rules," holds sway now more than it has at any other point in my lifetime. I would like to see Chief Justice Marshall's vision of "The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men," to be at long last realized, and the term "equal justice under the law," at long last be have a firm grounding throughout our representative democracy. Until then--

CHORUS:

"Set out runnin' but I take my time,

a friend of the Devil is a friend of mine;

If I get home before daylight,

I just might get some sleep tonight."

"Friend of the Devil," American Beauty,

Grateful Dead, 1970

Authors Bio:

Richard Girard is a polymath and autodidact whose greatest desire in life is to be his generations' Thomas Paine. He is an FDR Democrat, which probably puts him with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in the current political spectrum. His answer to all of those who decry Democratic Socialism is that it is a system invented by one of our Founding Fathers--Thomas Paine--and was the inspiration for two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, who the Democrats of today would do well if they would follow in their footsteps. Or to quote Harry Truman, "Out of the great progress of this country, out of our great advances in achieving a better life for all, out of our rise to world leadership, the Republican leaders have learned nothing. Confronted by the great record of this country, and the tremendous promise of its future, all they do is croak, 'socialism.'