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All of this leads me to meditate on the many tv shows that obsess over the benevolent prowess of our police state: CIA, FBI, Homicide Unit, beat cops, secret agent men, mathematicians, statisticians and, of course, the forensics unit. All of these shows telegraph a singular message. We are in charge and we will find and prosecute the guilty party, even if we have to discover the truth from a single, solitary strand of hair left on a candy wrapper in an abandoned parking lot. We are just that good! But not to worry. We don't beat suspects unless they are actually guilty. And we don't force false confessions unless they have it coming.
Americans have a hard-on for "benevolent" authority. You read stories like that of Bruce Ivins and you realize just how far from reality these tv shows are. Meanwhile a crime lab in Houston, Texas, is found to be so overwhelmingly corrupt that it has to be shut down, all the evidence has to be tossed and court cases going back over a decade have to be reassessed. So much for benevolence.
We should ask ourselves just what it is that we are doing in this country. Our penal system is a full-blown industry! From the law enforcement officers, to the defense attorneys and attending bureaucracy, to the massive prison industrial complex. All this time we could have been funding education and instead we're getting tough on crime in a way that has done nothing to stop it. The drug war has ruined lives and destroyed families.
The reason why nobody blinks an eye at the case of Ivins is because they have been taught through ritualistic story telling that the FBI and their law enforcement brethren always do things for a good reason. The FBI wouldn't have pursued him if they didn't have actual evidence of guilt. All you have to do is imagine some street-hardened, wise cracking FBI agent with a strong gut feeling to calm your doubts.
