A Terroristic Divorce

It is difficult, but there is a small ray of hope, once you sort through all the ideas floating around on the internet.

Although on the one hand it can be comforting to connect with other people in the same situation, one of the painful aspects of connecting with other victims of American injustice on the internet, is seeing just how anguished and self-centered other people have become because of their traumas.

Their web sites and material are sometimes very hard, downright confusing to read. You may not realize that you will sound like that, too, at first, if you start to write about your own story.

You will come across various websites by other victims of injustice, some of them suggesting that they are starting new organizations to fight injustice and so on. But you will find that some of these sites are just extended material on one particular situation, by one particular victim or group of victims. You can see that the “organization” is just a little one, with no power, or money, or influence.

And it is puzzling that these sites often do not connect with each other, with what is obviously a whole community of victims. Here is one site and one new “organization”, there is another site and another new “organization”, and so on. It’s very discouraging. Some of the sites even try to ask you for money for the service of helping you tell your story, or in exchange for telling your story on their website. It can be sad to look through these sites.

But as you keep plowing through the internet sites, you will find some material that is easier to read, and which has at least helpful little bits or ideas, or just good factual accounts that help put perspective on your own situation. You will connect to some of the people who are trying to wrestle in some way with the American problem of judicial and legal corruption in America.

Occasionally you will see items or proposals that seem to suggest hope, or a glimmer of hope for a mass movement in America. Certainly there are a number of little nearly-broke organizations that would like to suggest they are the beginnings of a “mass movement”. Very frustratingly, these multiple little “organizations”, sometimes with just one or two people, are often not connected even to each other.

Some people still have hopes in some miracle coming from the Republican or Democrat political parties, because of occasional remarks by a few people in Congress, who say they would like to do something about crooked and biased judges. We can all keep hoping and dreaming a little, but politicians usually back off, before starting anything like that.

Every now and then you will see a request come out, that either some Congress-person, or some reporter or producer in the media, would like to know about specific cases of legal corruption. That person then gets flooded with material, supplied by people around the country, and even from ex-Americans in other countries. And then, the big fizzle, as the politicians or media reporter realizes that for their own good, they better stay away from this hot potato.

The idea of a “mass movement” is very difficult, despite the many victims, because you need the media participation to have a mass movement, and the media is very hostile to exposing legal and judicial corruption, for the reasons described above in this FAQ.

People talk about the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s as an example. But that civil rights movement had lots of media coverage, supported by the big corporations. The big corporations themselves wanted to end official racism and segregation, for more efficient personnel policies. The big corporations wanted women’s rights and abortion, so women could become more eager employees on the job, and less tied to unplanned children.

Nowadays, the American media ignores many things that have grass-roots support. They have ignored huge demonstrations in the streets, where the government has arrested thousands of people. Currently, the media have no interest in publicizing any movement of judicial or legal reform in America. The big corporations like the system like it is now, and they own the mass media.

Because even many victims of legal corruption are afraid to speak up, and because no one with power or clout or influence or money will speak for these victims, and because the American mass media is firmly hostile to exposing legal corruption, the many victims will continue to have no large public voice of America, even though the number of victims is in the millions.

That could change overnight if the corporations wanted to change it. By publicizing a few of the major clear-cut cases of legal and judicial corruption, the media could create an unstoppable revolution of public opinion in favor of reform of the judicial and legal system. People would start to call for the hanging of many judges from the lamp-posts of America.

But such a revolution would involve actually expanding American democracy, giving power back to the people, and ultimately risking that American workers would want more social benefits, like in Canada or Europe. This would come at a price of profits and power that are currently maintained by America’s largest corporations and wealthy investors.

So most of these “legal and judicial reform organizations” on the internet, will remain unable to do anything. Some of them, as described above, the ones with funding and money, are actually not fighting corruption, they are just serving the two big political parties with various big-party political agendas, like trying to shift judicial nominations a little to one side or another. These fat and happy “organizations” are avoiding the real issues of America’s crooked lawyers and judges.

The other internet organizations – the little ones that have no money, that are sometimes one or two people, or a small group of people – keep dreaming that one day they will have more money and will get more media coverage and then become the start of a “mass movement”. But these are most likely just dreams. They will likely not find much money, and not get any media coverage; if they did start to achieve something, the lawyers and judges would file lawsuits and sue them and shut them down and take away whatever money they had, and maybe even send their leaders to prison.

For a mass movement to get started, such organizations will normally need to publicize particular cases, which is a chance for the lawyers and judges to destroy them with lawsuits and false criminal charges. Unless the government, the media and the big corporations are part of the process from the beginning, protecting the little organization, it will be destroyed before it gets very far. But those people are exactly whom the little organization needs to fight, because those are the forces supporting America’s judicial and legal corruption in the first place.

There is one grass-roots organization on the internet, which is very cleverly designed, and which may offer the very best hope for the reform of judicial and legal corruption in America. On the internet you can find information about Jail 4 Judges (www.jail4judges.org), a grass roots movement to change the fundamental laws throughout America, and give people the right to supervise and punish wayward judges.

This is real and true potential for democratic revolution. The idea for Jail 4 Judges is immensely brilliant and appealing, in several ways that may make it successful.

First, the basic idea is simple and appealing, something to grab the imagination, and to which no citizen really objects – that judges can be held accountable by the people, instead of non-accountable like they are now, where the judges cover up for each other. The judges, lawyers and politicians hate this idea, precisely because it is so beautiful and instantly appealing to the public.

Secondly, Jail 4 Judges is bypassing the traditional problems that beset the usual attempts for legal and judicial reform “mass movements”. Jail 4 Judges is trying to make use of America’s small remaining apparatus of direct democracy – where people can circulate petitions, to get enough signatures for a referendum for new laws that can be voted upon at the ballot-box. So Jail 4 Judges is not trapped by the usual dead-end efforts of trying to influence the main political parties, trying to raise huge amounts of money, trying to get the mass media to cover the story, or trying to get lawyers to litigate or prosecute some important cases. It only depends on a few people getting enough signatures on the ballot, and then the voters making a common-sense decision.

Starting in a referendum attempt in South Dakota for the 2006 election, Jail 4 Judges is the spark that could truly ignite a real pro-democracy revolution in America, by destroying the arbitrary power of America’s judges. Jail 4 Judges, if passed nationally, would go a long way toward remedying the most serious missing element in the framework of America’s 1789 Constitution.

The odds are still against it, though Jail 4 Judges is the best hope for American reform in this area, and maybe even for saving American democracy itself. The current corporate powers of America are against it, of course. If the Jail 4 Judges proposal gets on the ballot, one can expect lots of money to be spent to defeat it. But the concept is so beautifully drawn, that attempts to attack the Jail 4 Judges idea could backfire, and wind up generating more support for it. There are so many victims of the legal system out there in America; they have just needed something around which to rally their support. Jail 4 Judges could be that magic item.

If there is a multi-millionaire who really wants to change the United States of America for the better, who really wants to give America a pro-democracy revolution that it badly needs, broad funding for Jail 4 Judges would be the way to do it. Something like Jail 4 Judges must succeed, if America is to turn back from the disastrous road onto which it is now tumbling. The horrors of America’s judicial and legal corruption, need dramatic relief, if any shred of the old freedoms are to remain alive in America at all.

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In the above questions of this FAQ, you have come to understand what typically happens when people look for help in fighting against legal and judicial corruption in America. You now understand the frustration and agony of the victims of American injustice as they look for help from other lawyers; from the Bar that supervises lawyers; from the judges who receive complaints about other judges; from the law professors; from the police and prosecutors; from the politicians; from the civil rights organizations and advocacy groups; and from the news media and reporters. Very commonly, it all comes to the same dead end. No one will help you, people avoid you, and hardly anyone even knows how to advise you.

And you face grave dangers if you try to fight back, or challenge judicial and legal corruption in America. You face harassment, threats, false criminal charges, illegal jailings, or slander by the news media and the rich and powerful, and all sorts of attempts to discredit you. People may even threaten to murder you, and you might have to leave the country in the end, like other victims. In the end, if you have rock-solid documentation of your position and place it widely on the internet, their final tactic is just to ignore you and pretend you don’t exist.

You will feel very lonely, as perhaps even old friends abandon you, not wanting to associate with someone like you who has now become a target and a victim. Most people in America just try to continue leading a normal life, in quiet subconscious fear of the big ugly legal machine, just hoping that they won’t get sucked into it and destroyed by it.

The ancient Greek writer Thucydides summarized the philosophy of power as, “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” This is a phrase that applies to life in modern America. As a victim of American legal corruption, you find yourself among the weak and powerless. And that is painful, especially in a culture like America that values and prizes power and strength.

Obviously you just must try to survive in some way, as best you can. As far as your particular legal case goes, you are at least better prepared, if you understand the forces that you are up against, and this FAQ has given you some of the tools of understanding.

Although it’s unlikely you have a lawyer who will directly and boldly fight judicial and legal corruption, you may be lucky enough to find a good hearted lawyer who will, somewhat timidly, try to protect you from having too much harm done to you. Just remember that the lawyer has his own reasons to be afraid, and will tend to be very timid and limited in what he will do.

Also, remember that many lawyers will tell lies and make false promises, but in fact they are thieves and criminals who will sell you out to the other lawyers and to the judges. Be careful what you say to them, or how much money you give to them. Maybe you will find a lawyer who can bribe a judge to soften or diminish what happens to you. But beware of lawyers’ promises, they often lie to little people, they just steal your money and do nothing.

Remember that the system wants you to appear submissive to what they are doing to you. Trying to fight back is dangerous, as they tend to take much bigger revenge on you. So you need to weigh your strategy carefully. Sometimes you can gently fight back a little, while also appearing to be submissive for example. Every case is different, and the risks are high. It is too bad there are not more resources, or people, or lawyers to help.

If you become a target of American legal or judicial corruption, think about whether escape is an option. If your situation is a more minor one, you can consider a path of escape to some other region of America, where you are not in the immediate neighborhood of the same criminals. Or you may be one of the many people for whom it is time to escape the USA. It is often better to just leave America, than to hang around and think you will accomplish something within America’s crooked and near-hopeless legal system.

The US media doesn’t want to tell you the stories of the people who have been forced to leave America, the so-called “great land of freedom”. But actually, there are six million Americans living outside USA borders, and many of them are not coming back.

If you do not have a criminal record and a little bit of money, and some skills, you can consider countries like Canada, Australia and Great Britain, that are actively looking for immigrants. If you have a parent or ancestors who were born overseas, you may qualify for citizenship in some other countries.

Political asylum in other countries can be a difficult process, and a last resort, but for special cases of people who have been human rights victims in America, it may be necessary to ask for this. Hopefully, more of the world will soon be realizing that America has a crooked, unjust and politically perverted legal system, and will be more accommodating of asylum requests from America, as victims of the American government cannot hope for justice in American courts.

But for those who stay in America, or who feel they cannot leave, and where the legal system does not threaten death, they just often wind up submitting to the rape of their lives by American courts and lawyers. These victims, and you may be one of them, just accept the separation from their children, the prison terms, the financial destruction, the payment of extortion money to lawyers, and then live always with the inner sickness of knowing that they are victims.

You may find some comfort on the internet, as you wind up reading about, and connecting with, many other victims of the legal system. Many of these stories and websites are very hard to read, however, as the anguish of the victims comes through in what they write.

Indeed, some psychologists have identified a “legal abuse syndrome”, where the victims of law and injustice, show the awful trauma of their experiences. What feeds this syndrome, is how lonely and helpless people feel when they are the victims of American judicial and legal corruption, given the lack of support, how no one will help you, and how almost no one even wants to hear your story. You can see this in how many victims of the American courts, talk about their experiences.

You may be tempted to tell your own story on the internet, and put up some of your own websites telling what happened to you. As you try to tell your own story, so vivid in your own mind, try hard to realize how easy it is to sound angry and hysterical. That is part of the nature of being a traumatized victim. But it can be very fulfilling, and liberating to tell your story, to name the criminals and gangsters, and call them by their true names. Indeed, the truth does set you free in some ways.

But also, be aware of just how dangerous it is to tell your story. Innocent people have suffered false criminal charges and jail, just because they dared to speak the truth on the internet. What about freedom of speech, you ask? Well, freedom of speech is dead in America, if the judges will not enforce it, and if the lawyers will not fight for it. And judges and lawyers are especially eager to stamp out those who criticize the American legal system. That’s part of why this FAQ itself, is being written from a safe haven in Europe.

One does wish there was more to recommend, for particular cases, for the many victims of America’s horrifying legal system. But it may be a comfort in itself to you, as well as save you much time and money, to realize there is often not much you can do, from inside America. Other people have tried, and failed, and died, in the same endless battle.

You are not alone as a victim of America’s crooked judges and lawyers, there are many others like you, whom you can meet on the internet. But regrettably, there is likely no clever strategy you can use to salvage your own situation, there is no “someone” who is out there to help you and save you.

Every case is different, every story of survival is a different one. Good luck to all.

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Americans tend not to travel very much outside the USA, so they often assume other countries have the same kind of crooked, rigged, oppressive legal system, even though it’s actually much better in every other developed nation.

In terms of corruption, bribery and oppression of the innocent, America’s legal system is like that of a sleazy and totally corrupt little country in the third or fourth world. But it is a giant monster of a system, fueled and funded by the richest country on earth. There is nothing like it.

It’s really a lot better in all other developed, advanced nations, than it is in America. Americans are more oppressed by the law, by lawyers and by crooked courts, than in any other developed economy. It’s almost a very funny equation – in America, more lawyers equals more crime, more prisoners, and less justice.

From comparing other societies, it can be argued that the Anglo-American type of legal system, with its roots in English law, and where lawyers can make lots of money arguing about “precedents”, is really the inferior one. And that America has taken the defects of this system, to an absurd extreme

On the European continent, with its differing system with roots in the Roman and French civil codes, the law is really a simpler kind of thing. It is the law as written that matters, and if the law is not clear in some respect, it’s not really enforceable.

But in the English kind of system, there is a legal culture that is based on lawyers arguing at great length about precedents and historical cases, every time they are in court. The lawyers like this because they make more money from rich clients, and can just argue endlessly about this and about that. It makes for more money and more of a cult of lawyers.

In Great Britain, Canada and Australia, for example, which all share the same roots in the English legal system, you can see a little bit – a tiny fraction – of the American cult of law and lawsuits. The British, in particular, are starting to develop a little bit of the American-style zest for lawsuits, maybe after watching so many American movies about lawsuits, and realizing they could play the same game. And sometimes, from these countries, you read about cases of lawyer corruption, that sound a little like the typical American corruption. But it is not anywhere near as widespread a problem, as in the United States.

Even though they share the same English-based common law legal system, none of these countries has the same kind of American-style legal disease. In all of them, there is much less crime, a much smaller percentage of people in prison, many fewer lawsuits, and much less oppression by lawyers and judges.

The situation is even better on the continent of Europe, where the legal systems, usually with roots in the Roman and French legal codes, function in a simpler way. Living in Europe, many people hardly think about the law in their lives. There’s quite little crime, by American standards, and very few people in prison. Prison sentences are usually pretty short, too, especially for a first offense.

In Europe, lawsuits are relatively rare; things like that are usually handled informally. Lawsuits are actively discouraged, especially silly or nonsensical ones. And there is no cult of lawyers. Lawyers are just other working professional people, and often don’t make very much money. The law and courts are just not a big factor in people’s lives. Overall, people more often trust the courts, and expect justice when they go to court. They expect the judge to be fair, and not political at all, even though the judge might have some private and very strong political opinions. The judge might even be a communist, or have some other very bold personal views, but people do not worry; they feel good about getting justice in the courts.

In Europe, you tend to hear very little about the American-style complaints about legal and judicial corruption. The judges tend to very explicitly stay out of politics. They don’t pass laws, or try to make new ones. That is for the parliament or legislature, and the judges very specifically defer to the legislators, who are the voice of the people.

There are a number of reasons why other advanced nations, in Europe, Canada and elsewhere, have much better legal systems than in America. You could consider things like the fact that in all these other countries, lawyers are an independent profession which is not under the control of anyone else, whereas in America, the lawyers have to be slaves to the judges, or else lose their right to practice law. And other factors could be cited as well.

But the biggest overall reason why other developed nations have much better legal systems, is because they have more democracy. Democracy that is not just a word, but real, effective, multi-party democracy, where people feel they have representatives who really speak for them. And the democracy is at the top of the political system, not the judges.

In a typical European country, you have a real, thriving multi-party political system in the parliament – not like in America where there are the somewhat phony “two parties” who actually both get their money from the same corporations.

In Europe, there might be a few large political parties, but also several smaller ones, thanks to “proportional representation”, so even small parties have seats in parliament. What this means, is that if your party gets 10 per cent of the vote, you may get 10 per cent of the seats in Parliament. Whereas in America, a political party can get one-third of the vote, and have no seats in Congress at all.

In Europe, the political parties cover a much bigger range of views, and it is much easier to start a political party. It takes much less money to start a party or campaign. So there are left-wingers, right wingers, socialists, ex-communists, animal rights advocates, people who like big business, people who hate big business, people who want more rights for working people, and so on. It is lively, and a lot of fun. So even the smaller political groups, get a voice, and get heard. Most people get to see some elected representatives yelling and shouting on their behalf. It is very satisfying, even if you don’t have the biggest party, because even the minority point of view influences the law-making.

Also, the government is often a coalition of various parties. And the prime minister, is himself or herself, very close to the elected representatives, and can lose his job tomorrow if he does something wrong. The parliament can vote, and call a new election; you don’t need an impeachment.

The parliament system seems to work much better, than the big American political machine. In Europe, if the public is concerned about an issue, it is often debated quickly in parliament. People do not wait for years for some judge to decide something, after a long string of lawsuits, like happens in America.

In Europe, people do not worry so much about the politics or appointment of judges, like they do in the USA. In Europe, judges come from the full range of the political spectrum, but they have limited powers. No one worries about appointing some high court judge, and then being imprisoned by that judge’s decisions for the next 20 years because he has political power over the country, like in America. People expect the judges to be professional and not twist the law to suit their purposes. If there are changes needed in the law, the parliament will do that itself, not the judges. The judge can protect the innocent, but he does not have the ability to manage the political life of the country.

In Europe, people look to the parliament, not the judges, for making changes in law and in society. And that is always available. They never feel trapped, like Americans do with their Supreme Court. The parliament can change things right away, if change is needed.

In America there is this whole cult of the law and lawyers and judges. People pretend that the law is “above” politics, “supreme” like the Supreme Court, when actually of course, American judges are supremely political. There is this false image of judges in America, as a kind of priesthood of law, at the same time that judges are given all this absurd power, that really should belong to the people themselves.

In Europe, they understand that it works better the other way around. In Europe, they don’t pretend the judges are gods, so they don’t put courts higher than the democracy. They understand the danger that judges might start to get political – so that precisely keeps the judges from being political, exactly because everyone understands the danger, and there are multiple political parties to keep an eye on things. If some judge starts getting political or twisted in his decisions, then it is likely that someone in parliament will start complaining about it, and steps will quickly be taken to restore fairness and modesty to the judge’s role.

Instead of a cult of law and judges, there’s more of a genuine respect for voters and democracy, which ends up being better, even for the courts and the judges, who wind up being more truly of service to the public.

In a nutshell, there’s no substitute for democracy, and in America that the smothering of democracy is what has happened: The judges, and the cult of the law and lawyers, has taken the place of democracy. The big corporations prefer the judicial dominance, because it helps them to maintain power and profits, and the “two party system” that quashes all other parties helps maintain the whole scheme. In Europe, the corporations and rich people have to be more socially responsible, because there are usually several political parties in parliament who are not afraid to question them.

In America, democracy is, sadly, just a shadow now, despite all the American boasting about the “land of freedom”. The big corporations in America pay for both of the two political parties, which both support the cult of lawyers and judges as a way to serve the big corporations. Because there is no significant political opposition, the cult of judges and lawyers is out of control, and there is no restraint on their power. This is the background of the endless particular cases of legal and judicial corruption, with so many victims.

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This is obviously a big topic, with many different perspectives. But a few brief notes on the history of America, and how judges and lawyers got so much power, may be a help to you in understanding your own struggle within the American legal system.

Americans often say they “love” their “great Constitution”, but they actually might not be totally clear on what part of the document that they love. What they probably love, most likely, is not so much the original Constitution that took effect in 1789, but more likely the Bill of Rights of 1791, the first ten “amendments” or changes to that Constitution, that put onto paper the basic freedoms that people think they have: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and so on. These first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, indeed contain many wonderful words, that sound like they will protect people. Too bad that America’s judges no longer take the Bill of Rights very seriously, and will just twist and turn these words to mean whatever they want.

It is important to understand that the original American Constitution was regarded as defective even by many of the people who were involved in writing it – the Bill of Rights was the first “bug fix”, almost immediately after it was enacted, and just one sign of the problems that people had with the Constitution even before it went into effect.

Although Americans are very reverent in talking about the “Constitution”, if you read the original document, it is not very inspiring. For one thing, of course, it is not very nice about the full human rights of either black slaves, or native Americans, and these issues are still being fought today. But beyond that, the American Constitution basically is a diagram of some machinery for government, theoretically “checks and balances” in bureaucratic machinery, that the writers claimed would help preserve freedom.

But this machinery had problems, right from the beginning, and has continued to show more problems with age. For one thing, there is just the problem that it is a bunch of machinery for government institutions. The people who wrote the U.S. Constitution were actually a little afraid of democracy, they worried about the “mob”, the rabble, the general public, whom they thought might elect a dictator – or perhaps start taking things away from the (generally rich) kind of people who were writing the Constitution.

A problem, however, is that if you just install a bunch of bureaucratic machinery, that means that whoever controls the machinery, controls the government itself. The people who wrote the Constitution were afraid of too much democracy, so they included some elements of monarchy and aristocracy in it. They made the President a strong figure, a little like a king, independent of the Congress. And even stronger, they put judges and a Supreme Court at the top of all the machinery, like a whole group of kings or dukes and duchesses. A lot of the people who helped write the Constitution were rich lawyers, so they thought it was only natural to put lawyers, judges and the legal system at the top of the whole machine.

The danger that some people saw from the beginning, was that eventually America would become a tyranny of the lawyers and judges, denying democracy to the people. And of course, that is what has happened today.

One of the delegates to the original Constitutional convention, Robert Yates, denounced the document and wouldn’t sign it. You can find his writings from 1788, in the Anti-Federalist papers (quoted in various places on the web). Yates predicted that the American Constitution and its granting of ultimate power to un-elected judges “created a dangerously unaccountable branch that would usurp power and ultimately grant itself more power” than the people’s elected representatives in the legislatures. Yates turned out to be absolutely right, but it would be a while before the disaster became fully visible.

The great advantage of America in its early period, is that it was more like modern Europe. Between 1789 and 1863, America was only partly a single nation, because the individual states were almost independent countries, each with their own culture and laws. People were loyal to their own states, more than to America as a whole. The power and influence and identity of the states, prevented America from becoming too much of a centralized power. The federal government was restrained, because the individual states had a lot of power and identity.

But that didn’t last. America’s civil war of 1861-1865 was theoretically fought to free the slaves, but what was really driving the war, was a big economic push to make America a centralized and expanding empire, based in Washington, D.C. When the tide of war turned at Gettysburg in 1863, and the states effectively lost their ability to oppose Washington, it was really the end of the original America. A new national empire was born.

During the civil war itself, some of the basic Constitutional freedoms were suspended, while hundreds of thousands died. Afterwards, the old American freedoms began to slowly chip away, and America’s courts began to assert increasing control over the people.

In the late 1800s, in the new America, the traditional rights of the American jury started to die away. Judges began to limit the use and power of citizen juries in court cases. Judges began to give juries more “instructions” which sounded like orders, so the citizens no longer felt they were free to do what they wanted. Americans started to forget their old rights as citizens.

Under the rule of the judges, Americans forgot their right to let an innocent man go free, regardless of what the judge said, or the way the law was written. The judges worked to keep people ignorant of their right to give their independent verdict if they thought a law was unjustly written, or if they thought the judge was behaving badly.

The late 1800s also saw the rise of the “robber barons”, the really wealthy people, who wound up wielding enormous power in America. Some of the descendants of those original robber barons, are still among the wealthiest and most powerful people in America today. And the American central courts became more and more active, in protecting the growing national financial interests of the newly powerful corporations.

Basic American democracy remained vibrant for a long time, despite the rising power of the wealthy people and corporations, and a certain progressive movement reached a high point in the national election of 1912, where there were actually four major political parties involved, including one quite radical party that got a lot of votes. It was the high water of America being a multi-party democracy, before the two parties settled into their final comfortable control of American politics.

Around that time, however, there were also some more changes to the Constitution and the laws, which really sealed the dominance of centralized power in the new America. In the 1910s, a national income tax was established, along with central government banking, giving Washington the greatest taxing-and-borrowing machine the world has ever known. And World War I came along to jump-start America’s armaments industry, what President Eisenhower would later call the “military-industrial complex”, now able to be funded by the Washington money machine.

As Washington became ever more powerful, the courts became more important to manage that power. The old Constitution, where supposedly the federal government had “limited powers” and the individual states had all remaining power, was really and truly dead, although few people admitted it. The old Constitution had died in the Civil War, along with the rights of the individual states to rebel against Washington.

America’s judges got used to bending and twisting the Constitution just to make things work, as a practical matter. Sometimes this was very well-intentioned, as in the great Depression – the federal government had the big money, and seemed to be in a position to help people. So most people didn’t worry too much about old words on paper, and the old ideas that went with them.

As the judges assembled more power, they also began to even take power away from individual lawyers. During the 20th century, the legal profession slowly changed from an independent body in each state, and instead became a group of people who were under the thumb of the judges, and forced to play along with whatever games the judges were playing. It was all part of the slow death of the old American freedoms.

After World War II, with America now the richest and most powerful nation in the world, it was just natural to the big corporations to give increased power to the judges and the American legal system. It was a way to control things, to keep radicals and communists from getting power, like was happening in other countries. It was a sweet deal for all the powerful forces – the judges got bribes, the lawyers got rich, and the corporations maintained their profits.

As America continued to get richer, the power of the judges and lawyers expanded. As American society changed, those changes were often imposed by the judges, instead of through political activity in the legislatures. The major changes in civil rights, women’s rights, and abortion rights, for example, were often led by judges and court decisions, instead of by laws voted on by legislatures. The big corporations actually favored things like civil rights, women’s rights, and abortion rights, because they helped make the workplace more efficient, and got more people into the workplace on a flexible basis.

The big corporations may have actually preferred things to be changed by courts, instead of by legislatures. There could see a problem with democracy: if you give people the idea that the legislature will pass laws they want, people might start asking for all sorts of things – like better wages and free health care and child care. That was happening in Europe and Canada, where corporations made smaller profits and people got a lot more benefits.

In America, however, where the judges were in charge, the corporations ruled the country like no where else, and made bigger profits. Americans started to get used to the idea that they were mostly helpless to change society, and should just wait for the judges to change things.

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a big chance for America to start becoming a lot more like Europe or Canada, which were developing very different societies – more social benefits, though smaller profits for big companies and investors. But, in the end, America took a different path, and by the late 1970s, you could see America turning in a different direction than other advanced nations. After America lost the Vietnam War, and the early 1970s energy crisis, America began to be managed by a climate of subtle fear, that turned it into a very different country.

America wound up being the only developed nation in the world, without a national health policy, so tens of millions of people could remain afraid of losing health care if they lost their jobs. The fear helped the worker loyalty and submissiveness, and the company profits.

But the largest part of how they made America a different place, is by use of the law and the legal system. While other countries became kinder and gentler, America became a place of crime, lawyers, lawsuits and fear – and a place where huge profits can be made.

The 1970s saw the big explosion of the American lawsuit culture – lawyers and lawsuits filled the news and people’s thoughts and lives, and the entire medical care system was transformed with all the endless malpractice lawsuits by lawyers. This helped make Americans think that lawyers and courts are the only ways to handle things.

The judges and lawyers created a big booming industry in divorce, child custody and alimony cases, so that tends of millions of working Americans would have their lives all tied up in knots in the courts. People would be drained of money, and be in courts for years and years fighting over children and money. The system was designed to drag down people’s lives into endless legal battles that would prevent them from doing anything else.

America’s streets flooded with drugs – a few even said they were brought in by the government. Crime skyrocketed, prison populations boomed, so now America has the biggest prison gulag in the entire world. In fact, America now has over 2 million prisoners – 25 per cent of all the prisoners, anywhere in the entire world. 1 out of every 140 Americans is in jail. America has more crime, more prisons, the longest prison sentences, and more lawyers; they all go together.

The court and prison business became a giant industry – lots of work for greasy little lawyers, helping send poor people to prison. The public was afraid of being a victim of crime, and also subconsciously afraid of getting arrested for some false or trivial reason, and sent to America’s awful prisons. Fear and more fear, which is very good for inhibiting democracy.

An interesting symbol of the different U.S. path from other developed countries, is the practice of the death penalty. Much of the world no longer allows the death penalty; outside of America, it is considered barbaric and cruel. It has been outlawed in all of Europe for a long time. But Americans tend to want it very much, they are very emotional about it. It is a part of the whole American culture of fear and crime and blood.

And many people forget that America actually ended the death penalty, too, for a long time. From the late 1960s to the late 1970s, there was about ten years that America didn’t execute anybody; America was on the same track as Europe. At first, the judges almost outlawed the death penalty altogether. But then, the political decision was made – by the judges themselves – to bring it all back, and America is now one of the leading cultures of executions and death in the world. Being put to death is after all, the ultimate terror of law and lawyers and judges. What better way for a judge to feel like a god?

The restoration of the death penalty, is an interesting symbol of the pathway of the American legal system. Americans largely support and want to read about these prisoners being killed by the government, even though many people on American death rows, were later proven to be innocent. But the American people, made so fearful in their daily lives, and so full of anger, feel a great need to take the blood of some of their prisoners, whereas other nations have let this pass into history.

The monster of American judicial and legal corruption, however, gives a special perspective to America’s many executions, its thousands of prisoners waiting for death. Once you realize the deviousness and corruption of America’s judges and lawyers, it is frightening to give such gangsters the power of imposing death. The abuse of this power is proven by all the innocent people, who have been sentenced to die in America, and later shown to be innocent.

As the new 21st century began, America is a very strange nation, when compared to other countries. Its judges are indeed supreme, its legal and prison system and gangs of lawyers, the biggest of all. The legal system completely dominates the political life of the United States, even though nearly all who know this system well, find it a very disgusting and dishonest legal system indeed.

America’s legal system is what replaces its stagnant politics, where not much happens in Congress aside from what is wanted by the big corporations. The American people are constantly distracted and manipulated through the media, by means of various emotional-heat issues, so that they rarely see the real big picture of their society. In their private lives, Americans have debts and work long hours and try to get by, and they don’t know what to do if the big legal monster comes for themselves, let alone for their neighbor.

Americans have largely given up on trying to change things, as they feel so helpless, with the two big political parties. They no longer even think very often about political action. They wait, usually in vain, for someone to take a lawsuit into a court (“Take it all the way to the Supreme Court!” is a favorite American phrase), hoping that some judge might change things for the better. (And America’s Supreme Court ignores and rejects nearly all requests that come to them.)

What people worried about in the 1780s, has come true. The judges and lawyers in America are the tools of tyranny, democracy now a fading ideal in the USA, trampled upon by the judges in black robes.

Only the naive and the ignorant, those who haven’t yet been victims, still believe in the old fairy tales about the American legal system. Only the naive and the ignorant, still believe that American judges are like in those Hollywood movies, smiling like wise old uncles.

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As long as you are living in America and having to deal with lawyers, it is important to keep some things in mind to protect yourself.

A few lawyers try to be ethical and helpful, within the limits of their fears, even though they still won’t fight corruption and bribery by other lawyers and judges. But with so many millions of victims of legal corruption in America, it’s better to be mentally prepared for the worst when dealing with lawyers.

In America, think of a lawyer as someone who is trying to take your money, while doing as little as possible for you by way of rocking the political boat in your community. Remember that lawyers are used to taking money from people when they are desperate and vulnerable – that is exactly the time for lawyers to pounce, and squeeze money out of a person in trouble. Don’t ever expect an American lawyer to accomplish much of anything, other than helping avoid the judge’s anger and revenge at you if you didn’t have a lawyer there with you.

Remember that nearly all lawyers, regardless of what they say, are submissive to the judges, to the government, and to the lawyers for big corporations. Regardless of what you pay a lawyer, your so-called lawyer may easily betray you and cut a dirty deal on the side with the other lawyers for the government or the big company, and will usually follow the judge’s secret instructions and demands.

Remember that all promises, words, and even written contracts by lawyers, are worthless. American lawyers are the biggest liars in the world, above all to their own clients. Lawyers will sign written contracts, take your money, cash your check, and then instantly tell you they are not honoring the contract, and not returning your money, and then may even threaten to sue you if you don’t keep your mouth shut about how they defrauded you. Yes, things like that actually happen.

Your problem is that, even if a lawyer commits clear fraud against you and violates his written contract, you still cannot find another lawyer to sue the first lawyer, and if you go to court, the judge will usually cover up for the fraud and theft by the lawyer, and rule against you. The same goes for the lawyer complaint office at the Bar, which is run by the judges. That’s how it all works.

If you give a lawyer your money, kiss it goodbye. Even if he does nothing, he will often keep all the money. The lawyer will tell lies and claim he did “many hours of research” for you.

Lawyers are basically only loyal to clients who will keep paying them large amounts of more money in the future. This is the only kind of relationship where the lawyer is forced to have some respect for you, and where you have some hope of trusting him. If you give a lawyer a large amount of money in one big lump, and he doesn’t expect another big lump from you, he basically kisses you goodbye in his mind, and already starts looking for his next “big ticket”, which may be a bribe from the other side, in the same case for which you just paid him.

So try not to pay your lawyer in a big lump – pay him in stages, once or twice a month, so that he is worried you will fire him and become a cash cow for some other lawyer instead.

Don’t tell a lawyer how much money you have – he will scheme to ask for all of it. Keep your money a secret. Just allow that you will “try to find” the money he wants from you. Take a while to think about it, whether it is worth it.

Never give a lawyer your last money that you have. It won’t help you or save you. Lawyers tend to despise people who only have a little bit of money. Better to use that last little bit of money for personal needs, or possible escape out of the state or country.

If you do have some significant amount of money, more than a few thousand dollars that you can easily carry, then keep it in a bank account in a foreign country, so that American lawyers and lawsuits can’t find it. Rich people do this, and you should do this, too, even if it’s just some ten thousand dollars or more. It’s much harder for the lawyers to grab your money in a foreign country, as foreign countries know the American legal system is a joke, a farce and a fraud, and American court judgments are not recognized in many other countries.

There’s a good reason so many people, even just middle class people, keep their money in Switzerland or other places. It’s easier to set up an account than you might think, as you can find on the internet. You can even get a nice little money-machine card, and access your foreign bank in America or around the world. A lot of Americans have been saved much grief, because they kept their money in foreign banks. America is not a safe place for your money, because of the crazy legal system.

Your main purpose in hiring a lawyer, is first of all so the judge won’t be angry with you and take revenge on you because you refused to hire a lawyer. But be prepared that the lawyer will tend to betray you to the other side or the government, if you are in any kind of conflict with the government or someone who is richer than you. Your goal is first to keep the costs down, not giving too much money to the lawyers; and secondly, while your lawyer slowly sells you out to the other side, you try to make it so your lawyer doesn’t sell you out too badly.

Obviously, in general, you want to avoid going near courtrooms and lawyers in America. Often, nearly everybody loses, except the lawyers.

If you do need a lawyer, smart or clever lawyers are not that important. What is more important is lawyers with connections to the judges who can pay the bribes that are needed. If you can afford it, this is what you are paying for, in hiring an American lawyer.

Don’t let your lawyer know how smart you are, about him or about the crooked system. Lawyers and judges hate people who talk directly about bribery, or about the games lawyers play. You will be safer with the lawyers, if you appear to be someone stupid whom they can manipulate. Lawyers and judges have big egos, and like to think they are experts at manipulating and deceiving and dominating other people. Pretending to play along with lawyers, while guarding your money and your personal safety, may even save your life in America.

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After the long hopeless search for a lawyer, sometimes people think about acting as their own lawyer, filing lawsuits against legal, judicial and government corruption on their own.

It is certainly good to know something about the details of the law in America, so as to better understand the legal tricks that are being played by lawyers and judges.

As you start to study the law, you may get all excited about what a great case you have, and you dream of winning a great victory on your own, acting as your own lawyer. You may start reading the law, and you may find you’re just as smart as many lawyers. You may find all sorts of laws, and statutes, and previous cases, that support your position. You see that the law, theoretically, allows you to win a lot of money for your pain and suffering and for the harm that was done to you.

There are also a number of resources you can use to help you. On the internet you can find companies to supply you with do-it-yourself legal guides. Near your home you may have a free law library you can use, and with time and study you can become reasonably educated with the law.

On one level, it’s not that hard. The law is full of jargon and is annoying and inconsistent, and takes some time to get used to the jargon and learn the rules, and know all the stuff you should know. You get used to the ways that lawyers are constantly twisting words around to mean different things, depending on what they are arguing. It’s not beyond the average person.

After all, many actual lawyers are total idiots. America has nearly a million lawyers, and many of them are total morons, despite three years of law school and having passed the bar exam. With your passion and dedication to your own case, and some diligent self-study, you can out-learn and out-think those morons.

However, it is usually just a fantasy to think you can get somewhere by acting as your own lawyer. To fulfill your fantasy, you would need to find a judge somewhere who cares about the law, the truth, the evidence, the facts and about justice, more than he cares about covering up for his fellow lawyers and judges. And that’s where your fantasy starts to fall apart.

The reality of law and courts in America, is not that idealistic image you invent in your mind after reading the law books. In a real court, the judges and lawyers can find and invent a thousand ways to delay and deny you justice. If not legally, they will do so illegally. They will just rule against you, period, and tell you that you lost. “But . . . but . . . but . . .” you will sputter, because the law and the facts and the evidence and the truth are on your side. And then the judge will tell you to shut up, or he’ll send you to jail for contempt of court.

The Constitution and the law turn out to be empty words that will not help you, when you discover that the judges ignore not just the written law of statutes, but the Constitution itself. And you will be amazed at how judges can rig a court proceeding just with a series of small rulings on court procedure. Right to a jury – denied. Right to present some piece of evidence – denied. Right to cite some specific statute, or example, or a previous case – denied. Right to talk about the Constitution – denied, “Irrelevant!” screams the judge. When the judge starts yelling at you, that he is going to put you in jail, if you say one more thing he doesn’t like, you will finally understand how American judges really behave. Indeed, it is nothing at all like you see on television.

Maybe you can appeal the illegal orders of the first judge. (Although sometimes they even threaten to jail you on false charges, or contempt of court, if you file any appeals.) But even with an appeal, you typically just go to another judge, who dismisses your appeal, maybe even without listening to what you have to say. Most judges are not interested in reading or hearing appeals by little people who have no lawyers. And the other side will tell the judge, that the fact that you have no lawyer, just proves what a lousy and worthless case you are trying to present.

Another illusion you may have about acting as your own lawyer, is that you think you will get media coverage, after you file a lawsuit on your own. You imagine that your case will start to win public support, after the media informs people about what you are trying to do. And you imagine that there will be all sorts of TV and news reporters watching you in the courtroom.

But you are often wrong, if you think that the media will cover your lawsuit that you file on your own. Yes, the media does cover some legal cases. But they often totally ignore any cases filed by people who do not have lawyers, regardless of how interesting, or how strong the evidence. The media pretends that you are a nut or a crackpot, just because you have no lawyer. And they know your case will not get anywhere. So for all your efforts in court, not only with the judges dismiss your case or delay it indefinitely, but you will suffer in silence, as the media won’t cover your struggle either.

Sometimes you can be caught in this hopeless game for months and years, before it all crashes down into nothingness. Or before you are finally arrested by the local cops on some supposedly unrelated charge. Or before the judge and the lawyers themselves file a lawsuit against you, and their lawsuit actually works out very well for their side. One way or another, they will most likely show you the nature of their power over you.

Almost certainly, there is very little you can accomplish against legal or judicial corruption, by filing lawsuits acting as your own lawyer. The judges will rig the game to nail you, regardless of the law, the facts, the evidence, precedents, the truth, or anything else.

And in legal cases in general, judges just hate people who show up in their courts without lawyers. Judges think it means you don’t respect the court, because you aren’t taking your case seriously enough to pay money to one of the judge’s friends.

If you’re not yet regarded as an outlaw in the American legal system, and can still get a lawyer for a normal legal case, it is often a good idea to pay even some idiot lawyer to stand there before the judge, as it generally goes easier on you when you have a lawyer, than if you don’t. It is like protection money to gangsters; the alternative is dangerous.

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This is another topic that tends to mislead the general public, both in America and around the world. Yes, it’s true that even in America, rich people are sometimes arrested and go on trial. Sometimes the executives of big companies get put on trial and go to prison for a long time. Supposedly, this proves that “the system works”, because even some very rich people get sentenced and go to jail. And some of these rich people are executives of big corporations – doesn’t that prove that the legal system is really “fair”, because even the big corporate executives can face criminal charges?

But, once again, there is something behind the scenes here, that makes all of this very misleading. If you analyze the reasons that these executives are going to jail, you often find the same thing underneath the various cases. These rich executives, millionaires though they might be, generally got into trouble for violating the one set of “rules” that they were supposed to obey – loyalty to the shareholders and investors who own the big corporations of America.

Remember, the big corporations are not the same as the rich executives who run them, even though those executives might be paid many millions of dollars. The executives just work for the corporations, who are really owned by their shareholders. These shareholders are dominated by investors, who are the richest people and institutions in America.

When the executives are sentenced to prison for their fraud and other crimes, the basic reason behind it all, is that these people are accused of cheating the investors who put their money into the corporation. In other words, these executives did not provide good service to the really and truly rich people who owned their corporations. That’s the story of the Enron or WorldCom executives. The government will talk about how these executives cheated average Americans, but that is just talk. What they really are angry about, is how these executives cheated America’s millionaires and billionaires who owned stock in Enron or WorldCom or whatever.

America’s richest people have their assets in stocks, more than anything else. That’s why the government spends so many millions of dollars on regulation of the stock market.

As far as lawyers and judges go, there’s hardly any regulation at all. Lawyers and judges can be criminals and perverts and lunatics, and commit a new felony crime every day of the week, and the government will do nothing about it. Especially if the victims are everyday average Americans.

But stock fraud? Play games with stock prices, that might slightly affect the profits of multi-millionaire investors? – That’s where the government is very, very serious. Lots of officials may swing into action immediately, if you have broken any rules of stock-market trading. That was why they started going after Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart was rich, but she was involved in trading stocks that are also owned by other rich people, and that’s something the government is very concerned about.

The prosecution of a few rich executives doesn’t prove that the system works to protect the common people. It is just another case of how the government spends a lot more money protecting the big investors more than anyone else. The government is concerned that everything is “fair” and equal for the billionaires and big investors, and even rich people can go to jail if they do things to hurt other rich people, if they break the rules of loyalty to the big stockholders.

Beyond that, there are a few other trials of celebrities who are rich, but yet go on trial in some big media circus, accused of some crime or other. Many of these celebrities have some money, but are minorities or have no big political connections. If they had really good connections, made a lot of political donations, they often would never have been charged in the first place, some lawyer would have “fixed” the whole thing very quietly with the right government officials. Rich people who make big political donations in America, are sometimes able to commit quite serious felony crimes and get away with them, just by continuing to bribe politicians and judges.

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With very few exceptions, no. The law professors at American law schools, writing all sorts of long articles full of legal jargon on the supposed “issues” of the American legal system, generally stay away from the topic of legal corruption and misconduct. Like everybody else in the American legal system, the professors at American law schools are afraid of speaking the truth about American corruption and bribery.

These professors will have various kinds of scholarly excuses – they will tell you that, as professors, they are focusing on “technical” issues in the law, as it is found in the decisions of judges. They will tell you that issues of simple corruption and bribery, are not “intellectually interesting”, or that they have no way of investigating such complaints, given that complaints about judges and lawyers are almost all held secret in the American legal system.

But the reality is that most every American law school and university, like most everything else in America, is basically a business trying to raise money and maintain its funding. The big money for the universities, aside from tuition fees, comes from donations from the big corporations and the wealthy donors, and from the American government, which is itself a servant of those big corporations.

And the law professors are afraid of revenge, too, just like lawyers and people in the media. If they speak out against corruption, they can get sued, and their university can get sued, and start losing money from the government and the big donations from business people. And the particular law instructors might lose their jobs.

The students of the law schools often graduate to become highly-paid lawyers directly involved in legal corruption. Often, the crooked judges themselves teach part-time on the law school faculty. The law professors are closely connected to the culture of bribery and corruption, even though they won’t admit it. Many law professors get rich on the side, earning big money by using their prestige as a “law professor” and earning big fees. You will find cases of law professors even allowing their names to be used for criminal projects by crooked lawyers and judges.

Yes, law professors will sometimes be chasing after publicity on some big case that is already in the news. Lawyers and law professors love to be involved in big famous cases.

But law professors almost always stay away from the millions of poor little victims of the law, who are getting their lives destroyed by crooked lawyers and judges. Law professors find themselves in trouble if they rock the boat and try to expose the culture of bribery and court fraud, so they stay away from it. Like practicing lawyers, they won’t risk their careers to help poor victims, whom they feel they won’t be able to help anyway, because everything is stacked against the victim.

So it’s the same game all over again. The law professors are usually another dead end, another brick wall, as you look for help to fight American legal or judicial corruption.

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The big corporations own most of the major news media in America, but they don’t own or control all of it yet. There is a somewhat lively alternative or radical media, mostly found now on the internet, and a little bit in print or magazines, not too much on television.

Such alternative media are important – and a much better source for news than the mainstream media, which is so heavily filtered to benefit the big corporations. But alternative media does not have the large following it deserves, although that following is passionate. Getting your story in the alternative media, may not do much for you in real life, in the same way that a story in the mainstream media tends to get a reaction from politicians and the public.

You might ask, why doesn’t someone start a new kind of cable television news network, that tells the real news about corruption in the government and courts? Well, such a project takes a lot of money, and people and corporations with big money, are not interested in funding a radical news network, that would damage the power of the rich people and corporations.

Also, if such a radical news network got started and became popular, one of two things would happen. Either the big companies would buy it, and slowly force it to become more submissive to the corporations and government; or else, the legal system would start to destroy it. In revenge for telling the stories of corruption, the judges and lawyers would allow lots of lawsuits to start destroying the alternative news service. Very quickly, the company would be broke and bankrupt and unable to provide the alternative news at all. Which is why no one is investing in the start of such a radical television news service in the first place – they know they cannot get legal protection in America.

That is the way of America: The legal system threatens to silence and destroy those who start to criticize the system, and the media companies are naturally submissive to legal corruption.

So even in the alternative or radical news media, it is very hard to get these media to cover your particular story of legal or judicial corruption, however interesting or significant.

The reason is that, inside the United States, any one who does journalism, even on the internet, has largely internalized the fear of the legal system, and the fear of talking about lawyers and judges.

The alternative and radical media doesn’t like to admit it, but they, too, are afraid. And they’re more vulnerable than the big media, because they don’t have big money for lawyers and big political connections.

The little guy, the little media magazine or web-zine, or small publisher, can be much more easily destroyed by a single lawsuit. Or banned or put in jail on false charges.

Quite a number of journalists and people with websites have not only been sued, but also had their freedom of speech banned, been criminally charged or jailed in America. And the reason you may not know about these events, of course, is once again that the big media is not reporting on these stories. The big media doesn’t want to rouse the anger of the American people, by making it too obvious that little people with websites are getting criminally charged and jailed.

So the alternative media in America, helpful as it is in many ways, still stays away from the most taboo subject in all of American journalism: the vast corruption of America’s judges and lawyers. Even all sorts of radicals and rebels, are in fear of the great American legal monster, how it will come and destroy them if they dare to speak too boldly.

The alternative media, like so many in America, now tries to play it safe, by merely often reacting to what they read in the mainstream media. Or else they tend to analyze and take apart the mainstream media, while looking for the little nuggets of truth that still come through the propaganda, if you keep hunting between the lines. The alternative media will take the little detail on the back pages of some newspaper article, and point out how it combines with something else to point to a deeper truth behind the superficial news story.

But no alternative media outlet is making a significant attack on exposing new cases of legal corruption, if such a case is not already in the news media loop. This is a topic they think it is wiser to leave for the bigger and more well-funded news organizations, which of course won’t touch the topic either.

So it is pretty much of an empty hope, to think that some alternative journalist will be brave enough and interested enough, to start exposing your particular case of corruption by a dishonest lawyer or judge.

It is very sad how America has become the land of fear, in its journalism like in much of its daily life.

Also, if you look outside of the borders of America to try to find a journalist, your own particular case of corruption, is unlikely to be a big story. America does not have a good reputation in much of the world now. Outsiders often see America as a country that starts illegal wars, kidnaps and tortures people and holds them without trial at places like Guantanamo. So your own particular case of getting victimized by America’s legal system, is just one more little case in a country that other people think is crooked and nasty anyway. You are just one more victim, compared to tens of thousands of dead bodies of children and civilian dead in Iraq or other places.

This is another myth that people inherit from Hollywood movies and television – that stereotypical “investigative reporter”, the brave man or woman eager to fight for the little person, and present the truth and help fight the rich and the powerful.

The reality is something else, however. Those kind of “investigative reporters” basically died out a long time ago, they were exterminated as the local media sources got bought up by the big conglomerates, and as America’s media became increasingly part of the big machine that controls American life.

The people who are “investigative reporters” today in America, basically only start “investigating” more details about someone after the government initiates the process. The prosecutors tip off the reporters that they will be going after some person, and then the media will go chasing after details. But the government is nearly always the original source of a story.

What rarely happens, is where people come to a newspaper with proof of some crime that the government isn’t prosecuting, and then the newspaper runs a big story to “expose” the wrongdoing. That happens very rarely now, and when it does, the target of the story is usually someone who has no political connections.

What basically never happens at all, is where the media starts running stories about crooked lawyers or judges, just because they have proof of crimes that those people have committed. You can present totally slam-dunk evidence of crimes involving a judge, and the American media won’t touch the story. That’s the way it is in America.

In modern America, “journalists” for the big media companies are people very submissive to their bosses. They know the unspoken “rules”. Stories that violate the rules, don’t get published or broadcast. And if the stories don’t get published or broadcast, pretty soon the reporter is out of a job.

Since the ultimate bosses are the big corporations that own the media groups, it filters down very clearly to the staff what is supposed to be news and what is supposed to be ignored. They don’t need to put things in writing, for the reporters to figure out how to kiss up to the bosses and company owners.

For some reason, people keep citing the old Watergate case, and the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, as showing that America has a “great legal system” in which a President was shoved out of office because of the work of some “investigative reporters”. But even that is neither accurate, nor a good example, for two reasons.

One is that this is an old story, more than 30 years old. Since then, the American legal system, and the corporate ownership of media companies, are both a lot worse than they were in the Watergate days.

But even more significantly, even this Watergate case, was really about how other factions in the American government wanted to get rid of Nixon, for various political reasons. The two reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, were themselves very well connected to other government officials, both in personal background, and in their attack against the Nixon presidency. The Watergate case, like nearly all other news in America, had its origins in the powers of government itself, not the so-called “investigative reporters”.

The circus of political “news” in America is not about the common people, who are often crushed and ignored and thrown under the bus. The so-called news stories are more often about one part of government in petty bickering with another, playing a power game among themselves, while hiding the fact that the real needs of the people are ignored.

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