I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is ... Broader and deeper we must write our annals, - from an ethical reformation, from an influx of the ever new, ever sanative conscience, - if we would trulier express our central and wide-related nature, instead of his old chronicling of selfishness and pride to which we have too long lent our eyes.
From History, Essays, First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yesterday, I was reading an article in The Baffler, "Exterminating Angels - The American Myth of the Progressive Prosecutor," and highlighted this passage:
The United States is a hegemon and cultural trendsetter, but it does not see its governing structures replicated elsewhere. Many countries will take our fast food and our pop music. They will pass on our uniquely demented presidential system, preferring the suppleness of the parliamentary government and executives who do not enjoy virtual immunity. We are both leader and mutant on the world stage, an example of everything to avoid, yet inarguably an influencer.
This is an article about U.S. prosecutors - but is also an article about the U.S. legal system, historical context and why the criminal justice system is the way it is, and the reluctance to change even though the original circumstances under which the system was created is no more - or exist only to a limited extent.
There is a reason other countries choose not to elect prosecutors - they do not want to reproduce scenes like Kamala Harris at the Commonwealth Club in which prosecutors yuck it up about political capital. This is the danger of the system we have inherited from our ancestors. The gravest matters - guilty or innocent, life or death - are reduced to whether prosecutors believe such choices will alter their political futures.
p. 19
In an attempt to look objectively at U.S. history - there may be individuals or groups who can be identified as least harmful to others' rights. But by and large, the history of the U.S. is violent, criminal driven and immoral. Generation after generation, a genteel version of an ancestor's villainy is born.
So long as Americans are so easily goaded into culture wars and disputes that fail to provide legal equality, access to knowledge and access to capital, the problems will persist. Each new promise seems to be doomed by "human nature" and the reluctance to "share" wisdom or knowledge which has heretofore been an advantage lest someone else gains the upper hand socially, politically, or commercially.
The chasm between the principles upon which this Government was founded, in which it still professes to believe, and those which are daily practiced under the protection of the flag, yawns wide and deep.
Mary Church Terrell, 1907
