Justice

Justice confuses me.

People celebrate it. People are celebrating it, like it means something, like something has been accomplished.

But justice, at least this kind of retributive settling of the score by punishing, does nothing.

3 people died, scores injured, many horrifically. And now one of the killers is dead. His fellow angel of mayhem is now in police custody, awaiting a hefty sentence.

And it’s what the fucking bastard deserves. He deserves to go to jail. He deserves punishment and pain that waits in his future.

And we’ll celebrate now just as we’ll celebrate in the future. We feel relieved. We feel vindicated. Or something.

But nothing’s happened. Nothing can happen. None of the dozens wounded are going to get their legs back. None of the 3 will be brought back to life with the death of their killers. But we’ll drink to the fact that they terrorists lost and that we can move on.

And then we will move on. In fact, some may already have. Case closed, they got the guys. “JUSICE” has been served.

And what justice can occur in Texas? A plant, which hasn’t been passed a safety inspection for almost two decades, explodes and vaporizes scores of people from the earth. What can we do? People will get fined. People might go to jail. But nobody is coming back.

Retribution is a quick fix. Justice is a quick fix. It pastes over the wound and make us feel better. It’s all just an easy way to make us feel better. We stamp “JUSTICE” on some event so that we can move on with our lives, so that we can forget.

Maybe we aren’t meant to “move on.”

Right now I think healing, true healing, whatever that is and however it is achieved, is the goal. That’s the path to follow. But it’s not easy.

Listen: We are always about to die. We could get shot, hit by a bus, stand under a falling piano at any minute. And then we'll be gone forever. Most of the time we can forget about that. But we're reminded so strongly of our mortality during these sorts random, violent of situations. And, even though most of us will take the arrest of Dzhokar Tsarnaev to mean some great victory has been won in the battle between life and death, good and evil, nothing has changed. Nothing is bringing back Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell or Lü Lingzi. But that won't stop us from acting like something will.

I just don't understand the exuberance.