The validity of friendship

So by chance, I've befriended someone who is off to jail for seven months. You'd wonder why the hell would I be friends with someone who is sentenced to seven months in jail, but then again why not? The point is not that he is going to jail, but that he is a person and I'm a person. I have no right to judge what he's done in the past, to lay down the law in front of him that he has broken because I have broken the same laws. No, I'm glad to be friends with someone who is off to jail. 

Look at this bastard...He just looks like a asshole

But you know what...he's my friend despite all of it.

Here's a funny thing about the government. Why are we punishing people who are harmless. Who break the rules a couple times and then they're shipped off to jail because they violated another law? We send off these harmless people when the real menace is still out there. Lurking in our backyards, molesting children, raping women, killing people. 

What's worse?

A scruffy thirty-five year old man who has been arrested multiple times for drinking. Never driving, just public intoxication. He gets boozed up and wonders around town. After multiple arrests they finally ship him off to jail. Problem solved for everyone because they don't have to see a slob in their town. Yay....right?

How about this. A young man who has just turned eighteen. He's got a fantastic family, money, a beautiful girlfriend, academically sound. One night he decides to rape the seventeen year old girl next door. Parents pay off the cops, the family, shut the girl up. The young man continues on, gets accepted to an Ivy league school living with the fact that he can get away with such a heinous crime. 

Now where is the justice?

Perhaps my friend deserved to go to jail for partaking in drugs. But who do you know who hasn't done drugs. Worse off, why are we punishing those who do drugs when the real criminals are the people who distribute? I could prance right up with the Tippecanoe court house right now, with solid proof of one of the biggest dealers in Tippecanoe County. I could tell you the address, phone number, and even who they've dated in the last three years. Would it make one difference? 

No.

Democracy isn't such a great thing.

People bitch about socialism...Well I don't know much...

But if something doesn't work, why not try a different approach.

Same goes for the justice system. America isn't a just society. We base our laws on the highest bidder. The end. El Fin. Ta-Da!

I'm glad I'm friends with someone who is going to jail, and if it solved anything, perhaps I'd go with him. I've done nothing wrong, but if justice could be 'straightened' out by my visiting jail, that's something I'd gladly sacrifice. 

Unfortunately bright dreams and happy thoughts aren't going to make a dent when corruption has a deeper pocketbook than I'll ever know.