The criminaloid is really a borderer between the camps of good and evil, and this is why he is so interesting. To run him to earth and brand him, as long ago pirate and traitor were branded, is the crying need of our time. . . . Every year that sees him pursue in insolent triumph his nefarious career raises up a host of imitators and hurries society toward moral bankruptcy.
These words, written well over 100 years ago by the American economist and sociologist Edward A. Ross1, speak to our present moment in ways that he would not even have been able to imagine, to a time that he could not ever imagine.
He was writing about what later would become known as white collar criminals, people who broke the laws to their advantage in their professional work in business, politics, the law itself, and elsewhere. He noticed the way they played subtly between virtue and vice, presenting themselves as avatars of leadership and merit while grossly preying upon others–and even the nation–to further grow both their wealth and power. And long before his peers and later generations, he saw the connection between uncontrolled “criminaloids” and the end of morality. Continue reading “Criminaloids Take Over The Government”
- In his book, Sin and Society, 1907.[↩]
describing the Fall of Lucifer. Lucifer was once one of God’s most powerful angels, until his lust for worship caused him to rebel against the Creator, resulting in his fall from grace
and eternal life to become the destroyer of worlds. It has been said that Lucifer took at least a third of the angels with him in his rebellion and fall, and that he did so by deceiving them with lies.
conform language to the needs of a society’s authoritarian leadership to maintain control of its population. Newspeak is a minimalist language designed to make the utterance of heretical thoughts–those that challenge central authority–impossible.  Doublethink refers to the ability to believe and say that black is white, in contradiction of plain facts, in order to uphold the regime.
come. In the meanwhile, the indictment by the New York City grand jury and prosecutor has already created feverish media reactions and the expected bombast from the former U.S. president. What to make of it all? These thoughts come to mind.
commonly trained that legal reasoning is a learned skill much like that in scientific work. It is based on principles of deduction, according to which judges make decisions about laws by logically figuring out how the principles established in earlier court decisions–precedents–apply to the current dispute before them. In this perspective, judicial decision-making–especially in the higher courts with the best trained lawyers–is a matter of technique.  It produces the correct legal answers based on facts and reason, free of bias and personal belief. Competent practitioners, therefore, should reach the same, right, answers.
consequential–even somewhat anodyne–meaning is that American racists are attracted to the Republican Party because it has long favored tough-on-crime policies and low taxes/small government policies, which have always translated into harsh punishments of and weak federal support for poor people, among whom minority populations figure disproportionately. This view can seem to insulate the Party itself from charges of racism and racial animus.
 More so than the President’s campaign’s efforts to coordinate with the Russians to favor his election. Even more so than the behavior in the impeachment’s own charges against the president: that for his personal political benefit he used the power of his presidency to withhold funds mandated by Congress for Ukraine’s military defense against Russian aggression, in order to extort that country to announce an investigation of a political rival (Joe Biden), and that in unprecedented fashion he obstructed the Congress’s investigation of those events. As such, it will either portend the end of our democracy or so diminish it that it will take generations to repair. 
