Justice for Whom?

I’m sure a lot of you have seen the rant I posted about the City of Santa Fe, its police department, and its mayor. In it, I pointed out something that has been eating at me for months: the woman who made a U-turn directly across my path last October, nearly killing me, apparently never received a citation that I can find, despite the police report saying citations were pending and despite my later being told that a citation would be issued.

But somehow Santa Fe has found the political will, financial resources, technology, and manpower to automate speed enforcement. This comes after automated enforcement of the city’s noise ordinance. And all of this has me asking a much bigger question: Who the fuck is the victim?

Seriously. Who is the victim when somebody drives seven miles per hour over an arbitrarily chosen speed limit on an empty road? Who is the victim when a motorcycle makes more noise than somebody sitting in a downtown condo would prefer? Who has actually been deprived of life, liberty, property, safety, or anything else? Because somewhere along the way, we stopped asking whether somebody was actually harmed and started treating disobedience itself as harm. And that should scare the fucking shit out of people.

Now states are passing laws for something called “criminal speeding,” which is another phrase that makes me stop and ask: criminal against whom? Who did I hurt? Whose liberty did I take? Whose property did I damage? Who did I endanger if I’m traveling down an open interstate designed specifically for high-speed travel with nobody around me? We’ve gotten extraordinarily comfortable with the idea that government gets to prohibit something simply because government has declared it prohibited.

And when the fuck did we become this compliant? When did personal liberty become something government graciously allows us to exercise within increasingly narrow boundaries? When did we collectively decide that peace, quiet, conformity, and the preferences of the majority were more important than individual liberty?

I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep fucking saying it: I think liberty in this country is dying. Not because somebody came along one morning and repealed the Bill of Rights. That would at least get everyone’s attention. It’s dying through a thousand tiny fucking compromises. A camera here. A sensor there. Another ordinance. Another civil penalty. Another prohibited behavior. Another government database. Another automated notice showing up in somebody’s mailbox. And every time it happens, we shrug because this particular infringement doesn’t affect us. Yet.

That’s how this shit becomes normal. Surveillance has become frighteningly fucking normal. We now seriously debate whether government cameras should automatically watch vehicles, record identifying information, determine whether somebody violated a rule, identify the registered owner, and generate a penalty without a human officer ever witnessing the alleged offense. And somehow the debate is mostly about whether the cameras reduce speeding.

That isn’t the only fucking question we should be asking. We should also be asking what kind of relationship we want between citizens and their government.

The Fourth Amendment exists because the people who created this country had a profound distrust of unchecked government intrusion. The Fifth Amendment exists because taking somebody’s liberty or property is supposed to require due process. And yes, automated enforcement systems usually provide some mechanism for contesting a citation. But when the process becomes a camera, an algorithm, a plate lookup, and a bill arriving in the mail, I think we should be asking whether due process has become something we technically provide afterward instead of a principle that constrains government beforehand.

Because the underlying presumption starts looking awfully fucking backward. The machine says you did it. Now prove why you shouldn’t pay. And apparently the government itself becomes the injured party deserving restitution because a citizen had the audacity to travel faster than the number printed on a sign.

Which brings me right back to Santa Fe. Speed cameras. Noise sensors. Automated enforcement. Fines. All of this infrastructure devoted to finding violations and extracting penalties from citizens. Meanwhile, when somebody actually drove a car across the path of my motorcycle and nearly fucking killed me, the system somehow couldn’t manage the most basic act of accountability.

That contrast is impossible for me to ignore. And maybe that’s why this has become about something much larger than my crash. It has me wondering whether we’ve forgotten the proper relationship between government and the governed.

Government does not grant us liberty. That distinction fucking matters. The entire philosophical basis of this country is that liberty belongs to the individual first, and government derives its authority from the people. Government works for us. Not the other fucking way around. Something about government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” I could swear I read that somewhere.

Yet people increasingly react to government as though it’s some unstoppable force of nature. City Council passed another ordinance. What can you do? The state created another criminal offense. What can you do? They installed cameras. What can you do? They raised the fine. What can you do?

Vote the fuckers out. That’s what you can do.

Organize. Write. Call. Speak. Show up when you can. Support candidates who actually believe individual liberty is something worth defending. And when those people get elected and turn around and become exactly the kind of politicians they replaced? Vote those fuckers out too. Keep doing it until they get the fucking message.

Because elected government only becomes untouchable when citizens decide it is. Stop behaving like helpless fucking spectators while government steadily expands its authority over your life. Stop assuming something must be reasonable simply because somebody wearing a suit passed an ordinance saying it is.

Ask who was harmed. Ask what legitimate public interest is actually being served. Ask whether the response is proportional. Ask whether government really needs another camera, another sensor, another database, another fine, another criminal statute. Ask what liberty you’re surrendering in exchange for whatever little piece of order they’re promising you.

And then ask whether you’re ever getting that liberty back.

Because that’s the part nobody seems to fucking think about. Government power accumulates. Liberty usually doesn’t. And if we keep surrendering ours a little bit at a time because each individual surrender seems too small to fight over, eventually we’re going to look around and wonder where the fuck it all went.

Lady Liberty won’t need to hitchhike back to France. We’ll have packed her fucking bags for her.