The injustice involving the Texas teenager, Justin Carter, is obvious on its face. He was arguing via Facebook about an online video game, “League of Legends,” and the following occurred:
“Someone had said something to the effect of ‘Oh you’re insane. You’re crazy. You’re messed up in the head,'” Jack Carter told CNN affiliate KVUE in Austin. “To which he replied ‘Oh yeah, I’m real messed up in the head. I’m going to go shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still-beating hearts.'”
According to court documents, Justin wrote “I’m f—ed in the head alright. I think I’ma (sic) shoot up a kindergarten and watch the blood of the innocent rain down and eat the beating heart of one of them.”
Jack Carter said his son followed the claim with “LOL” and “J/K” — indicating that the comment wasn’t serious.
However, a woman in Canada saw it and was enraged and contacted Texas authorities, who arrested the teenager, searched his apartment with a SWAT team (found nothing incriminating, although that no longer matters in the U.S. “justice” system), and then threw him into jail under a half-million dollars bond. After being assaulted by inmates, he was put into solitary confinement and put on suicide watch. He faces 10 years in prison if found guilty of “making terroristic threats.” (After many months in prison, someone finally paid bail and he has been released pending trial.)
A lot of people have taken notice of this ridiculous situation, including the World Socialist Web Site. What I find ironic is that the WSWS believes that the source of “injustice” in the USA is the lack of state control of our economy and, frankly, our lives. Given that socialists believe there should be only government stores, government schools, and government everything else, I find it almost hilarious to see socialists then complaining when government tries to criminalize speech.
When governments have the kind of power that socialists demand they have, no one should be surprised when the State acts in a heavy-handed manner. After all, when I was in college 40 years ago, socialists then were singing the praises of Fidel Castro and Mao Tse Tung, both of whom viciously suppressed any kind of free speech with imprisonment, torture, and execution. While I commend the socialists for speaking out in this particular case, I cannot help but wonder if any of them can see the irony.
Thus, we have socialists telling us that State control is a bad thing in the case of Justin Carter. The solution? Even more State control. You can’t make up this stuff.
8:54 am on August 18, 2013
