Legal, Illegal, Crime, Corruption: Let's Connect the Dots

This is a departure from the norm of late... but in light of the Panama Papers...

Here goes...

Legal, Illegal, Crime, Corruption: Let's Connect the Dots

or

Making Sense of the Panama Papers

The legal and illegal worlds are connected by crime and corruption.

What?

The hooker on the corner and the executive in the corner office are connected.

Not via nebulous far-fetched conspiracy theories. Nor via suspect scandals of entrapment.

Rather:

The illegal world operates in the legal world - by masking crime (and criminal enterprises) - as legal.

How?

Corruption.

The illegal world exploits corruption.

Corruption is the actuation - of avarice and greed - in the legal world.

With two critical caveats.

Caveat 1:

Not all corruption is willing. Not all crime is willing.

What?

Death or death.

When any kind is faced with two options, death or death, can we blame any kind for choosing life?

Life or death.

When any kind is faced with two options, save a life or commit a sin, can we blame any kind for choosing not to pull the trigger on a handgun pressed to the head of a loved one?

Invisible coercion.

When any kind is subject, to real or imagined threats of harm to self or loved ones, can we blame any kind for choosing what feels safest (and least deadly)?

Desperation.

When any kind is embroiled in a web of crime and corruption, can we blame any kind for choosing to do whatever it takes to survive another day?

Justice.

When heroes rescue the suffering and the oppressed, can we blame them for employing any non-lethal means necessary, to save lives?

NB: In no way whatsoever do I (nor anyone of sound mind) condone vigilantism. For no kind is perfect and infallible - capable of wielding the sword and hammer of justice - without error or fault. Period.

Etc.

Caveat 2:

Not all corruption is inexpiable. Not all crime is inexpiable. 

What?

Context.

When the context is - Death or death - Life or death - Invisible coercion - Desperation - Justice - etc. - is it not possible to empower mercy, compassion, understanding, rather than reprisal, retaliation, retribution?

Alternatively, when the context is the recklessly unadulterated pursuit of more wealth, more power, more influence via the unconscionably relentless exploitation of any and all kind - is not justice, the answer?

Lastly...

As with Cycles of Relational Violence, demarcating agents of corruption and agents of crime, into inflexible categories of criminals and victims, conflates and confounds the complex realities of cycles that have thrived since time immemorial:

Cycles of crime and corruption are extraordinarily perplex moving targets, with many moving parts, that include many influencing factors and many contributing components, that result in infinite permutations of cycles (of crime and corruption). 

Including role reversals. 

For a perpetrator of corruption and crime in one cycle, may be a target of crime and corruption in another. While a target of crime and corruption in one cycle, may be perpetrator of corruption and crime in another. For that which scaffolds cycles of crime and corruption, perpetuates both criminalship and victimship.

Indeed, despite relying on the lens of inflexible labels and labels alone, with which to examine cycles of crime and corruption (i.e. criminalship, victimship, etc.), the persistently intractable use of such a myopically limited strategy fails to resolve (much less cease altogether) that which scaffolds cycles of corruption and crime within which all agents and targets and criminals and victims operate. 

Ultimately, there is no neat fix to cycles of crime and corruption (especially with respect to the caveats above), that begins and ends with ignorance. (See also: Cycles of Relational Violence.) 

Moreover, with regards to legality and illegality...

That which is legal and illegal are determined by institutions, such that, that which is defined as legal and legal, are arbitrarily defined as such, by processes susceptible to coercion, manipulation, and other tactics of corruption. Notwithstanding, that issues of legality and illegality do not possess weight to bear on every intersection of cycles of crime and corruption.

For example: not all actions committed by criminal enterprises are illegal. However, to the extent that legal actions committed by criminal enterprises may be essential to the core business of criminal enterprises, it's important to recognize that the absence of visible illegality, does not in any way whatsoever assure the admirable legitimacy of criminal enterprises. No more than the absence of visible illegality amongst non-criminal institutions that commit immoral but not illegal actions, assures the admirable respectability of non-criminal institutions.

In the end...

Grey areas exist with regards to legality and illegality and crime and corruption, because human behaviors exist within grey areas that are no more black and white than all human behaviors, including corruption, crime, illegality, legality, etc.

Needless to say...

This post is but a cursory exploration of that which connects the dots between the intersections of crime and corruption and legality and illegality. Nevertheless, let's not underestimate the value of the Panama Papers, even if it illuminates but one lens of the kaleidoscope. For if we are to see the truth...

It behooves us to look.

Addendum

To be sure, truth and untruth, reality and unreality, exist side by side. But... when efforts to expose untruth and unreality overwhelm truth and reality... how is this effort actually different than silencing truth telling?

For when the truth and reality is as incredible as that which is revealed by the Panama Papers... are not those who seek to overshadow the truth and reality with attacks that aggrandize untruth and unreality... propagating zealotry and fanaticism?

Let me be crystal clear:

The truths illuminated by the Panama Papers are vital to the truths of all kind.

The realities exposed by the Panama Papers are vital to the realities of all kind.

Agendas that silence these truths and realities are indefensible. Period.

(more re: the war on truth telling (by a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, no less))

More

Lest the illumination and exposure of truths and realities devolve into totalitarian absolutism and catastrophic polemics -

Let us not forget that no one of us is defined by the most wretched of our sins. For within all kind lurks that which shames us all - imperfection and fallibility. Let no one of us deem our selves perfect and infallible - capable of wielding the sword and hammer of justice - without error or fault.

Indeed:

Justice without love, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion - is tyranny.

(more: Justice for Wrecking Balls)

Note (I)

Modified from MG (page):

The justification, rationalization and legitimization of superiority, narcissism, perversion, and corruption rife within dimestore aphorisms of

'don't trample on my rights: it's my money; I earned it, all of it, all by myself; therefore I can do whatever I want with it, because I'm entitled to it all; I have a right to refuse to pay for the social contract of the community of all kind, because I don't want to pay for it; instead, I'd rather pay for a mansion, a jet, an island, for me, myself, because I deserve it all; etc.'

reflects the relentlessly myopic mercilessness of human depravity. That any kind fail to recognize or appreciate the cost to so many kind - to achieve that which is lauded so highly in our granverse (see above) - is a degree of moral destitution all too virulently endemic among sycophants of the New Altar of Worship.

Moreover, crats (i.e. aristocrats, plutocrats, autocrats, technocrats, etc.) at the helm of the apex of political, corporate, institutional, and technological systems, who embrace such credos of the self-serving indulgent, rarely recognize such blatant actuations of conceit as self-idolatry at the New Altar of Worship; for indeed, such crats enthusiastically sacrifice and tirelessly exploit any and all kind to satisfy wantonly bloated megalomania and rampantly unbridled avarice.

Verily, when such crats achieve exaltation - be it power, wealth, influence, etc. - by pilfering, pillaging, ravaging, and defrauding the hearts, souls, minds, bodies of any and all kind - at what point will all kind eschew sychophantism for justice for all kind?

(more re: crats @ Broken; more re: rights @ The Pen and The Sword I)

Note (II)

Corruption is the actuation - of avarice and greed - in the legal world.

How - exactly?

(1) How the morally bankrupt and indisputably corrupt - become more wealthy, powerful, and influential - by exploiting processes that are susceptible to coercion, manipulation, pressure, etc. - by (among other tactics) financing the elections of lawmakers and devising policies that arbitrarily determine what is legal and what is illegal:

This: Corruption Is Legal in America (@ YouTube)

Leads to this: Why Are Americans Not Included in the Panama Papers? (@ NBC)

(2) How the morally bankrupt and indisputably corrupt - become more wealthy, powerful, and influential - by exploiting the differentiation between immoral and illegal - by (among other tactics) deliberately crafting a financial house of cards and then ruthlessly betting on its subsequent (and predicted) collapse:

The Big Short (@ IMDb, @ Wiki)

(3) etc.

'Oh, what a terrible web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!'

from 'Marmion' by Sir Walter Scott (@ Project Gutenberg, @ Wiki)