Yes, they applaud unknown motives; living like that comes easy, detached from it all. The grand masterpiece is having turned yourself into judge, jury, and executioner. All without achieving it yourself—a gift from heaven you never asked for, but embraced with pleasure and rage, wielding the accidental privilege of citizenship.
Nobody fights for anything.
The problem with applauding a faceless machine is that you end up advocating for your own guillotine, one that bears no name and is so indifferent that justice itself—as philosophy and theory—is just an ornament, a sort of theoretical framework for the deluded and the junkies.
This isn’t about supporting crime or anything like that; it’s about redirecting the conversation: power exercised by humans against humans. Careful. Because poverty and stupidity spare no one. In either case, you will suffer your own applause.
BEHIND THE APPLAUSE
Inadequate solutions are born from common, enslaved mouths. Oblivion as a premonition and any random voice becomes fuel. A regular guy, a regular woman, regular old folks—they beg for death, for bombs. To bring down a building with all the inmates inside.
“Nothing of value is lost.” “They’re in there for a reason.” “They deserve it.”
Blind trust. Power feeds on its own excitement; it gives you what you want. But for justice, the fact that you applaud without context or proof means one thing: “the ends justify the means.”
Often, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time is enough to land you in prison. Having nothing in your wallet increases the odds. There are thousands of innocent people behind bars in this country. It’s not about being stupid; it’s about understanding how the judicial machine operates. Prosecutors love to lock people up without hesitation; the entire premise of a case is just that: an assumption (in the cases of the innocent).
But how can someone imagine actions and motives so completely that they harden into accusations against the innocent? How does a rich man imagine where a poor man eats, where he shits, and how he sleeps? What does his soul dream of, and what assumption locks him up?
Foucault suggested that a “certain” soul managed to materialize into flesh, and justice is addicted to that kind of soul, to the point of needing to fabricate cases. It is also important to ask where the applauders’ desire for revenge comes from, reaching the madness of not distinguishing the innocent from the guilty.
The history of the evolution of power manages to turn you into the victim; the debt is owed to society—it is owed to you, the decent citizen. Seeing this, a double-edged trap emerges. On one hand, whether you are innocent or guilty, your debt is to everyone, and since society is the victim, it is that infinite mass of people who begin to judge you.
It seems that strangers to both the victim and the perpetrator are the ones who hold the right and privilege of forgiveness. On the other hand, by generalizing, there is the danger of granting an absolution, but beware, this move is calculated.
Since the one who condemns is society (in that risk of judicial self-absolution) and not due process, every assumption, every case, and every investigation feels like a mere stage for and by society—delivering a spectacle to the public. Justice turns into a perverse mechanism that needs to give answers to society, rather than objectively determining guilt.
Go on applauding, dear citizen, but don’t forget that if we gamble with your blood, we won’t find purity. Your only shield against the wrong moments is money. Like a raid on a friend’s house. There are no innocents. Our nature is error.
The way this country functions resembles the Nazi machinery of ethnic persecution. The only difference is that it doesn’t exterminate.
I base this on the fact that the condemned is not the only one who suffers in body and soul; their relatives also bear a heavy burden of social condemnation. Even their friends start wondering if they want to remain part of that circle, if it’s the right thing to do, or if it might bring trouble upon themselves. Of course, every dream and soul disappears.
If every conviction weren’t social, perhaps justice would take more time deciding whether to ruin a life or not, whether it’s deserved or not.
Following this model, which carries shades of Nazi Germany, ordinary people don’t know they can be persecuted for almost anything. A deception, a selfish attitude, taking a small advantage, a childhood punishment, an atrocious crime, crossing exactly where you shouldn’t cross, being someone’s neighbor, saying hello, smiling, congratulating a minor, almost insignificant criminal with a handshake—any of it can turn you into the biggest monster on earth for the prosecutor of the moment.
There is no thin line, not even a thick one. Every investigation lacks the intellect required to achieve impartiality, and being in prison or not depends on a moment, a place, and whether you just happened to be there or not—never forgetting money.
Selfishness, cheating, cowardice, and love are our currencies. And I am sure that if any prosecutor had access to the everyday life and privacy of each person, 95% of human civilization would eventually see the inside of a cell over the slightest detail.