Kiera Wilmot

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2013/04/florida_teen_girl_charged_with.php

When I first read this story, I was horrified. But, learning from various other cases, I resolved to wait a full 24 hours before reaching judgment. I thought the story worthy of posting in the interim, but didn't sign any petitions or write any letters. After all, sometimes there is some additional evidence that comes out that, in retrospect, justifies the decisions by law enforcement.

I just read the publication date of the article. It's six days old.

And needless to say, I'm livid.

Some have tried to make this case about race. It may or may not be about that, and I don't think race needs to be a factor at all to feel passionately about this. But I understand if some people view this case through the lens of race.

And it'd be easy -- perhaps easier for me -- to make this about the science culture wars. After all, given the recent noise from Lamar Smith (R-TX), current chair of the House Science Committee, about making political oversight the determining factor for NSF grants, it's clear that one political party (you get two guesses) has adopted a pretty anti-science position, even as it seeks minority opinion to try to make settled issues appear somewhat unsettled. I hope to hell she does get into a good program that gives her the opportunity to get a great science education; she has more native curiosity about science than I did at her age, and if I was good enough to get an NSF fellowship, she probably will be, too. (Who knows? She might even complete her PhD, unlike yours truly.)

But it's not about either of this. This is about childhood, and about America.

It's about whether we, as a country, are so paranoid of our own youth that we can't exercise judgment and come up with proportionate punishment.

Maybe this would've been different if the Boston Marathon bombings hadn't happened. Maybe many are still a bit paranoid about the potential for young people to inflict mass casualties using relatively simple devices. Maybe we've gotten so used to hearing stories of heinous crimes committed by younger, and younger people that it's only natural we've begun criminalizing the young.

Maybe we've become a nation of cowards.

I believe in an America that can't be defeated by one bomb, or a hundred, or a thousand. I believe in an America where our native, sometimes sickeningly naive optimism triumphs over the paranoia and cowardice that are invitations to unchecked power.

Have we become so weak, so pathetic as a country that a little bang on the field is enough to bring down the security apparatus of the state?

If so, we deserve the horrors of the worst paranoid fears realized, for we are no longer a nation worth defending.

You have a 16-year old young person, who happens to be black, happens to be female, happens to be bright, curious, and, by all accounts, a good person. She is now facing two felony charges for something that appears on Youtube, for combining very, very common items.

Did she display a lapse in judgment? Sure. I don't know the details yet about the amount of reactants used, but I suppose she could've seriously injured her eye if the ejected bottle top had hit her in the face. I'm also curious why she didn't get permission from her teacher, and who the mysterious friend is that allegedly told her to do it.

A 16-year old's judgment could be worse. We're complaining about a 16-year old girl who would do a science experiment to impress a friend. There are 16-year old girls who spread their legs to impress someone. Or do drugs. Or break into a house.

Was it uncommon? No.

At my college, we used to blow up things, like, oh, large weather balloons filled with flammable material. Those were stopped before my time. But someone did try to detonate an ice block with thermite once. Yeah, there was some trouble about it, but it was all resolved without a felony charge. And I think there were occasional magnesium fires in the courtyard. All of these were more dangerous than the poof generated by aluminum and toilet bowl cleaner, outdoors, in an uncrowded field.

Was it criminal? I hope not.

It's pretty much impossible to write a good law that covers all possible cases. That's why law is evolving, dynamic, and imperfect. Maybe she did technically break the law (though it's not at all obvious from what I read). But if so, does it make sense to charge her with felony counts?

The whole reason we have a trial by jury, DAs, and judges is that there is, and ought to be, some leeway regarding which cases to bring to trial, which cases merit a guilty verdict, and, even in those cases, some level of judgment regarding sentencing.

I have not seen any of those fine aspects of jurisprudence on display in the last week. What I do see is half-hearted excuses by weak individuals unwilling (with the exception of the school's principal) to stand up and say, this is wrong. We are not doing right by her. We are not doing right by all of the youth we regard, by default, as threats.

I'm disgusted, and will sign petitions, and write letters, and contribute to her legal defense fund. Also, I'll encourage Harvey Mudd College, recently recognized for its success in growing its female student body, to start sending her application materials.

Could something come up in the next few days that will leave egg on my face? Sure. Then I'm sure some people will mock me for running to defend someone not worth defending. Bullshit. I'll choose the promise of youth over the cynicism of the old every day, any day. And if that means I'm wrong occasionally, so be it.

But it looks pretty damn ridiculous right now. Florida has definitely demonstrated some high profile madness in a number of criminal cases in recent years. Here's hoping they get this one right, and let her get back to school soon.

All politics is local

International legitimacy matters less (or more) than you think, depending on your professional, personal, and sociohistoricultural background-induced biases.

It matters less than you think, if you think as most intellectuals do, viewing the system-wide interactions of the pilotless, rudderless international system.

Those who use Occam's razor to argue that there is no God would find a similar line of argument that concludes that belief in an "invisible hand" is likewise irrational.

Most of us don't give a flying flip about the international legitimacy. Those who care about it tremendously tend to be in self-imposed intellectual and cultural - if not physical - exile from their countrymen, depending upon some intangible and poorly quantifiable form of recognition and validation from abroad to confirm their superiority (real or imagined). It may also fend off whatever residual nationalism/tribalism that resides in the subconscious, that which whispers in the spaces of the night words like 'fifth column', 'Judas', 'Benedict Arnold', 'traitor to the race', etc.

Subprime

To the subprime lenders -

I have just one thing to say: you knew what you were doing.

It doesn't matter that it was company policy. It doesn't matter that incentives to sell higher interest loans directly impacted your take-home pay. It doesn't matter that the relatively simple algorithms for calculating the fitness of a prospective borrower are buried behind pastel GUIs, such that you, dear agent, do not have to crunch the numbers yourself.

You knew what you were doing.

It doesn't matter that you would have lost your job, or been denied promotion had you questioned company policy, or that your boss' boss' boss would have illustrated to you the time-tested truth that shit does roll downhill, and that, by god, it could become a brown avalanche by the time it landed on your desk if you failed to do your job.

You knew what you were doing.

And because you knew, you must now know that in the final account, you bear responsibility.

I don't really care if you hide behind Ricardian economics to explain why all the good, easy money has already been made, resulting in the need for complex debt instruments in order for you and your firm to make a buck. I don't really care if you in fact helped some customers buy homes that they would not have otherwise been able to purchase. And I especially don't care that caveat emptor is a logical result of evolutionary biology, and that dog eat dog is simply the nature of things.

I don't even care that, rightly, a lot of people were damn stupid to think that citizenship entitled them to ownership, and that a house defined who they were so badly that they were willing to ignore basic arithmetic, and that I, like you, are pissed as hell that we're going to chip in to pay for some shithead dealings.

You knew what you were doing, and no rationalization will hide that. No matter how small the part you played, you were directly responsible.

I don't claim moral superiority over you - through my incompetence, I am in my own way defrauding the taxpayer. I am reneging upon two generations of admirable ancestry by failing, at the critical moment, to take command of myself, responsibility and ownership of myself, to do what must be done. God knows I've enough sins to send me straight to the hot seat, among which are possession of investments which, directly or indirectly, contribute to the credit crunch.

But I want to know that I'll save you a seat on the bus, the Good Intentions Express, right next to me.

America is what it is, good, bad, or indifferent, because of the ability for most of us to push aside personal responsibility, to be led admirably by those who embrace it and honor, tyrannized by those who embrace it and selfishness. But ownership of one's actions, thoughts, and words is the prerequisite for leadership, perhaps the prerequisite for humanity.

So you have a choice, friends. Admit that you are no more than cogs of an elaborate, magnificent, and fundamentally unhealthy clockwork piece of questionable but not decisively negative value to humanity's progress. Or, admit your failure to commit to the principles of honor, integrity, and good faith that are the bedrock of the American enterprise, in idea if not in fact.

Either way, i, and others like me, will not permit you the complacence of ambiguity, the somnambulant reprieve from the blistering attempts to reconcile who you think you are, to get at the core of who you really are. Vivisect your false self, yo.

Welcome to my hell.


On the brighter side of things, check out this delightful website: http://www.predatorylendingassociation.com/