Anna Marie Barry-Jester at 538 tries to tell us what went wrong in Flint. She doesn't get very far, it seems to me. Yes, she chronicles how responsible officials ignored and belittled citizen complaints, and cooked the books on testing the water. But she doesn't explain why they did this, and she doesn't go more than two links up the chain, either, pretty much sticking to the actions of flunkies.
I'm not going to speculate about where the true responsibility lies here -- apparently the FBI is on the case and maybe they'll make some headway through the zone of plausible deniability. But the fact is, this is a crime so vast, and so horrific, it's difficult for the mind to encompass. People get 20 years for armed robbery and life in prison or the needle for murdering one person. But I will be very surprised if anybody even pays a fine for poisoning an entire city, damaging the brains of thousands of children, diminishing their prospects, and shortening their lives.
Our conception of justice is horribly distorted.
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2 comments:
Nothing I can really add to that.
There is a quote etched on the Kennedy Center (one quote among many) that reads something like this: "This country cannot afford to be materially rich but spiritually poor." Seems to me we've achieved poverty on each front. Especially the second one.
Well, to be more precise the country is materially rich but a few people are hogging it all.
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