by Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts:
A while back I wrote about British female authors of mystery novels during 1920-1940, such as Agatha Christy, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Elspeth Huxley, the last two being colonial British. I noted at the time that even in the case of murder in the novels, those decades as portrayed in the novels were a highly civilized period in England. Readers have let me know that they, also, have found relief from our woeful times in the civilized recent past described in British mystery novels.
As an aside, I cannot help but say that ideological feminists who claim the oppression of women are ignorant beyond belief. Female authors became very wealthy. Their books sold in millions of copies–and not only to women.
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Successful movies were made of the books. At least two and perhaps all four of those mentioned above received national recognition by being named “Dames of the British Empire.” As my friend, Peter Bauer, Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, told me on his elevation to the peerage, Britain has always been a society open to ability. Alas, no more, with merit displaced by race, gender, and sexual preference, the British have returned to the status-based society of the feudal era. Merit is nowhere in sight.
But I am drifting off again into our distressing era. I chose John Grisham as my author for relief from today’s reality, and as soon as I did realized I have made a mistake and have again landed us in distress as John Grisham is one of the most truthful tellers of the utter corruption of our time.
I am going to go forward with it, regardless. But next time the author will be Louis L’Amour, the author of US western frontier stories that certainly are an escape from the present world.
Grisham is everywhere praised for his “storytelling abilities.” But he is not telling stories. He is describing our world. Grisham is thoroughly familiar with the American criminal justice system, and justice is the last thing that it delivers.
In his book, The Runaway Jury, Grisham displays the utter corrupt process of a jury trial. Consultants and lawyers on both sides of the civil trial spend millions of dollars analyzing the jury list, each looking for jurors biased in favor of their side of the conflict. The judge issues questionnaires that indicate which side of the conflict the jurors are on. In other words, there is no supposition whatsoever that jurors will make an honest decision based on the evidence.
Neither the plaintiff lawyers nor the defense regard the “trial” as anything but an attack on money, an effort at redistribution. One side wants the attack to be successful, the other doesn’t.
Grisham impels us to think about trials and juries. What does a juror’s decision mean when it is a consequence of an emotional identification of prejudice with guilt or innocence? What does a “jury of one’s peers” mean in a tower of babel where one’s “peers” have nothing in common with the defendant?
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