Justice is as justice does

Spring has finally sprung. While others rejoice in the warmth of the sun, my thoughts have been in darker places. 

There’s so much evil in the world, so little justice. I thought I’d work out my gloom by suggesting some ideal punishments for perpetrators of cruelty and injustice. Hey, it’s cheaper than going to a shrink.

Don’t be shocked. When it comes to crime and evil, I’m no liberal. I’m more like Madame Defarge, who cried: “Tell the wind and the fire where to stop, not me!”

The trigger for my depression was the alarming number of bodies — mostly women’s bodies — that showed up again this spring in Wisconsin rivers, cornfields, ditches and burn pits. I say anyone who mutilates and murders a woman and discards her body should face punishment that matches the crime in every gruesome detail. Some crimes are unforgivable, some criminals irredeemable.

Christina Huth of the Crazy 8s roller-derby team survived being shot in the chest by an armed robber in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood last year. Huth, whose moniker is “Sin N’ Innocence,” is finally back on her skates but the authorities have not apprehended her assailant.

When police do find the thug, I think he should face justice from the entire Brewcity Bruisers Roller Derby League. Put him on skates and see if he can survive a few jams with the Bruisers. What a show that would be!

Poetic justice for conservatives who want to cut food stamps and oppose an increase in the minimum wage is obvious. Force them to live on food stamps and the current minimum wage for a year. They wouldn’t last one month.

Why this meanness about denying our fellow citizens food and a fair wage to support themselves and their families? Aren’t health and employment basic requirements for a stable society? We have billions for arms and private interest subsidies but not for our neighbors? What’s that about? Beware those who want to divide us.

In another divisive move, Milwaukee’s Southridge Mall has restricted public buses from its massive parking lot, forcing poor, elderly and disabled people to negotiate a dangerous 1,000-foot route from the bordering streets. How backward and insensitive can you be? Exclusion is not the way to do business in the 21st century. 

I hope that Southridge’s owners develop temporary disabilities that will give them a reality check and a chance to develop some empathy. I encourage Southridge customers to join the growing boycott and let management know you are shopping elsewhere. This is a local justice issue on which you can really have an impact.

To global warming deniers, who are mostly wealthy corporate tycoons, and their paid media lapdogs, I hereby channel my inner Moses: May your beach properties be inundated by the seas; may your corporate farmlands shrivel in the heat; may you have no water to drink except that fouled by your own pollution.

Finally, to Boko Haram, the Taliban and other fiends who enslave and kill little girls because they don’t want girls educated and they hate Western culture: May you be imprisoned and tortured for life, forced to watch a blaring, unending video loop of Queen Elsa belting the girl-power anthem “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen, a movie which celebrates the Western values of freedom, respect for differences and everyone’s right to a fabulous makeover.

Ah, sweet justice.