Breaking the law

My first job was at a fast food joint slinging burgers and fries. I usually was one of the lucky ones who had to close the store. This appealed to my autonomous nature since the manager was too busy with paperwork to get in my hair. However, a little bit more oversight was called for since most of the guys that closed with me would smoke a little wacky-tobacky while standing on the stainless steel counters with their heads up in the exhaust hood. They all drove souped-up Chevelles and we listened to Judas Priest blaring on their boom boxes while we were closing down the store.

Despite this metal-rock indoctrination and influence, I didn't end up turning to a life of crime or drugs or even buying alcohol when I was underage. I've never joined a terrorist organization. It really makes me wonder what influences Kathleen Soliah, aka Sarah Jane Olson, was exposed to that made her land so far afield. Maybe if I'd have listened to Kiss or Metallica I would understand better.

The problem with Ms. Soliah is that she is unrepentant. Not just unrepentant, but defiant. She was angry, hostile and antagonistic every time we saw her on TV. Then 9-11 happened and the country was reminded just how hideous her crimes were.

Her friends came out to support her and claimed she was a model citizen. The small problem was these people had left the radical days of the 60s and 70s in the past. Ms. Soliah seemed to fit into mainstream upper-class life, but it was clear she was one person who hadn't moved beyond the extreme notions she had held decades earlier. Appearances be damned -- criminals don't stand on street corners with signs around their necks. No, some live among us, look like us, work where we do and go to the same PTA meetings. Just because she hasn't held a gun to anyone's head in the last 20 years doesn't exonerate her of her crimes.

That being said, I'm very much for mercy and leniency. I'm not one who supports the death penalty. However, the clincher for me is her unwillingness to see what she had done was wrong. It was evil. As a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, she was complicit in a murder and a slew of other appalling crimes.

It was solely by the grace of God that the bombs planted under a police car did not go off. Soliah said at her hearing, "I want to make it clear, Your Honor, that I did not make that bomb. I did not possess that bomb. I did not plant that bomb. But under the concept of aiding and abetting, I plead guilty."

I think she misses the concept. What happened to, "I'm incredibly sorry for attempting to murder innocent people."

Oh, and then there's the murder of Myrna Opsahl in the Carmichael Bank robbery. Guess the SLA notion of "a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body" was a platitude they never quite figured out how to put into practice because they were too busy robbing, planting bombs and shooting people.

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There I was completely wasting, out of work and down
All inside it's so frustrating as I drift from town to town
Feel as though nobody cares if I live or die
So I might as well begin to put some action in my life

Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law
Breaking the law, breaking the law

So much for the golden future, I can't even start
I've had every promise broken, there's anger in my heart
You don't know what it's like, you don't have a clue
If you did you'd find yourselves doing the same thing too
- Judas Priest - Breaking the Law