The Price of Pardons

Karla Homolka will soon be eligible for a pardon.

* * *

It's a hell of a price for Canadian society to pay in order for the guilt-ridden do-gooders among us to assuage their heavy, sweltering collective conscience by tolerating this travesty of a pardon system in Canada.

I mean, the world is so rough, so harsh, so uncompromising on those who aren't born with the privilege of attending Upper Canada College, or having their year in Europe before taking their scholarships and degrees and foundation financed chairs; ensconced by their trust funds and tenure; enjoying summers on the lake.

And all the weighty, weighty responsibility that comes with such privilege.

For the proles reared amid the gray dungeon walls of tenements, eating hamburgers fried in lard on slices of Wonder Bread, what recourse is there? As their drunken father and prostitute mother argue loudly and profanely right in front of the children with no regard for propriety, or with any semblance of dignity.

For those who chew with their mouths open and say "ain't" and "irregardless."

Who'll grow up to drink beer.

For whom the highest aspiration imaginable would be working through a technical college, learning a trade, possibly horticulture, and by the grace of the Dominion of Canada, attain a position tending a gentleman's estate.

But, who would more likely impregnate the high school harlot he calls his girlfriend -- that, the first in a whole litter of proles -- and end up working in some dark, Dickensian factory of dread and despair.

So, who could begrudge such a wretched creature if he steals a few pennies for a bottle of stout, or is caught crossing the crosswalk against the light on his way home after the midnight shift?

Who, really, could hold it against the bent and stooped brute if, in a fit class-crystallized angst, he stole a gentleman's motorcar, or manhandled one of his drinking partners at the hotel, or skipped out on the cheque at a lunchcounter?

What mean-spirited, embracer of unfairness could hold this against him?

I mean, the pathetic pilgarlic is barely more man than beast, boiling alive in an inner cauldron of envy and lust and inarticulate rage against a world that uses him in such base and numbered and dehumanizing ways.

So, if that man sets fire to his tenement, who could blame him?

If that tortured, simple soul had his way with his neighbor's wife while in the fog of drunkenness, who could hold it against him?

If he struck his villainous landlord across the face, and sent the blackguard crashing down a flight of stairs, killing the money-grubber, who -- who in the name of the British Empire and its eternal devotion to fair play -- could blame the man?

Who?

O, some arrogant, avaricious conservative might! Those who've traded their bowlers for golf shirts and their canes for putters. Those rotten, soulless bastards who exploit the righteous, ignorant, hopeless workingman's sweat for their own selfish gain. Who are too smart to toil in factories, or on the grounds of gentlemen's estates. The Fortune 500 Philistine!

But luckily, praise the crown of Queen Elizabeth II, that we have enlightened, manicured humanists among us -- soft as boiled chickens, with souls like polished pebbles -- whose hearts are veritable volcanoes of compassion, erupting with the rich, dark blood of love for the proles!

These enlightened, jelly-spined benefactors of the proles! Although they only really know of the proles from lectures and grainy photographs in their sociology textbooks, or through anecdotes of aged, seasoned humanists who might have spent a missionary season among rough-handed workmen, millers, smiths and tanners. Still, they love the proles, and hold them up as contemporary noble savages.

These dew-eyed benefactors, who peer upon the idea of the pitiful prole felon -- the harshly judged "murderer," the much maligned "molester," the misunderstood wife abuser, the introverted arsonist -- as St. Francis of Assisi would look upon a garden grub.

* * *

The arrogance of Canadian elites cannot be exaggerated.

Since their rarefied lives, and those of their families, never come within a hectare or even a furlong of those who rape, steal, murder and molest, it is ever so easy for them to pardon miscreants whom they only know from files, textbooks and pedantic appraisals of progress.

After all, what is a murderer but one whose mischief got a little bit away from him.

I can hear one of the humanist harrumphers intone in his haughty, faux British accent, "So, you'd prefer that all offenders be locked up forever and that society throw away the key?"

If you murder, yes. If you're a child molester, most certainly! If you commit rape, of course. If you exhibit habitually reckless behavior -- i.e. repeat, unrepentant drunk driver -- and you cause bodily harm or death to another citizen, you're goddamned right.

But the dew-eyed St. Francises of Canada banded together decades ago and granted upon themselves the duties of deities: they would pronounce judgments to rehabilitate "offenders." They would impose sentences that would alter the bold behavior of roustabouts.

Hence, Canada now has a judicial system that sees itself more as a personality spa to the violent, the depraved, the incorrigible, the malevolent, the criminal. So we hear of sentences to murderers and pederasts, rapists, wife abusers, arsonists and child pornographers that range from one harvest season in a penitentiary, to house arrest.

Because everyone knows, the most important people in society are those who do not respect its laws! That's Canadian Law 101.

What's Canadian Law 404? Abracadabra, presto disappear-o: do your time for your crime and after five years there's no more crime.

It's almost like William Blake wrote that.

As if the weak-kneed, misguided, do-gooder-poisoned judicial system wasn't already completely defanged, castrated, disarmed and virtually moot, the St. Francis of Assisis, whose maple leaf pillowcased pillows are drenched with unending tears for the misunderstood embezzler, the put-upon drug dealer, the frowned-upon child abuser, the vilified bank robber -- they give us the pardon system.

"Well," the harrumpher intones, "there's a process involved! A pardon's not a sure-thing by any stretch! No, no, the doctrine of fair play cuts both ways, you know. Not everyone who applies for a pardon gets one!"

That is true. Only 99 percent of pardon applicants are granted their pardons.

The deities of Upper Canada College would take every miscreant's sins -- though they be as scarlet -- and make them as white as snow.

Congratulations child molester James Graham, you're pardoned! You and 99 percent of post-prison criminals who apply! Be free! Fly! High may you soar!

Who will soon be on deck to have their sins washed away and blessed by the hand of Canada's judicial deities upon their head?

Karla Homolka!

Gosh, it's not everyday you see a 22 year old serial killer outsmart seasoned investigators and Crown attorneys! Fair play to her getting that "deal with the devil." Isn't there a way to go back in time and have the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal declare it illegal for anyone to speak of Karla's 12 year prison sentence as a "deal with the devil"?

Surely there is a sandaled, pony-tailed physicist wiping tears of compassion from his eyes at this very moment working on the problem.

I suppose the crass and worldly -- and distinctly nonspiritual -- conservative would begrudge Karla her pardon. Some small individual. Someone vengeful person who is utterly without compassion. Someone certainly devoid of inner light, and with absolutely no connection to the Great Spirit that gave us the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta and Barbara Hall.

If -- if by some wretched twist of unforeseen fate, Karla Homolka's pardon is considered for even a micro-second, give it to her. St. Francis of Assisi, show yourself for who you are! Give Karla her fucking pardon!

And then add her name to the short list of candidates for Canada's Governor General.

Because that's where common sense has gone in Canada -- it has disappeared as though it never existed.

"Justice," Richard Pryor once scoffed while talking about his time in prison for tax evasion. "Yeah, it's 'just us,' all right."

And as Lenny Bruce lamented, "The halls of justice. That's where you'll find it -- the justice is in the halls."

Once the criminals of the world learn how lenient Canada is on crime -- throwing in the Happy Meal option of a pardon into the laughing gas mess of Canadian Judas-Prudence -- we will become the Howard Johnson hotel to this planet's most heinous souls.

In fact, I bet it won't be long before the Vatican relocates here, relieved and happy to finally find a haven for its priestly pedophocracy.

Note: I do not support Stephen Harper or have any affiliation or affection or time for the Conservative Party of Canada.