The Trial of the Century

All right, maybe not the century. But at least the trial of the week.

Here’s the thing. You can rant and rave all you want about various aspects of the Nov-Dec topic, but at its core it asks the question if, under certain circumstances, murder in self-defense is justified. As I’ve said before, probably most of the jawing will be about the circumstances, and that may be okay, but if you can get past the circumstances, you still have to answer the question, is this murder justified? It’s like capital punishment. People ran all sorts of stuff, and recidivism inevitably faced off against executed innocents, but if you could get past that, you still had to answer the question, is CP right or wrong on a moral level? With domestic violence, I can fairly easily paint a picture where the abuse is beyond acceptability, and there are no alternatives. Still, is deadly force a morally correct action (which is a higher plane than a legally acceptable action, although legally acceptable may be enough to satisfy the test of justness) in this situation? That’s the question I will set out to answer next week, at the trial of the century.

Tonight we’ll jaw about this and that, including more details about the new rez. (And I feel so sorry for the novices, having to bounce immediately from Sept-Oct to Nov-Dec, a plight that would have been ameliorated by the Modest Novice. One forgets how wrenching it is to barely understand one topic before hitting another one; Modest Novice would have made the move after Thanksgiving. If I were going to remain a member of the NFL, a dubious proposition given our Red Light District status, I might make a higher level push for this.) After everyone has gotten the rez at least vaguely understood, I’m going to set up a mock trial for next week. We will have a victim accused of deadly force on trial for murder. We will make that victim the perfect example of what this topic suggests is the necessary situation for the action: she’ll be relatively poor and uneducated, living in a fairly remote area, firmly convinced that no alternatives exist. We will have a defender and a prosecutor, and the novices will be the jury. I’m still working on a witness list. It should be most interesting.

Of course, that same night we need to have a Bump team meeting first. Aaarrggh. I envy Monticello, with their tournament behind them. O’C is pinballing around for his this week. I entered his LD data last night, except for the judges. He wants me to name the thing “The New York City Invitational” on all the schematics and stuff. I want to call it “Big Jake,” or maybe the “Please Make Me A Quarters Bid, JW.” Word on the street, of course, is that he is flying in judges, which my team finds most impressive. Hell, I’m flying in Emcee (except, of course, he’s paying for it). I mean, in this day and age, who the hell wants to get on an airplane? You can’t have a drink of water, they make you stow your computer in the hold because they’re afraid its battery will blow up, and nine times out of ten some loud-mouthed lunatic sitting next to you starts ranting and raving and the next thing you know your flight has been diverted to Tempe, Arizona. Me, I’m bussing the judges in, courtesy of the Lexwegians. You never hear of anyone misbehaving on a bus…much. On the other hand, I’ll be flying myself out of town for Bump. I can’t imagine a better place for a tournament director to be than somewhere else while the event is going on. Peace, blessed peace. Amen to that, brother.