WHITE COLLAR WHAT?

When the criminologist does address himself to the nature of crime, he does so with shallow, unoriginal eyes, reporting crime statistics, not types of crime.  The American National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1976) pored over a mass of crime, the bulk of it clearly political, but made no comment on the political nature of most crime in America.

"In the United States, as in many places and times, people are inured to the threat of political violence as a normal part of daily life (Schafer 8).  This numbness is not for lack of concern.  Public opinion on President Kennedy's assassination provides a model.  According to the Washington Post, eighty-six percent of the American people believe Kennedy's murder to have been the result of a conspiracy.  The forlorn hope that ensuing  administrations may be willing and able to find the murderers has provided the impetus for several official inquiries subsequent to the Warren Commission..

In the face of this public concern, the American government drags its feet for a half of a century, and waxes metaphysical on the subject in the manner of their European brothers, whose present, philosophical view of political crime is that it is [...]best left to "long-cycle historical analysis in the 25^th century (Schafer 10).  Meanwhile, the voting public is treated to the view of a seemingly permanent "war on crime" where lesser criminals are pursued through the social underbrush as if their petty crimes might bring the government down.  Thomas Jefferson distinguished between ordinary criminals and "those pursued by tyrannical laws" (Schafer 9).  George Bush did not.  Violent crimes - rapes, murders, and some robberies - spray blood.  They divert attention from white collar crime, which is less dramatic.  It merely absorbs money.  The average citizen, and certainly the media, distinguish between gunplay in a carry-out and secret manipulation of economic data.  The first is lethal; the second seems not to be, but "violence usually accompanies political crime"  (Schafer 11), whether the violence is direct, as demonstrated by the JFK assassination, or indirect, in the form of all the lives ruined by the failure of an increasing number of large financial systems.

                                                                       -- Michael Zempter

                                                                           excerpt from The Guarded Moment

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