ICE is out in force again, dragging brown bodies out of homes in Los Angeles like it’s some righteous carnival of due process. Another day, another federal theatre production titled Law and Order: Ethnic Cleansing Unit, where men with guns and names like Chad or Hank mistake cruelty for patriotism and paperwork for moral clarity.
Naturally, critics of these raids are now being threatened with that great juridical cudgel: “obstructing justice.” Yes, you heard that right. If you interfere – say, by filming, shouting, refusing to roll over like a good little colonial subject – you are obstructing justice. As though justice were something you could actually put your hands on in the United States without a hazmat suit and a decade of appeals.
Let’s be clear. There is no justice here to obstruct. What you are obstructing is bureaucratic violence wrapped in legal latex. You are obstructing a system that functions like a vending machine for state-sanctioned trauma: insert immigrant, extract ruin.
Justice: The Imaginary Friend of Empire
Ah, “justice.” That hallowed ideal trotted out whenever the state wants to put a boot through your front door. The U.S. has long since traded its Justice for Security Theatre and capitalist choreography. The blindfold is still there, sure – but these days, it’s a branded sleep mask from Lockheed Martin, and the scales are rigged to weigh white tears heavier than brown bodies.
Let’s run through the usual suspects:
- ICE – America’s own domestic Gestapo, but with better PR and significantly worse fashion.
- CBP – Border fetishists whose job seems less about national defence and more about satisfying their Freud-bereft fantasies of control.
- SCOTUS – That great moral weather vane, spinning wildly between “originalist necromancy” and outright lunacy, depending on how recently Thomas and Alito read Leviticus.
- Congress – An assembly of millionaires cosplaying as public servants, holding hearings on “the threat of immigration” while outsourcing their lawn care.
And of course, the President – whichever septuagenarian husk happens to be in office – offers the usual bromides about order, safety, and enforcement, all while the real crimes (you know, the kind involving tax fraud, corporate pollution, or drone strikes) go entirely unmolested.
Can You Obstruct a Simulation?
If you stand in front of a deportation van, are you obstructing justice, or merely interrupting the bureaucratic excretion of empire? It’s the philosophical equivalent of trying to punch a hologram. The system pretends to uphold fairness while routinely violating its own principles, then charges you with “obstruction” when you call out the sleight of hand.
This is not justice. This is kabuki. A ritual. A performance piece sponsored by Raytheon.
A Modest Proposal
Let’s just be honest and rename the charge. Not “Obstruction of Justice”—too ironic, too pompous. Call it what it is: Obstruction of Procedure, Obstruction of Power, or if we’re being especially accurate: Obstruction of the Industrial Deportation Complex™. Hell, add a corporate sponsor while you’re at it:
You are being charged with Obstruction of Justice, Presented by Amazon Web Services.
Because when justice itself is a ghost, when the rule of law has become the rule of lawfare, the real obscenity is pretending any of this is noble.
Final Thought
So no, dear reader, you’re not obstructing justice. You’re obstructing a machine that mistakes itself for a moral order. And if you’re going to obstruct something, make it that.
Philosophics 