people have a much more emotional and almost animal reaction to the notion of justice. People can tell when they're getting a raw deal. Game theory experiments have proven that people are willing to sacrifice personal gain just to enforce a sense of justice when the other player is perceived to be taking advantage of them. It is this same emotional dynamic that is leading people to camp out in the cold at Occupy sites all across America.
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One doesn't always have to be able to express coherently why or how one is getting screwed to know one is getting screwed. People get that the social order has broken down to the point that accountability is only for the little people anymore. Tea Partiers understand this, though they blame entirely the wrong people, and their Objectivist authoritarian mindset means that they are incapable of being any kind of assistance in solving the problems that got us here. But they do have a legitimate sense that society is out of kilter, and that accountability for elites is a thing of the past. Protesters in the Occupy movement also understand that justice is not being done, even if each person has their own sense of exactly what those injustices look like.
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Gnawing, unresolved injustice eats away at societies. Ritual cleansings have been part of human organizations for millennia to resolve just this very issue.
When major injustices have been committed, the public will continue to be agitated until they see some sort of resolution that involves accountability for those involved. Politically, that has taken the form of consecutive wave elections that make no rational sense politically, but do make sense emotionally.People are only going to get more and more angry until they start to see some justice. Remarkably, though, our elites don't even seem to get the idea that there were even misdeeds that require any accountability. That's a recipe for increased acrimony and conflict. If bipartisan fetishists and various pearl clutchers want more public unity and less fractious political discourse, they should start looking into how to satisfy the public's yearning to see justice done to those who continue profit at their expense.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/justice-by-david-atkins.html
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