SO FAR I'VE DISCOVERED THAT EVERY IMPLICATION IN IT IS DEPRESSING.
...well, "discovered"; I mean, I knew when I was setting up an economy based on slavery that everything was going to suck. And then I started prodding at psychological effects, like how after seven years Neal does not entirely grok how to make choices for himself any more; or how if someone picks a fight with him he's disinclined to bring up the fight even to the point of, like, getting medical care for a fractured rib, because if something can be construed as a convict on lease assaulting a full citizen, his observations say it will be construed that way, even if the reality was self-defense; or how Neal is intensely uneasy being left unsupervised with Elizabeth for a while, because wow the ways in which you don't want to be left alone with your direct supervisor's wife if there isn't an incontestable body of evidence that you're not trying anything at the ready.
And then at some point, when he's feeling secure enough to have this kind of (potentially interpretable as hostile) conversation with Peter, he asks what a staunch abolitionist is doing in law enforcement, where basically the only sentencing option for most crimes is to shunt people off into the CCCR nightmare. And Peter's answer is more or less that, yeah, this system at times seems irreparably broken, but it's the only one they've got. And when it comes down to it, once a crime's been committed, you have the option of doing wrong by the criminals by subjecting them to a justice system which is patently unfair, or doing wrong by the victims by sparing the criminals the rod. And when it comes down to that, even when it's a great sucking moral mess, he more moral (or less-evil) option is still pretty clear-cut.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-06-22 07:05 pm (UTC)...well, "discovered"; I mean, I knew when I was setting up an economy based on slavery that everything was going to suck. And then I started prodding at psychological effects, like how after seven years Neal does not entirely grok how to make choices for himself any more; or how if someone picks a fight with him he's disinclined to bring up the fight even to the point of, like, getting medical care for a fractured rib, because if something can be construed as a convict on lease assaulting a full citizen, his observations say it will be construed that way, even if the reality was self-defense; or how Neal is intensely uneasy being left unsupervised with Elizabeth for a while, because wow the ways in which you don't want to be left alone with your direct supervisor's wife if there isn't an incontestable body of evidence that you're not trying anything at the ready.
And then at some point, when he's feeling secure enough to have this kind of (potentially interpretable as hostile) conversation with Peter, he asks what a staunch abolitionist is doing in law enforcement, where basically the only sentencing option for most crimes is to shunt people off into the CCCR nightmare. And Peter's answer is more or less that, yeah, this system at times seems irreparably broken, but it's the only one they've got. And when it comes down to it, once a crime's been committed, you have the option of doing wrong by the criminals by subjecting them to a justice system which is patently unfair, or doing wrong by the victims by sparing the criminals the rod. And when it comes down to that, even when it's a great sucking moral mess, he more moral (or less-evil) option is still pretty clear-cut.