“Hell is truth seen too late.”
― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“I for one believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what confronts them and the basic causes that produce it, they’ll create their own program, and when the people create a program, you get action.”
— Malcolm X

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.” – Montesquieu

Someone else for a day? Who would I be? At one time, I think I would have picked someone whose life I’d like to experience. Maybe someone rich but it would have been all about me. Not anymore. Especially if I could only pick one day and that was it. One of my favorite movies is ‘The Cobbler’ and I love the lessons they explored in that story. Power is power, it’s how we use it that matters. If I were to have such an opportunity, I’d have to take it very seriously. There is a chance to do a lot of good in that situation.

But who would I be? It would have to be someone who, by themselves, could create changes that couldn’t be easily taken back or hidden. It would also have to be someone who was part of a system that I was reasonably familiar with and had participants that I recognized. I could choose a foreign leader bent on war but if I didn’t know how to create change, I could make things worse. After all, I would only have one day.

I would choose to be the current head of the Dept of Justice in the United States and I would do a major data dump of every last file, image, and bit of evidence in the Epstein files, redacted, unredacted, all of it. I wouldn’t drop them through official channels solely, I would also make sure that they were scattered around the globe. Redundancy is paramount so that they’re less likely to disappear. It’s probably obvious as to why I would do that. But there’s a reason I would choose her over the big guy. He doesn’t actually do anything. He seems to follow what someone else says to do and then orders his subordinates to implement his demands. She, on the other hand, seems to be hands-on and directly involved. It would be more likely that she would be able to accomplish it in one day.

It’s a tough call on this one. I’d love to see the invasion of Ukraine end and the invasion of Venezuela end and the destruction of Palestine end and get USAID working again and, and, and a thousand other things I haven’t even thought of yet. But I have to stay within my own limits. Not only can I not determine exactly who I would have to be for a day to accomplish those, but I don’t know how to set enough wheels in motion to fix such terrible things on that large of a scale. Setting the truth free is always good. Making decisions about who lives, who dies and who pays the consequences, takes a jury.