The term has some negative connotations, but that only speaks to a lack of understanding of what a `jailhouse lawyer' represents within the many cultures of humans all over the globe today. In basic terms, a jailhouse lawyer is a little person who sticks up for his or her fellow little people for the sake of something inside of them, regardless of how badly it will ensure they are fucked over personally in the end. Jesus is perhaps the most notorious jailhouse lawyer in history.
In prison a jailhouse lawyer generally is someone of higher intelligence than their peers, who utilizes the collective plight of those around them to further a cause against `the system'. On the street, a jailhouse lawyer could be someone that organizes their coworkers towards forming a union, or perhaps someone who sets up a community watch in their crime infested neighborhood. To come into contact with such a person may lead you to inspiration, anger, bewilderment or envy depending on what part of history your life existed during and where. For the vast majority of people on this earth, silence is a choice most attractive, especially for those of us who have something to lose. Fear is the jailhouse lawyer's #1 enemy.
To learn that there were loyalists all over the colonies throughout the Revolutionary War is to appreciate the effect that fear can have on people, and how dangerous it truly is to speak out against power. Here were these people now an entire ocean removed from the authority they feared, with neighbors uprooting amongst them and enlisting to fight for the sake of freedom, they hedged their bets safely in case the effort was doomed to fail. Were these people cowards? I don't think so, not personally in this situation, although the rancor of nationalistic politics today would prompt most of us to call them just that. Instead I understand that the loyalists of that time were merely representing a sign of what was to come. Indeed, as societies grew more advanced and freedom spread its virtue throughout the nations of some, along with it grew the amount that one could lose by rocking the boat.
That's where we are today, in a sphere of supposed comfort, one that teaches us to shun or look down upon the jailhouse lawyer, because everything is fine and if I'm going to lose mine it's not going to be for the sake of anyone I'm not related to. Entertainment, comfortable furniture, air conditioning...without these things we'd be miserable, and without the job I have it wouldn't be possible to avoid such misery. So while inflation fails to match up with the rise in my pay, at least I'm not like some of the people who have nothing, and anyways, that show I like is coming on tonight. That loudmouth down at the factory complaining about these things I too grow angry about is going to get what's coming to him, and there's no way in hell I'm going to get caught up in that rabble. Hence the term `jailhouse lawyer', as in prison one rarely has a lot to lose anyway, so as time went by, the `patriot' became something on a football helmet and the idea behind the term became something negative, `agitator'-'troublemaker'-'jailhouse lawyer'.
In the HBO series Deadwood we're exposed to three characters that personify this concept, but in their own ways. Seth Bullock, Wild Bill Hickock and Wyat Earp all had urges to stick up for what was right in the face of power, that which caused most of those around them to quake in fear yet resent and tollerate for the same reason people remained loyal to Brittan in 1776. Sure, they could have done for themselves and said fuck it, but something inside of them wouldn't allow them to feel like a man if they went out like that. So they pined the 'sheriff' badge on their coat and took many licks a piece for the good of the community. When industry took a knife, stabbed an `aggitatin organizer' and left the body for everyone else to see and learn from, these guys got angry and did something. They were jailhouse lawyers, much in the tradition of others who drafted our Constitution and told a king to eat shit and die. Today we celebrate this act, yet at the same time grow uneasy whenever someone among us is embracing the actual spirit behind all of it. That general uneasiness is the product of fear, and the authority that instills that sense within us is much more cognizant of it than any of us little people will ever be by the looks of it.
The general state of affiars in America today indicates a society that has been neutered and druged for quite some time. When a person speaks out, they are ridiculed and torn apart, while always being described as having a stick up their ass put in place by some unpatriotic organization that happens to be controlling their every movement. Shit, you can't even go on a hunger strike now without the government sticking a tube into your gut! To me it's a sign of things to come, whereas to the powerful it's a sign of progress. Look at what Ghandi was able to accomplish with such methods when the British were intent on telling his people where to get off...well, I guess our government learned something from all that, and by calling everything inconvenient unpatriotic or evil, they understand full well that there aren't that many MEN among us who will think long enough to question it. Come to think of it, Americans aren't even MAN ENOUGH to get themselves any more than $5.15 an hour as a bottom wage, let alone question whether or not its government is turning soldiers into cans of Spam for no reason.
Why did coal miners die at a higher rate this year than any other? Why were billionaires able to cheat the government out of taxes owed, while the IRS cut the amount of lawyers auditing their returns? Why were the children of working class Americans getting asthma at higher rates, while energy companies not only got away with not having to cut pollution, but enjoyed a period of unmatched prosperity and profit? Why are there less unions now than there were in the 1970s? Why has the separation between the wealthy and the middle class continue to grow year after year?
We're losing. You and I are losing, and as a country, unless we're dropping bombs - our people have to be the sorriest batch of sissies this world has ever seen. Nobody's willing to go out on a limb, nobody's willing to TAKE PRIDE in being a jailhouse lawyer anymore. Of course we'll pat ourselves on the back and pretend we had something to do with our independence, but in reality none of us did a thing to make that happen. All the jailhouse lawyers who accomplished that have been dead for over a century, and besides the firework manufacturers, everyone else in this country is jerking it on July 4th. To me it's like walking around with a pitchfork listening to Marilyn Manson on Easter, the way we look in amazement at the spectacular explosions of lights in the sky, yet fail to correlate what exactly it is we're celebrating...is it the 1% salary increase two years running? Or is it the enormous sense of pride one gets from knowing that Americans are great at making things that explode?
If you're a jailhouse lawyer in America today, you most likely won't be killed for it, but you'll probably be sorry in the end. In countries of less comfort and widespread delusion though, the jailhouse lawyer can be murdered and left out for everyone to see...that can still happen in places like Columbia, China and Russia. Do we have more or less to fear than any of those people? Obviously not - but then again, my boss could somehow find this post, call me into the office tomorrow and start asking me why I hate my country, and whether I'd like to have my possessions boxed up now or mailed later on in the week.
http://deadissue.com/...