“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
What amounts to a perfect crime all hangs upon one’s standard.
Merriam-Webster defines a perfect crime as “a crime that leaves no evidence,” while Oxford Languages defines the term as “a crime so ingeniously contrived and carefully executed that it cannot be detected or solved.”
Neither definition seems to quite satisfy. Both are literally true but figuratively lacking.
Unsuspected, undetectable, unsolvable – all are literal attributes usually associated with pulling off a perfect crime – but what of more obvious public crimes committed in the light of day that go untamed and unpunished?
What of the public criminal who perfects his crimes to such a point that they aren’t considered crimes at all? What of the crimes that are celebrated as glories, victories and legacies, not just for individual men but entire nations? What of the government’s perfect public crimes?
To explain such perfect public crimes, you must first understand that most men live figuratively, not literally. Most men discover their standards in shared stories and symbolism, not propositions and literal dictionary definitions.
So, in a more figurative frame, allow me to surmise that perfect crime is best defined by one simple phrase: getting away with it.
Most of man’s history is story after story of one group of people getting away with it at the expense of some other people. Just think of the never-ending history of war and conquest. Vae victis! When everyone’s DNA is on the murder weapon, everyone on the winning side is exonerated.
Wikipedia actually provides a pretty good explanation of two standard possibilities of getting away with an individual perfect crime:
A murder committed by somebody who had never before met the victim, has no criminal record, steals nothing, and tells no one might be a perfect crime. … Another possibility is that a crime might be committed in an area of high public traffic, where DNA from a wide variety of people is present, making the sifting of evidence akin to 'finding a needle in a haystack'.
The latter possibility, a perfect crime committed in a highly trafficked public place, seems the most obvious analog for how the government gets away with things. The fingerprints of popular sentiment simply sully the crime scene. When everyone is suspect, no one is.
Yet, the metaphor of finding a needle in a haystack isn’t quite right, as sifting through evidence of government crimes is more akin to sorting through a mountain of bloody needles for the bloodiest point. Even popularly elected governments engage in secret criminality – founding little kingdoms by getting away with it in the shadows away from the people’s moral squint – often while violating the very standards of justice they publicly claim to uphold in the name of the people.
“What’s the cadet motto at West Point? You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do,” Mike Pompeo said in a 2019 speech at Texas A&M to much applause and laughter. “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
Yet, beyond the machinations of covert operations or collecting the fingerprints of popular sentiment, something else seems to empower the government to commit its perfect crimes. Some obvious yet frightfully figurative fact continues to deceive man’s best intentions to establish justice.
In a word, impunity.
Impunity is the perfect standard for getting away with perfect public crimes. Impunity is the standard upon which all governments tend to operate. Impunity is how the government gets away with murder.
All governments, even the least bad forms, are founded and sustained by getting away with it. One will almost always find some heinous crime at the foundation of a given society long before ever finding justice. There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact of government: power tends towards impunity.
Indeed, if you want to deceive well-meaning people into celebrating perfect public crimes at the expense of justice, have them accept the government’s impunity as their standard.
St. Augustine famously said it better than I ever could:
Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, ‘What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.’
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances as well as any feedback, please email joeyclarklive@gmail.com. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819news.com.
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