One of my kids recommended to me that I watch the program titled Justified. I was prejudiced against it because it appeared to be one of those Clint Eastwood “cops as killers” programs that have so warped American culture into one celebrating violence and war while somehow pretending to preach the gospel of Jesus, though not living it. Turns out it was worse than I prejudged.

The first episode reveals a US Marshal, honorable law man that he is, giving a notorious “narco-terrorist” hit man a chance to leave Miami or be killed by a deadline. When the deadline approaches, the good Marshal meets the hit man at a table at a restaurant. Following the usual banter so beloved by American movie goers, the hit man draws, the Marshal is faster and the hit man is the hitee, dead on the table. 

The shooting is “investigated” and is found, as is the title of the series, justified. Now I was so horrified that in a kind of trance, or temporary insanity, I watched more episodes. As the story arc unfolded, the moral arc of the program revealed its forlorn judgment: sometimes one must be evil to defeat evil. Soon the question of justified killing became confused. Was the killing by the bad guy of another bad guy to stay in business (drugs, protection, prostitution) justified? Was the killing to take over another bad guy’s territory justified?

I watched in growing horror until I watched the epiphanic, truth-exposing episode, where all was revealed: the good Marshal had had enough and he went full on bad guy to defeat the bad guys. The “good Marshal” had become the enemy of all he stood for, but it was justified to defeat the enemy.

This was just before I watched the video of the ICE agent killing Renee Good. Soon enough it was claimed the ICE Agent had to kill Good because she had “weaponized her car” and she was a “domestic terrorist” deserving to die because of turning her car around. Having been fully brainwashed by Justified, I should have admitted it is a paragon of American narrative. I should have been happy. I should have stood up and sang the Star-Spangled Banner while saluting the Flag.

Having dedicated my life to the rule of law, however, I was instead troubled. 

As a teenager I watched Vietnam Vets return home having been tortured by their experience, suffering from moral injury, who morphed into Black Panthers. Besides providing breakfast to hungry kids, they took up arms to defend their neighborhoods against the violence black people were subjected to by law enforcement and they claimed it was justified.

I watched as the War on Drugs of Dick Nixon morphed into a War on the Bill of Rights and violence and destruction used in that war spread while law retreated. The cops became robbers. And it was said to be justified.

Now I watch as the Iraq/Wars of Choice vets morph into ICE agents along with testosterone-filled 18-year-old kids who want to pretend they are heroic warriors protecting America from the “worst of the worst.” As people are shot and killed in the streets of America, the Bully Pulpit thunders out “justified.” 

The last nuclear weapons treaty between the USA and Russia is set to expire in February 2026. No new negotiations are planned. Russia invades Ukraine. American invades Venezuela, threatens Greenland, Cuba, Mexico, and Columbia. China threatens Taiwan. The Mideast remains a tinderbox following America’s wars of invasion. The pandemic of violence spreads its oily, bloody miasma across the globe. The world is on a hair trigger seconds from extinction, and everywhere I hear the judgment: “Justified.”

Kary Love, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Michigan attorney who has defended nuclear resisters and many others in court for decades.

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