“I have solid evidence that my wife filed a false restraining order against me, and I can’t get anyone to even consider looking at it. In fact, and I kid you not, I was told if I don’t let it go, I might be charged with harassment!

“America is such a bullshit nation! I’m moving back to China. At least Chinese are upfront with their bullshit.”

—Blog respondent

It’s hardly uncommon to hear it remarked that judges like to play God. Their power within the shoebox theater called the courtroom is absolute. If judges violate the law, they may face consequences later…but only later and only maybe.

There’s a notorious case of a judge’s actually masturbating in his courtroom for years before anyone nerved up and called him on it…and that was only because he was using a device to pleasure himself that was audible to members of the gallery. His staff had witnessed him stimulating himself and said nothing.

Beyond lording it over everyone while possibly considering themselves above the law, though, judges arrogate to themselves superpowers even God doesn’t possess. For example, they place a time limit on the truth.

Appreciate that a preliminary ruling in a restraining order case may be determined in three minutes; a final ruling in 10. Both rulings, what’s more, may be determined without a judge’s even having heard a word from the accused. A final ruling can be formed by “default” if a defendant, who may reside in another county or state, misses his or her court date. Some states (Arizona, for instance) don’t even require a final ruling. Unless the accused formally requests an audience before a judge, the preliminary (three-minute) ruling stands. (In New Jersey, there’s a precedent on the books that allows a judge to enter an “indefinite temporary” restraining order without anyone’s showing up to court at all.)

Defendants are afforded a few moments, if they take advantage of them, to try to convince a judge of truths that may contradict the allegations against them, and that’s it. After that, the truth not only ceases to matter; it ceases to be the truth. The court’s rules supersede those of natural science.

An appeal to a higher court may be filed, but that court doesn’t concern itself with the facts of the case; it just determines whether the lower court clearly abused its discretion. The appellate judge determines, that is, whether the trial judge violated ethical rules or the law.

In “courtland,” ignoring the truth isn’t unethical or illegal; it’s protocol. Finicking about what’s true and what isn’t, and whether what’s true is more important than what might be true—that isn’t an economical use of the court’s time.

Nonresidents of courtland—those spoilsports—may be resistant to the notion that truth is irrelevant, that it has an expiration date, or that it can be transmuted to untruth by the fall of a wooden mallet. Because there’s no procedure to exploit to reassert truths that have been discounted or denied, however (or any audience who would care), and since the regents of courtland can’t permit the legitimacy of their sorcery to be questioned, it’s necessary for them to threaten or punish the unruly (see the quotation above).

~SUMMARY~

A perfectly normal, upstanding, productive person can be falsely accused (of anything: threats, sexual deviancy, battery, rape…anything) in a three-minute audience with a judge. If, in the subsequent few minutes s/he may be afforded to defend him- or herself, s/he’ s unable to persuade the court that the truth is more urgent than a liar’s lies, then the truth becomes the lie, and the liar’s lies become the truth, which is mechanically entered into various databases to “safeguard the public interest.”

According with this act of alchemy, the perfectly normal, upstanding, productive person is punished and may consequently become abnormal and socially apathetic. S/he may also be deprived of the livelihood, family, etc. that had formerly motivated his or her productivity.

If s/he publicly objects to this result, which can’t help but gnaw, by daring to call it “unfair,” “unjust,” or “wicked,” for instance, s/he risks punishment, too, for this act of nonconformity. Laws are invoked to label him or her a “stalker” or “harasser,” and s/he may be jailed.

This is why a person like the speaker of the epigraph may express greater faith in a Communist country’s “rule of law” than in our own…and be right to.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*It’s also “Why People Who’ve Been Falsely Accused ‘Blog’.”