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The Sweeney Todd aka flying squad   in the UK were an “elite”   police unit designed to address the most serious, at least serious to people that like money and property, crimes. It’s a fitting name given the corruption at the core of Sweeney Todd is the apparutus of crime and punishment.

Out of the terrible tale of Sweeney Todd comes a question that  seemed to  I’m assumming you know the basics of the story , and did so prior to the recent movie, but there’s quite a few versions of the tale that predates the musical and movie.   Todd in this incarnation is set up and sent to Australia  by the corrupt judge and the local enforcers for the crime of marrying a woman that the judge has the hots for.  This is the part I have to stress the seriousness of.

Having just read a book about the  British system of transportation to Australia , the Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, you need to appreciate that this wasn’t just a  playful gambit by the judge in a game of romantic one upsmanship. If Barker( Todd prior to name change) was to survive at all it would be after a journey that the majority did not survive on the earliest boats, to be  worked to death , flogged,  fed rotten food when there was any.      To then have Pirelli  threaten to unmask him to those people was a  very real and present threat to his life and livliehood which he dealt with by what most in the audience, judging by their laughter at the mititagion of this act as being  akin to ” he was blackmailing me”, ” Oh well, then that’s different”

At this point I think there’s a strong case for his actions that I would defend in polite company.   Then , then there’s the rest of story. This is very much  in the style of Chris Rock’s OJ riff.  “i’m not saying he should have killed her but.. I understand”

I’m coming around to the idea that it’s not the police, the judges or even the politicians to blame but those that support them.  I’m taking Sam Harris’s  theory that the religious mild are the largest danger to our evolution being that the give a framework for the truly commited to operate in.  It’s the same with the state.  There’s no way clowns like the Judge could get away with this if the population didn’t want it to occur. We have our own clowns here in Arizona  but the population just like to think that something’s being done.    So when Todd gets all pie eyed at revenge on a world that he see as sanctioning the horrors that befell him  how much truth is there in that?  Like I said  I’m not saying he should have done it but I understand.