Justice v. Restoration

I began writing about the recent Manchester City EPL scandal — the one where they circumvented spending rules to cheat for nearly a decade — through the eyes of a Liverpool fan. Liverpool fielded one of the greatest teams in English Premier League history, but were continuously rebuffed by a Manchester City team that benefited from extra-curricular payments to players and coaches, and Liverpool fans are already planning to strip Manchester City of their titles and dissolve the team into dust. I wanted to talk about what it means to retroactively celebrate a championship, about whether there’s any justice in a verdict that comes nearly 17 years after the first season in question, as if there’s anything to be done about the moment itself.

But, come on. Beyond this fandom, there’s very little to care about here. This is a sport, and while it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that employs thousands of people from players to the ticket booth, it’s nothing compared to what we’ve already become accustomed to. This is life, right now: you do what you want and the consequences come decades later — if at all.

We saw it with Trump’s tariffs — where a year of higher prices is “shut down” by the Supreme Court, only to find that prices have not come down and the refunds are going to the importers, not the people who paid more. We saw it in 2008, when more than 5 million Americans lost their homes and exactly one Wall Street executive went to prison. We’ve seen it forever, whenever someone walks out of prison decades late for something they didn’t do, or for being the wrong color, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Shit, we’re seeing it right now. In October 2024, a Cornell student was drugged and raped by seven frat dudes. No criminal charges followed — only now that the lawsuit went viral has the district attorney reopened the case.

And in January, federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. No one has been charged, and even if they were, how do you fix this? How do you find justice? How do you bring innocent people back to life?

It’s no wonder we’re all angry and frustrated. Why we’re so tired. The gap between the initial injustice and the eventual solve — if a solve is even possible, which often it isn’t — exposes an assumption that justice fixes things. That justice can undo wrongs, that people who were harmed can have that harm taken away. It’s no wonder we watch the world through our fingers, and it’s no wonder we feel this level of rage — a rage that, frankly, not enough people feel. We’re all so tired because our belief in justice has waned. It’s really no wonder.

One of the frustrating things about growing up is learning how justice works. We are taught that bad things are punished, that good deeds lead to success. We go into life with the assumption that we are protected by a simple understanding: that if we treat each other as we want to be treated, the world will work. But the unfortunate truth is that justice and restoration are two different things. A tariff refund doesn’t restore the money a family already spent, and a conviction doesn’t bring Renee Good or Alex Pretti back.

It doesn’t mean we stop trying, though. We’re all so tired, but we’re tired because we care — because we know our aspirations should still focus on being kind. On respecting each other and understanding how we and society as a whole harm those who aren’t easily protected. Understanding that there’s no good that comes from evil. Justice can’t fix everything, sure, and we’re so tired — but we know that’s not a reason to abandon it.

Never stop fighting, I guess is what I’m saying. I really just wanted to talk about English football. But, sometimes, I guess I just have to remind myself that we can never stop fighting. To stay mad. To still believe justice is possible, even when we know it’s hard.