The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: January 2018

Manufacturing Violent People

One of the largely unacknowledged problems of prison is that it manufactures bad people.

When someone is arrested, it is often a traumatic event. It’s backed up by the promise of violence, and even death if someone resists.

Police are often brutal, and, once in prison, one is surrounded by dangerous people. The least sign of weakness will make one into a victim, so one must pretend to be tough, no matter what. Months to years of living like that, plus the real possibility of new trauma from rape, assault, or battery, along with the certainty of living in near constant fear will likely give the person trauma and rage issues, and teach them that the best way not to be a victim is to be a victimizer.

When they get out…

This is made worse by the fact that once you’ve got a record, good jobs are largely closed off from you. Even a lot of bad jobs are, as so many employers do criminal records checks now that it is easy.

Poor, traumatized, and used to violence as a solution to problems; having been taught that admitting any weakness will just get you victimized, you’re very likely to turn to crime and even violent crime.

Prison in all Anglo countries created worse, harder criminals. By making a lot of poverty illegal, by locking up junkies (who should be in for treatment), and by disproportionately locking up minorities for crimes for which whites tend to skate (most drug use crimes), we tend to create the very monsters we think we are protecting ourselves from. And when we don’t create them, we make them worse.

There is another possibility: Norway has half the recidivism rate of the US because they treat their prisoners well. They don’t throw them into a situation with a great threat of violence, including rape, instead they genuinely try for rehabilitation.

Hurting people who have already been hurt makes them worse, not better, in most cases. It teaches them that violence is the way of the world, and that the strong do what they will to the weak. Victims become victimizers.

This is a choice. A lot of the people we lock up don’t need to be locked up: They have committed no crime of violence. There are other ways to deal with them, from medical help to removing their ability to do harm (like forbidding bankers to ever be involved with the financial industry ever again, seizing their ill-gotten wealth, and garnishing their income until they have paid back the billions they destroyed through their fraudulent actions. No money, no position = no power. But they can have good jobs which don’t pay more than median wages.)

And once they are in the system, we could choose not to treat them horribly, and not put them in a position where the other inmates will brutalize them further. This can be done, because other societies do it.

If we choose to perpetuate the violence, it is because, like Justice Clarence Thomas of the US Supreme Court, we think rape is part of the punishment.

Which, to be clear, makes us rapists. If you support criminals being raped, you’re little different from some asshole cheering a rapist on, screaming, “He has it coming!”

Perhaps, having tried cruelty for most of our history, we might consider trying a bit of kindness and a lot of “no harm”?

At the least, even if it doesn’t work (and the evidence is that it does), we wouldn’t be complicit in generating more violence.


The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The 2020 Celebrity Election Will Be Far Crazier than 2016

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah is apparently considering running in 2020. As Matt Stoller notes, she isn’t a joke: Unlike Trump, she is extraordinarily competent, widely loved and owed favors by at least a plurality of important famous people in the US, including many of the best selling authors.

People have not come to terms with all the consequences of Trump’s election. Every truly popular celebrity in the US has to be looking at Trump’s victory and thinking “I’m smarter, more handsome, and more loved than he was; I can win.”

Bernie Sanders? Kamala Harris? (Insert politician here)?

None of them have more star power and fundraising ability than someone like Oprah. (And remember Oprah does run a company and does it competently.) And many of these people are good on TV. Like, well, really, really insanely good. You expect them to lose a TV debate against some politician?

Then we add in the billionaires, like Facebook CEO Zuckerberg. What other billionaire is now thinking, “Screw buying politicians, they can’t be trusted. I’ll just run myself?” Zuckerberg, of course, is not charismatic, but that much money buys a lot and Facebook itself is insanely influential and even if he “removes himself,” well, I bet Facebook’s algos will somehow work in his favor.

2020 isn’t going to be a normal election. It is going to be far crazier than 2020.

And heck, if I had a vote, I’d vote for Oprah (or Clooney) before most Democratic politicians, especially if they say “universal healthcare, fuck the bankers, and no wars” like they mean it.

I suspect many Americans would too.

Remember, Trump won, in the end, because enough people were sick of regular politicians to take a flyer on him. A celebrity with more charisma and brains is entirely viable and will be considered seriously.


The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

 

The Law of Heaven

In all the myths, heaven is only for good people.

This isn’t because those who run heaven want other people to suffer, it is because heaven is heaven because of the people.

Heaven is just a place where you are surrounded by good, loving, kind people.

What destroys heaven is bad people. Oh, heavens can handle a few bad people: They can be rehabilitated or be watched carefully, treated kindly, and deprived of any power to hurt others. But they can’t handle a lot of bad people.

Heaven IS kind, loving people who take care of each other and take care of the world. Kindness not just to people, but to all life, because life depends on each other. This doesn’t mean being a sucker, it doesn’t mean feeding yourself to a tiger, it means recognizing that tigers have a place.

I will give you two laws of heaven:

1) Neither money nor power buys anything that matters. Education, health care, or skipping security lines at airports. Nothing works in a society if the elites know that they will not be getting what the majority get.

2) Default to kindness (or good.) The bar for doing anything evil is huge, because if you fail, all you’ve done is evil. If you do something kind, then at least you’ve done something kind even if you fail. This is most important in the routine way you run your society. If you run a society based on greed, selfishness, and fear, then that is what people do all day and have done to them. That is the sort of people they become.

You become what you do, which includes what you think and feel. People who do good, and feel love, are good people to have in your society.

This is conceptually simple. It is hard to execute, of course, but failure to execute it means we will always live in hells of varying intensity, lucking occasionally into good societies, and losing them without really knowing either how we got lucky, or why we lost the good.


The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Happy New Year

I hope my readers had good years in 2017 and will have better ones in 2018.

It’s going to be an interesting year. Trump is fairly clearly in the throes of dementia. We need to avoid a major conflict with either North Korea or Iran. And we can expect, barring large, unexpected events, that the Republicans will lose control of the House and possibly the Senate at the end of the year.

All the best to all people who act with good will in this new year.

 

Page 2 of 2

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén