Members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have warned America for three years to take former President Donald Trump at his word.
Now, as Trump is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination, his criminal trials face delays that could stall them past Election Day, and his rhetoric grows increasingly authoritarian, some of those lawmakers find themselves following their own advice.
In mid-March, Trump said on social media that the committee members should be jailed. In December he vowed to be a dictator on āday one.ā In August, he said he would āhave no choiceā but to lock up his political opponents.
āIf he intends to eliminate our constitutional system and start arresting his political enemies, I guess I would be on that list,ā said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose). āOne thing I did learn on the committee is to pay attention and listen to what Trump says, because he means it.ā
Lofgren added that she doesnāt yet have a plan in place to thwart potential retribution by Trump. But Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who has long been a burr in Trumpās side, said heās having āreal-time conversationsā with his staff about how to make sure he stays safe if Trump follows through on his threats.
āWeāre taking this seriously, because we have to,ā Schiff said. āWeāve seen this movie before ā¦ and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.ā
The sentence in prison should be as long as is needed to rehabilitate them.
Prison isnāt a place to āconvertā or ātortureā or āpunishā someone. Its s place for them to get care and education until they are safe to return to society without being a risk to themselves or others.
There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
There are countries where prisons are used to torture and there are countries where prisons are used as rehabilitation centers. Both exist.
My point is that we should build the later, not the former.
There is no prison on Earth that does not punish people. Even the most humane institutions struggle to treat inmates as anything other than subhuman, because no matter how lofty the goals of a prison system itās still a prison. And the purpose of prisons is very clear.
My point is we should abolish prison.
Sorry, thats not true. There are definitely prisons that dont punish people. I mean they may lock you in a cage, but thats to protect you and help you, not to punish you.
Even the US prison systems (one of the worst Iām the world) is run by the Department of Corrections. At this point they may as well rename it to the Department of Torture (and also Department of Defense should be renex back to the War Department) as the name is double-speak).
We should strive to replicate prisons in nordic countries, not those of the US.
Hereās what prisoners have to say:
All prisons are prisons. You have a rosey imagined image of the Nordic model, probably because youāre from a nightmare country that openly and gleefully tortures prisoners (donāt worry, I am too), but the reality is that all prisons are punishment. The purpose of a system is what it does. We should strive for a world without prisons.
Yes. And thatās not punishment.
If someone is mentally not healthy and a risk to themselves or others, youāre going to have to do uncomfortable things to them. But the point is that they are given access to resources to be rehabilitated while theyāre in prison.
I dont know about Norway or Denmark or Iceland. Normally I refer to Finland.
I wasnāt in a Finish prison, but I have a friend who was. He spent most of his time in school. As in, he left the prison during the day to attend Uni. A few times a year a guard would come to his class and make sure he was there. Of course it was a limit to his freedom, but he was given resources.
Finland isnāt perfect either, and he never should have gone to prison to start with. But their prisons are how prisons should be. They exist to help people, not to make them suffer.
Surely, if your friend could leave the prison to attend school, then the prison itself wasnāt necessary! What purpose did that serve other than to alienate and isolate and punish? Itās ānot perfectā because it canāt be, the suffering is the point and all the Nordic model does is make their suffering productive.
Prisons should not be. We donāt need Nordic prisons, we need prison abolition.
He got a free bed, free food, and the prison had facilities for therapy.
This prison is a good thing.
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This is totally a bit
socdems arenāt just doing a bit
Unfortunately true
I very much do not give a shit whether Trump is rehabilitated or not, heās an existential danger to many groups of people, if somebody decides to put a bullet in his head Iām not gonna cry over it.
Trump doesnāt deserve forgiveness or a chance to get better. He deserves a hole in the ground with his neck broken.
Not in the US itās notā¦
The US is the most violent and one of the most classist societies in the world. Slavery is still legal in US prisons.
Its hardly a benchmark.
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