Original Post:
Me: This article is old, but points out that in a civilized society, less crime should mean fewer prisoners. Yet we have much less crime in our country and vastly more prisoners. That is a natural result of privatizing the prison industry.
A couple of friends commented initially, but I'm only including those whose comments are required for this post. All comments are shown in their entirety, misspellings and all.
Smart Friend: Another possible explanation for this is that in the Netherlands, almost nothing is illegal.
Confrontational Friend (CF): Isn't that the point of the prison system? They keep bad people from committing crimes. Death penalties in other countries are more efficient as well. ie. Less crime less prisoners.
Me: That's exactly my point. Who lobbies to make private behavior criminal? Why do these super tough sentencing laws get passed. An unholy alliance between law enforcement (gets more funding if there is more "crime), prison guard unions (more overtime better job security with full prisons) and private companies which profit from prison construction and operation. Throw in the slimy companies which get cheap prison labor and you have a disgusting group which extorts money from tax payers to steal the liberty of citizens.
Up to this point, things were going along as normal. I post links to articles which point out some of the public policy failings in our country, friends of different ideological stripes make comments which reflect either their disagreement with my assertion (e.g how I interpret the article) or disagreement with the ideology.
CF: By private behavior you mean: drinking and driving, selling drugs, doing drugs, stealing, fraud and tax evasion?
Yup those are totally victimless crimes! Set them all free! I've got my poster board and bull horn let's do this! (note the sarcasm)
What is a private behavioral crime?
CF: I have the end all be all answer! Stop commuting crimes!
It's really not that hard. When some has the urge to rap and Pillage. They should step back and say "hey I might just go to jail for this!" then not do it.
If you blame the justice system for how many prisoners are in the system, then I am going to blame my pencil for all my misspelled words!
Normally I don't mind the back and forth. I enjoy it actually. But I do not like to have my words intentionally mischaracterized. CF is not one who is classically trained in debate, philosophy or rhetoric, so I give him some leeway when he makes commits logical fallacies. But the stealing fraud and tax evasion comment was nonsensical even by the low standards that I usually hold him to, and I was uncharacteristically annoyed by that. So I was perhaps a little nasty in my response.
Me: CF - don't be an idiot. Seriously, it's beneath you. Stealing, fraud, tax evasion are not victimless. Recklessly endangering others (drinking and driving) is a huge public safety risk. I will do zero research and bet money that those are all illegal in the Netherlands.
Doing and sellin drugs are victimless. Which is why Phillip Morris and Anheiser Busch are billion dollar companies. The harm from consuming and selling drugs which are illegal is created by the illegality, not the substance.
CF: When did Phillip morris come out with crack and extasy? I did see it on the shelf last time I was at Safeway.
You tell a mother who's child OD'd or got shot by a stray bullet from a gang fight over drug turf.
Pull your head out of you fucking collective ass's and put the Blane on those that break the law.
You mean to tell me you would have your kids ride in a car with their friends parent if you know they were high? What if they wrecked and killed your kids as well as another family. Would smoking weed be a victimless crime?!?!?! Would it?
You just made my blood boil with such an arrogant comment.
Don't you love the straw man he sets up in his arguments? A child OD's on something (crack or ecstasy?) should mean that crack or ecstasy should be illegal? But thousands of young people die every year from alcohol. Tens of thousands of you count people of all ages. A kid gets shot by people in a gang fighting over turf and the fault is the drug? Not the fact that the drug is illegal? When was the last time you saw alcohol dealers shooting at each other in the streets? Oh yeah, when (and where) it was last illegal to sell alcohol. Of course nothing I have said in this argument or any argument ever has indicated that I advocate to allow people to drive while impaired. Although, I have pointed out that impairment from cannabis has not been shown to make people more dangerous drivers (unless they are also impaired with alcohol) and even then I do not advocate that they be allowed to drive while high.
CF: I'm done with this. I don't want to say something I will regret. Good day sir!
He should have regretted making himself look stupid with his nonsensical arguments.
Me: I have some work to do, I'll get back to this in a minute. I'll address you points more gently then.
Yeah, that was a little snarky. I said "don't be an idiot, it's beneath you," by which I meant, I respect your intelligence, please use it. And in that last comment I was implying that he was being a petulant little child with his temper tantrum.
CF: No need to be gentle.
I just feel you should stop pointing fingers at everyone else.
It's funny how you try and use the points of they imprison people for cheap labor, job security and higher pay. Sounds like you want to be a prison guard for minimum wage!
Also that coming from a person saying that the average person can't support a family on $60-70k a year. Yet bitch about jailers making too much to deal with dangerous dirtbags!
It is beyond me the logic you use whilst backing all these conspiracy theories. You are an enabler nothing more. I really have nothing else to say to you. I really used to respect you. But you are constantly spewing this shit all over. And the sad thing is that the sheep with no ideals of their own will blindly follow you and others that think like you. You think you are fighting for a greater cause cause but all I hear is white devil this white devil that. The man is keeping us down! You go hold the hands of these so called wrongly imprisoned people you are bleeding your heart out over and tell them they did nothing wrong. While I tell my niece and nephew that for rich or poor being and good person and respecting the law and those that uphold it will keep you out of trouble and jail.
No need to respond I won't read it.
This is too incoherent to even make any sense of. I say that the prison guards union lobbies for tougher sentences and he takes that to mean to mean I think that they should guard for minimum wage? This from a guy who routinely argues against all manner of public employee unions and their "lavish" pay packages. No dummy, I do not think that prison guards should be paid less. They should probably be paid more.... but there are too many of them because we have too many prisoners. We have too many prisoners because the people who profit from the prison industry lobby for very long sentences. Is that hard for your tiny Fox News addled brain to understand?
Conspiracy Theories? Really? Do prison guard unions support longer prison sentences? A quick google search yields the answer. Does Corrections Corp of America (prison construction and operation company) do the same? Well of course they do. By the way I picked that link because it has no political agenda at all and it points out that CCA is lobbying the government on immigration reform. Not to go all conspiracy theorist on you, but how much you wanna bet that they are seeking detention for as many immigrants as possible for as long as possible?
White devil? White devil?!? At least he owns his fear with the statement "all I hear is white devil this and white devil that." I'm not even gonna address that it's so stupid and inflammatory. Oh wait, yes I will. The reason why that's what he's hearing is because that was his ears are tuned to hear. How? Well without knowing this for a fact (because I don't recall asking, and he hasn't responded to my request to have a conversation) he listens to Fox. Fox sells fear and racism. Period. They want honest hard working, under-educated white people to be afraid that the darkies are coming to get their hard earned stuff, to make their big pick up trucks more expensive to own (he has at least one), to take away their guns (he's an avid shooter), to have sex with their women and to make them marry other dudes.
I thought this was going to be fun... pointing out the logical inconsistencies and complicated mental gymnastics required for a normal American guy, to go off on such a stupid rant. But it wasn't fun. It made me sad. CF is a guy who used to work for me. He worked hard, he was honest, he did his job well. I ribbed him a bit because of his conservative politics, and took special joy when, for good business reasons, I had to send him to work in Berkeley for a while. But honestly, I liked him. I overlooked many of the racist things that he said because I wanted to educate him a bit about privilege. I figured that if I could get to him, a self described red-neck, then I would have helped the cause of justice because he could spread the word in places that I do not have access to. On previous threads, he would typically post stuff that started from an ill-informed place, but asked questions that indicated that he had at least an open mind. His last words "No need to respond I won't read it" were what made me the saddest. A closed mind turns a person into a pre-programmed robot. And his current programming, which I was trying to help him change, is odious.
Oh well... can't save em all I guess.
