Sobering look at how the poor are denied American justice

I’m tellin’ ya, Tim Curry is the right lead for this role. He could sell that line like noones business.

Maggie Smith is my backup, followed by Eddie izzard.

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Yes, though those of some Quakers were admirable indeed. I’ve long admired John Woolman, who had incredibly egalitarian views of subjugated peoples for the eighteenth century.

[I had for] “many years felt love in my heart toward the natives of this land who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the owners and possessors of the land where we dwell, and who for a very small consideration assigned their inheritance to us.”

Woolman truly means that the Delaware people had possessed the land where he lived, and he recognized and felt the injustice of this.

From this inward experience, a responding outward action formed over time. This is a typical dynamic of Woolman’s meditations and action. Two years before the journey, Woolman was in Philadelphia on a visit to some Friends who had slaves, to convince them to free the slaves. There he met a group of Indians from Wyalusing. He writes:

“…in conversation with them by an interpreter, as also by observations on their countenance and conduct, I believed some of them were measurably acquainted with that divine power which subjects the rough and froward will of creature; and at times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, of which I told none except my dear wife until it came to some ripeness.” Woolman admired their spiritual depth.

Wyalusing Woolman Walk

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I’ve been thinking about how this may now come to roost on the privileged white masses now, those who are starting to agitate and “resist”. What happens when many whites become criminalized for political protest and suddenly realize that any arrest becomes a barrier to what they had previously considered normal life? Will these issues that have been limited to people of color and the poor (that “middle class” whites like to pretend are just “problematic” people who make “poor choices”) suddenly be considered important?

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Per Henchmen resources, you’ll get an orange jumpsuit and a helmet. Metal teeth are optional.

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I Hench in Merino wool.
I’ll Hench, but style is required.

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Are you sure that’s an option?

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Why does the narrator use the word poor but the animation only shows African Americans?

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It’s also a driving force behind the support for death penalty in the USA. It’s more about the ritualized exorcism of a mythic Essential Evil, through human sacrifice, than about anything a judicial system should concern itself about.

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According to Cesare Beccaria, back in the 18th century, the certainty and quickness of the penalty is a more important factor to deterrence than the severity of said penalty. I’m not aware that he’s been proven wrong as of yet.

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Works with cats and bad drivers, in my observation.

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Oh so very much this. The deep irony is that the US was founded as a Christian nation… just culturally and socially, not religiously as the TGOP wishes it was. But Calvanist and Purtian thought are so deeply embedded in the cultural and legal mores that it is essentially impossible to remove them–even if we started over from square one in the legal system, the populace would just reintroduce them from acculturation.

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Thank you for that. It is the first unprompted statement I have seen on the web, outside Norway, that takes that view. I have spent quite a lot of time trying to explain to people on various fora the reasoning and law behind the Norwegian reaction to Breivik. Here in Norway there is almost no one who is more than two degrees of separation from someone who was killed or injured on Utoya yet very few people expressed a demand for retribution here. On the other hand many people from outside the country, who have no connection at all, have expressed themselves in vitriolic terms on the subject.

Should be oslash in Utoya but I haven’t had time to set the keyboard correctly on this new installation of Linux.

Sorry for drifting even further off topic. :slight_smile:

Edit: By separation I mean knowing someone who knows someone, not being biologically related. And two degrees is a bit of an exaggeration but three is not so much.

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I’d advise against leaving me in a closed room with him, but that is entirely the point behind the phrase, “cooler heads prevail”. I am keenfully aware that the symbol of justice in the US is a blind folded woman with a balanced scale, yet retribution is more commonly used.

Retribution is the easy road, that ends with more suffering. Forgiveness and compassion is the hard road, that ends with peace and solace.

(Dayum, I should be a preacher, except for all that aetheism baggage :grinning:)

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I think that applies to most of us here in Norway too; but, I’m pleased to say, we let the system do its thing and treat him as the common criminal that he is. Pretty much the first public statement on the topic, from the then prime minister, was that no special case was to be made, no new law should be created, and that he should be tried under the prevailing rules of law and constitution.

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Fuckit, after I get these damn businesses running on their own, i am moving to Norway. Mind you, I will still be nuts, but the right kind of nuts.

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It’s been often quoted, here in France, as an argument against knee-jerk legislative reactions after the various attacks of 2015 and 2016. Alas, it didn’t prevent new laws that are only efficient at eroding civil liberties.

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Related to the prior mention of pervasive Christian influence in US criminal law: the use of religiosity as a factor in parole and sentencing (“I was a criminal, but now I’ve found God, therefore I should be released/not executed”) is deeply, deeply fucked up.

In effect, what that does is to set up a two-tiered system where religious minorities are punished more severely than Christians. And where jailhouse conversion is “encouraged” by the threat of extended imprisonment.

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In plain terms: folks generally don’t commit crimes with the thought of “hey, it’s only five years in prison, seems like a fair trade”.

Instead, they’re either thinking “I won’t get caught” or they’re not thinking at all. The deterrence effect of amped-up penalties is essentially zero.

Obligatory West Wing:

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Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support those assertions, or are you merely rehearsing your comfortable prejudices, which allow you to take credit for the lottery of birth?

How about showing us one iota of evidence to support the notion of free will, before you base everything upon it?

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Have you seen where to invade next by Micheal Moore?
Its really really good. He goes lots of places and looks at what Europe does better than the US.
He goes to Norway and looks at their prisons, talks to the inmates and the guards.
And then he talks to a father of a child that was killed by Breivik.
Its heartstopping.
But the father wants to ensure that his son’s death is not used to bring back the death penalty and that Breivik serves his term and is not put to death.
Its really really good.

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