Head-Spinning Political Shit!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by GoddessJess

I love how I can sit here and read so many different posts written so many different way and a lot of them say the same thing. Politics is a twisted game. I cant remember a single time when I remember hearing the truth...the first time around...It's always Oh I diddnt do it then...oh yea I did! It cracks me up. As far as republicans and democrats and liberals and the tea party (wich just the name cracks me up) they all have one common goal and thats their own agendas!

Okay so what do you replace politics with? It's all well and good to say "all politicians are after their own agenda" or "politics is a twisted game" but it is quite another thing altogether to suggest something to replace politics. So what's your suggestion or is the point not to think about a better way of doing things but to just blast it all as sucking?

Gay rights, abortion, the markets, the economy these are all touchy subjects

Okay and what are your suggestions?

, I think they just try to find the touchiest of them all, wich seems to be sexting latly, find the biggest affected crowd and then side with them! It's like a sick cat and mouse game...under what egg will the attention fall today?
Prisions are overcrowded, hell yes they are...rehab services?? I have known a lot of people that went to rehab and well they diddnt turn out so great!

I have known people who went to prison and that didn't work out so great either. I can offer you any number of examples where people went to prison and were put to death and then, later on, it was discovered that the person was innocent. How well did THAT work out?

My idea..in all my infinite wisdom...PUT THEM TO WORK!
give them tents and stick them someplace where there is work to be done! build something, clear something hell for once in your life do something that the tax payers are paying for anyways!

Does that include the white collar criminals who, for instance, crash the economy 100 million dollars a year still wasn't enough money?

I love that guy in AZ that stuck them all in pink and made them work for a living!

Well, if you love that sheriff then you would be positively giddy with glee over the conditions in Soviet gulags. Say what you will about the Soviet Union, they knew how to build a prison. Given your two statements on crime and criminals, you would've loved it. A non-trivial portion (up to half by some accounts) of prisoners never even saw a trial, they were arrested, put on a train to Siberia and into the gulag they went. None of that messy mucking about with rights of the accused, trial by jury, evidence, reasonable doubt--the Soviets didn't have any truck with that, no ma'am. If you were going to go to prison, you were going to go to prison and unless you were the child of a Politburo member any trial you got was fair only in the sense that anyone else who *also* wasn't an elite would have much the same fate as you. Once in the gulags the most common causes of death were disease, starvation and being worked, quite literally, to death. That sound about the way you think it should be done.

Put them in tents in Arizona, make them work hard without adequate food, water or sanitation and let nature take its course. Sound about what you're envisioning?

So based upon your love of Mr. Arpaio, I can surmise what kind of state you would like. You do realize, though, that any state that sustains the kind of prison system you describe either isn't a constitutional republic or is in the process of not being one any longer? It is like empire, you can have an empire or you can have a republic but you can't have both. Likewise, you can have an republic or you can have a prison system that Stalin would be proud of but you can't have a gulag system AND remain a republic. The logic here is straightforward. So let's say that we get the kind of prison you and Mr. Arpaio think is appropriate. Let us also say that there are people, yours truly included, who might think that such a legal system was uncomfortably close to the Soviet one and had some strong words for it. Is it beyond imagination that some sheriff might decide to pick up some protestors as they leave? Might it be the case that, since we've thrown out all the legal protections given the accused because they frustrate you, that they lock these people up on trumped-up charges? Might it be possible that others will protest the arrest of these political prisoners? How many times do you think it takes before people get the message "don't speak up about the legal system or else the cops will come get you"?

Starting to sound familiar? I'm not going to pull a Godwin violation and say that what you are describing sounds uncomfortably like Nazism because it doesn't. I AM going to say that what you are describing sounds uncomfortably like the kinds of things that totalitarian states do. Is that what you want, a non-democratic state? Given your statement about politics, perhaps you do. Say what you will about totalitarian states, the politics are fairly straightforward and easy to understand--support the dictates of the Leader or else.

Cheers
Aj