We are propagandized that it's okay for governments to do all manner of unconscionable things, as long as their targets are "bad" enough. Our hatred is stoked to make us emotional rather than rational and thoughtful about the powers we are permitting government to seize.
We are propagandized to accept mass surveillance using arguments about the need for protection from terrorists or child molesters. Any vicious practice adopted by our prison system can and will be rationalized by referencing the most horrible crime of someone imprisoned in that system. We lose the concept of national standards for how our government treats human beings. It is the *exact* same, manipulative, emotional argument used by the Bush regime to justify the tortures by our government that Democrats were uniformly against before Obama become president.
Recently, our government revoked Social Security benefits for Nazi war criminals, and people cheered. Never mind that the action was a chilling precedent for punishing people outside of the limits of our judicial system. Whose Social Security benefits will be revoked next? And for what crime? I suspect child molesters will be the first tried, but make no mistake that it won't stop there. There is financial incentive to start using criminal history as a justification for stealing the Social Security fund.
We are manipulated like puppets. We are deliberately marinated in the language of hatred and vengeance rather than thoughtful discussion about the type of society we would like to create based on our own actions and values.
Prison is profitable now. So is war. So is punishing the poor, who are routinely smeared in our media as parasites rather than human beings. It is useful to the One Percent to keep us focused on fomenting the rage and vengeance rather than creating a society that teaches and models compassion for one another.
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