by Phillip Torsrud
A nation with five percent of the world's population that has twenty-five percent of the world's prison population is a police state. No country at any time in history has incarcerated as many people. While America's government isn't killing the prisoners off like Hitler or Stalin did, the fact that Americans have accepted this form of solution is a reflection of the universal appeal of the politics of fear. Totalitarian police states do not come into existence without fear. America is testing the limits of democracy, and it is failing both democracy and itself.
Two reasons why these policies won't work are: (1) Ninety percent of criminals eventually do get out, and they will be more vicious than ever as a result of these harsher policies. If you were to chain up a dog for years and beat him up regularly as a punishment, would you have a better dog, when released from the chain? Why would you think this would work on the proudest creature there is? (2) The economics of a police state are unsustainable in the long term. Think what would happen if our economy went into depression. Where would we find the money to continue incarcerating all these people? What would the crime rate be in that type of economy? If during times of economic prosperity we have high crime rates, what happens when you double, triple or quadruple the unemployment rate? The time to figure out how to deal with this scenario is not after the hurricane hits.
Remember how Americans could always go to Mexico and have a great time on vacation because everything was so cheap and the dollar was so strong? Europeans now come here to bargain shop because the Euro is dominant. America is Europe's Mexico! Things will only get worse if Opec decides to take oil off the dollar standard. Right now the only thing holding back a run on the dollar is the fact that Opec countries, China, Japan and others who hold huge dollar assets, are not foolish enough to devalue their assets by trying to dump them all at once on the world market. They have recently been selling off slowly, by that we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. The fact that our economy is at the mercy of forces outside our control, means that the U.S. is no longer a superpower. How did this happen?
In the days of British Imperialism, the Crown's Empire was imposed by the Royal Navy and the Redcoat. This was tremendously expensive and eventually proved unsustainable. America learned from the British, and after World War II, when the world was ours for the taking, we chose to do it on an economic as well as on a physical scale. Besides soldiers being stationed all over the earth, we put Fords, Levis, CocaCola and Malboros everywhere. More importantly, our media put out books, songs and movies that would lead the world into our modern culture, which also gave our goods a market boost. Our media began falling apart in the 1980s, producing more but of lesser quality.
America is not immune from the consequences of poor decisions by its corporate and political leaders. This leadership has exported whole industries, along with technology, overseas, to make more money for people who were already millionaires. This was sold to the public as necessary in a global economy, and that we would benefit by changing to a service industry based economy. Rather than lead the world's economy, and serve America's interests, they have turned America into a cog in a machine over which they have no control. This, while they wear their American flag pins and spend billions on defense, claiming to be such patriots. They've castrated America by giving away our industrial base and driving up the nation's debt to unimaginable levels, over nine trillion dollars. Is there any way we can sustain this, on top of the billions spent on prisons and cops every year?
Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher begins with an examination of the big picture issues: culture, politics, religion and law. They then work their way into dealing with more specific issues and potential solutions. A change in attitude towards criminals is the root to changing our self-destructive policies, but this isn't politically popular. Awareness that our culture can not be changed by passing laws is the first step in depoliticizing our legal system. Clearly, politicians who have lied for years on this subject do not want to acknowledge their costly fraud.
Part II offers a variety of essays on different topics: the war in Iraq, health care, labor issues, solar energy, and so on. It closes with a challenge to address these problems now, before the window of opportunity closes. A person should not only come away from this book with a better understanding of crime, but they should also understand the importance of being more socially conscious in general.
Being educated is about recognizing when leaders are appealing to the short term self-interests of their constituents, versus the long term common good of the nation. We have free speech for a reason, and we need more dissent if we are to become a modern democracy. The fact that most elections in America are still won on emotional issues, shows we have not developed past an infantile stage. Since our economy has been so good in the past, we never had to, but times are changing.
Essays of a Penitentiary Philosopher is available at Amazon.com as well as Barnes &Noble.com, where Phillip Torsrud's Preemptive Strike, a novel on human trafficking, between Russia and England can also be purchased. Torsrud also has a web site at www.crimeandculture.com
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