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Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Gruesome.
I'm not convinced the death penalty is worthwhile except to feed someone's wrath.
What if, (and hear me out,) we did for corrections the sort of thing that countries with low recidivism do? Like, not use for-profit prisons with incentive to turn out re-offenders, and not use prisons that turn out hardened criminals that aren't equipped to function in the world without resorting to crime, and actually take the 'corrections' or 'rehabilitation' parts of their nomenclature seriously?
If all we do with our prisons is punish and humiliate (and squeeze slave labor out of) convicts, we're just creating future crime and all that's left at that point is killing convicts at industrial pace unless you can figure out that crime is more driven by poverty than anything else, and the USA just doesn't want to figure that out because it just doesn't want to solve poverty or crime, it wants to make money creating and punishing both.
It is seriously incredible that in the United States prisons are for profit. Healthcare and water are for profit too...
Only 8 percent of US prisoners are in for profit prisons. This is definitely a problem, but it's not the main problem with our justice system, by any means. The way we focus on punishment instead of rehabilitation is a bigger problem than the fact that for profit prisons exist. I mean, getting rid of for profit prisons is a start, but the whole thing needs reform.
The cruelty (and profit it generates) is the point
That message might be more effective if it weren't associated with a weird doomsday cult that most people don't like.
I had no idea Albert Einstein was in a doomsday cult. Now. Should I believe a space cowboy on the internet; or one of the most intelligent people to have ever lived?
Marxists believe in a destiny where there's a complete failure of society. Late-stage capitalism and all that. There will be a great revolution, lots of people will die. Doomsday. It's inevitable. It's destined to happen.
But much like revelations, there will be a judgment day, but instead of Jesus there will a dictatorship of the proletariat. But that will fade away. Like a rapture or something like that. And then we will have heaven on earth, a worker's paradise for all eternity. It has been prophesized by some weirdo with a big beard 200 years ago. It was written, so it shall be!
Soviet Union? That doesn't count! The stars weren't aligned properly and they were doing too much farming and not enough factory work. Well they did have factories, but things happened in the incorrect order. The prophecy from the man with the big beard specified the exact order things would happen in and the Soviet Union didn't follow that order precisely! It doesn't count!
The prophecy of the man with the big beard will happen any day now! We've seen the signs. LATE. STAGE. CAPITALISM. Our destiny is upon us!
Any day now!
Marxism LOL.
You, sir, have made my day. This is worthy of Reddit Gold.
Ever heard the phrase "Socialism or Barbarism"? Marxists don't believe socialism is an inevitable result of the end of capitalism. Socialism has to be built, the entire theory of Marxism is that we observe the history of the world (i.e. the history of class struggle) and, rather than waiting around for history to happen on its own, we intelligently act on historical forces and cultivate a better world we want to live in.
If we just wait around for capitalism to collapse on its own, i.e. wait for what comes after late stage capitalism, we might all die.
Capitalism could very well collapse into a post-apocalyptic hell where a few million survivors huddle around the poles to survive.
Or just a nuclear war and total human extinction. Or a fascist Mars colony where only the elite are allowed to escape Earth. Etc.
Yes, I understand that you believe in an inevitable doomsday and it's all based on some complicated system you've devised from reading the texts or whatever.
But that's what every doomsday cult says.
Do the texts specify date for the end times? I like the doomsday cults that do that because when the date comes and goes it's kinda funny. But I guess marxists don't do that otherwise it would've died out a long time ago.
Capitalism sucks but it outlasted the Soviet Union. Capitalism also outlasted a hell of a lot of college professors that believed in it. Most people just grow out of it when they realize how silly the whole thing is. Others grow old thinking "any day now."
The reality is no one really knows where things are headed. People find it comforting to hear from people that act like they're certain of the future. Even if the future they talk about is a doomsday. But it's all bullshit, no one knows the future.
What we observe in capitalism is that it depletes resources as fast as possible in order to maximize profit. That's obviously impossible on a finite planet, and that's why we're running into real limits because of climate change. "The texts" are just the scientific observations on when the ice caps and glaciers will be gone, when the fossil fuels will be too expensive to continue, when the rainforests will be gone, when the top soil will be depleted, when the oceans will acidify too much to support shellfish and corals, etc etc.
Saying we can't predict any of these things is unscientific. You're like a mystified peasant that refuses to believe feudalism will ever end.
Next you'll say that some magical technology will solve all those problems and save us, and that is just blind faith in a cult of progress.
They are beyond our understanding. They’re like a fire juggler at a luau. It’s best to not get in their way while they’re working.
You will always have some crazy evil mfucker even if you give them all of it. There were a gang in my country from mid class families that robbed houses. They went in a van and stole until the last TV. Human CAN BE evil by nature. It happens in other species too. Bears kill salmon just for pleasure.
Mental illnesses will never be eliminated, but can be managed. Raising material wealth in society will never eradicate crime, but it will lessen its likelihood.
It's not just the prison system that's fucked. It's society in general.
A former prisoner will always be shunned. No matter if rehabilitated or not, people will always fear a former prisoner (at least in cases of brutality or sexuality) and often even former accused people. That also makes the whole system absurd. If people don't trust in rehabilitation and therefore always push former criminals away and back into one corner or another, we might as well continue/intensify killing them right away; society decided that there is no way back, so why bother. And that sucks.