“The number of Americans in jails and prisons has increased 500 percent since the early 1970s, undeterred by changes in crime rates, economic cycles or demographics. As the prison population approaches 2 million, two UH faculty examine the impacts.
Texas spends nearly $3 billion a year to lock up more than 150,000 people in one of the largest detention programs in the world. Manoa Assistant Professor of American Studies Robert Perkinson has examined the system for a book he is writing on the history of Texas prisons and their influence on the nation. Texas abandoned rehabilitation in favor of incarceration beginning in the 1970s. The resulting costs have created enormous fiscal pressure on the state, Perkinson says. That should serve as a caution to states, like Hawai'i, that are considering cutting drug treatment, building more prisons and extending sentences.”
When empires are approaching the end of their reign of terror they share common traits. Even the mighty Romans succumbed to this axiom.
Roman Emperor, Caligula like “w” after him, passed laws that citizens of the republic were not allowed to see. This is the very essence of a contradiction to the concept, the philosophy of “the people rule” otherwise known as democracy. This practice is anathema to either a republic or a “democracy.” In a republic, the very word “republic” means “the public things” or “the law.” Those unseen laws as far as anyone knows are still on the books. So much for “change I “can believe in.”
Spain in decline 500 years ago blamed all its own failings, faults and excesses on “illegal aliens” in that case, the Jewish people. Empires past and present are following suit today as they have been throughout history. We hear it uttered. We see it printed. The poor who migrate not for “god, gold and glory” but for a job---a living make an easy, defenseless scapegoat. There are a myriad of reasons for a nation’s woes and inevitable decline seldom is it the poor, the defenseless, the “illegal.” How can anyone be “illegal.” We’ll take those up questions across the span of time-space.
Germany through at least one iteration of its history and global war on the defenseless blamed all its ills on those least like them.
Hateful talking heads have conveniently forgotten how this nation came to be. European terrorists, now hailed as heroes migrated here and through the programmatic genocide of Native Americans (North and South), a system of indentured servitude of fellow---if poor Europeans, the enslavement of African peoples and the cyclical century after century of oppression of one ethnic or racial group after another claimed what was not theirs through the back breaking labor of those the majority despises most---anyone different from themselves.
Europeans had good reason for wanting; some would say needing to leave Europe. All of Europe’s prisons were filled to the rafters at the end of the Dark Ages much like our own. The land was barren and polluted.
Such was the time of the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment also known as the Renaissance, the Rebirth, the Age of Reason when even debt resulted in being put in chains and thrown in a dungeon.
At this stage in their disintegration empires rightly recognize their vulnerability and begin attempts to identify the basis for their decline and to stave off attackers real and imagined. Any weak or defenseless person or group of persons will do. Walls are built where bridges would be more useful.
Blindly, empires attempt to fend off elusive and unseen attackers. Empires, especially this one, lash out futilely at the dark with any weapon at hand---often stumbling for their efforts. A drowning swimmer’s last kicks of desperation take down many who had no fault in the drowning swimmer’s condition.
Our young men and women are presently in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Turkey and the Philippines lashing out, carrying on the “war on terror” whatever that is. On the not distant horizon are Iran, Syria and anywhere else the elusive threats, real or imagined, our leaders tell us “terrorists” or “illegals” lurk. This is but another example of “might makes right.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYtViromvzY
Policy starts with the people. We are in an election year. The width and breadth of America’s South is and has been a red Republican stronghold of discrimination and intolerance. So there is little reason to believe that anything will change. However, the strongest walls of oppression cannot stand against the will of the people---if those people become informed and organized.
Policy starts with people.
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