Creating a class of prison slaves who have no right to vote with no possibility of upward mobility is a feature, not a bug. Add to that the difficulty of obtaining affordable healthcare/tying it to a job, gutting education, making child labor legal, making abortion illegal, etc., etc., and that plan becomes pretty obvious.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Can we be totally honest here and just state what the fear is?
If slaves could vote they'd vote for freedom.
There's a hole the size of a railroad junction in the 13nd amendment.
Thereβs a hole the size of a railroad junction in the 13nd amendment.
It's less of a loophole and more of a loop-archway... with bright neon signs to advertise it.
This. The whole thing is 100% by design, any other reasoning is a distraction created, again by design, to get us to look the other way.
Don't.
It's a recipe for creating monsters similar to how intervention in the middle east created those terrorists and their symbiotic relationship with the military industrial complex. That plan is so ridiculously evil and doomed to fail that I can't help but think there's some second order effect that they're going for here.
The monsters aren't the ones being created, the monsters are the ones creating those circumstances to begin with.
I know you didn't mean anything by it, but that shift in focus is really important to point out, because those same people rely on you and me to see the poor people who's lives they destroyed as the problem, instead of whose who really are.
.
None of that changes the fact that it is the system that creates that kind of behaviour by encouraging and rewarding selfishness, greed, hate, and doing whatever it takes to "succeed".
I'm not denying that there are horrible people out there (I've been victim to a few personally), or that they shouldn't be held responsible for individual actions if they harm others (they should), but in almost all cases you can't blame them for turning out that way (again, not excusing any harm they go on to cause to others) when you look at the circumstances they need to exist in. Circumstances designed by a handful of people reaping unfathomable benefits.
So I'd much sooner point my finger at those who are actually to blame, instead of at those who are the fucked up products of their system, because one of those not only creates infinitely more damage than the other, but also it's only that same group that have the power to do anything to stop it.
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You're assuming that the point of the American justice system IS to refrain and rehabilitate. It's not.
A for-profit prison system seriously is low-key the most fucked up thing in a country full of fucked up things.
American prisons exist to make a profit for their investors. They do this by both government subsidies (which are calculated per inmate) and using the prisoners as cheap labor that they legally only have to pay pennies.
The system NEEDS a continuous influx of prisoners (slaves) to remain profitable. Rehabilitation is anathema to that.
It us not just petty or counterproductive. It is violating the basic principle of democracy itself.
The US criminal justice system has never been for rehabilitation. No sane person thinks jail makes someone less likely to commit crimes.
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When you also can escalate certain crimes (like cannabis) to target portions of the population it gets pretty dystopian already.
What could go wrong with giving a democratic government the power to strip voting rights from those people they deem unsuitable to vote on how they are governed? /s
"/s"...? You just lost the right to vote.
One vote might not matter much, but 4.6 million votes can swing elections. Itβs really fucking weird how that country calls itself a democracy when it does this, allows rampant gerrymandering, have a very uneven vote weight depending on where you live, and, just as icing on the cake, allows slavery in some specific instances.
Doesn't the US also have the largest population of prisoners in the entire world too?
Currently China, per capita El Salvador. US scores second most population wise (3rd most populous country, so it's not that unreasonable?) and 5th per capita (No excuse).
The US appears to have been slowly going down a little bit, some times when it feels like it, more so if you're white, with a big drop during Covid.
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If people who break laws can't vote, and the government decides what the law is and appoints the judges who enforce those laws, then the government currently in power can decide who gets to vote. Obviously there's an incentive there to make laws that disproportionately affect those who weren't going to vote for you, and thereby remove most of your opposition's votes. That way lies dictatorship.
It also makes it hard to change bad laws. For a random example, there used to be laws against homosexuality. How do you think LGBT acceptance in law would be doing if anyone who was openly gay or trans lost their right to vote? How do you improve access to abortion if anyone who has an abortion, provides an abortion, teaches young people about abortion, or seeks information about abortions becomes unable to vote? How do you change any unjust law if the only people who can vote are those who are unaffected - or indeed, those who benefit from the status quo?
See, e.g., the war on "drugs"
The GOP has been working towards making the US a dictatorship since the 60s. We passed the civil rights act and the right was so appalled that they had to treat people of color like, well, people, that they've been coming up with new ways to ensure progress never happens again ever since.
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It also seems very undemocratic. The idea of democracy is that everyone can vote
True. But the US was founded by the rich, white elite for the rich, white elite.
Always fun to remember that the US threw off the shackles of oppression due to a 3% tax rate.
Because they aren't getting rid of one vote, but tens of thousands.
There are a lot of Republican states that are Republican mainly due to voter suppression.
It's win/win for them. Thousands of fewer (likely mostly) Democratic leaning voters, and thousands of additional people counted in their census.
Also keep in mind that they count those prisoners as part of the census, which affects how resources are distributed.
So they're counted, but don't get a vote. Ripe for abuse by unscrupulous politicians.
It's almost like they shouldn't be counted at all unless they are free to vote. But the states with significant prison populations wouldn't go for that. Maybe we can compromise. Perhaps only 3 out of every 5 disenfranchised prisoners should count for representation purposes.
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the point was to reform them into civic minded individuals ?
That was never the point.
Rehabilitation has never been the goal. The goal is free labor pool and punishment. The cruelty is the point.
There are already enough potential voters who have been imprisoned, not the future, such that they could tip the balance. If you're not sure if this is case, just look at how hard the GOP acts to block reinstatement of voting rights for ex felons.
The point is not reform, it's punishment.
Yes, it's counterproductive and the recidivism rate in the US is terrible as a result.
It works this way by design.
I've never understood this. What're they gonna do? Vote to make crimes legal?
The united states already imprisons so many people, and unevenly at that.
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Not just voting but having that blot on the record FOREVER puts a scarlet letter on their forehead. Good luck getting a good job and having a future when you've been in prison a few years for a nonviolent drug crime that should've been solved with a few weeks/months of inpatient rehab. Our entire criminal justice system in the US just breeds more crime and generational cyclical poverty. Hooray.
Giving hoe little one vote mattersβ¦
Stop using this dumb mindset. Also there is more than 1 felon.
"one vote matters little" makes my blood boil, and I hope for it to never change as I get older.
It doesn't matter though. We vote for the least bad option every 4-5 years and call that "democracy".
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That title needs a lot of editing. It does end in a question mark, but it's structured like a statement. Even if it is a question, it appears that your asking if it seems that way way to you. How is anyone else supposed to know how it seems to you?
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