And people ask me why I drink.

Good, if depressing, article. Duly tweeted as "another read it & weep" commentary on the state of the union. No wonder I'm so fucking depressed.

Semi-related, Stanford U. researchers have determined that strict class-based systems are the most successful (partly because they concentrate the suffering on the lower classes when times are bad).

Yeah, right, we've been watching cowboy movies with hangings for decades, just to watch the boots kick, and now people are going to get all shocked because people cheer for the death penalty. The South lived through a century or so of lynching blacks, turning those events into Sunday town picnics, and now people react as if such attitudes toward death are some new development. The editing of that hospital video is such an obvious hack job, you all should be embarrassed for promoting it.

For intelligent people, I have seen a lot of friends get swept into distortions of reality equal to any of Limbaugh's blather. Who could possibly be ridiculed by such limp attempts? Don't fight stupid with more stupid.

The real validity in that article to me is that it makes an attempt to talk about the complete and utter failure of the American justice system. Nobody ever wants to talk about the prisons, the vast number of Americans who are incarcerated, the many and varied and insane reasons they are there or, particularly or, the attitude of the general public towards this issue, namely, they either don't believe it, they think they "deserve it" or they just want to sweep it under the rug. There has been a systematic war on the poor going on in this country since the 1980s and it's been facilitated by the legal system. If you don't want to believe me, go spend some time down at your local courthouse. I have. Go watch the "process" of "justice" in action. Talk to some people who have spent time in your local county jail. I have. I seriously doubt that my small NC county is any exception to the national rule and the courthouse and the jail are horrific, beyond horrific, places.

I agree with Ardiril that public cruelty is not a new phenomenon in American culture nor is any culture necessarily too far from bubbling into it. Like mygothlaundry I do think there's something different that has gone on with the war on drugs and so forth though. Especially after the mid-80s when crack exploded and so on. I was watching the first scared straight though (1979) and prison rape was seen as just a given at least by the messages put out by those prisoners. I think that situation has probably improved a bit. But meanwhile the population of the prison system has just been exploding, medical and mental care within them is inadequate, and prison guard unions have the nerve to oppose parole reform because it might threaten their job security(!)

And they call themselves civilized (then and now). No, we're not, not yet.