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It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of

It's interesting to see reddit's America-hatred spread here. We can't condemn atrocities anywhere in the world without first holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil. The failure to recognize the good in America, indeed the many ways in which it still leads the world, and see the difference between a free country with perhaps too-strict sentencing guidelines and one which enslaves and kills its people for purely political transgressions, is indicative of the erosion of one axis of our moral compass and the early sign of a culture and a nation turning in on itself and destroying itself.

ajkessler 15y ago
If I've learned anything, it's that we can't judge. Nope. Regime that interns its people in death camps? A system that engenders such poverty that people are forced into cannibalism? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657#) Couldn't possibly judge. Nope, not with all the similar problems here in the evil ol' US of A.
- AJ007 15y ago
  North Korea: Homeless and those with homes starve to death. USA: Morbidly obese homeless chatting on cell phones
  - pessimizer 15y ago
    Simply a lie.
_delirium 15y ago
I'm mostly interested in looking at the problems with the U.S.'s prison system before North Korea's because it is: 1) exceedingly bad; and 2) nearby enough that there is some chance we (=Americans) can do something about it. "North Korea is really bad" by contrast, I already believe, and we have a ton of evidence for it. Is evidence that North Korean prisons are also big and inhumane surprising? Yes, we should do something about it if possible, but we've been at a loss for decades about what to do about it; it's not like we haven't already been trying to pressure the regime there, and get rid of it if possible. The U.S. system is not just "too-strict sentencing guidelines" either; the prevalence of rape makes it imo basically an inhumane system. The government will not usually actually rape you (though rape by prison guards is also a problem), but it will put you in conditions that it has known for decades are likely to cause you to be raped. It continues to maintain those conditions and knowingly forces people into them, in effect (probabilistically) sentencing them to be raped. And regular Americans on the street will joke about "pound-you-in-the-ass prisons" or "hope you like the butt sex!", apparently considering this an appropriate, perhaps even good, way to punish criminals, since it adds to the deterrence factor by making the prospect of going to a prison with such conditions a frightening one. I guess we can make some hierarchy, where maintaining a prison system filled with starving inmates is worse than a rape-filled prison, which is in turn worse than a merely filthy/diseased prison, but it seems sort of pointless to justify things that way. I'd just go after the closest inhumane prison system, which I don't have to travel far to find. (It's also not purely a left-right thing; the left probably talks about it more, and the "tough-on-crime" right downplays the U.S.'s prison conditions, but it's also become a popular cause among Christian groups lately.)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
zyb09 15y ago
Well I agree with your point, but did you really had to drag reddit into this? I don't think reddit is at fault of these opinions here.
bluekeybox 15y ago
There is a particular sentiment (I call it politics of resentment) that aims to portray anyone who is in power as evil, disregarding the question of whether a power change would really be productive. Those in power (whether good or bad) unavoidably have to play a power game to maintain said power, and the politics of resentment will always try to portray any such game as being played for an evil/unjust/immoral purpose. Such politics of resentment lead Soviets in the 1910s-20s to hate the upper class and the "imperialist" West, Nazis in the 1930s to hate the British and the Jews, certain Islamist elements from the 1980s and onward to hate the U.S., and so on. I don't mind a sound criticism of power, but I cannot stand resentment. Because those who resent those in power the most are often those who unscrupulously desire said power for themselves the most. TL;DR: stop resenting and get back to hacking.
- guelo 15y ago
  Real tldr: trust our dear leader, nothing to see here, move along.
  - bluekeybox 15y ago
    It is okay (and good!) to criticize power but there has to be a good reason other than resentment, otherwise you just fall into the trap of sounding like a bitter guy who lost at life and has nothing better to do than to externalize his failure at the current status quo. I grew up in a former communist country. There, if you were a critical thinker with a strong personality striving for your own economic well-being, you would generally end up labeled as the enemy of the state. The modern capitalist economy tends to reward such people, yet some still feel resentment (hint: in any system, egalitarian or not, there will be those who feel resentment).
mortenjorck 15y ago
I don't see anyone in the discussion here "holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil." I do see people holding the US to account for its own practices and patterns of incarceration. Few would dispute that there are still many ways in which America leads the world, but let's not delude ourselves here: the prison system is not one of them. DPRK is an extreme case compared to the US, but the US is an extreme case compared to much of the industrialized world, and invoking "America-hatred" trivializes an important dialogue.
zedshaw 15y ago
Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means). In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't survive their sentences. France's prisons are so historically bad that they've spawned whole revolutions numerous times, and are a common factor in their history. The EU was supposed to improve these conditions but it remains to be seen given they have very little data on how they're run, let alone anything publicly accessible. In Asia only Japan has decent well run prisons, but their prisons are harsh while still having a high success rate. In the rest of Asia prisons are typically horrible, and even S.Korea has some awful conditions. Last thing I read said they don't feed prisoners and keep them in tiny huts, requiring their relatives to come and feed them. Burma is a massive police state with actual slaves by law. In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should. The US is similar to Europe, with some of the worst and some of the best prisons in the world. Now, we're not talking about American legal policy on things like wrongful imprisonment by the LA Crash unit, idiotic "3-strikes your out" laws, or minimum sentencing laws. I'm talking the actual conditions of the prisons in the US as labeled by organizations like Amnesty International. In our case, prisons are generally alright, with a few standout offenses like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ, and most prisons in the south and California. The worst state is definitely California, which makes sense given they've had more complete city wide riots than any other state in the nation and their huge gap between rich and poor. But, a significant difference between our prison system and many others around the world (even those in Europe) are our laws about open records on how they're run and our recent trend of civilian oversight groups and recitivism prevention. Starting in about 2004 there's been a huge push to increase monitoring of prisons, offenses, guard abuses, and to help parolees stay out of jail. I personally worked on systems that tracked guard abuses at Riker's Island and the NYC DOC, as well as finger print systems for prisons that do early release programs and job release programs. The biggest problem in American prisons is the advocacy by law enforcement of inmate-on-inmate rape as a sanctioned form of punishment. There's been numerous cases of countries refusing to extradite criminals based purely on our joke that a man will get ass raped in prison. If you wanted to focus your activism and hatred on any one thing to improve our system, it would definitely be eliminating rape. In general, through my research and my own need to improve prisons, I found that prisons are horrible poorly managed hell holes everywhere. They generally reflect the cultural fear of the dominant members of a region against the "unclean" citizens, outsiders, and the low class. The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world. Very few countries in the world try to hide prisons, and when they do it's considered horrible, but none of them are hiding a prison that's the size of Manhattan: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square

ajkessler 15y ago

If I've learned anything, it's that we can't judge. Nope. Regime that interns its people in death camps? A system that engenders such poverty that people are forced into cannibalism? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1875007335054132657#) Couldn't possibly judge. Nope, not with all the similar problems here in the evil ol' US of A.

AJ007 15y ago
North Korea: Homeless and those with homes starve to death. USA: Morbidly obese homeless chatting on cell phones
- pessimizer 15y ago
  Simply a lie.

_delirium 15y ago

I'm mostly interested in looking at the problems with the U.S.'s prison system before North Korea's because it is: 1) exceedingly bad; and 2) nearby enough that there is some chance we (=Americans) can do something about it. "North Korea is really bad" by contrast, I already believe, and we have a ton of evidence for it. Is evidence that North Korean prisons are also big and inhumane surprising? Yes, we should do something about it if possible, but we've been at a loss for decades about what to do about it; it's not like we haven't already been trying to pressure the regime there, and get rid of it if possible. The U.S. system is not just "too-strict sentencing guidelines" either; the prevalence of rape makes it imo basically an inhumane system. The government will not usually actually rape you (though rape by prison guards is also a problem), but it will put you in conditions that it has known for decades are likely to cause you to be raped. It continues to maintain those conditions and knowingly forces people into them, in effect (probabilistically) sentencing them to be raped. And regular Americans on the street will joke about "pound-you-in-the-ass prisons" or "hope you like the butt sex!", apparently considering this an appropriate, perhaps even good, way to punish criminals, since it adds to the deterrence factor by making the prospect of going to a prison with such conditions a frightening one. I guess we can make some hierarchy, where maintaining a prison system filled with starving inmates is worse than a rape-filled prison, which is in turn worse than a merely filthy/diseased prison, but it seems sort of pointless to justify things that way. I'd just go after the closest inhumane prison system, which I don't have to travel far to find. (It's also not purely a left-right thing; the left probably talks about it more, and the "tough-on-crime" right downplays the U.S.'s prison conditions, but it's also become a popular cause among Christian groups lately.)

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

zyb09 15y ago

Well I agree with your point, but did you really had to drag reddit into this? I don't think reddit is at fault of these opinions here.

bluekeybox 15y ago

There is a particular sentiment (I call it politics of resentment) that aims to portray anyone who is in power as evil, disregarding the question of whether a power change would really be productive. Those in power (whether good or bad) unavoidably have to play a power game to maintain said power, and the politics of resentment will always try to portray any such game as being played for an evil/unjust/immoral purpose. Such politics of resentment lead Soviets in the 1910s-20s to hate the upper class and the "imperialist" West, Nazis in the 1930s to hate the British and the Jews, certain Islamist elements from the 1980s and onward to hate the U.S., and so on. I don't mind a sound criticism of power, but I cannot stand resentment. Because those who resent those in power the most are often those who unscrupulously desire said power for themselves the most. TL;DR: stop resenting and get back to hacking.

guelo 15y ago
Real tldr: trust our dear leader, nothing to see here, move along.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  It is okay (and good!) to criticize power but there has to be a good reason other than resentment, otherwise you just fall into the trap of sounding like a bitter guy who lost at life and has nothing better to do than to externalize his failure at the current status quo. I grew up in a former communist country. There, if you were a critical thinker with a strong personality striving for your own economic well-being, you would generally end up labeled as the enemy of the state. The modern capitalist economy tends to reward such people, yet some still feel resentment (hint: in any system, egalitarian or not, there will be those who feel resentment).

mortenjorck 15y ago

I don't see anyone in the discussion here "holding America up as a paragon of all that is evil." I do see people holding the US to account for its own practices and patterns of incarceration. Few would dispute that there are still many ways in which America leads the world, but let's not delude ourselves here: the prison system is not one of them. DPRK is an extreme case compared to the US, but the US is an extreme case compared to much of the industrialized world, and invoking "America-hatred" trivializes an important dialogue.

zedshaw 15y ago

Having actually worked for the penal system collecting and analyzing statistics on prisoner abuses and policy enforcement, I can easily tell you that you are wrong (assuming your confusing deconstructionist prose means what I think it means). In general, Europe has some of the best prisons, and some of the worst prisons. France, Italy, Turkey, and Russia have horrendous prisons where in many cases prisoners don't survive their sentences. France's prisons are so historically bad that they've spawned whole revolutions numerous times, and are a common factor in their history. The EU was supposed to improve these conditions but it remains to be seen given they have very little data on how they're run, let alone anything publicly accessible. In Asia only Japan has decent well run prisons, but their prisons are harsh while still having a high success rate. In the rest of Asia prisons are typically horrible, and even S.Korea has some awful conditions. Last thing I read said they don't feed prisoners and keep them in tiny huts, requiring their relatives to come and feed them. Burma is a massive police state with actual slaves by law. In Africa, if you remove countries that just don't even have working governments, you find the prisons are also horrible, with the exception of maybe South Africa, but even they've had a history of nasty evil and torture (read about Steve Biko). It's improved a lot, but not nearly as much as it should. The US is similar to Europe, with some of the worst and some of the best prisons in the world. Now, we're not talking about American legal policy on things like wrongful imprisonment by the LA Crash unit, idiotic "3-strikes your out" laws, or minimum sentencing laws. I'm talking the actual conditions of the prisons in the US as labeled by organizations like Amnesty International. In our case, prisons are generally alright, with a few standout offenses like Sheriff Joe Arpaio in AZ, and most prisons in the south and California. The worst state is definitely California, which makes sense given they've had more complete city wide riots than any other state in the nation and their huge gap between rich and poor. But, a significant difference between our prison system and many others around the world (even those in Europe) are our laws about open records on how they're run and our recent trend of civilian oversight groups and recitivism prevention. Starting in about 2004 there's been a huge push to increase monitoring of prisons, offenses, guard abuses, and to help parolees stay out of jail. I personally worked on systems that tracked guard abuses at Riker's Island and the NYC DOC, as well as finger print systems for prisons that do early release programs and job release programs. The biggest problem in American prisons is the advocacy by law enforcement of inmate-on-inmate rape as a sanctioned form of punishment. There's been numerous cases of countries refusing to extradite criminals based purely on our joke that a man will get ass raped in prison. If you wanted to focus your activism and hatred on any one thing to improve our system, it would definitely be eliminating rape. In general, through my research and my own need to improve prisons, I found that prisons are horrible poorly managed hell holes everywhere. They generally reflect the cultural fear of the dominant members of a region against the "unclean" citizens, outsiders, and the low class. The difference between American prisons and this one in N.Korea is the size of it and the blatant attempt to keep it secret from the rest of the world. Very few countries in the world try to hide prisons, and when they do it's considered horrible, but none of them are hiding a prison that's the size of Manhattan: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=90km+square