What really hurts my soul is how cruel, unempathetic and bloodthirsty the American population as a whole is. We do a lot of things we normally wouldn't when we'

What really hurts my soul is how cruel, unempathetic and bloodthirsty the American population as a whole is. We do a lot of things we normally wouldn't when we're afraid. So guess what? There are plenty who are willing and able to manipulate us by simply stoking fear. I wish more Americans were adept at recognizing this. You see this with rhetoric about crime spiralling out of control (it isn't). Or that we need more police officers (we don't) or harsher sentences (we definitely don't). The US has 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners. The US has the highest number of prisoners in the world (2.1 million) and the third highest (IIRC) incarceration rate as well as the highest incarceration rate. If locking people up was the solution the US would be the safest country on Earth. We treat prisoners as de facto slaves (eg [1]). Rape within prison [2] is effectively institutionalized as a means of systemic punishment. And of course we have examples of completely unjustifiable abuse of solitary confinement. Nobody should be put in solitary confinement (technically, administrative segregation or "ad seg"), as the author was, for a year. [1]: https://innocenceproject.org/13th-amendment-slavery-prison-labor-angola-louisiana/ https://innocenceproject.org/13th-amendment-slavery-prison-l...