Prison Journal: 20 January 2019 – Sunday

479 down; 251 to go.

Blah. Fuck Nebraska.

At least I’m now off for two days. I’d like to finish the Blockchain book and the readings of Aquinas and the alternate for Age of Belief.

Professor Nadine Strossen is speaking about hate speech. How ironic she would speak in Nebraska where they may speak pleasantly, but are more inclined to Hate Action. She is at the Lied Center. “What we will remember most is not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – MLK. Her thesis: censorship is not effective against hate speech; counter-speech is.

Heard a story of religious discrimination from the tall gay guy Rob. He was at North Platt in the county program and there they were forced to listen to ultra-conservative religious propaganda from like 6-7am. They grieved it and they lost. They contacted the UCLU-NE, who said “yeah, you have a case, but we don’t have any resources to fight.” This is how Nebraska gets away with so much unconstitutional stuff. Prof Strossen is alluding to this issue (discrimination that is illegal, but no one willing to fight).

Content-neutrality is the basis for allowing hate speech. The speech in question must be associated/like to cause a specific, serious, imminent harm. -> “true threat standard”. “bad tendency test” -> too easy for government over-reach.

Those God-damned Nebraskan didn’t bother to fix their horrid performance last weekend – that is – NET was offline all Saturday and Sunday. They didn’t replay the season 4 finale so I missed that. This week they started season 5 (Downton Abbey).

I heard a story that Nebraska even keeps a person’s corpse until their sentence is over if they die before it’s over. I wonder if that’s true. It must be fake – that’s so depraved I can’t even believe it would be true of Nebraskans.

The logic of maintaining a directory of past crimes. Also this scarlet letter is further proof of the solely retributive intent. As far as “fairness” to others in society (employers, et. al.) they don’t have the same warning for first-time criminals. Wouldn’t it make more sense to assume anyone could be a candidate for problematic behavior and plan accordingly? Bernie Madoff was a first-time thief. Everyone other person was a first-time thief before their first time. Analogy: medical people plan for anyone to be a carrier of blood-borne pathogens.

Watching “Dead Man Walking” again. Good movie. I still think the idea of society ridding itself of murderers and rapists is OK in theory, but I don’t think it is ever possible to trust the government, politicians, lawyers, judges, jurors/sheeple, and witnesses/informants, and most of all the police to be honest, vigilant, ethical, and incorruptible in the execution of their respective duties/process of delivering justice. Clearly we myriad examples of frequent and egregious failures of duty in all those areas. There is the self-serving, unsubstantiated, and improvement-discouraging adage that says “our system is terrible, but at least it’s better than all the rest”. Would like to do a whole chapter picking apart why it is not the best and then why regardless of its rank among justice results of other societies is irrelevant and allows us to avoid responsibility to make meaningful measurements of our actual performance and then make improvements.

Plato was right when he ranked democracy as the second worst, most oppressive form of government. It is great for a generation or two after the generation that achieves it – as that generation necessarily understands the value of various institutions, safeguards, and incredible responsibilities required of the citizens. These duties include voting, being educated about the institutions of society, current issues, and the values of their representatives; running for office themselves when the current roster is not doing a good job or have served enough; dutifully serving on juries, military assignments and other civic organizations; paying their taxes; communicating ideas, opinions, and statements on their values to their representatives (and listening to their constituents when they occupy those roles); and participating in respectful public discourse with their fellow citizens about the health of the democracy.

After the first couple generations important lessons are lost, trade-offs are made, sacred cows are created and unhealthfully worshipped, and eventually as citizens, become too lazy to check on and adjust the rules governing their representation (judges, prosecutors, police, politicians, regulators, etc.) corrupt citizens learn how to use the rules to consolidate primary goods and personal power. These malignant citizens chip away at the power of regular citizens who still do participate and can’t check that erosion of power with a large number of regular citizens who have abandoned their responsibilities altogether or simply just “go through the motions” and agree with whatever simple messages are relayed by the malignant citizens through now-corrupted institutions (media, police, “justice”, etc.). In the words of Battlestar Galactica: “All this has happened before and all this will happen again”. The concern this time is the incredible gap between the power of individual citizens and the now-authoritarian government. In past cycles…. <more research here>. Try to find that book: “How Democracies Die”.

In some of the systems created by rationalists an attempt to make their relentless time spent in contemplation and study seem like less a waste of time and opportunity cost of more “fun” (according to larger society). That is are we really seeking immortality of the soul or salvation through truth or some other achievement or are we just doing it because we like being smart or pithy and those other things are justification. And does this question even matter?

Tried to call TH – no answer.