Unto every generation

lhn posted a grim, though-provoking excerpt from the Washington Post comparing our tolerance of North Korean atrocities with our predecessors' tolerance of Nazi atrocities and reminding us that we can't expect to be judged less harshly by our successors than they were. Do you suppose they'll listen to the excuse, "We couldn't think of any way to alleviate their suffering that wouldn't have destroyed the lives of tens of millions of South Koreans"? Probably not--definitely not if a war ends up breaking out anyway, despite our most strenuous efforts to find a peaceable solution.

I worry there's plenty of blame to be cast even closer to home. Know how we look back on the workhouses and orphanages of the Victorian era, cluck our tongues, and say, "How could they have been so cruel?" Isn't that going to be what our descendents say when they look back on the millions incarcerated during our current "tough on crime" fervour? On the scandals and crises in the various state child protection regimes? At least, I hope they will--the alternative, of course, is that they'll have grown even less compassionate than us and more indifferent to rights of the imprisoned and the defenceless. Yesterday, I read about the report on John Geoghan's murder in prison. (If that name seems familiar, it's because he was the most notorious of the clerical child molestors sentenced during the recent scandal.) The study concluded that protections were inadequate during every step of his passage through the penitentiary system. I'm sure the general reaction must be, "He was a child-fucker! Good riddance!" and "Who cared about protections when it was children being harrassed and exploited instead of convicts?" But one of lawyers on his case pointed out that many others suffer this way, but aren't high-profile enough to spawn an investigation.

Still, when there doesn't seem to be enough compassion to go around for the unincarcerated poor, it's hard to imagine stirring any up for those who have been convicted. I worry about what our treatment of prisoners says about the state of civil society, but, at the same time, I myself want as little personal interchange with criminals as possible. I can hardly blame anyone else for their indifference when I let myself be overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem and do nothing to solve it. It often seems that real change will only come when a enough people have passed through the prison system to build a substantial lobby. (What's the old joke? "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged; a liberal is a conservative who's been booked.") Of course, state politicans are aware of that, which may explain the lifetime deprivation of all voting rights for convicted felons. It never ceases to amaze me that this is constitutional. Voting seems to be one of the most basic rights it's possible to have in a democracy; I'm not sure that anything short of high treason is an excuse for taking it away at all, much less for life.

So, please, if this is floating around the Net in fifty years, show some mercy. Don't keep asking why we didn't do more; ask yourself what you're doing now.

Clarificatio vampirensis

In light of aroraborealis response to a previous post:

I had no idea that goo was effective against vampires. I'll be filing that away for future reference.

I think some clarification is in order. In the dream, I accepted a ride from a acquaintance and found myself in a car with three vampires. Once I realised that they were not joking about dining on me, looked for a weapon and found in my hands a large lump of semi-solid goo. Somewhere, I would say, between raw cookie dough and the rubbery blob Nuphy uses to do grip-strength-building exercises. I shoved a handful into the wide-open mouth of the nearest fiend and found that it bought me enough time to deliver smackdown and escape. I suspect it was not just everyday goo, since it did more than merely stop up the gullet. Perhaps it was made with garlic. Maybe it was Holy Goo.

Tastes like...er...

I credit bunj with being the first to tell me, after a lunchtime conversation he had with some SEAsian co-workers, that dog tastes like lamb. Here's confirmation from the BBC, in the form of an article about an Egyptian vendor arrested for selling dog meat as lamb. (Keep in mind that, in the Arab world at least, personality does not go a long way and dogs are considered as filthy as swine. This was not a case of people being outraged because they unwittingly ate poor Spike and Mitzi.)

So what's safe? So far, I've never heard anything besides bison and ostrich compared to beef, so you have to choose between your fear of mystery meat and your fear of of prions. Good luck!

State 1, Indians 1, Poor 0 for 2

Woo-hoo! Scientists can finally study Kennewick man! A triumph of common sense and truth-seeking over well-meaning but misguided minority privilege!

Thanks to danlmarmot for the link.

In vaguely related news, the proposed increase in the Cook Co. cigarette tax is music to the ears of the Amerind tribes who already sell monshu all his tobacky. I've always found a great deal of poetic justice in tax-free reservation tobacco sales. Of course, it's rich educated guys like my man who can easily order smokes over the Internet and poor underprivileged people who will have to continue buying them on the street, making this tax even more regressive that it already was! Pretty soon, it may rival the Lotto when it comes to redistributing funds from the city's poorest to its corrupt politicians. That, or we may see the city's drug dealers branch out as cigarette smuggling reaches Southern European levels. Either way, way to go Illinois lawmakers!