Republicans Are BIG MAD About Prison Conditions (Now That THEY'RE Going To Prison)
Boo. Fucking. Hoo.
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Many many years ago, I summed up the difference between liberals and conservatives as follows:
A conservative says, âIf it hasnât happened to me, I donât care.â
A liberal says, âThat should never happen to anyone, and thatâs why I care.â
Iâm not the first person to think of this. I might not even be the first person to phrase it this way. Even so, it holds up remarkably well a decade or so later and, I promise you, it will still hold up a decade from. Or two. Or twenty. Republicans simply do not care about injustice in the world until it affects them. Then, suddenly, theyâre outraged at the top of their lungs over societal problems they themselves had a hand in causing.
For a real-world example of this, look no further than the big sad sobby tears the right is crying over poor Steve Bannon going to Big Boy Prison. Previously, Bannon was pardoned by Trump for stealing millions from gullible racist Republicans. Trump did this to buy Bannonâs silence over his involvement in the January 6th insurrection. Bannon, of course, is hard at work planning the next coup attempt.
Still, Trumpâs pardon worked and Bannon ignored a subpoena from Congress. But Trump isnât president and Republicans donât control the Senate. Now Bannon is going to jail for contempt. He was proud to do it, though! A patriot! For âMurika! But that was before he learned about going to Big Boy Prison.
You see, Bannon and his fellow fascists figured he would be going to a nice cushy country club jail for a few weeks. No biggie, right? Any sacrifice is worth the overthrow of America!
But Bannonâs not going to a minimum security day spa and heâs definitely not getting home confinement. Heâs going to an actual prison. Itâs low security but itâs still a real prison:
Instead of a minimum-security prison camp, where many nonviolent offenders serve their time, Bannon â now a right-wing podcaster with a following of loyal Trump supporters â is set to report next month to the low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, one of the sources told CNN.
âŚ
But Bannon isnât eligible for the lowest-level prison setup because he still has a pending criminal case against him in New York, where he is fighting the charges and set to go to trial in September. That case accuses him of defrauding donors in a fundraising effort branded the âWe Build the Wallâ campaign for a border wall between the US and Mexico.
The outrage is so thick you can cut it with a knife:
Former Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark complained that officials had not sent Steve Bannon to a minimum-security prison because "they want to see harm come to him."
While speaking to Real America's Voice host Jack Posobiec on Wednesday, Clark claimed that "they want to send Steve Bannon even to Rikers Island."
"Or they're going to send him to a place where he's going to be like in a communal lockup, you know, when he's 70 years old, you know, roughly," he said.
AwwwwâŚboohoo! Heâs old so he deserves special treatment! Itâs dangerous in prison! We canât have our people getting sent to mean olâ nasty prisons! Bad things happen!
Funny thing, thoughâŚClark, Posobiec, Bannon, none of them gave a fuck about prison conditions before they and their buddies were looking at doing time.
You may recall that Republicans also suddenly discovered that the jails in Washington DC were hellholes but only after their fellow Republicans were being held there by the busload:
The politicians highlighted a report Greene published after touring the D.C. Jail unit. Titled âUnusually Cruel,â it notes that people in the D.C. Jail spent much of 2021 locked in cells for 22 or 23 hours a day, and that one man held on January 6 charges spent 200 days in solitary confinement. Greene stressed: âThis type of treatment is being used against inmates who are all pre-trial. They have been convicted of nothing.â
Itâs really important to note that these are the same people fighting tooth and nail to keep cash bail intact. Cash bail is the system in which if you cannot afford bail, you stay in a local jail until your trial. Literally hundreds of thousands of people a year, if not more, lose their freedom over this:
The use of money bail is one of the most troubling features of our deeply unequal justice system.
Bail amounts vary widely, with a nationwide median of around $10,000 for felonies (though much higher for serious charges) and less for misdemeanors (in some places such as New York City, typically under $2,000, though much higher in some jurisdictions). But even the lower amounts are more than most people can pay, and many spend time in jail for lack of as little as $500 or even $250.
They sit in jail waiting for their trial which can take weeks or months. Sometimes years. People lose their jobs, their homes, everything. It can be for anything at all. Drinking in public. Loitering. A fucking parking ticket. And your life is ruined.
On top of all that, you get to spend time in a nightmare, hoping not to get shivved or raped. Over a fucking parking ticket.
This has been going on for decades. Centuries. The left has been trying to fix it and Republicans just like Greene and Gaetz and the rest have stopped reform at every opportunity because they want American jails and prisons to be dangerous. Why? Because the system is designed (by racist white men) to funnel Minorites in and Republicans are racist fucksticks. Donât even get me started on private, for-profit prisons and the school-to-prison pipeline set up to line the pockets of Corporate America.
Republicans never considered that they would be the ones to end up incarcerated in the squalid shitholes they created. That was supposed to be for THOSE people. This is America! We donât hold Republicans accountable for the crimes they commit! ThatâsâŚthatâsâŚthatâs fucking tyranny!!!
Fuck these people. This is why I created the Liberalâs Prayer: May you and yours be the victims of your ideology.
Republicans laughed and laughed at the pain and suffering of the people they threw in jail. Now we get to laugh at them.
Ha. Ha. Fucking Ha.
You might have been laughing too hard to catch it above but the best part of all of this is after Bannon gets out of jail, he gets to go on trial for the same crime Trump pardoned him for. But at the state level and the evidence is overwhelming. Bannon going to prison on July 1st is not a brave act of defiance.
Itâs a fucking preview of the rest of his life. Adios, fascist.
There are 133 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
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Yes: A conservative says, âIf it hasnât happened to me, I donât care.â
I would add,"...and if it happens to you, then you deserved it."
My mother told me decades ago. "A Republican says you must have done something wrong. A Democrat says there but for the grace of God go I."