Hardcore

The constant drone of "Everyone is equal, no matter what their talents, and we can't hurt anyone's feelings" creates mediocrity, not equality, okay? (By the way, this statement refers solely to the concept of talent and personal creativity, not social engineering of one sort or another.)

I'm coming to realize that people are stupid. (This is not necessarily a continuation of the previous rant, but it's related.) I've been hanging out on AOL, in the chat rooms. Depending on the chat room, you actually can find decent conversation. But not always. And of course dorks can come in at any time. They scream, they shout, they ask "age/sex check." Then they wonder why no one will talk to them.

I read The Hot House by Pete Earley, a book about what life is like inside Leavenworth Prison. It's pretty scary. It sounded honest. I don't want to meet any of the guys who are kept in there. They sound like animals. And the system is rigged such, for the most part, these guys are kept behind bars far, far beyond their original sentence.

But, you say: they get out.

Why, yes. And you read this book, and you realize that they're kept like animals for their entire incarceration. There's no attempt whatsoever to rehabilitate them -- many of them are way beyond rehabilitation.

My solution: we should just kill anyone convicted of any felony. Death penalty for any felony. No three strikes. Wouldn't this solve all of our problems? No more debates about early release programs or assimilation into society or neighborhood notification. I think this is a great idea.

We don't care about them now. We're not doing anything to change them. We're not helping them once they get out.

So let's just cut the crap and clear out the prisons, shall we?

Sending 13-year-olds to maximum security prisons is going to breed a new form of hardcore criminal. Can we rethink this?