Last week, Democrats including San Antonio-Austin Congressman Greg Casar called on lawmakers to open an investigation into prison conditions in Texas.

At least 41 people have died in the Lone Star State’s unairconditioned prisons due to heat-related or unknown conditions this summer, according to the Texas Tribune.

Even so, it’s hard to firmly establish how many have succumbed to heat-related illness, according to observers. That’s because TDCJ’s official stance is that no inmates have died of heat exhaustion since 2012 — the same year the agency began to be bombarded with wrongful death lawsuits from inmates’ families, the Tribune reports.

  • LeadSoldier@lemmy.world
    40·
    1 year ago

    I agree with you and have studied this from my role as an intelligence official and former interrogator. The lawyer who prosecuted the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials stated that the real problem wasn’t the evil but the apathy of the masses that allowed a few evil people to do big evil things.

    The fact of the matter is that human reactions to certain information are well known from our centuries of study of propaganda and marketing and psychology. At this point it is easy for the government to manipulate messaging so that the people are misled enough to allow evil.

    It is the simple stuff and even smart people are influenced by it over time. It is a well studied phenomenon. No one is immune. For example, Trump saying that he has the most transparent government ever while specifically taking away rights and doing things in secret.

    The propaganda tool has been efficient for our governments, especially since the advent of the internet. Also, keep in mind that roughly half of the population has a two-digit IQ. Some people will never admit that they are dumb and therefore will never admit that they have been deceived.

    The fact that US citizens are scared to stand up to their government because the government police will abuse them shows where we are as a society. We are deeply fascist and the illusion of democracy hasn’t been functioning in Congress for quite a while. The illusion of the checks and balances has worn thin as well.

    So I agree with you. Our society is diseased. But it’s not necessarily the faults of the individuals.

      • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
        51·
        1 year ago

        That’s good. That’s progress. Eventually you’ll have no more tears to shed, you’ll grow numb and dead inside, and then, finally, you’ll be able to appreciate the morbid hilarity of humanity’s constant, unflinching torture of humanity.

        We really are the fucking worst 🤣