Tuesday, June 20, 2023
In bed at 10:10, up at 7:19, GERD episode at 2:45 had me in the bedroom recliner but also let Lilly out. 62℉, high of 74℉, sunny all day, wind NNE at 6 mph, 3 to 14 mph during the day, gusts up to 25 mph, no rain😖. The sun rose at 5:11 and will set at *:34, 15+23.
Guns, Crimes, and Incarceration in America's Dystopia. From Jennifer Rubin's WaPo column this morning:
In the Netherlands, there are roughly 2.6 guns for every 100 people; there are more than 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. In the Netherlands, it is very, very hard to get a gun; in the United States, it is ridiculously easy to get guns.
In the Netherlands there are about 27 gun homicides a year. Not 27 per 100,000. Total. In the United States, the Pew Research Center reports, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in 2021. (The U.S. population is about 20 times that of the Netherlands; U.S. gun homicides are more than 1,777 times the number in the Netherlands.)
Also, the Dutch do not incarcerate people for drug addiction. It’s one reason they have locked up so few people. The Guardian reported, “Since 2014, 23 prisons have been shut, turning into temporary asylum centres, housing and hotels. … The number of prison sentences imposed fell from 42,000 in 2008 to 31,000 in 2018 — along with a two-thirds drop in jail terms for young offenders. Registered crimes plummeted by 40% in the same period, to 785,000 in 2018.”
By contrast, a report from the Prison Policy Initiative found that in the United States, “Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of over 350,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. And until the pandemic hit … police were still making over 1 million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences.” As a result, “Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.” In short, the United States has 163 times the number of incarcerated people as the Netherlands, more than eight times as many per 100,000 people.
Understand, then, that we have our current criminal justice system because we have fetishized guns, criminalized addiction, neglected mental and emotional health, and resisted addressing social factors driving crime.
We could do it differently. We simply don’t want to.
Why not? The primary reason is RACE.
In another two decades, perhaps we’ll know whether we managed to find a way to advance racial equality that doesn’t also feel to a majority of people—and to the Court—like legally approved discrimination. Since S.F.F.A. filed suit nine years ago, the number of Asian Americans admitted to Harvard has significantly increased, reaching nearly thirty per cent of admitted students this year. White students are less than half of the class. At Stanford, only twenty-two per cent of admitted applicants last year were white, and, in the University of California system, only nineteen per cent were. Beyond any decision of the Court, the increasingly clear picture of white students as an underrepresented racial group whose majority status in the U.S. is fading—and of Asian Americans taking their place at the most selective schools—predicts even more racial resentment. And it suggests that a white conservative alignment with Asian Americans as the victims of discrimination cannot endure for very long. ♦
Untethered thoughts about Hunter and Joe Biden. News stories are reporting that Hunter Biden's and his attorneys have struck a plea bargain with the Trump-appointed US Attorney in Delaware under which Hunter witll plead guilty to 2 tax misdemeanors and participate in a 'diversion program' for his gun-purchase related falsehood. I know little of Hunter Biden other that the bits I have head in the media but here are some impressions. First, he seems like a very unadmirable guy who has traded on his father's position as a US senator and then as US vice president to make a lot of money for doing nothing other than being Joe Biden's son. Second, his problems with drugs and women also make him pretty unadmirable, at best. Third, I don't think I would like this guy or want him for a friend. Fourth, I can't help feeling sorry for him precisely because he is Joe Biden's son, and not the favorite son. Fifth, I have mixed feelings about Joe Biden's decision to keep the Senate seat he had recently won when Hunter's and brother Beau's mother and sister were killed in a vehicular collision. If small children ever needed a loving parent's presence after such a tragedy, it was Beau and Hunter. How much time could Joe make available to his children, even as a commuting US senator? Sixth, can there be much doubt that Hunter, compared to Beau, was the 'spare', much like Prince Harry was to Prince William? Beau was so favored and so accomplished compared to Hunter, who seems like a psychological train wreck. I always cringe at least a little when Father Joe speaks of Son Beau almost as his heir apparent with Hunter the misfit ne'er-do-well child in the background. When an adult child ends up as thoroughly screwed up as Hunter did, mustn't we at least wonder about the job his one natural parent did during the child's early and later life?
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