--- Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
> because you casually collapse the prison population
> into a kind of
> one-dimensional profile of people who don't deserve
> our empathy.
Or perhaps this is how you read it. Of course you can interpret any text any way you want, but if you read what I post to this list you would certainly notice that I am usually against one-dimensional and simplistic interpretations. So why would I be one-dimensional in this particular case?
I am well aware of the fact that many people who are in prison probably should not be there. Among other things, my wife used to run a social program targeting, inter alia, prison population, so I heard a lot of sobbing true stories about people in prisons - no, not that there were innocent, but about high social cost and pointlessness of their incarceration, and the emotial trauma it has on their families.
Furthermore, if you read all that I wrote on the subject, you would no doubt notice that I was against imprisonment as the only form of punishment, because it is ineffecive, counterproductive, costly and precluding other forms of rehabilitation.
So it is not the prison population that I rant about. I object to something totally different, namely intellectuals trying to turn prisoners into martyrs and folk heroes. They really irk me, because I see it as an act of passive aggression and uppity snobbery.
An ordinary snob simply tries to impress people with his real or purported knowledge, social connections, wealth, status and kindred desirable qualities. An uppity snob, otoh, does not lower himself to such obvious ostentation, which would put him on an equal footing with thousands of social climbers and noveau riche. He is above it, and manifests that by reversing the polarity of what ordinary snobs do.
If ordinary snobs like luxury and wealth, uppity snobs ostentatiously embrace austerity and poverty. If ordinary snobs aspire to higher echelons of social status, uppity snobs reverse that and ostantatiously embrace the lower echelons, which ordinary snobs renounce. If ordinary snobs like dressing up, uppity snobs ostentatiously dress down. If ordinary snobs like "high culture," uppity snobs are ostentiatiously flippant toward it and instead embrace cultural expressions that are vulgar, shocking or expressive the values of lower echelons of society.
If ordinary snobs denounce people who engage in criminal activity, uppity snobs turn them into folk heros. This is their freak show that they use not just to separate themselves from ordinary snobs, but to demonstrate how much avant garde they are vis a vis the mainstream society.
Whereas ordinary snobbery is usually laughable and pathetic, uppity snobbery is highly annoying. It is so, because uppity snobbery is usually an act of passive aggression toward other people. Fundie x-tians do this by saying "god bless you" to their critics and opponents. Radical intellectuals do it by pretending to empathize with the "wretched of the earth." But both have the same intention and effect - to show how empathic and loving and virtuous they are vis a vis their mean-spirited, intolerant and vile opponents.
This is how I interpret many, if not most, stories empathizing with prisoners and lumpen, which left-wing intelectual produce, with proper public displays of moral indignation, for pubic consumption. It irks me because it puts me (and others) in an impossible position of either publicly embracing what I do not really think or believe, or otherwise being portrayed as a vile, mean-spirited and prejudiced person.
Perhpas this is not your intention - I really have no way of knowing. But your responses to my postings at least read this way. Just like you read my postings as collapsing the prison population into a one-dimensional image.
Wojtek
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