Much of the new investigation has focused on whether the select committee had hidden information that may have exonerated Donald Trump.

Members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol have warned America for three years to take former President Donald Trump at his word.

Now, as Trump is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination, his criminal trials face delays that could stall them past Election Day, and his rhetoric grows increasingly authoritarian, some of those lawmakers find themselves following their own advice.

In mid-March, Trump said on social media that the committee members should be jailed. In December he vowed to be a dictator on “day one.” In August, he said he would “have no choice” but to lock up his political opponents.

“If he intends to eliminate our constitutional system and start arresting his political enemies, I guess I would be on that list,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose). “One thing I did learn on the committee is to pay attention and listen to what Trump says, because he means it.”

Lofgren added that she doesn’t yet have a plan in place to thwart potential retribution by Trump. But Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who has long been a burr in Trump’s side, said he’s having “real-time conversations” with his staff about how to make sure he stays safe if Trump follows through on his threats.

“We’re taking this seriously, because we have to,” Schiff said. “We’ve seen this movie before … and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.”

  • queermunist she/her
    32•1 month ago

    There is no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do.

    The purpose of a system is what it does.

    • @delirious_owl@discuss.online
      5•1 month ago

      There are countries where prisons are used to torture and there are countries where prisons are used as rehabilitation centers. Both exist.

      My point is that we should build the later, not the former.

      • queermunist she/her
        18•1 month ago

        There is no prison on Earth that does not punish people. Even the most humane institutions struggle to treat inmates as anything other than subhuman, because no matter how lofty the goals of a prison system it’s still a prison. And the purpose of prisons is very clear.

        My point is we should abolish prison.

        • @delirious_owl@discuss.online
          3•1 month ago

          Sorry, thats not true. There are definitely prisons that dont punish people. I mean they may lock you in a cage, but thats to protect you and help you, not to punish you.

          Even the US prison systems (one of the worst I’m the world) is run by the Department of Corrections. At this point they may as well rename it to the Department of Torture (and also Department of Defense should be renex back to the War Department) as the name is double-speak).

          We should strive to replicate prisons in nordic countries, not those of the US.

          • queermunist she/her
            15•1 month ago

            Here’s what prisoners have to say:

            Here, it is worth looking at the results without any comparative benchmark. Notably, around or above half of prisoners in Norway agreed with items including ‘I feel cut off from the outside world in here’ (56%) and ‘All the Prison Service cares about in this prison is my “risk factors” rather than the person I really am’ (50%); between a third and over two-fifths agreed that ‘This system treats me more like a number than a person’ (41%), ‘The level of security and control in this prison is oppressive’ (39%),‘Staff in this prison think that prisoners are morally beneath them’ (38%), and ‘I have no control over my day-to-day life in here’ (35%). Around one in five agreed with the items ‘The prison system is trying to turn me into someone I am not’ (23%) and ‘This prison is trying to mess with my head’ (22%) and or disagreed that ‘Staff in this prison do their best to help me’ (23%), ‘Staff here treat prisoners fairly’ (20%), and ‘I feel safe from being injured, bullied or threatened by other prisoners in here’ (19%); and substantial proportions disagreed with the item ‘I feel cared about most of the time in this prison’ (16%), or agreed that ‘I am not being treated as a human being in here’ (15%) and ‘Generally I fear for my physical safety’ (13%).

            Most notably, as shown in Table 2, just under a quarter of prisoners in Norway agreed with the statements ‘My experience in this prison is painful’, ‘This prison is trying to take away my self-respect’ and ‘My treatment in this prison is humiliating’; just under a third agreed that ‘This prison is doing harm to me’; and well over half agreed that ‘My time in this prison feels very much like a punishment’. Overall, then, while the results are indisputably more positive in Norway than in England & Wales—supporting the claim that Norwegian penality is more humane in relative terms—there is no doubt that, in Norway, pain and suffering are still integral to the prisoner experience. In the following sections, we move on from these general results to discuss more specific findings that are particularly germane to debates about Nordic exceptionalism.

            All prisons are prisons. You have a rosey imagined image of the Nordic model, probably because you’re from a nightmare country that openly and gleefully tortures prisoners (don’t worry, I am too), but the reality is that all prisons are punishment. The purpose of a system is what it does. We should strive for a world without prisons.

            • @delirious_owl@discuss.online
              4•1 month ago

              Yes. And that’s not punishment.

              If someone is mentally not healthy and a risk to themselves or others, you’re going to have to do uncomfortable things to them. But the point is that they are given access to resources to be rehabilitated while they’re in prison.

              I dont know about Norway or Denmark or Iceland. Normally I refer to Finland.

              I wasn’t in a Finish prison, but I have a friend who was. He spent most of his time in school. As in, he left the prison during the day to attend Uni. A few times a year a guard would come to his class and make sure he was there. Of course it was a limit to his freedom, but he was given resources.

              Finland isn’t perfect either, and he never should have gone to prison to start with. But their prisons are how prisons should be. They exist to help people, not to make them suffer.

              • queermunist she/her
                8•1 month ago

                Surely, if your friend could leave the prison to attend school, then the prison itself wasn’t necessary! What purpose did that serve other than to alienate and isolate and punish? It’s “not perfect” because it can’t be, the suffering is the point and all the Nordic model does is make their suffering productive.

                Prisons should not be. We don’t need Nordic prisons, we need prison abolition.