I would like to draw your attention to this and this. The second one, I admit, is less credible, since it’s just an LJ post, but I think that true or not, the real horror is that I have no trouble believing it of the US authorities. One might argue that the second guy did commit a crime, and therefore he really can’t complain too much, but y’know, it’s worth comparing his experience with that of someone like Erwin James an inmate of the British prison system, who recieved a life sentence for murder, if memory serves. It’s not the fact that the guy has to do time that bothers me – it’s that he did it in a system that seems designed to grind people down, rather than rehabilitate…

I would hope that none of the Americans on my friends list are planning on voting for Bush in November, but what bothers me most, I suppose, is that thought that I don’t seriously expect things to get better under Kerry, I just expect them to stop getting worse. That these experiences will keep happening to people who don’t deserve them, but at least there won’t be new legislation passed allowing worse. And I wonder – is this resigned acceptance to the idea that the status quo is the best we can hope for an inevitable consequence of growing older, or is it just me getting even more fucking cynical?