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 ā€œday one.ā€ In August, he said he would ā€œhave no choiceā€ but to lock up his political opponents.

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

Lofgren added that she doesnā€™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 Trumpā€™s side, said heā€™s having ā€œreal-time conversationsā€ with his staff about how to make sure he stays safe if Trump follows through on his threats.

ā€œWeā€™re taking this seriously, because we have to,ā€ Schiff said. ā€œWeā€™ve seen this movie before ā€¦ and how perilous it is to ignore what someone is saying when they say they want to be a dictator.ā€

  • delirious_owl@discuss.online
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    8 months ago

    The sentence in prison should be as long as is needed to rehabilitate them.

    Prison isnā€™t a place to ā€œconvertā€ or ā€œtortureā€ or ā€œpunishā€ someone. Its s place for them to get care and education until they are safe to return to society without being a risk to themselves or others.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      8 months 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
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        8 months 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@lemmy.ml
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          8 months 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 itā€™s still a prison. And the purpose of prisons is very clear.

          My point is we should abolish prison.

          • delirious_owl@discuss.online
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            8 months 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 Iā€™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@lemmy.ml
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              8 months ago

              Hereā€™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 ā€˜I feel cut off from the outside world in hereā€™ (56%) and ā€˜All the Prison Service cares about in this prison is my ā€œrisk factorsā€ rather than the person I really amā€™ (50%); between a third and over two-fifths agreed that ā€˜This system treats me more like a number than a personā€™ (41%), ā€˜The level of security and control in this prison is oppressiveā€™ (39%),ā€˜Staff in this prison think that prisoners are morally beneath themā€™ (38%), and ā€˜I have no control over my day-to-day life in hereā€™ (35%). Around one in five agreed with the items ā€˜The prison system is trying to turn me into someone I am notā€™ (23%) and ā€˜This prison is trying to mess with my headā€™ (22%) and or disagreed that ā€˜Staff in this prison do their best to help meā€™ (23%), ā€˜Staff here treat prisoners fairlyā€™ (20%), and ā€˜I feel safe from being injured, bullied or threatened by other prisoners in hereā€™ (19%); and substantial proportions disagreed with the item ā€˜I feel cared about most of the time in this prisonā€™ (16%), or agreed that ā€˜I am not being treated as a human being in hereā€™ (15%) and ā€˜Generally I fear for my physical safetyā€™ (13%).

              Most notably, as shown in Table 2, just under a quarter of prisoners in Norway agreed with the statements ā€˜My experience in this prison is painfulā€™, ā€˜This prison is trying to take away my self-respectā€™ and ā€˜My treatment in this prison is humiliatingā€™; just under a third agreed that ā€˜This prison is doing harm to meā€™; and well over half agreed that ā€˜My time in this prison feels very much like a punishmentā€™. Overall, then, while the results are indisputably more positive in Norway than in England & Walesā€”supporting the claim that Norwegian penality is more humane in relative termsā€”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 youā€™re from a nightmare country that openly and gleefully tortures prisoners (donā€™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
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                8 months ago

                Yes. And thatā€™s not punishment.

                If someone is mentally not healthy and a risk to themselves or others, youā€™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 theyā€™re in prison.

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

                I wasnā€™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 isnā€™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@lemmy.ml
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                  8 months ago

                  Surely, if your friend could leave the prison to attend school, then the prison itself wasnā€™t necessary! What purpose did that serve other than to alienate and isolate and punish? Itā€™s ā€œnot perfectā€ because it canā€™t be, the suffering is the point and all the Nordic model does is make their suffering productive.

                  Prisons should not be. We donā€™t need Nordic prisons, we need prison abolition.

    • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      I very much do not give a shit whether Trump is rehabilitated or not, heā€™s an existential danger to many groups of people, if somebody decides to put a bullet in his head Iā€™m not gonna cry over it.

      • JimmieJam@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Trump doesnā€™t deserve forgiveness or a chance to get better. He deserves a hole in the ground with his neck broken.

      • delirious_owl@discuss.online
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        8 months ago

        The US is the most violent and one of the most classist societies in the world. Slavery is still legal in US prisons.

        Its hardly a benchmark.

    • radiofreeval [any]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Those three methods are taken from the FBI suppressing Black revolutionary thought. Iā€™m this model, prisons are absolutely places to torture, punish and convert people.