I’m gonna push back on this vision as idealism, cathartic though it may be. I’m not seeking to good cop them too hard or pretend to be anything other than what I am. Mao’s liberalism communists disdain to hide their views and all that. I just mean that if we want to do anything other than actually torture them for our own sick ends, we should be educating them in a way that gets the job done for the least resources possible. It’s unfair to the workers doing the teaching, it’s unfair to society to shoulder the burden of paying for their incarceration for any longer than absolutely necessary, and ultimately, it’s unfair to the incarcerated to antagonize them any more than necessary. Say what we will about their horrible beliefs, I’m not a retributivist when it comes to justice. We’re better than the idealist nonsense that underpins our current justice system and we shouldn’t let the ugly motivation of vengeance be the guiding light when engaging here. It should be rehabilitation, and whatever methods we can use to rehabilitate ASAP so they can be lifted to sapience and rejoin society as well adjusted members rather than horrible little gremlins hell bent on harming the historically marginalized. I’d argue this resource minimization is just a socially responsible way to minimize any further damage they can do, directly or indirectly, short of slipping into immoral forms of torture or unproductive and unjustifiable compromise of principles, like your good cop as described.
I’m just an educator by trade, and consider it part of my duty to reach the reachable as a professional obligation if nothing else. Discussing this with my peers who are POC or women, we widely recognize the type and how frustrating it is that they’ll listen to me and not them. None of us like this, it’s just a pragmatic matter to some extent, so if we’re trying to teach a group of folks and problem makers push back in them I’m brought in as the BAD cop if anything. A punishment or admonishment coming from me gets treated with more consideration than one from my marginalized peer, which might get written off as “that fucking slur hates me because they’re incapable of rational thought.” Again, terrible though it may be, they don’t get to use that line of reasoning on me. The same message coming from my lips can’t be written off in the same ways. Surely it can be written off with plenty of other vicious and moronic cope, but their options are more limited, and if they have a predisposition to accept authority from the likes of me why not exploit that to our advantage?
You should do some reading about how political education actually occurs during reeducation in cuba. The political officer more or less lives with the prisoners and is there to help coach and guide their development. Under ideal conditions, prisoners are to be released within 2 years of joining the political reeducation program. This is a great article that explores the philosophy of the program in Cuba.
This is a fantastic article that cuts through the ridiculous propaganda of western rags uncritically printing allegations of gusanos and the Yeonmi Parks of Cuba.
The biggest difference between Cuba’s situation and our own is the level of wealth and class character of offender. Cuba’s political prisoners tended to be peasants, not the ‘middle class’ as exists in the US or proletariat. We’d need to adjust our program accordingly, but I don’t want to get too into the weeds here until we’re operating from a materialist lens and rooting our analysis in proven socialist projects rather than idealist notions of how reeducation looks. PM me if you have difficulty accessing the article and we can figure out how I can get it to you.
I’m gonna push back on this vision as idealism, cathartic though it may be. I’m not seeking to good cop them too hard or pretend to be anything other than what I am. Mao’s liberalism communists disdain to hide their views and all that. I just mean that if we want to do anything other than actually torture them for our own sick ends, we should be educating them in a way that gets the job done for the least resources possible. It’s unfair to the workers doing the teaching, it’s unfair to society to shoulder the burden of paying for their incarceration for any longer than absolutely necessary, and ultimately, it’s unfair to the incarcerated to antagonize them any more than necessary. Say what we will about their horrible beliefs, I’m not a retributivist when it comes to justice. We’re better than the idealist nonsense that underpins our current justice system and we shouldn’t let the ugly motivation of vengeance be the guiding light when engaging here. It should be rehabilitation, and whatever methods we can use to rehabilitate ASAP so they can be lifted to sapience and rejoin society as well adjusted members rather than horrible little gremlins hell bent on harming the historically marginalized. I’d argue this resource minimization is just a socially responsible way to minimize any further damage they can do, directly or indirectly, short of slipping into immoral forms of torture or unproductive and unjustifiable compromise of principles, like your good cop as described.
I’m just an educator by trade, and consider it part of my duty to reach the reachable as a professional obligation if nothing else. Discussing this with my peers who are POC or women, we widely recognize the type and how frustrating it is that they’ll listen to me and not them. None of us like this, it’s just a pragmatic matter to some extent, so if we’re trying to teach a group of folks and problem makers push back in them I’m brought in as the BAD cop if anything. A punishment or admonishment coming from me gets treated with more consideration than one from my marginalized peer, which might get written off as “that fucking slur hates me because they’re incapable of rational thought.” Again, terrible though it may be, they don’t get to use that line of reasoning on me. The same message coming from my lips can’t be written off in the same ways. Surely it can be written off with plenty of other vicious and moronic cope, but their options are more limited, and if they have a predisposition to accept authority from the likes of me why not exploit that to our advantage?
You should do some reading about how political education actually occurs during reeducation in cuba. The political officer more or less lives with the prisoners and is there to help coach and guide their development. Under ideal conditions, prisoners are to be released within 2 years of joining the political reeducation program. This is a great article that explores the philosophy of the program in Cuba.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23294111
This is a fantastic article that cuts through the ridiculous propaganda of western rags uncritically printing allegations of gusanos and the Yeonmi Parks of Cuba.
The biggest difference between Cuba’s situation and our own is the level of wealth and class character of offender. Cuba’s political prisoners tended to be peasants, not the ‘middle class’ as exists in the US or proletariat. We’d need to adjust our program accordingly, but I don’t want to get too into the weeds here until we’re operating from a materialist lens and rooting our analysis in proven socialist projects rather than idealist notions of how reeducation looks. PM me if you have difficulty accessing the article and we can figure out how I can get it to you.