By now, anyone who has been on this site during approximately 13 years since I first came here knows that I tend to be quite outspoken on issues about which I care.
I care about a lot of issues.
I do not, even in light of the results of the recent election cycle, plan to change that.
In the past I have accepted that my outspokenness and my long track record online here and elsewhere could cost me job opportunities. I actually first encountered that long before coming here, for the 2001-2002 school year. It has happened several times since, although that was in part balanced by one assistant principal who wanted to hire me precisely because of what I had written (for other reasons I did not get the job).
But this is a different time.
There is no doubt looking at the mindset of some who supported Trump, and of many of those around him, of a willingness to criminalize political opposition. After all, the election is over and yet at his relatively sparsely attended “victory” rally last night we again heard chants of “Lock her up!” and verbal attacks on the press for fake news when in fact the fake news comes from the Trump camp.
We have seen the President-elect advocating stripping citizenship from those exercise a currently protected by the First Amendment political expression.
We have previously heard him talk about punishment for women exercising a currently protected by the Supreme Court right of terminating a pregnancy.
We have some idea of the kind of judges and Justices he would appoint, and we know that the key people advising him on legal matters, his Attorney General designate and his White House Counsel designate are not exactly paragons of protecting rights with which they disagree.
So is it not logical to think that if the current patterns continue as they are, we all should consider our possible future domiciles at the expense of the taxpayers? Particularly given that the massive expansion of prison populations would inevitably lead to an exponential expansion of private prisons, which just so happen to be places where those rights still guaranteed to prisoners in government facilities are not protected?
After all, the idea of “victory rallies” is just the latest example of how to rile up and satisfy the blood lust of masses that goes back as the bread and circuses of the Roman Empire.
Hence the title of this post — because if things do not begin to change direction fairly quickly, I had damn well better wonder what prison would be like, because if somehow I am still alive it is hard to see how a bigmouth like me would not wind up in such a place.
What about you?