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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
The man told jurors he spent hours listening to far-right podcasts before breaking into the Pelosi home and attacking the then-Speaker’s husband with a hammer.
The man told jurors he spent hours listening to far-right podcasts before breaking into the Pelosi home and attacking the then-Speaker’s husband with a hammer.
If your reason for committing a crime is because of a conspiracy theory you should get an extra harsh sentence because you are an exceptional menace to society.
I disagree. I think the punishment should be twofold: automatic parole on the condition that you see a psychiatrist for a minimum of three years (paid via subsidy). Failure to find a therapist or missing three sessions (with reasonable exceptions) sends you to prison to serve out your remaining “therapy” time.
That would just guarantee this crap will thrive. You have vastly underestimated the menace of people like this. It is absolutely critical to deal with this in a severe way, as the equivalent of a hate crime.
Sorry. I have conspiracy theorists in my family and have a good friend with a doctorate in Administration of Justice with a focus on prison reform. These people need psychiatric help, not isolation and prison, which would just further entrench them in their worldview.
If there really was systemic child abuse and ritual murder happening all around you, any reasonable person would try to stop it; the core problem, of course, is that’s not what’s happening in reality. They can’t tell what is fantasy and what is real, and relegating them to a cell doesn’t teach them how to discern the difference.
There’s no way mandating seeing a psychiatrist would result in more crimes any more than standard parole or community service does, especially if failure to participate results in prison anyway.
You would think that, but a reasonable person would also notice that no one else is concerned about this. And the few people that are concerned seem a bit funny in the head.
You would also notice that the bad guys always appear to be (((them))) and ignore it as anti-Semitic nonsense.
The people who believe conspiracy theories are not relieved when you point out the holes in their theory. This is the difference between “belief” and “desire to believe”.
Let’s say you believe this weekend will be rainy, and you are upset about it. You had cool stuff planned! You check the weather on Friday and notice the weather has improved. You would be happy to have your negative belief disproven.
That’s not what happens when you disprove someone’s conspiracy theory. They “want to believe” it because that belief gives them something: friends, purpose, etc.
That’s called being in a cult. They want somewhere to belong. Like any cult, it snatches up people in a questioning phase of their lives.
My friend, wanting somewhere to belong is human. They just feel they have no other options.
Exactly. These people are in a cult. What they need is deprogramming, not isolation and engulfment in pain, which they already get from the cult they are in.
Not to mention our prisons are full of white supremacists who will further reinforce this worldview and further radicalize the Nazi. Prison is part of the problem, not the solution. We just saw this, actually, with Jacob Chansley’s Congressional bid following his release from prison.
Yeah, ignorance and stupidity are not great defenses.