(08-26-2021, 09:01 AM)David Horn Wrote: There are others still out there awaiting trial. If 6 years is the deal made for a guilty plea, some will receive serious punishment -- decades at least. It's unlikely to dissuade others of similar bent from doing similar things in the future, but it will stand as a benchmark.
Some are guiltier than others in a conspiracy. He is the youngest and he may have been able to say that older and more cunning people had manipulated him into actins that he now regrets. We do not yet know everything, including the facts of the case and the psychological dynamics of the participants scheduled for trials. All conspiracies are milky until the harsh light of justice dries the mire. As I see it some of the accused face this prospect:
![[Image: 7b65d8d9cf72bd72bbaca1b9b25b4bfbf486096e...edc4e9.png]](https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7b65d8d9cf72bd72bbaca1b9b25b4bfbf486096e0ff1ce999a7627b9caedc4e9.png)
Except for the prediction that former President Trump will end up there, this looks like an objective insight into what awaits some defendants in this case. The prospect of this Hell on Earth would scare me more than the sick ceremony of a formal execution. At least with an execution one's misery is over. At least on Death Row one can do what many do -- kiss up to the Almighty in some religious sect that offers cheap grace (have faith and you avoid going to Hell where the non-believers end up*). The only freedom that I can imagine there is the exercise of religion. ADX Florence is isolation and social deprivation that deny the humanity of the prisoner. Life is stripped of all possible meaning. Even in a Nazi "labor" camp one had the hope that one would outlast a regime that the rest of the world sought to overthrow. One's life would be shattered, but one cou8ld also pickup the pieces. If the rest of one's family and old friends had been obliterated one would have the prospect of love, marriage, and a new family with very different people. The symphony, the drama, and the art will still be there, and if one has talent and competence one will no longer be a pariah for being Jewish or a political dissident**. A Stalin-era Gulag? Maybe the regime would relent at some point and choose some partial amnesty. The United States of America has two things over all the Evil Empires that ever existed: durability and continuity. If you are Victor Frankl (I would suggest that his Man's Search for Meaning be on Ty Garbin's reading list) even the Red Army is deliverance. If you are Ted "Unabom" Kaczynski then one faces no prospect of even the pretense of rehabilitation in ADX Florence.
Ty Garbin has surely been told of what awaits him as comparative privileges. He may get vocational training and some access to formal education. He will get unfettered access to religion. There is cable television, so he will be able to get religious programming. Maybe he would not gravitate toward sports, news, public affairs, PBS documentaries, cultural events (occasional concerts, operas, and ballets on PBS), and old movies as I would if I still had cable TV... I'm priced out and I live 70 miles from a broadcast tower of any kind, so I now must rely upon an extensive collection of recorded video or the Internet. The stated objective of rehabilitation (prisons are often euphemized as "reformatories" is that he will come out of it a better person than he went in. Everything in a conventional prison except bare survival is a privilege, and good behavior allows one access to educational and vocational programs, access to at least radio, books, and even cable TV, and religious services.
I hope that he comes out of his experience of federal prison 75 months older, considerably wiser, and able to pick up the pieces of his life. He will serve as a warning that even with comparative mercy that involvement in violent extremism is a very bad idea.
*I consider cheap grace unlikely; if there is a just God, then those who either believed in the wrong entities or in Him the wrong way, one will get that detail right very quickly. God Almighty chooses whatever theology He wants, and it may change depending upon how He chooses to judge the recently-departed. A Nazi brute might discover that God is Jewish. Crusaders who butchered Muslims might be scared to find that God is Allah and Muhammad is His Greatest Prophet. 9-11 perpetrators find that God is a Roman Catholic (New York City may be known for its Jewish population, but it is more Catholic than anything else). The Kluxers who bombed the Eighth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham and killed four black girls find that God identifies as black. So... DON'T DO EVIL!
** If there is a Hell, then one of its worst torments will not be the knowledge that people in Heaven will be taking delight in watching your suffering. If I were a denizen of Heaven, that (the three-headed dog Cerberus and his progeny ripping the souls of Nazi war criminals; dogs kill much like bears and Big Cats, differing from those more infamous animals in being better behaved) would get very old very fast. Hell is still a vile place of sensual insult and deprivation, but it has the added torment of having the video stream going the other way: the delights of those who were one's victims enjoying heavenly bliss to which the damned are condemned to observe for eternity.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.