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Steven's avatar

You've admitted that she's deeply ideological, entirely ignorant on the subject, and yet aggressively inclined to push extreme policies on a topic she knows nothing about. Yet you think such a person is potentially suitable to lead our nation if she'd just brush up a little and tone her rhetoric down a bit so she doesn't scare off moderates. That puts the cart before the horse and then has it walk backwards.

Instead of starting with a policy idiot who happens to have charisma and hoping to educate her into a halfway decent position before she wrecks the country, how about finding someone who has the good sense to know what they are talking about and try to teach them better social skills?

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Jeff's avatar

I truly believe that AOC is dumb enough and ambitious enough to be the next Stalin or Mao. I have no doubt she would feel justified in seeking to “re-educate” those who disagree with her positions.

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Matt L.'s avatar

Anyone who ever even thought this let alone stated it, including AOC, are forever disqualified from ever winning the US presidency. The stupidity of some from the Left is that because perpetrator experienced hurt - that this person’s trauma trumps that inflicted on the victim when it comes to criminal justice. It’s ass backwards, ignorant of human nature, and keeps people on the streets who deserve to be behind bars.

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Jack PG's avatar

Interesting that you are going off the assumption that every incarcerated person is in prison because they are a “perpetrator” who harmed a “victim.” Lot of non-violent drug offenders in our prisons.

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Gooddogboy's avatar

Actually not many at all

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Andras Boros-Kazai's avatar

Not many as of 2014.

But of course, as we learned from "Shawshank," everyone in prison is innocent.

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Bill's avatar

Have you ever considered experimenting with human powered flight?

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Maier Amsden's avatar

Trump is a direct threat to criminal justice, and his people love it. Trump makes grandiose unworkable promises and his people love it. Democrats can't stop equivocating and pre-compromising long enough to actually say anything compelling. And they're losing to Trumpism while still clinging to this ancient archaic notion of dull centrism.

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Somewhere in the middle's avatar

That and she is a blithering idiot

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Jack PG's avatar

There can be no abolition of police and prisons while we remain a capitalist state; the two are inseparable.

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Pete McCutchen's avatar

And a socialist planned economy won’t need any instruments of state power. It will just run on rainbows.

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Jack PG's avatar

Never said socialism would not use instruments of state power lol but go off king

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Filk's avatar

This is correct. Communist never had anything like police enforcement and never had places to send people away like prisons.

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Jack PG's avatar

While we still have private prisons and people getting rich as fuck off of mass incarceration, nothing can fundamentally change.

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Nov 30
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Pete McCutchen's avatar

Alice, in Florida, prisoners want very much to be sent to private prisons. They prefer them! Why, you ask? Because in a rather pointless exercise in macho tough-on-crime bravado, the Florida legislature decreed that government prisons couldn’t have air conditioning. In Florida. But the private prisons can -- and do. Not for the comfort of the prisoners per se, but because it’s harder to hire guards if they have to work in sweltering heat, and it’s physically impossible to provide climate control for guards and not prisoners.

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Nov 30
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Nov 30
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Pete McCutchen's avatar

I’ve been to Australia! I just got back from a month there. Unlike you, most Australians I met were pretty good-natured.

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Luxuria Luxuria Condo 503's avatar

Her past words and attitude will ensure that she will meet er be president.

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Karen Russell's avatar

She won’t!! She would be worse than Harris!! She’d never win!!

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Frank Lee's avatar

AOC Cannot be president because she is not bright enough.

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Bill's avatar

This is ass

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Greg Kemnitz's avatar

My guess is she may be influenced by people advocating some sort of "restorative justice", which seems to be rooted in the idea that there's no such thing as a criminal or individual victim, and they're both victims of societal evilness.

In practice, it ends up being a criminal-friendly scheme where the victim is supposed to be forgiving, while the perpetrator somehow makes amends. And you end up with the lion and the lamb discussing lunch plans.

AOC wouldn't like the world before police and prisons, where most non-minor criminals were hanged, beheaded at the block (beheading was considered more dignified than hanging, so it was often reserved for nobles or wealthier commoners), or conscripted into slavery for the state.

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Janos's avatar

That's not what restorative justice is. Restorative justice believes that the best way to address the harm and prevent it from happening again is through a restorative process that involves the willing cooperation of both the victim and the perpetrator.

It is one powerful tool for addressing harm, but it's clearly not meant for every situation.

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Hayden Douglas's avatar

Your definition here is essentially "restorative justice is a restorative process" without any concrete description of what that process is. Progressives have a terrible time defining their utopian ideas via material instructions and actions.

Just put them in jail.

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Garrett Phillips's avatar

Just stop. She makes Kamala Harris look bright. Also, it’s apt that she looks like an child playing dress up behind that podium.

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Eric Tyler's avatar

AOC is the dumbest Brookkynite I have ever seen.

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Maier Amsden's avatar

AOC can't be president. Some of her positions are radical and unworkable. [Motions to Trump's second term] Democrats are the only party that thinks dull pragmatic centrism puts asses in seats. Feckless hand-wringing loser is their brand.

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Anna's avatar

She also pushes radical gender ideology, just recently proclaiming “trans girls are girls” on the House floor. That position is rapidly becoming untenable too.

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Maier Amsden's avatar

Refusing to call someone by their chosen identity isn't bold truth telling. It's just being an inconsiderate asshole.

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Anna's avatar

Her speech was about the save women’s sports bill, nothing to do with names or pronouns.

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Sonu's avatar

Americans are not fine with a humane criminal justice system. Most Americans are very punitive and want tough on crime policies. Its why Trump was so successful this year. There's a reason why capital punishment has succeeded 31 out of the 34 time it has been on the ballot. There's a reason why Prop 6 failed in California.

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Andrew's avatar

I don't think for most folks that the desire to be "tough on crime" is at all difficult to align with "a humane criminal justice system". Being tough on crime means making it difficult and undesirable to commit the crime in the first place and then having consequences when someone commits a crime anyhow.

In the real world at present, this would mean not decriminalizing shoplifting. It would mean actually encorcing and prosecuting the laws. It would mean supporting a well trained police force.

Several Trump voters that I know have spent extended time in jail and are understandably very liberal and humane in their belief that those incarcerated should be treated humanely and once released that they have "paid their dues" and should have the full rights of any citizen. But at the same time, if someone were to break into their neighbor's house or store, they want to see the perpetrator arrested and convicted. Outside of partisian discord, these two beliefs are not a source of cognitive dissonance.

This seems a very normal way to feel and yes, Trump recognized this while the Dems did not. So, yes, Trump won, but isn't that how a functioning democracy should work? There is nothing nefarious about it.

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Janos's avatar

Trump also signed the First Step Act, which has brought thousands of people home from prison sooner.

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A Rancor (rancor)'s avatar

Excuse me, but the reason Prop 6 failed in California is our system allowed the Private Prison industry to spend obscene amounts of money advertising and advocating against it. This kind of "there's a reason" talk is utter nonsense that falls apart at the lightest scrutiny - there's even a fallacy named for it: Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

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Filk's avatar

In my opinion, anyone who seriously advocated for (and doubled down on) those specific policies, while trashing everyone else as delusional bigots who even questioned the wisdom of such rhetoric, are radioactive. And, Abolish/Defund the police and Abolish prisons are rhetorical platforms that have a tremendous half life.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

Where am I

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