John Oliver's Last Week Tonight

Honestly, I wish I had quit the video after the squeaky frog. I am now actually kinda bummed out.

Well, that goes for a lot of Oliver's videos, really.

Actually, prison as punishment is not THAT old. In medieval Europe, for instance, prison was basically just a waiting room for other punishment, like branding, chopping off little bits of flesh, or hanging.

Oh, prison as punishment (or to keep hostage) has been a thing for a long, long time. The idea that if someone committed a crime society has failed the criminal instead of the criminal having failed society is the new one. But I am not sure if the US has really understood the concept. Like, at all. Or there wouldn't be privatized prisons. It is bad enough to imprison people, it is even worse to outsource the process.

I recommend people watch the Netflix documentary 13th for the link between prisons, racism, the drug war, and moh money.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on May 6th 2019 at 11:08:22 AM

Prison as punishment has been around for a while, but I think in ancient times it mostly involved imprisonment for debt rather than for crimes.

In medieval and early modern Europe, I think punishment for crime generally involved execution, corporal punishment, public shaming, fines, and - after colonialiasm began - temporary or permanent exile to the colonies (“transportation”), sometimes combined with indentured servitude.

I think it was only around the 1800s that imprisonment became the default punishment for crimes.

Edited by Galadriel on May 7th 2019 at 7:15:33 AM

People who were imprisoned for debt were rarely really imprisoned...like, a lot of them went daily to work aso.

Prison as punishment is basically the purpose of prison, the concept that you have done something wrong to society and you have to be removed from society and rights restricted to make amends and protect people you have or might hurt. And prison as a deterrent is real, where politics get things wrong is believing that changing the minimum sentencing from 3 to 5 years has a notable impact on the crime committed. Oliver has done a segment on the problem with minimum sentences, and the whole system does need reform.

I think it's only been about the last 50-ish years that world society in general has turned against capital punishment. Government is about providing order to how people interact with each other, and promising people that they will kill someone for the crime if they are guilty was a better alternative to lynch mobs who were far more likely to kill an innocent. Lynchings were relatively common up until about the 50's, and it's probably no coincidence capital punishment sentiment has risen significantly since then.

..... uhhhhhhhhh. You’re leaving out a LOT of context on lynch mobs. Jesus Christ.

That was hard to watch. But I must say I'm not surprised. I've read something similar about lethal injection in articles online or in the paper — I think about two years ago?

It also reminds me of a novel I once read, but couldn't actually finish. The Hangwoman by Pavel Kohout. It's about a beautiful, insensitive girls who goes to school to become an executioner. It was good, well-written, but reading about methods of execution, killing people and torture was more than I could take.

I am glad that he did that segment. Because I was wondering for a while what the Green New Deal actually is. The only thing the US media is focussing on is who is for and who is against it and how it might impact the chances of the Democrats.

The segment is less about the Green New Deal than the need for regulation to combat climate change. The Green New Deal has been problematic because it was functionally just outlining all major liberal talking points of the last 15 years, it's not an original, specific or unique policy proposal. A large number of democrats said it sounded like a parody of democratic policies (most democrats voicing support largely did so to keep their name in the media as presidential candidates, especially since Cortez has one of the largest social media presence of any current politician), and as Oliver mentioned the rollout was also disastrous. I think he is giving it too much credit as "starting the conversation."

I was mildly amused at Bill Nye's Cluster F-Bomb.

Nye has clearly been saving up those feelings and was only able to let them out on HBO.

The GND was a big part of why I can't really take Ocasio-Cortez too seriously. It both tries to say too much while not really saying anything at all.

Edited by M84 on May 13th 2019 at 6:32:08 PM

The Green New Deal is a framework, a conversation starter. It's not actual legislation, but at this point I'll take what I can get. The problem isn't on the Democrats' side here; it's with the entrenched Republican resistance to any form of effort to combat climate change. Since putting them all up against a wall and giving them extra cranial ventilation is out of the question, we have to deal with them somehow.

Yes, but alone the information that the green new deal is actually just a few pages long is more than I knew beforehand. I always assumed that it was some sort of long complicated paper.

Plus, the part with the Co 2 taxes which are given back to the poorest was extremely interesting.

Edited by Swanpride on May 13th 2019 at 4:08:27 AM

I don't think that part is outlined in the Green New Deal, that was part of Canadian legislation that Oliver was highlighting.

The Green New Deal was basically just a broad mission statement about their policies, there was very little in the document that actually explained in any detail what the plan was, how it was going to be managed or why it was so important. It also diverged from the "Green" title and covered everything from economic reform to universal basic income to affirmative action and minority group reparations. The name is in reference to President Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930's to try and curtail the Great Depression with government work programs (it's seen as a banner for socialism policies but actually had a marginal impact on the economy, it alleviated unemployment but it took WWII mass production to get out of it).

I've seen a number of people try to defend GND, but it usually comes down already supporting the broad idea rather than believing the document itself was a real milestone of government policy proposals.

Yes, I got that. It was still interesting because the Co 2 discussion happens over here, too. And I wonder if Macron would have been able to push his gas tax through if it had also been put aside for the benefit of the rural areas.

I don't want to snark or something, but... you could have just read the bill to find out what it was about.

It's really kinda meta that you need John Oliver to explain it to you.

Edited by Redmess on May 13th 2019 at 2:13:35 PM

Well, in my defence, I am not American. If it had been a bill for my own country I would have most likely sought it out and taken a look at it. Since it is an American bill, all what I know about it comes from the kind of American media I consume per proxy. And it is really telling how they reported about it, as just some element in the election campaign which might or might not damage the democrats. Which is most likely the reason why Oliver made the segment in the first place.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe a moderator shouldn't be casually suggesting the execution of their political opponents.

I'm not. I'm saying that we have no option but to deal with them lest we suborn our own democracy.

He who fights monsters, Fighteer...

... are you reading Fighteer's posts? "Deal with them" is explicitly not kill them, it means accept the fact they exist and are entrenched in politics, and whether we like it or not have a voice.

Edited by Larkmarn on May 13th 2019 at 2:01:48 PM

This is the part I was referring to: