what could be worse than wal-mart?

So..... what happens if --no, when- prisons-for-profit start to lobby Congress? Yesterday you couldn't protest the President at an official event. Sure, the penalty isn't severe, but we're not in a time of crisis. Doubtless, anti-presidential demonstrations would be tolerated much less gracefully in such times as 9/12/01- it doesn't take much to imagine protesters on such a day being arrested and detained. Today the House passed an anti-flag-burning amendment (House: "you can't say that." ahem). It has to pass the Senate, and be ratified blah blah blah, which is to say it's ultimately not very likely, but still, it represents an incremental encroachment on true, responsible, freedom of expression. I'm not sure what the penalties would be, but imprisonment would certainly not be a surprise. What's tomorrow, then? Ever-increasingly draconian legislation, that's what. To the point, eventually, where people like you and I will no longer be officially US anymore. Maybe I'll dress wrong. Maybe you won't be able to pay your debts. Use your imagination: watch Brazil, read 1984 or Brave New World- as natural resources dwindle, the Power Elite will find more reasons to exclude those they don't like, and those definitions will be made in the halls -and sewers- of power. For the powers behind Corporate Prisons: the more people in prison, the better. More prisoners, more money. Longer terms! Put those dangerous pot smokers away for good! And how might they go about getting more prisoners? Lobbying Congress -or maybe Alberto Gonzales- for heavier sentences, broader definitions of federal crimes, easements on use of inmates as labor, silly things like that.

Think about it. All conscious critters -I think- naturally divide the world into US and them (in various and shifting ways, as circumstances and needs change). On a societal scale among humans, the sides are determined by our purportedly impartial leaders and ruling class of politicians and judiciary. Let's not be coy: the socio-political elite.

As resources threaten to dwindle, it should come as no surprise when the ruling class narrows the definition of what's legal and acceptable -eventually to a point at which you and I are their them.

Now taking bets on when that point will come...