Rs trying to ramp up legal penalties against protesters is a perfect illustration of the mentality that has made the US justice system a dumpster fire. There's barely even a pretense that it will prevent the activities it targets, or make anyone safer. It is *purely* ...

... retributive. Purely about making some citizens feel better by imposing a little more suffering on other citizens. It is using law in service of culture war -- the only way the authoritarian personality can conceive using it.

And so US law is full of these purely political provisions, leading to a thicket of picayune laws & penalties that give police & prosecutors more & more power to hassle anyone, any time, which of course they apply inequitably.

It is in the nature of the authoritarian personality that, when it contemplates social problems, it can only conceive of punishment as a solution. People doing things you don't want? Punish them harder. Still happening? Must need to punish even harder.

It is only fear of punishment that restrains the authoritarian from being a selfish monster and that is the only motivation he can conceive of anyone having. "Everyone is as horrible as me" is the bedrock of every authoritarian reaction or proposal.

You see it reach parody in discussions of, say, homelessness. The authoritarian's only tool is punishment, so for homelessness, the answer must be rounding up & jailing or penalizing homeless people. As though people need some extra incentive not to be homeless!

It simply never occurs to him to *help* people so that they don't end up in the situation in the first place. That feels like weakness to authoritarians. "The only language they understand is force" is projection, nay, the root of all the other acts of projection.

Sorry, blabbing on & on is just my instinctive reaction to horrible things. I will fire words at it! Word it to death! It doesn't work, but I lack other tools, so