Generation Bubble

Dies Irae: Vaccinated Inmates, Public Outrage, and the U.S. Prison Industry

The nineteenth-century Russian novelist and one-time convict Fyodor Dostoevsky famously remarked, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” If our correctional institutions do in fact present this absolute measure, then we are confronted with the sad truth that the United States isn’t terribly civilized. This is especially true if we Americans consider that, as sociologist Barry Glassner famously pointed out, ours is a culture of fear. A culture of fear in many respects represents a return to primitive stage of cultural development, one subject to forces and vicissitudes beyond that culture’s control or comprehension. A culture of fear makes for a collective Imaginary populated by all sorts of malign powers. Every stranger (particularly if said stranger has brown skin) is a potential demon, goblin, bugbear or ghoul intent on harming others simply to satisfy his devilish impulses. Inner-city “superpredators” lurk in every alley, middle-eastern terrorists down every jetway. People subject to culture of fear rationalize the inherently irrational simply as a matter of reflex. The barbarities — and the profits — which flow from this reflexive tendency are appropriately staggering.