Looking for an enemy
Here's an interesting article about the fact that some states are rethinking "get tough on teen crime" laws that give juveniles harsh prison sentences. Granted, many of the steps aren't big (in Colorado, minors now can "only" get 40 years to life, not life without parole - truly, the milk of human kindness right there), but if it begins a trend to reverse the draconian measures of the 1990s, that's only a good thing.
It's those draconian measures of the 1990s that this article made me think of, mainly about how ridiculous they were. Remember the word "superpredators" that was thrown around to describe all these horrible "killer kids" that commentators were predicting would rob, rape, and kill us all? The single most effective propaganda strategy for those wishing to abuse civil liberties is to dehumanize criminals (cf. comparison of death row inmates to "mad dogs" who need to be "put down"), and this is a textbook example. "Superpredators"? What the fuck is this, Jurassic Park? To be sure, there probably are some people who really are incurable psychopaths at a young age, but I'll wager that the vast, vast majority of kids who are savaged by the adult criminal-justice system are scared people who made a horrible mistake and who now face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives paying for it. Giving them a label which sounds like something a cartoon mad scientist grew in his petri dish isn't helping anyone.
So why was this sort of mean-spirited idiocy so prevalent in the 1990s? Well, to answer that question, what you really need to do is consider the stock-in-trade strategy of the demagogue, to get his or her (in practice, usually his) base good and scared of some threat that's out there, and then to reassure them immediately that he'll protect them from that threat, as long as he gets elected. Unsurprisingly, this Hannibal ad portas routine works best when there's a foreign enemy with which to scare people, and the Soviet Union served that purpose for many an asshole politician throughout the Cold War. But in the 1990s, the US didn't have a popularly-feared foreign enemy. The Bad Russians weren't so scary once the USSR fell, and the Bad Arabs weren't scary yet. Yes, there were US troops in the Balkans, but I don't remember anyone claiming that Slobodan Milosevic was a threat to Americans at home.
So if you're a demagogue and you need to bullshit people, and you don't have an enemy ready-to-hand, you make one. A lot of the 1990s fearmongering was focused on this sort of enemy-within routine, and the idea that Our Children could be turning against us was part and parcel of this strategy. Note also that the 1990s were the period of the worst hysteria over media violence since the 1950s establishment of the Comics Code Authority. Now, in the 21st century, we're back to being scared of foreign bogeymen, just like when the Soviets could nuke us any minute. But it's interesting to consider how the disingenuous political machinery operated at a time when there wasn't a military enemy (credible or exaggerated) to organize against.
It's those draconian measures of the 1990s that this article made me think of, mainly about how ridiculous they were. Remember the word "superpredators" that was thrown around to describe all these horrible "killer kids" that commentators were predicting would rob, rape, and kill us all? The single most effective propaganda strategy for those wishing to abuse civil liberties is to dehumanize criminals (cf. comparison of death row inmates to "mad dogs" who need to be "put down"), and this is a textbook example. "Superpredators"? What the fuck is this, Jurassic Park? To be sure, there probably are some people who really are incurable psychopaths at a young age, but I'll wager that the vast, vast majority of kids who are savaged by the adult criminal-justice system are scared people who made a horrible mistake and who now face the prospect of spending the rest of their lives paying for it. Giving them a label which sounds like something a cartoon mad scientist grew in his petri dish isn't helping anyone.
So why was this sort of mean-spirited idiocy so prevalent in the 1990s? Well, to answer that question, what you really need to do is consider the stock-in-trade strategy of the demagogue, to get his or her (in practice, usually his) base good and scared of some threat that's out there, and then to reassure them immediately that he'll protect them from that threat, as long as he gets elected. Unsurprisingly, this Hannibal ad portas routine works best when there's a foreign enemy with which to scare people, and the Soviet Union served that purpose for many an asshole politician throughout the Cold War. But in the 1990s, the US didn't have a popularly-feared foreign enemy. The Bad Russians weren't so scary once the USSR fell, and the Bad Arabs weren't scary yet. Yes, there were US troops in the Balkans, but I don't remember anyone claiming that Slobodan Milosevic was a threat to Americans at home.
So if you're a demagogue and you need to bullshit people, and you don't have an enemy ready-to-hand, you make one. A lot of the 1990s fearmongering was focused on this sort of enemy-within routine, and the idea that Our Children could be turning against us was part and parcel of this strategy. Note also that the 1990s were the period of the worst hysteria over media violence since the 1950s establishment of the Comics Code Authority. Now, in the 21st century, we're back to being scared of foreign bogeymen, just like when the Soviets could nuke us any minute. But it's interesting to consider how the disingenuous political machinery operated at a time when there wasn't a military enemy (credible or exaggerated) to organize against.