Jail: Not an Ice Cream Social

 There's a new genre of political mendacity brewing in the fever swamps of the Right, the notion that the 1/6 rioters are political prisoners.  We all saw the footage from that day, this gaslighting is stupid and grotesque.  The latest developments in this story-workshop involve the harsh treatment of these innocent tourists/patriots/innocents at the hands of the carceral system.

The first of these Tales of Woe involves some heavy metal doofus who cried about his two months in jail being 'hell', claiming that he received death threats and had feces thrown at him.  I don't see what he's complaining about- he was okay with death threats and weaponized feces on the day of the insurrection.  He should have felt right at home in the pokey.

Even more cringe-inducing is the cri du cul (sic) of one Joe Biggs, a former Alex Jones associate and street-brawling Proud Boy.  Gone is the bravado and violent rhetoric, replaced by an unconvincing melancholy:

Seems like he regrets being part of the insurrection. (GETTR) pic.twitter.com/cPs7AwmEdR

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) July 24, 2021

That bit about being tested by white supremacists is particularly disgusting- if they rejected him, it's because his insurrection failed, it's not because he's insufficiently racist. More interesting to me is his lament about being soy-based food, because it is a window into right-wing sexual anxiety, misogyny, and the grifter ecosystem. Sure enough, the Biden D0J is turning these MAGA Marauders into soyboys. 

The real irony here is that a substandard prison diet is probably the result of profit-seeking among private prison companies, and Trump almost single-handedly revived that industry,  an industry that President Obama was set to kill off.  I'd also note that neither of these ninnies seems like the type to lament the treatment of other prisoners, particularly people of color imprisoned in the course of the Drug War.  I can't really verify this, because at least in Biggs' case, he was banned from all mainstream social media platforms.  At any rate, he's living in the 'tough on crime' MAGA world he craved.

My personal take on the prison system is that it should be used to contain violent offenders, those people incapable of living in society with other humans.  As far as drug sentences go, I am in favor of legalization, regulation, and harm mitigation.  That being said, people who spray bear mace at people they disagree with and attack civil servants with improvised weapons should be locked up.  I believe that jail and prison should be humane, something which I doubt Biggs would have agreed with before he was jailed.  Therefore, I really can't muster any sympathy for the creep.