Tedesche

Just like you can be anti-Hamas without being anti-Palestine or pro-Israel.

As with virtually any war, the problems here are two relatively small groups of people with radical ideas that are enforcing their will upon millions of innocent people.

What!?! No! That complicates my emotional response! Damn you and your “context!” Leave me with my clickbait titles and feelings of justified rage! Everyone I disagree with is a reasonless Neanderthal! I am superior and always right!

If long prison sentences were the primary factor in reduction in recidivism

I never said that. Rehabilitative prisons are the main component in reducing recidivism, but short sentences that don’t punish criminals for their crimes reduce confidence in victims that justice has been served. Rehabilitating the criminal isn’t the only thing that matters; making them suffer for the harm they’ve done is also important. As much as people would like to believe we can excise that from our judicial systems, it can’t be done. You will simply get vigilantes.

Long sentences do not demonstrate anything except distain for the criminal.

Incorrect. You try raising a child without ever punishing them for bad behavior. It’s called permissive parenting, and it results in unruly, self-centered, impulsive adults with no self-control. It’s the same for criminals–you don’t punish them for their crimes, they won’t change their behavior. This is not debatable, it’s repeatedly proven science.

No, rehabilitation is about your concern for criminals, and I’m not saying criminals don’t deserve concern. But appropriately long sentences are how you demonstrate to victims that you understand the harm that was done to them and are holding those responsible to account. If you don’t do that, trust me, people will start exacting their own punishments, and you don’t want victims administering “justice.”

I’ve met people who feel guilty about murdering someone else in their past. Trust me, while the guilt sucks, it’s not that bad. Punishment exists in criminal justice systems because people should suffer proportionately for making others suffer. If your system of justice doesn’t sufficiently punish criminals for the harm they do to others, you will get vigilante justice instead. It’s that fucking simple. People who think punishment has no place in a justice system are naive.

10 years for ending someone else’s life? I’m glad we have longer sentences for that here in the U.S. Don’t get me wrong–I’m all for prison reform and introducing rehabilitative elements to reduce recidivism, but Europeans seem to have more concern for criminals than they do for the victims of crime.

Then you have a very warped understanding of conservatism. I’m not a conservative myself, but I understand it’s values system. What you likely mistake for selfishness is actually a preference for individual liberty to take precedence over the interests of the majority. That’s not to say the greater good doesn’t matter; it just means conservatives feel everyone being free to do what they please serves the greater good better than majorities dictating what individuals should do. Like liberalism, conservatism has its flaws, but it is not inherently selfish or evil.

However, I should also note that I don’t think modern conservatives follow conservatism very closely these days. Trump and others have succeeded in perverting that value system into something something much more authoritarian than conservatism is at its core.

Why is it conservatives are so much more frequently corrupt than liberals? There’s nothing about conservativism itself that would lend itself to this sort of bullshit, so how is that corruption spreads so much more in conservative circles?

Anyone know what kind of prison time these people are facing? I would support life sentences with no possibility of parole.

As do I.

While the concerns over some of the policies enacted by this government are legitimate, I think one has to acknowledge that they have been effective at combating the gangs, which had largely held the entire nation and its government hostage through terrorism. My question is: what should that government have done instead? If the humanitarian critics want to be taken seriously, we have to be able to suggest plans and policies that will achieve the same or similar ends without the drawbacks of rolling back fundamental human rights. The people of El Salvador were in a desperate situation and so elected a president who took desperate measures. If we want to prevent those desperate measures from gaining popular support, liberal politicians need to provide effective solutions for these desperate problems that work without the need of said desperate measures.

Gore has it’s place in horror films. Personally, I feel like it’s best used sparingly and to maximum effect, but there’s something to be said for the “gore fest” film types (e.g. Dead Alive), I suppose. Still, after a certain point, things stop being about horror and veer closer to torture erotica. Nothing against torture erotica either (again, not my thing, but to each their own), but it’s not horror. The violence orgy scene was literal torture porn, and I think it serves the film best as brief flashes, just enough to make it clear what’s going on, but not enough to function as an actual torture porn clip.