hyperbole

I've never thrown around words like fascism, nazis, or genocide before. I was always the one to argue that the world isn't ending. Society isn't collapsing. No one but the Nazis were Nazis. This begs the question, has the world changed, or have I?

This is not the sort of question where I can say both, and move on. No, the world has changed such that things are incredibly bad, or it hasn't. If it has, then of course it's both, because that's freaking me the fuck out. If it hasn't changed, and it's just me.. that's something else entirely. This is why I go through this over and over. It's an important distinction.

So, I'm thinking if it's just hyperbole, why would I do this? Why the impulse to exaggerate? An example came to mind, one I've never used, but seemed to work well. Like insisting that mass incarceration is genocide. 

Clearly, mass incarceration is not genocide, right? I can imagine why I might go that way though. Mass incarceration is an atrocity, and I don't think people appreciate how wrong it is. Some might ask how the Germans let it happen.. but look around us. Given modern technology, we have far less excuse than they did.

It's pretty damn bad in any case, and maybe I want to make the case more strongly. Maybe if I exaggerate that will break through the callousness - but wait. Why do I feel mass incarceration is that bad? What if it's the intuition that's really telling me something here. What if I'm not exaggerating.

Is anyone going to dispute that prison destroys lives? We lock up tens of millions of people, more than anywhere else in the world. A lot of it is ethnically motivated. Almost all of it is class motivated. It has destroyed entire communities around the country. 

Holy shit. It is essentially genocide. A difference more of kind than degree. 

Am I wrong?

This isn't even getting into the thousands of Americans killed by the state per year, the people starved by our sanctions, or bombed in the middle east. We've got tens of thousands of immigrants being raped and tortured in cages. We get hit with a pandemic, and just let hundreds of thousands of people die in an effort to protect the economy. We've got an unaccountable police force brutally suppressing the right to protest. They've killed at least fifteen protesters so far, but that barely makes the news.

How can I blame Trump, when the free press is complicit? How can I blame Trump, when Democrats won't even speak on these issues, let alone try to actually do anything? Not to mention Republicans of course. All of this has been going on well before Trump. All of this will continue when he's gone. We're fucking monsters.

Am I wrong?

We've just gotten better at keeping it out of public view. Abusing and killing people in ways that can be passed off as justified, unintentional, a million different isolated incidents, bad apples, and ill considered policy.