Maybe in a country where "everybody" drives huge trucks and vans. Not when everyone else also drives a small car. And the auto magazines I occasionally read when I wait for my car to be serviced often write that it is not true that big cars and trucks are safer-- they may even be less safe!
We live by myths and half truths, or even lies, and when they are repeated often enough they acquire a certain obviousness. But... (A very useful feature of Hawaiian pidgin language, a sentence with a loose but at the end.)
From the perspective of Europe, or Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, it is unbelievable that 45 million Americans cannot afford any health insurance whatsoever.
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More questions. Why do we have more people locked away than any other industrialized nation, serving infinitely longer sentences? (And I have read that the condition in some of our prisons is worse than in many poor countries).
No, we don't ask that why. We are proud of being tough on crime: "three strikes and you're out." Once a sex offender, always a "predator." We guarantee that sex offenders forfeit a more or less normal life: after serving a stiff sentence they are watched and avoided forever after. Felons who have served their time are virtually unemployable. Is it any wonder that recidivism is so high?
We're also the only country that has the death sentence -- and the only country that has large numbers of people violently "pro life."
Prison sets an example, people say. It's a deterrent so that other men won't choose a life of crime. Do we really believe that people "choose" a life of crime? Do severe prison sentences work? Does locking a 16-year old away for "life without the possibility of parole" serve any purpose other than revenge? An eye for an eye, and we are both blind.
A large percentage of prisoners is locked away for what we quaintly call "victimless crimes," meaning these people didn't hurt anyone but themselves (perhaps). Are we protecting society by locking them away? Has the number of "drug" users changed in thirty years of a War on Drugs? All the statistics show that the number of users has not changed much--the drugs change: more potent and more vicious. And, of course, our war on drugs has created a multi-billion dollar underground economy.
Locking someone away costs the government, say, $50,000 a year. Couldn't we do a lot more good for society as a whole spending it on rehabilitation, re-education, something more positive?
But very few of us question.
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