When the root cause is systemic, the solution also needs to be systemic, like for example, a high security facility to keep them while they recover wouldn’t be the end all, but there could be more outside work as well, such as investigating the conditions that drove them to the crime, and helping them form and follow through on a plan to change those conditions, with state support in what ways are needed to change those conditions. It needs to be treated as a whole and everything relevant integrated into the process of making sure a repeat incident is unlikely, with more serious crimes having a higher bar of thoroughness, though at the same time, their life is not more important than that of others, and what one does affects the system just as the system affects them, so a persons recovery cannot come at greater expense to the rest of society then that of the life of the person that did the crime compared to those that did not, if someone murders someone, the bar for insuring that they will never murder again needs to be no less then on the moon.

I have believed since childhood that prisons should be places of healing and recovery rather then of “punishment”, as it was obvious to me that people being “bad” was the result of the conditions that made a person who they are, not of some kind of “magical” “evil” or so called “free will”, each of which is just a label but it is treated like an explanation, that to my view, a “bad” person was the same as someone who is injured and in need of help, since I’ve been learning ML I’ve also come to see the need for practicality, so I don’t expect it to be perfect or it’s just trash anymore, if the resources are lacking but people are still destructive, even non healing prisons may simply be needed until they aren’t, as it is all very complex you can advocate for a better system and work towards that, but it isn’t the end all be all if it isn’t perfect. Of course that’s all a moot point if Revolution isn’t achieved as in Capitalism only cares about profit and control, so prisons are there for slave labor, not even “punishment” let alone healing.

Exercise, firing ranges, organizations, on bravery specifically, baby steps, find small scary things that you can handle and work your way up. The point is that these are all skills or similar, and skills can be developed, people aren’t just masters at things, it takes time and work, and what you do is what you get better at, if you sit around, you get better at sitting around, if you break the mold, you get better at breaking the mold, an example for me recently, I started participating in this sort of “Socialist Summer School” type dealy, and during the first class they did this thing called a “breakout” where zoom threw me into a room with 3 random strangers, I have crippling social anxiety but I still managed to talk with them, it was scary but exhilarating and I’m excited for the next class.

“Put on a fake smile as you die inside, that is how you become an adult!” -my parents if they were more honest about what they’ve been taught to think.

When you’ve been trained to treat the word “politics” like a dirty word not to be spoken in polite company, then you limit yourself to a level of political literary equivalent of what ever gets past your rejection of the topic like a trojan horse, like for example, “entertainment” out of liberal CIAwood. A liberal that doesn’t treat the word as dirty and that does actually learn about it, has there own CIA provided words, and CIA provided fictions, only they believe those fictions real, and their words as the height of the science of politics. The willfully ignorant liberals have less that needs correcting because they know less in general, but are more resistant to even listening, while the miseducated liberals have more that needs correcting but aren’t as resistant to listening, getting them to actually change their viewpoint and stop defending the system is another story.

I’m fortunate enough to have therapy covered by medicaid/medicare (I have both, I forget which one covers it), but on that topic I need to cut the conversation here, I feel uncomfortably close to bringing up something that I’m only prepared to bring up during therapy, where I can use EMDR to process what comes up, thank you for sharing, but also let’s leave it here.

I’ve told my own parents that, almost word for word, especially with my mom, who was thrown out of a moving car by one of her parents in childhood, and it’s stuff like that that reminds me, for all the pain I had in my own childhood, they did an amazing job at not being like their own parents, and doing what little they know how to do to deal with a broken child carrying a horrible trauma nobody at the time knew about, the ways Capitalism, and the tools they use against us, such as religion under Capitalism, torture, kill and under-develop us (and SA, but that is a difficult topic for me) are many in variation and intensity.

I’d think of it a bit like, teaching mathematics, so, provide examples, walk them through them, basically show them how to think in a Dialectical and Historical Materialist way, and encourage them to practice using it to better understand reality, and maybe throw in bits about history, philosophy, political economy ETC. You could give them some books to read (at their level) and then provide encouragement, maybe they get a special treat if they can demonstrate they understand the books content, and if you talk about such regularly at, you might encourage them to want to know more on their own so they can discus at a higher level with you, or even to show off what they’ve learned or something, what ever keeps them learning.

Edit: “regularly at home”

I think you need both, like you said, if you are not kind and patient with them they may rebel against you and what you tell them, but at the same time they would benefit from a solid Theoretical Foundation, make fewer unnecessary mistake, spend less time re-inventing the wheel.

It is kind of like the Dialectic between Theory and Practice, where as you need Practice to develop correct Theory, you need correct Theory to engage in higher quality Practice, which can also enable the development of more advanced Theory, leading to more advanced Practice, point is they need to be put together, and I think raising a child correctly is the same way, they need love and support, but also to learn the important things that school is setup to teach the opposite of.

Your environment is not neutral, if you live in a Capitalist country, they will be dragged along the Liberal path without even being aware of it, in order to actually “have a choice” they’d need to be taught Communism (Marxism Leninism specifically because it is scientific, Communism is not a religion), or they would even have the ability to “choose” in the first place.

Additionally, this question is a bit like “should I teach my kid about the deadly snakes hiding under that rock over there or should I let them find out for themselves?” This stuff isn’t like choosing what color you want your car, there are objectively correct and incorrect answers, and the consequences are deadly serious.

Edit: “wouldn’t even have the ability”

Get her to read “Left wing Communism an Infantile Disorder” by Lenin

This also demonstrates why the Capitalists (those who hold Capital) are so out of touch with humanity as a whole, they are the closest to their god, Capital, than anyone else, and thus are it’s greatest personification of it’s nature. It’s very embodiment of alienation, seeing everything within the binary view of “those that exploit” and the “cattle to be exploited”. And yet at the same time they are not really in charge, they are puppets to their god, Capital, this thing that isn’t sentient, isn’t even alive, but that has rules, rules that they too are forced to follow lest they become “lowly cattle” like the rest of us, and the closer they are to Capital, the further from humanity they become and may even see it’s loss as a “fate worse than death”.

And so from their twisted view, a billion people, “cattle”, dead, is a small price to pay if it can even give them just a small chance of staying close to Capital, and protecting it against the rebellion of humanity casting off it’s yoke. Making us Communists, who seek to free humanity, and who has the tools to do so, it’s greatest enemy.

Of course we Communists know that the seeds of a systems destruction exists within that very system, and that the death, one way or another, of that system is inevitable, as nothing is eternal, but for the Capitalists who are closest to Capital, seeing the death of the system the same as if it was their own death, and who have little connection with humanity for which they are so a odds with, see it’s death as the death of everything, as it is all they hold dear, all that matters to them, and so terror drives them to mythology, to see Capitalism as eternal, or at least as something they can make eternal, to keep the reality of it’s loss at bay. It is also why when it is collapsing they get more and more unhinged, they are checking themselves out from reality as they get more desperate, as it becomes harder to deny reality, they must insulate themselves from it further.

Edit: I think that maybe existence itself would be the one exception from nothing being eternal, as actual nothingness can’t exist as it is completely self contradictory at the most basic, conceptual level, meaning you can’t get something from nothing, and that means that anything that does exist must have derived from something else that exists or existed. It’s that basic physics law of “energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another”, that some form or another of “existence” must have always existed, but the forms within it change and aren’t eternal, and with humans being entirely the result of the configuration of atoms in a certain pattern, as a result of a long, slow, stupid process of evolution, and thus also not eternal. However, humans don’t exist alone, but as a whole with the conditions of the universe itself, so we pass on knowledge to our children, and eventually uncover the nature of reality, IE “advance science” and so eventually travel amongst the stars, do what would have been thought impossible before, because a thing is greater then the sum of it’s parts as it’s configuration enables it to do things that those parts could not do alone, humanity across generations do things no single human could before even have dreamed of.

Edit Edit: Or maybe I should say “energy” rather than “existence”, but things are getting a little removed from the concert here, and I don’t have a deep enough understanding of physics to go deeper so maybe I should stop.

I’ve never been a fan of drama, my inner child just wants everyone to get along, but our world is harsh to such hopeful dreams. It’s one reason why I want to see communism achieved, so the fighting can finally end, though I might not live to see it I at least want to assure it happens. Even the wreckers or those who act like them are just so sad and unfortunate, they don’t realize the beautiful world that they are fighting against being born, or realize they are fighting it rather then helping it in the case of those who aren’t trying to wreck but still making those kinds of mistakes.

It is just such a thing to think about, you know, that even the worst of the worst could have been the best of the best had their circumstances only been different. I know what it is like to drown in darkness struggling to hold on, so it makes me so sad when others are lost to it, if only they can discover that blazing light of hope that is the common interest of all humanity laying beneath the surface of false consciousness, that burns brightest in the Comrades of both past Revolutions and current Socialist countries, and yet exists in all of us as a common heritage, that they too can find and be saved by. I’ve been an atheist my whole life (since a traumatic event happened when I was just a toddler) but I feel like I’ve discovered the human spirit, not in some metaphysical or ideological way, but that exists in actual, physical reality, in between the interactions between humans with each other, and with the environment that is the bases of our existence, the human spirit that exists in the very fabric of society itself. I want to know more of it and I want others to know it as well.

I couldn’t even get myself to read the whole “Unity Struggle Unity” article as it was full of so much Reactionary shit slinging that I could not help but immediately see the “USU” as an NSA front desperately trying to smear the PSL in anyway they can as the PSL is making actual progress and the Ruling Fash are getting scared. (so much for “Unity”) I have trust issues and don’t trust easily, but everything I’ve learned so far over the last year or two has pointed me to see the PSL as the one US org that I can for sure trust.

The seemingly psy-op levels of smear efforts in these community just makes me think “they must be doing something right”.

Edit: I may have gotten a little emotionally heated from this thread, also I meant “these cummunities”

I think it might be a combination of Uncanny Valley (something looking human enough that our brains think they are, yet not quite enough and so it comes off as creepy) with them being much more alienated from society then we are from each other, meaning they can’t relate to us (making it real easy for them to murder millions) and as a result of being so out of touch, they act, dress, end up looking (facial expressions and the like) and even talking just a little bit different from the rest of humanity that it trips Uncanny Valley.

Same with everything out of Hollywood and most games on Steam, anything the Capitalist Ruling Class has control over is inevitability used against us, and should be treated as already compromised. Don’t be surprised if it turns out that they are using AI on Social Media (that they control especially) to subtle manipulate everyone, not just with fake accounts, but complex algorithmic control on who sees what and in what context, and even more, like we know they shadow ban, but what if they also shadow edit peoples post, like the poster sees the original, but strangers unlikely to contact the poster directly sees a modified version of the post that subtly redirects it’s meaning. The possibilities are endless and shows why AI can’t just be ignored, why the US is so desperate to build out data centers despite the tensions, and why China is working hard to advance it also, less the future be in the hands of the US. Don’t underestimate AI, it is a very rapidly advancing tech that the Capitalists will and are using against us.