James Tatsch was not charged with any crime. But when he was found unresponsive in an isolation cell at the Alcorn County Jail on Jan. 17, he had been locked up for 12 days. He died at the local hospital.
Tatsch was waiting for mental health treatment through Mississippi’s involuntary commitment process. Every year, hundreds of people going through the process are detained in county jails for days or weeks at a time while they wait for evaluations, hearings and treatment. They are generally treated like criminal defendants and receive little or no mental health care while jailed.
Mississippi Today and ProPublica previously reported that since 2006, at least 14 people have died after being jailed during this process. Tatsch, who was 48 years old, is at least the 15th. No one in the state keeps track of how often people die while jailed for this reason. The news organizations identified the deaths through lawsuits, news clips and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation reports. MBI investigates in-custody deaths only at the request of the local sheriff or district attorney.
Calling out conservatism for its cruelty is not “making things worse”. It is not divisive to point out the root of oppression. Resisting oppressors should not be discouraged.
Conservatives are the core of the world’s most horrific problems. They resist any attempt to address global warming. They gleefully support oppressive governments. Conservatives openly engage in racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, antisemitism and other bigotry. Conservatives are doing this. Not their victims.
First of all, I never blamed victims.
Secondly, you didn’t call it out for cruelty, you said “they” lack empathy, and “cannot see others as human”.
This is patently false and harmful. Try as you might, they’re not xenomorphs.
I listed numerous examples to illustrate the ways conservatives lack empathy. There is nothing “patently false” about it. They lack empathy. They see empathy as weakness to be exploited.
I think you are giving a great deal of credit to those who don’t even want it.
I think you may have only met some extraordinarily harmful people or you have read too much of the Internet. Go meet a super strict conservative at the table. Shit, go out and make friendly conversation with a white supremacist. People can have awful beliefs for soooo many reasons but they’re still people with all the feelings you keep trying to deny them.
The phobias you mentioned aren’t really about empathy to begin with - a decade ago, they were about fear. Hence the name. And you haven’t admitted to your false claim of me blaming victims.
Quit demonizing swaths of people based on gross generalizations, dude. You’re adding to the bullshit that hurts us all.
Buddy, many of us are literally related to these people. You know nothing about the person you replied to.
You’re bending over backwards to defend conservatives while trying to pretend it’s not specifically about defending conservatives. Which is obviously what you’re doing.
Patently false, or patently obvious? I’ve been following politics for about 24 years now and my observations overwhelming point to conservative values being horrific, inhumane, and quite frankly stupid.
Conservative values are not conservative people. Hate the ones running the show, not the idiots following them.
Or sure, hate the idiots for being idiots, but that’s as useful as yelling at a brick.
I agree in principle but it’s really hard to care about the distinction when those people are actively destroying my country with their idiocy and cruelty.
I 100% agree. But the dehumanizing comments like the one I originally responded to are just as useless. Fuck the assholes for falling for the same God damn cons each time, for hurting everyone with their beliefs. But they’re still people.
And if you want to look at it in a cold and calculated way, their idiocy can be useful. You just have to play to their emotions like what the gop does. They’re idiots. It’s not hard to trick or train them.