January 6, 2021: The day our innocence died

January 6, 2021: The day it became apparent that naive Americans could be sucked into the vortex and find themselves sitting in prison severed from their social-support networks, without recourse to counsel or access to exculpatory evidence; denied our Constitutionally guaranteed "speedy trial".

Object lessons!

Sucked in like krill by Blue Whales. Nothing personal, mind you. Guilty of the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and the director of the theater-production needed some bodies to die in the Gladiator scene.

Accepting what is beyond our control

The Bible tells us that we will be persecuted for what we believe. Since I have no intention of changing my Beliefs, then I must prepare to the possibility of being thrown into prison.*

I accept that.  There are things I have no control over.

But I can prepare for the possibility. Even if it seems like an impossibly small chance it will happen to me. Even if the preps are arduous and contrary to my nature.

Like most of my readers, I am poorly prepared for prison culture.  What makes us safe and successful in our middle-class bubbles are the opposite of what will sustain us in prison. We have been trained to FAIL prison.

My perceptions:

• Believing what you see in movies about prisons is a good way to get yourself killed or sustain closed-head injuries.
• Silence is Golden. Any information you volunteer will be ruthlessly exploited. Nobody trusts a convict who motor-mouths.
• Prison is filled with con-men looking for an angle. For the most part, you are not a fellow human but a resource to be exploited in any way possible. Keep your mouth shut!
  
• Snitches get shanked.
• Don't antagonize guards but don't appear to cozy up to them. Treat them like furniture and you will probably be OK.
• Keep your eyes and ears open at all times. You need to learn the road-map of your new universe.
  
• You will get tested. You will be tested violently. Be ready. Fight to win. Imagine the worst sports-team, seventh-grade locker-room or fraternity hazing and multiply by 100X. There is no recourse to "authorities" (see note about shanking).
• The way to minimize the amount of testing is to figure out where you will end up in the pecking order and try to edge-in there.
• Bragging will get you more beat-downs (see notes about keeping your mouth shut)
  
• You are not tough enough to go-it-alone. Finding the right tribe is the key to survival. The wrong tribe is bad for your health.
• Find a mentor but weigh what they tell you (see note about con-men). They can give you guidance regarding which tribes your tribe is currently on good-terms with. 
• Avoid tribes that are not on good terms with your chosen tribe. Doing an act of kindness for the wrong tribe will be seen as disloyalty by your tribe and you will lose the protection of your tribe.
  
• Prison is not a trust-based society. It is a respect-based society. The set of attributes that are respected in prison are different than attributes that might get you elected to the Board of Elders at your church.
• Your tribe will test you by demanding acts that demonstrate your loyalty. That might include tattoos or beating-down traitors. It might include a lot of different things but you will not want to do them. It would not be a test of loyalty if you did.
  
• Don't drop the soap.
• Sometimes it is good to be old and ugly.
  

NOTE WELL: I have never been in prison but have known a few prison guards and read a few articles. I am painfully aware of the limitations of my impressions.

Much of what I wrote was extrapolated from a subset of the people I supervised in factories.

I will be thrilled if any readers with first-hand knowledge want to call "BULL-SHIT!" on what I wrote. That is actually what I am fishing for, better information.

* I know this seems like a huge jump for some people, from "...people tossed into the hoosegow for trespassing to Freedom of Religion/Expression. The stream-of-thoughts that connect the two in my mind is that the State is demanding that we put God in second place and elevate them to that position. The State is demanding that they dictate what is "right" and what is "wrong" and that systems put in place for accountability and transparency be bypassed when they find it convenient.

Peeling away all the fancy wrapping and distracting details, the people who were tossed in prison for what they did January 6, 2021 were guilty of challenging the primacy-of-the-State.