Snortblog

I listened to a podcast on Open Source featuring Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran an experiment in 1971 studying the psychology of imprisonment. During the experiment,

24 normal, healthy, well-adjusted, college-age males were randomly divided into “guards” and “prisoners.” The “prisoners” were arrested and put in “jail,” and the guards were given custody over them. The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks. But by day two all hell broke loose; the guards were behaving sadistically and the prisoners were rebelling and having mental breakdowns.

The experiment was canceled early. Guards very quickly fell into stereotypical roles, often treating their fellow students sadistically, particularly when they thought they were unsupervised. Prisoners became submissive and complicit in the abuse of their fellow students.

The United States seems to be falling victim to the same kind of mindlessness that characterized fascist regimes in Italy and Japan during the 1940s. The American people have stood by while the Bush II regime has spent taxpayer dollars creating secret prisons, a watch list that would make Nixon blush, secret police with the ability to make warrantless arrests, more stringent requirements for travel papers, a unilateral signing statement stating the executive branch can read our mail without a warrant, bulk domestic spying of internet traffic, all against a backdrop of the most secretive administration in the modern era.