This mental illness accusation and any forced 'treatment' is a commie tactic to get rid of political dissent
The Chinese have this down: A student posts an anti-communist tweet. He is arrested but it is determined that he is not a criminal, just addicted to the internet. The cure for internet addiction: electroshock therapy. Solution is applied, student is cured. Compassionate state has rehabilitated a nice young man who might otherwise go full criminal.
Never go full criminal. - CCP
What would an anti-communist tweet even be nowadays?
"Joe lost"?
The long tail is that if they prefer executions eventually they lower their mean IQ.
By 'rehabilitating' the 'thought criminals' genetically what they are preserving is the tendency of a population for self reflection.
Serves two purposes
these, if they can be cowed by fear, become party members, which increases control long term. The most reliable and predictable member is not a fanatical ally, its a motivated would-be enemy or the subset of the population that tends to produce such. The state, and party, which is their prison, has guards and enforcers who are also the prisoners.
The act of torture is often more horrifying than the act of execution, the idea of 'wiping someones personality' is an existential form of threat to many people. The result is that this serves to keep the party members in line in case any of them were starting to question.
The 'northwest front novels' predicted winning a war against the u.s. government because it had become non-meritocratic or too 'diverse', however the aim of any sufficiently advanced state must always be to preserve meritocracy internally even if its outward face is made of fools and charlatans who can't tie their own shoes. They then serve only as cans on wires to alert the state of any armed insurrection--because the dumber they are, the more easily captured and destroyed they are, and conversely, the less their individual destruction matters to the state, like ablative shielding which serves also to gauge the 'temperature' of the public.
Thus it is not the vote that matters, but the radicals who get the vote. And it is not the ballot that counts as vote, but the extremist and their campaign. The state then offers temporary concessions to would be revolutionaries (not to those who carry out attacks, no, they must always be hunted and destroyed, but to the causes and people who sympathize with them). This is because concessions are, on average, as long as they aren't gained by an organized opponent, the cheapest means of pacifying a disaffected populace before they organize and realize they should always push for more and never be satisfied with just enough.
There is no compromise with the state, compromise is defeat. Only one side, the state, realizes this though.
And now you know why the state tortures people.
Control and fear are less risky, more profitable, and more effective means to war, than war itself.
I say means to war as opposed means of war, because war is the health of the state.
Thank you for taking the time to compose this thoughtful and comprehensive explanation. If my mind doesn't get erased I will always remember it.
They are totally doctrinaire. Old USSR was infamous for their "mental health" gulags.
Old USSR:
Someone says/does/publishes something Soviets don't like.
Soviets seek to prove in court that they were influenced by reactionary/capitalists/foreigners that introduced ideas/polluted their thinking etc....If they could "prove" outside source, then execution or long jail sentence for sedition/treason.
If they couldn't prove such connections, there was no "not guilty" option. The back-up plan was to say, "well then, he must be crazy" and ship them off to an asylum.
We're living the same playbook over again because the leftists overtook education and didn't teach what suffering socialists have caused in the last century, and instead fed propaganda to the young (also forbade education voucher systems to keep the money pouring in)
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