The Truth about The_Truth

“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”

What a mood I’ve been in lately. I far overshot simple “jerk” status in my last entry, and proceeded straight into the realms of “Grade-A Asshole.” I regret actually mailing that one out. Even I thought I was being arrogant (which says a hell of a lot, I think). I am sorry. Some things built up. And some things needed to be said, though I certainly didn’t say them in the right way. I think that is a major problem of mine: using the wrong tone of voice to argue a concept which is fairly logically consistent. I’ll be paying special attention to this for the near future, I promise. I suspect that Jung’s “inferno of passions” gets the best of all of us, from time to time. (If you are ever bored, his descriptions of your “shadow” are really some amazing reading.) I do think that there is a bit of a double standard for people in my position to act with a level of nobility that few could actually sustain, but thems the breaks. That is what happened when you end up on DR, and decide to publish some of your private thoughts online.

It is with that focus that I am going to response to your post, “the_truth.” (You can read the full post here.) Thanks for writing. You bring up a couple of divergent points here, and I will attempt to address them in order.

First, you are correct in your assessments of the guards. I have a tendency to focus on the lowest…oh, say 25% of the workforce here, and project the image that everyone in gray (and blue…the laws wear blue cotton shirts now, something new since you were down) are bullies. I don’t think that this was intentionally done, but I can see how you might think it was. Every time that I think about writing something positive about one of them, something comes up, or it doesn’t really fit the rest of the piece. I think you will agree with me that if I were to call out a guard by name, and say something positive about him or her, that they would be instantly transferred to another portion of the unit. Given the events of the past year and the consistent problems with contraband making its way behind the walls, any glowing character portrayal of an officer would cause the OIG to investigate. (To see an example of the continued issue of contraband in state prisons, see this story about an inmate who actually managed to get a gun behind bars.) You tend to see this a lot: a guard gets a rep for being “friendly,” and they get moved. Any hint of a relationship between an inmate and a guard is terminated with extreme rapidity.

I suspect that when you were incarcerated, you were in General Population. You may or may not be aware of this, but guards are screened before being allowed to work in Ad-Sec. This is a very, very different world than what you were used to, and some comparisons between your experiences and my own are disingenuous. Death Row in an animal of a very different species than exists anywhere else in the system. One merely has to notice the electrical fence that surrounds 12 Building here at Polunsky. It is unique state-wide. So are the massive stadium lights which ring the building. The officers here actually apply to work Death Row. I suspect that there are many reasons for why someone would choose to work here, some of them good, others less noble. You might benefit from a few seconds of thought on the subject of what type of individual would actively seek to work with condemned men. Also, it might be of some interest to you that Polunsky Unit has ranked among the top 2 units state-wide for employee turnover for the past four years in a row. Some of that is on the shoulders of us men in white, certainly. Most of it, I think, is indicative of the men who form the management structure here on this Unit. This is not generally regarded as a good unit, by any means. I have friends on several other units, such as Ramsey 1 and Darrington. They would rather go to hell than to come here, and this is not a unique perspective within the walls.

I do take exception to your comment that I “challenge” officers at every opportunity. I have zero staff assaults, and I will never have one. Seeing as how you have never met me, I can’t see how you would really know what type of inmate I am, other than from the information I present here. I don’t believe that I have cast myself as an agitator. I will agree to the charge that I stand up vigorously for my rights, and the rights of the men around me, as these are guaranteed to us by both the state constitution of Texas and the federal one.

It should be an interesting (and frightening) point that within the walls, it is actually the inmates who are protecting the spirit of the Constitution. If the system decides to overstep its bounds, I view it as my duty to correct this encroachment. I suspect that when you were locked up, you knew people like me, and appreciated the things we did to make your life better. I think that your more…ah, “free” perspective has caused you to forget how bad things can get back here. Amusing that you called me an “offender,” though. That word tends to be used primarily by the officers. In fact, the sentence, “A good correctional officer has to be bright enough to see that challenge for what it is and keep control of the situation” sounds as if it could have been ripped verbatim from the Sargents Prep Course. It’s cool, though. It is amazing how a few years can change your perspective, huh? I know mine has.

You seem to have an issue about the food, as you have brought this up twice now in posts. Again, I think some points should be made here, to show that our experiences were different. First off, it is likely that you’ve been out for at least a few years. There was a time when the food in prison wasn’t all that bad. Maybe, in your day, the guards ate the same food as the inmates. They most certainly do not anymore. I know about the decline in food quality over the years from anecdotal accounts of the men who have been locked up for many decades. They also tell me that food quality greatly depends on the unit in question. For instance, at the Ellis Unit where DR resided until 2000, the food was much better than it was the moment they pulled up here. In just three years, I myself have seen the quality decline significantly. Let me be clear: I don’t really care about the crappy food. That is so far down on my list of issues to fight that I would have to use tunneling equipment and dynamite to even locate it. I have made a few sarcastic comments on the subject, as is my tendency, but you shouldn’t read too much into that. The ironic mind is often misinterpreted. I think, however, that you may be ignorant of the only truly salient point here: Ad-Seg does not get fed the same as GP. It never has. Ad-Seg is a punitive environment, and the use of food-loaf (or nutri-loaf) as both carrot and stick is well documented. We are given what the kitchen staff refers to as “punishment trays,” though I do not know if that is the technical term for them. I imagine that they have a more official sounding name when they are listed on the budget paperwork submitted to the legislature. (They were called “behavior modification and cognitive redevelopment plan meals” at Polk IAH, which is about as bureaucratic a title as you can put to food-loaf.) For instance, when you were locked up, you got fried eggs, right? How many did you get? Three, four? It used to be that many. It’s always been two since I’ve been here, and you only get this every blue moon. Recently, they pared it back to one, something that was not done in Population. When GP eats hamburgers, we get wet noodles and ground-up hamburger meat. Same with the pork-chops (Ha, if you can call them that…I’m sure you remember those, right?). When GP eats pork-chops, we tend to get noodles and pork. State regs require inmates to get dessert twice a week, which usually means a brownie or cake for GP. We tend to get Jell-O or sometimes pudding. Again, I am not complaining. That is simply how things are. You were correct in commenting that I put myself in prison. (Have I ever said differently?) I am humbly submitting to you that before you call me a liar, you investigate your claims.

You accuse me of writing falsehoods and of manipulating information to take advantage of the ignorance of my readers. And yet, is this not precisely what you have done in your posts? You demand that people suspend their disbelief towards anything you say, merely because you claim to have been incarcerated, and have given yourself the handle of “the_truth.” (Funnily enough, one of the biggest snitches here on the row is known as “True,” which is supposed to stand for “True to the game,” though we have, of course, made sure to give him another nickname.) I suspect – again, humbly – that many of these “lies” you claim me to be publishing are merely gaps in experience between us, something I mentioned earlier. At least consider that, sir, for a second.

Frankly, to return to a point I mentioned briefly earlier in this entry, I have never claimed I didn’t deserve to be locked up. Never. I took the blame for my actions on the stand, and I have done so here, multiple times. It’s not really my fault that some people can’t be troubled to go back and read some of my earlier musings. My war is not with TDCJ as an entity; it is with the manner in which they apply their power. I seek a better, smarter, more efficient prison system for all: both for the men in white, and then for the society which will eventually receive 94% of us back into its ranks one day. There are different ways to be “held accountable” for ones actions. My argument is that all of us here could better replay out debt to society through hard work and deep personal reflection than with merely forcing us into an oubliette to rot until we are killed. You commit a grievous ethical error by stating that you had “no right to complain about any challenge (you) faced” when you put yourself in prison. Your original error does NOT give another the right to commit immoral acts against you. The consequences for crime should be both rapid and deeply felt. Prison is not supposed to be the Ritz. But there are levels to the degradations which another being may force upon you. For instance: when two female guards single you out for a strip search on the yard merely to ogle you: that is wrong. When my writings or copies of case law that I have collected (quite painstakingly, I might add) are tossed into the trash during a shakedown: that is wrong. Killing me to make the point that killing is immoral: that is both hypocritical and wrong, and merely pays homage to the more brutish, pre-enlightenment human tendencies which we all need to learn to evolve past. There are better ways to handle convicts, and I am sure that when you were in white, you had plenty of suggestions.

At any rate, I am glad that you got out, and have stayed out. That gives me some hope, even if you hate my guts. I think that you completely misinterpret me, if you think that I am a “wanna be CONvict,” however. I’ve never subscribed to the whole “convict ideology,” and I will not. That said, I have earned the respect of people who do cling to that eidos, heart and soul. I think that if we were locked up together, you would probably like me better than you do from out there. Modesty aside, I am a pretty good friend to have in a storm. (For some small sliver of proof of this statement see the comment by Sandra at the end of this entry.)

Thanks for writing, truth. I appreciate the input. Some people criticize out of spite, others because they believe a person is not living up to their potential. I hope you do so from the latter perspective, and I genuinely have an open ear to any suggestions you have for me in the future. Again sorry for my tone of late. All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Response to Gord’s post:

Yeah, yeah: the Red Wings bloody do well suck this year. (My Yanks, however, OWNED. Take that, Eric, you bean-town short-bus rider.) If you are the Gordon that I am thinking of, so does your Canuck mail system. I will try to write you again, now that I know you are alive.

© Copyright 2009 by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.
All rights reserved.