The scene that unfolds, where the CO"s are forced to strip and are given body cavity searches is disturbing, but I think it is easy to forget that inmates are strip-searched whenever they leave or arrive at a new facility, are strip-searched whenever they arrive or leave the visiting room, and are strip-searched whenever CO's feel it is necessary (often including body cavity searches).

So, you might respond to me by suggesting that the CO's didn't do anything to deserve this treatment (even if Body Cavity Searches are awful). Heck, even my visceral response to seeing those scenes was to think what the inmates were doing was grossly unfair and ethically wrong (emphasis on the gross).

But, I also remember that the CO's the prisoners were searching were the same ones who had been carrying out regular invasive body cavity searches out on them (often for years and with glee, perhaps you might remember Officer Wanda Bell suggesting in the officer's lounge that the COs should do even more body cavity searches during S2?).

To this argument, you might want to respond, "but Josh, body cavity searches were legal when done on inmates, the officers weren't breaking any laws."

To which I would probably respond, just because something is legal, it doesn't always make it right.

To an inmate, being body cavity searched feels wrong, intrusive, and like a violation. It certainly does not feel like something that should be legal and especially when it is cross-sex I am sure it can sometimes feel like rape.

I personally remember being asked to strip by a Doctor at quarantine only to have him repeatedly grope me as he told me that I wasn't going to do very well in prison.

It didn't feel legal, but I knew my complaints would fall on deaf ears.

I can see why people's first instinct might be to revisit abuse on their abusers. I even see why people wanted to punish me and why I deserved to be punished, but I have always been a deeply non-violent person (I have actually never hit a human being in anger as an adult..not even in prison).

Anyway, I don't believe that violence is an appropriate response to political or physical oppression and I don't believe that two wrongs make a right.

In situations where I have been the beneficiary of a reversal of power-relationships, I have thankfully reacted more like Alex and less like Ruiz.

I think it is important to feel uncomfortable watching the COs abused.

I think it is important to feel uncomfortable knowing that many of those same COs visited that exact same abuse on many of those same inmates (often cruelly or to get a thrill).

The abuses the prisoner's commit might be "worse," and should not be supported, but they should at least remind you of the many cases of abuse these exact same CO's committed on those exact same inmates.

This violence is not happening in a vacuum (so often the serial nature of television can make us forget context).

And, I think it is important to think about the differences between what is legal and what is right.

It has been suggested before that the central question philosophy has been trying to answer since the end of World War II is why people kept following orders during the Holocaust. I am obviously not suggesting Litchfield is similar to what happened in the Holocaust but COs who worry more about their jobs than they do about the ethics of carrying out unethical orders or enforcing unjust laws come from the same place.

It would be nice to think that our ethics come before our paycheck, but too often that seems not to be the case.

I think it all originates in what Better Call Saul referred to earlier in its season as "The Fallacy of Sunk Costs."

Perhaps we should each get to a place where we strive to do better than committing legal atrocities to preserve our paychecks?

Which takes me back to Abu Ghraib and to Alex's statement. I suspect Alex called the Chapel spectacle "Rumsfeld Dinner Theater" because Donald Rumsfeld was ultimately forced to resign over what happened at Abu Ghraib (thank goodness). Mr. Rumsfeld often suggested that his Department had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib, but the Senate report (that I just hyperlinked) exposed his (and his departments) complicity.

In Michigan right now we are dealing with something similar over the legal consequences of the ongoing Flint water crisis.

In this case, the prison system created these monstrous violations and some of the prisoners chose to follow this bankrupt structural logic to the extreme.

I do know this, violence usually begets (and rarely solves) violence (Gandhi and MLK were right). But we are surrounded by miniature Abu Ghraib's, by people who refuse medical treatment when people can't pay or who go along with rolling back food stamps and healthcare to pay for tax cuts for rich people.

We may ideologically or politically disagree about a lot, but I would love to think we would never deny even lazy people food or healthcare?

It would be irresponsible of me not to mention yesterday's violence in this context. I am absolutely opposed to what that individual did at that ballpark and I am also absolutely opposed to politicians cutting the social safety net.

In other words, I believe comity is good, but that comity should never provide cover for immoral actions (like cutting social benefits from poor people). At the same time, violence is never the appropriate response, in my humble opinion.

3. "Who Gets Guillotined First?"

Judy King suggests to Brook SoSo (Kimiko Glenn) that when peasants raise up they always start out by guillotining the "One Percenters."

Judy, in typical fashion, doesn't hear SoSo's "Marie Antoinette" response, which seemed more accurate to me. A one percenter might get executed first, but it probably would never be one intimately involved in the corruption that caused the uprising.

Eventually Rumsfeld, for instance, had to resign, but only after the entire Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal was first laid at the feet of Commander Janis Karpinski (aka Marie Antoinette).

2. "Wait Until You See Arabian Fantasy"

Red says that after taping a picture of Piscatella in costume in front of his place setting for an Arabian Fantasy dinner for some contest he participated in at the State Fair.

I get that Red hates Piscatella.

I get that Piscatella could, potentially, lay the "garden murder" on Red.

I even get that Red can sometimes be cruel and irrational.

But, I don't get why Red is "Queer Shaming" Piscatella?

Half of Red's crew is Lesbian? Why does she keep making derogatory comments and trying to humiliate him because he has a stereotypically queer hobby?

Anyway, Red seems to have almost entirely lost her mind this season and whatever drug she and Flores are taking is not helping the situation.

One can only hope they get whatever secret information they can soon (this whole subplot seems more than a little out of character for Red IMHO).

1. "Looks Like Danita's Work"

Sophia (Laverne Cox) has been talking about "Danita's" bad work as a hairdresser since Season One.

Okay, in prison you are allowed one "official" haircut call-out a month (a call-out is your scheduled permission slip that allows you to go to an area beyond your "house," the cafeteria, or the yard).