The Death Penalty

The death penalty is often unfair, racist, and unnecessary. There's little evidence that it deters murder. Texas is religious about imposing it and murders there are sky-high. In principle I'm against it. On the other hand there's a whole bunch of bastards I'd like to stand against a wall, so I'm divided on the issue.

All this crap about lethal injections and this ridiculous ritual/ceremony at the end of a criminal's life, how absurd! And the idea of three injections to kill the condemned is silly. Next, we will hear theme music when the three pistons descend. A massive overdose of barbiturates stops the heart instantly, and when the heart stops you are legally and in fact dead. 

The electric chair is torture and never was anything more than burning someone to death from the inside out; a cruel and painful torture either way. Hanging, if done right, snaps the spine at the neck and life is gone. Even beheading seems more merciful than lethal injection, and although it is said to be painless and humane, I would not put it past some sadist in the process injecting battery acid into a condemned prisoner just to make him suffer. If you must execute someone there is nothing quicker, cheaper, or more humane than a bullet through the heart. If he has donated his heart then one in the back of the head Chinese-style will suffice.

But there is no other, stronger proof than the death penalty that humans are spiritually and intellectually impoverished . So-called Christians have exempted themselves from the rule of their Jesus of Nazareth: "Thou shalt not kill." People all over the world are good and capable of self-government and self-restraint, which is the essence of civilization. Where they have found freedom in revolutionary societies humans often have shown a tendency to mercy by abolition of the death penalty. The most-recent example was in revolutionary Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas abolished capital punishment first thing; because it had been the dictator's favorite weapon against them.

Living under various forms of political and economic oppression, people are persuaded or pressed into armies and police units where they must accept the contradictory notion that it is okay to kill as long as killing is sanctioned by the State. This hypocrisy is like a cancer to the philosophical mind. 

Where there is great fear there is a reign of executioners, as in brave, heroic, John Wayne-Texas.

And then there is the unnecessary and distressing, factory-like murder of billions of animals to feed our stomachs, another sign of our spiritual and intellectual poverty, when fish, grains, vegetables, nuts, and fruits are all we need for an adequate, protein-rich diet.

I could go on, but the subject threatens to make me write again, and I have vowed to stop writing.