The most recent barbarism from the Trump administration is the planned public execution of the man who committed the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting,* by firing squad.
While I am opposed to the death penalty on moral, economic and margin-of-error grounds (you can't unkill the person if the verdict was mistaken), there's no question that the man in question committed the crime, nor that it was heinous; his actions were those of a bloody-handed barbarian and had he been stopped by being killed, I wouldn't have shed a tear. I won't weep for him if he is executed as planned.
I will weep for us. Our Federal and state governments execute people rarely, and not in public. It does not have a deterrent effect, and in his case, it will only make him a martyr for the cause he embraced. He was paralyzed from the waist down by an injury sustained when people ended his murderous rampage, and while I have no pity for him over it, shooting a man in a wheelchair (or strapped to a support) only makes the spectacle worse. There's no claiming the moral high ground after such an act.
And possibly even worse, it's one more trial balloon for authoritarianism: can the government execute a man on live TV without pushback? Will the sensation-hungry flock to the online video, share screengrabs and clips on social media, cheer on the administration for doing it? If it flies, they'll do it again, and again, and again. They've already shown a considerable taste for blood, and executions are much easier to control than street violence and enforcement overreach.
It's one more spot of mold on the rotten fruit of Trumpism.
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* You do have to specify the date, there having been another one at the base in 2014.
Historically, public executions do little to deter crime, and often just make things into another spectacle, even frivolous. Just look at the Newgate Cant for hangings.
ReplyDeleteI am in complete agreement with you. I am not well-educated, but I remember reading that Romans introduced religion into governance to control the citizenry (the "Roman" Catholic Church). A form of "Christian Nationalism" of today? The Romans did not have TV, but they had the Colosseum where prisoners were thrown to the lions for public entertainment. This new start of public executions for the US seems like the first step in that direction. - Bob Kramer
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, PANEM ET CIRCENSES and the gladiatorial games preceded Christianity by centuries, much less the adoption of it as the official Roman religion. For a few centuries, the Christians were more likely to be the ones thrown to the lions.
DeleteLater, it was the protest of Christians figures that led to the decline and eventual end of the games.
Of course, Trump is perhaps the most bread & circuses President we've ever had, glorying in the spending tax money on spectacles that he & his party would have heavily condemned just a mere 2 years ago.
The Roman Cult of the Emperor predates the adoption of Christianity by the Empire, and was itself well-rooted in Hellenistic traditions, with parallels among the Persians and Egyptians. Mixing of state and religion goes way, way back -- how better to ensure loyalty to a ruler than the favor of the gods, among whom he counts himself?
DeleteRepublican Rome and Athenian democracy were markedly averse to the idea but taking a broad view of Classical history, they were swimming against the tide.