China, Iran, North Korea, and The U.S.A. What do we all have in common? How could we possibly have anything in common with those despotic dictatorial terroristic States?
You guessed it. We all kill people who commit crimes. Great company, huh? It reminds me of the old W.C. Fields line about not wanting to belong to a club that would let him in. In fact we are the only supposedly superior “G7” country that still believes in this barbaric form of torture.
The Death Penalty. I’m against it. Big time.
Frankly, all you have to do is look at the company we are keeping to know it’s a problem. I mean North Korea? Really? The country that is starving its people to death in order to control them? Hiding rice in giant warehouses as it rots while the people starve? They kill people for just thinking things. So we want to be in that club? I mean, if you went to a party and the only other people in the room were these guys wouldn’t you think twice about staying? So why do we?
Simple: fear. And ignorance. And a complete disconnect between what we say and what we do. There is nothing that is not cruel and unusual about the death penalty. Just read the Eighth Amendment. How it is not unconstitutional is beyond me, no matter how many lame supreme court opinions I read. Justice Utter, that brilliant jurist, agreed. He quit the Washington State Supreme Court because of it.
When you read about Justice Utter, his background, his integrity and life experience, and above all, his compassion and intelligence, and his unwavering opposition to this grotesque form of “punishment” you can’t help but wonder. Unless you don’t have an especially inquiring mind, maybe. If he feels this way, and Kim Jong Un disagrees with him, who’re ya gonna believe? If you are hesitating at all I have some rotting rice jammed into giant warehouses to sell you.
One horrific story is the botched execution of one Joseph Wood in Arizona. Are you kidding me right now? Again? Another prolonged torture session thanks to the reject chemists that are cooking up the poison used to put the bad guys down like dogs? Why not just blow them up? Like Al Queda does? I mean, those guys know how to kill people. What is wrong with us, anyway? Oh wait, I forgot, we are the same country that created and wrote into law the whole concept that we would not be cruel and unusual, making us better than everyone else. Supposedly. But when I read about the two hours Mr. Wood spent anguishing as his lawyers frantically tried to invoke his constitutional rights and save him from this inhumane treatment, I get sick to my stomach. What a joke. Who cares what he did. We are not China and Russia and the rest of them. We are the U.S. of A.
Oh wait, Russia has a moratorium on the death penalty too. Buncha commies.
:~
So we need to look at ourselves closely in the mirror and ask what we see.
Kim Jong Un, the guy who fed his uncle to dogs, or our heroes, the folks who created our entire system of government, the Founders of the United States? Take your pick. To me it’s a no-brainer. Maybe that’s the problem. You know it’s cruel when you see it. You know it’s unusual when you find yourself hanging out with Kim K., the dog whisperer, Dennis Rodman’s friend. Get the picture?
Thank goodness we live in a state where our Governor is enlightened enough to save us from ourselves by declaring a moratorium on the death penalty here.
It brings tears to my eyes to see that Justice Utter teared up at the news. Maybe if more people really thought about it we could learn something and rise up above China and Iran and North Korea and their evil ways. Heck. If we work hard enough we might even catch up with Russia! Get it?