Today the New York Times reminds us as we are reminded every day that the world is inured to the inflicting of death. In Arkansas and elsewhere potions are prepared, all means of execution are the same. The notion that by making death painless we are being charitable is a cruel fiction. What else is death but a source of fear? The Gambler told us the best we can hope for is to die in our sleep. The best we can truly hope for is, as has been said, to be delivered from this body of death.
Capital punishment is a savage and useless enterprise that tells more about our warped morality than it does about crime and punishment.
Unquestionably, faced with cruel and vicious and mindless murders, the thirst is for revenge, for cloture, for all the good results that have been trumpeted forever. But such results are neither just nor good. The only valid form of revenge is love from beyond us, from what we might call reality, or god if we are so inclined, from the universe, from anything to which we give glory beyond this idolatrous planet. The love to which I refer is one with justice.It is unified with righteousness. It sees to a place of reconciliation. It is a matter of faith to recognize it. It only proves out in actual living. It proves out when we say no to capital punishment.
There is no solace in keeping a death train running on and on
Bearing Witness to Executions: Last Breaths and Lasting Impressions https://t.co/ALrkXycuPr
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 23, 2017
More than a few people watch death every day. We engineer our world to exhibit death all over. Death is the subject of our news, our graphic TV.
If a concussion kills it gets a headline. If airborne disease strikes its pictures of devastation fill our minds. We do not think that we are the authors of the very things we mourn. Capital punishment is merely one of the more extreme forms of human evil, hurting, inflicting pain and suffering.
Ludell Lee
On Thursday Arkansas killed Ludell Lee and three more deaths are on deck in that state.
Evil is conscious hurt and harm, whatever it is, wherever it is. We do not call it a crime when the Koch Brothers inflict it on people because we cannot easily track where pollution does its damage. We know from statistics that the toll of air and water pollution is huge. All inflicting of death when we are aware is criminal. The deaths we inflicted the other day on ISIS were criminal. War is criminal. The notion that there are laws of war is laughable. But human rights groups insist on trying to get us to observe them. The only law that should prevail is the law of love and the only love worth its salt embodies justice. Abolish killing. Abolish the death penalty.
