A nation of murder witnesses
When I first heard about Secretary of Defense War and human tribal tattoo Pete Hegseth’s announcement that the jihadist mass-murderer Nidal Hasan would be executed by firing squad and it would be publicly live-streamed, I responded with instinctual revulsion. I firmly oppose capital punishment on both moral and pragmatic grounds, and making it messy and public is the stuff of unfettered authoritarianism, not to mention likely to only further embolden publicity-hungry aspiring terrorists. But after thinking about it some more, I wonder if the error here is in not going even further. Live-stream all the executions, and make them mandatory viewing for all citizens. Make it a law that for state and federal executions, respectively, the governor and the president have to be in the room. Give them the training and make them flip the switch, pull the trigger, administer the injection, turn on the gas, fasten the noose. Put the Clockwork Orange lid locks on everyone. If we’re gonna have blood on our hands, let’s get blood on our hands. See how long we sustain an appetite for this brutality.
I realize that attempting to appeal to a population’s human decency may be hopelessly naive, that this misguided accelerationism may instead inflame the nation’s bloodlust and further empower the proudly ignorant strongmen who’ve already brought us so much ruin. But I don’t know; maybe this country really does need to properly hit bottom before it can begin to heal. And to be clear, I believe it does deserve to heal. We all deserve to heal.