Floridas execution industry has suffered a recent set back with controversy about the use of a new type of lethal injection, Etomidate.
It doesnt work?
Oh no, it kills people really well..
The problem is that it causes the condemned recipient ten seconds of *mild to moderate discomfiture*, before suffering the worlds worst heart attack.
First off, if its untested, how does anyone know that…? But more importantly, what kind of a split reality do we live in where you might be happy to kill someone whilst moping their chin after a hearty last meal, making sure their death suit is freshly back from the cleaners or losing sleep over the *moderate discomfiture* of the person currently having his heart stopped.
Somehow the discomfiture…..
don*t make the noose to tight on him, its unconstitutional!
…and the unpleasant feelings associated with having your heart ripped out in tune to the lapping oarstrokes of Charons ferry, seems somewhat disconnected from the big picture..
All this split politeness about judicial killing has quite some history. Its a tradition that the condemned are allowed last requests, even if you hate them. You might have to send out for pizza, give them a choice of blindfold, or a final fag, perhaps the book clutching comfort of a man in a black dress muttering words to break the arkward silence of those last few moments..
Perhaps thats why the executioners get to be hooded, to hide the shifty look that knows there is covert agenda..
or could it be for politeness sake, so that the poor condemned need not be offended by the coldness of a face with all the mercy of a stone cliff on a stormy night…
or perhaps its to discourage unnecessary chit chat. Rapid dispatch will serve to reduce the unpleasant chances of wetting of oneself, so thats jolly decent of them.
Oh and in fact you dont have to worry about having your head chopped off, which is a barbaric,… but we might dangle you by it and let you twist and kick for a bit. Way more humane.
The choreography of the pageant is preceeded by the death watch, a macabre ritual of intruding on the prisoner every couple of minutes to make sure he doesnt somehow manage to cheat his fate and make an earlier appointment with death, magically producing the means to kill himself from an empty cell, as though the maximum penalty also made you into a witch if you werent one to begin with.
Prisoners are often given a physical before their execution, in order to ensure that they are fit enough to die..
which is very considerate..
So, if you hurt your nob having a final desperate wank, you might be let off?
No, I dont think it works like that. Though it does beg the bizzare question of what constitutes health grounds for a stay of execution..
you cant kill me, I have a life limiting condition…
yes, its called the green mile.
The physical, the meal, the solemnity of final requests, the intricate rules, observances, training procedures to make sure the restraints dont chaf, all these are structures of denial about what is actually happening which have to be set in place to live with the contradiction of believing how evolved we are whilst clinging to the practices of tooth and claw. And so before delivering 300,000 volts to your exquisite jelly we will moisten the sponge, just so.
We dont want to kill people but we have a whole host of juicy ways of doing it which you can experiment with…of course, once due process has been tended to and we have made sure that the prisoner is not bruised before he is fried. We are humane.
Or maybe the execution industry is all part of a policy of bread and circuses designed to keep people amused whilst the State picks their pockets and slips shackles on their imagination. When times are hard the rate of judicial killing rises. The people must be diverted.
Of course, we are way too gentile to have such circuses publically anymore, that would be distasteful..
and crowd control is soo expensive.
But the court room dramas leading up to them, and the reliably endless media coverage makes up for all it. Shucks, its like having a front seat at the arena complete with corn chips and beer without having to leave the comfort of your own home.
how did life get this good?
But there is a problem..
For more than the amusement of a culture couch bound and weary from its own greatness, and for greater purpose than deterrence, there lies a dark and hidden motive that strikes further than the prisoners heart… and that is to convey to one and all that life is cheap, his, yours, mine. And since it is cheap it is not worth fighting for.
As soon as you argue for the relative worth of a particular persons life, irrespective of whether they *deserve* to die, then you are on the slippery slope of an arguement for the relative worth of any and all lives.
Andrew Anglin, founder of neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer wrote this about the Charlottesville attack…
*the real tragedy is what happened to the car. It was a very nice car, worth much more than the life of anyone who died.*
The ultimate effect of having a federal industry that puts people to death is not less crime, the deterrent effect, or justice for victims, but the ennervating message, embraced wholeheartedly by the collective insecurity of Supremacy, that the value of life can be measured like stock. And you wonder why your infinite, boundless soul is depressed.
