Photograph Source: CACorrections – Public Domain

The Trump regime very nearly sank to a new low of barbarism recently: it planned to televise a convict’s execution by firing squad. This public execution, trumpeted by defense secretary Pete “Killer of Fishermen” Hegseth, was no doubt envisioned as the first of many and, equally doubtless, would have degraded all who viewed it, whether for sport, bloodlust, or fanatical conviction in the rightness of state murder. It’s not surprising that the president who refused to forgive the exonerated Central Park Five should wish to create spectacle out of capital punishment, what’s surprising is that he called it off, given that some Trump voters likely believe ardently in the state shooting, poisoning or electrocuting of homicidal felons. Although in fact state murder may be acceptable in occasional cases – as it happened, say, at Nuremberg – those cases are extremely rare. The death penalty, for routine criminal murder, amounts to two wrongs not making a right. Worse, it is cruel and unusual (even if what the killer did was cruel and unusual), degrades the society and condemns the government that practice it. Especially when the killer was underage at the time of the crime or mentally deranged, execution is clearly odious. A decent society eschews it.

That is not us. The U.S. does not eschew it. While it’s a relief that Trump cancelled, October 15, livestreaming the execution of mass shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the profoundly unsatisfying but far more just alternative – life without parole – never even came up. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote on social media. Nota bene: by firing squad – a method to which many object. But truly, any method of state murder is objectionable, and the case can be made that lethal injection is one of the worst, not just because, when dysfunctional, it amounts to torture, but also because it pollutes the medical profession, whose Hippocratic oath, you may recall, is “first do no harm.”

The physician who tried, twice, to kill convicted murderer Christa Pike September 30 botched the job and inflicted torture. This is not “first do no harm.” Had he succeeded in extinguishing her, it would likely have been even less “first do no harm,” because while some – some, not all – torture is not as bad as murder, it still amounts to serious harm. I say “likely” because we don’t know how much or exactly what Christa Pike suffered at the hands of a doctor. Some torture is worse than death. It’s so much worse that death, when it comes, is a salve. Was this what she underwent? We’ll never know, because if she says yes it was, who will ever believe her? Certainly not Pete Hegseth. But for a med tech or doctor to administer torture in an attempt to murder, well, that simply is an abomination.

“As of Thursday,” the New York Times reported October 10, “Ms. Pike had been walking with assistance, but still struggling with concentration and memory…Ms. Pike has spent three decades in the prison, largely in isolation.” In other words, during 30 years of solitary confinement, Ms. Pike has looked forward to being killed and then when that day finally came, she was tortured instead and now knows she may still be put to death. Granted, she herself committed a heinous, unforgiveable crime. But her victim, whom she tortured, did not face death open-eyed for 30 years in solitary. This is an ugly situation and these are unspeakably ugly comparisons. Far better to obviate the whole obscene conversation and condemn Christa Pike to life in prison without parole.

Do the supreme court justices really want that ghastly conversation, that sickening debate? If so, they should consider the cases where justice, not revenge, has been most clearly the object of the death penalty, namely the Nuremberg Tribunal. Coincidentally, Russia, which has more than a little skin in this game given its 27 million killed by the Nazis, ran an article on this very topic in its state news, RT, October 16, the eightieth anniversary of the hanging of the main 10 Nazi criminals at Nuremberg. “Despite the horrifying scale and brutality of the crimes, the Nuremberg Trials,” RT wrote, “remain one of the most controversial proceedings in world history.” Ahem – if hanging these war criminals was and even remains controversial, for multiple reasons, what does that say about putting run-of-the-mill murderers on death row?

RT also argues that back in the 1940s, vigilante justice seemed justified: “No one mourned Mussolini, similarly, no one would have objected if a Red Army soldier had shot Hitler. Sporadic acts of vigilante justice also occurred as the war neared its end. A well-known incident involved American soldiers executing the staff of the Dachau concentration camp.” That’s vigilante justice, and merited in those circumstances. But is that, or any hint of vigilante justice acceptable in the U.S. government’s policy of executing more ordinary homicidal felons? Christa Pike was not implicated in any wartime criminality or crimes against humanity nor was Nidal Hassan. Yet one was tortured by the state and may still be killed, while for the other, the secretary of defense flipped off his rocker and advocated a public execution.

We live in parlous times, when officials with power of life and death turn on a dime toward the demented pageantry of revenge. It seems Hegseth expected Americans to plop down in front of their TVs with popcorn and watch the firing squad unload its bullets into Hassan, all while chanting “Kill! Kill! Kill!” The fact that Hegseth may think this is what the public wants – and remember, he, like his boss, has a TV pedigree – is bad enough, that he would pander to it is chilling. It’s also not irrelevant that Hassan, wounded during his arrest over a decade ago, is as a result paralyzed from the waist down.

Trump initially approved the plan to shoot Hassan to death publicly. What caused our reality TV star president to reverse course on this disgusting spectacle remains a mystery. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it means such a reversal could happen again. Maybe it means there are limits to the death cult in the white house, though I doubt that’s much consolation to the families of Venezuelan fishermen murdered for no good reason by the deranged, strutting, macho Trump military big shots.

Nor will it console the families of the thousands dead, for absolutely no reason, in Iran, also at the hands of an American military machine run amok because there were psychotics at the helm. Even if it was just vanity – white house heads swollen to planetary size after the kidnapping of Maduro – that also amounts to insanity. There was no reason to bomb Iran. There was no reason to announce the livestream public execution by firing squad of Nidal Hassan. Both were symptoms of a mentally ill leadership, with, horribly, the power of life and death over literally billions of people. We are in a preposterous, terrifying predicament. Prove me wrong.