School Shootings

Well, I hate to blog on such a topic, but events will happen....

So I have several mixed and jumbled thoughts about this-- I'll try to organize them as best as I can.

Firstly, as to the Pennsylvania executions, why the Amish? A while back, I got to spend a bit of time with some folks in an Amish community-- they welcomed me into their homes and shared their music with me... Truly, these are the most innocent and decent folks I can think of. They lack the bad Karma that we all create with our violent culture-- and still they must suffer this tragedy.... And so this attack has saddened me more than any other in my memory.

Given that, I offer this up as a second course: I often say that I'm a conservative forced by circumstance to play the role of a liberal, and yet I suppose I'm now a true liberal. And as the definition of a liberal is: "a person so fair-minded that they refuse to take their own side in an argument," I've taken this opportunity to question my beliefs. Namely, my belief that capital punishment is wrong and that it is as horrible an act of murder as any act it is intended to punish-- no in fact it's worse, because it is carried out with the cool self righteousness and calculated self justification of a popular tool of political gain.

I've never understood the popularity of capital punishment. Not until now.

There are no valid "reasons" for CP that have stood up to the test of evidence. Far from a deterrent, it is pretty consistently statistically linked to a rise in murder and in crime in general.

During the Newt Gingrich revolution the major point was that it cost the tax payer less than incarceration-- proven even back then to be a fallacy--
(and since no one believes me when I say this here ya go:
A Duke University study found... "The death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of imprisonment for life." ( The costs of processing murder cases in North Carolina / Philip J. Cook, Donna B. Slawson ; with the assistance of Lori A. Gries. [Durham, NC] : Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, 1993.)

"The death penalty costs California $90 million annually beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system - $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level." (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988).

"A 1991 study of the Texas criminal justice system estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at $2,316,655. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum security prison single cell for 40 years is estimated at $750,000." (Punishment and the Death Penalty, edited by Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum 1995 p.109 )

"Florida spent an estimated $57 million on the death penalty from 1973 to 1988 to achieve 18 executions - that is an average of $3.2 million per execution."
(Miami Herald, July 10, 1988).

"Florida calculated that each execution there costs some $3.18 million. If incarceration is estimated to cost $17000/year, a comparable statistic for life in prison of 40 years would be $680,000."
(The Geography of Execution... The Capital Punishment Quagmire in America, Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood 1997 p.6)

Swiftly lifted from: http://www.mindspring.com/~phporter/econ.html

Anyway, to sum, there is no "reason" reason for capital punishment-- only a FEELING-- and that feeling logically is summed up like this: there are some things for which murder is a just response.

It has always been easy for me to point out the irony of this statement-- that ALL MURDERERS ALWAYS FEEL JUSTIFIED IN THEIR ACTIONS. There are very few broken pieces on this planet that sit around twirling their mustaches wondering what they can do in the name of evil that day. All people who do bad things think they are doing them for just reasons.

Anyway, the argument for CP then is always that it isn't about LOGIC, its about the FEELING that it would be cruel to take the possibility of a revenge murder away from victims. And of course, that I couldn't understand because I've never been a victim.

Well, for the first time, I find myself FEELING that if this guy hadn't killed himself, then he deserves to be brutally killed.

(But then another even more reptilian part answers: "no, death is too good for this guy-- too easy." In fact, I really resent that he killed himself. Such a cowardly way out....)

But for the first time I understand-- I intuit how easy it is to just say: a fuck the bastard-- hang em. It's so easy and it feels so good....

Finally, where's the big government response? I feel more personally attacked by this then by 911-- so where's my "war on violence as an appropriate response?" Because that's what I feel attacked by-- our cultural instinct to respond to any provocation with force. I'll bet we'll find out that whatever this guy was thinking-- he wasn't some monster. He was a decent family guy who was good to his wife and kids but he was infected with this idea that's very ordinary in our culture-- that violence is a justifiable response-- a JUST response even....

We go to movies and we're supposed to cheer when the bad guys get killed-- the more brutally the better. And people tell me all the time that Bush was right to bomb people and take revenge for 911, nevermind that the people who did it all died, and nevermind that justice was never even an issue: quoth Rumsfeld " we don't have enough evidence to convict, but we have enough evidence to bomb." So how are we supposed to argue when some fucked up guy thinks he's got to go kill some little girls for some messed up thing in his head? Hell, grab your gun buddy, it's the American way!

That is the fucked up shit we need a war on. We're makin' real bad Karma baby, real bad.