Palmer Luckey had an ... interesting perspective on it. I was against it before, and I'm still against it, but his point was that the killing of a citizen is one of the largest possible flexes that a state can exercise, and to prevent against its abuse it should probably be more visible to more people
I think that there is likely _enough_ visibility in the case of the classic execution, which is only done after the fifth amendment has been thoroughly exercised and appeals process fully depleted, and (ironically) not nearly enough visibility in the exercise of state power done by drone strikes and such, and so I take his point and appreciate it for what it is, which predominately is that I hadn't thought about it in that way before -- I still oppose the idea, but perhaps less strongly than before now that I know that bloodlust isn't the only viable interest (tho still a tremendous worry to me)
Making it public will invite the deviants who derive pleasure from the audience. Look up historical behaviours of crowds in some of the last public executions in France.
If this were livestreamed you'd have just insanely grotesque stuff like livestream commentators narrating and reacting to the footage while polymarket ads play over it, making memes and remixes of it like what happened with the Charlie Kirk assassination clips. It's all sick IMO.
Good, maybe that will cause the >50% who support capital punishment to reevaluate their stance. Or at least the 30% cowards who support it but don’t want to watch.
I’ve worked on a slaughter floor before, and while it’s certainly not an enjoyable experience I can say with all honesty that a great deal is done to minimize suffering.
I killed chickens and fishes, but truly, hearing cows cry when their calves are taken away is still heartbreaking. Also seeing the pig moms trying to move to be able to see her children once in her life is extremely uncomfortable.
My philosophy is that I only eat meat I would personally be able to kill, which means chicken, ducks and fishes (probably game too). I still avoid battery chicken though.
1. Practically speaking, what's the intended effect, given that executions nowadays are pretty sanitized anyways? Lethal injection is basically equivalent to some guy going under anesthesia.
2. Do you actually believe in the implied principle of "if you support [x] you must watch every [x]", or are you just using it a cudgel against people you hate? Would it be fair game for anti-abortion groups to demand "if you support abortion you must watch every abortion"?
I’m not American and I don’t support the death penalty.
That said…
If you’re going to do this, it absolutely should be a public event. If This is what a society does, the society have to own that imho. Anyone supporting it should be required to watch one first.
How can it be ok to do it but only secretly in a dark corner and not let anyone see?
Didn't Trump cancel the live streaming of the military execution?
I'd rather we got rid of the death penalty pretty much everywhere but the military, but I don't see how watching an execution really benefits anyone. Watching another human getting shot isn't going to benefit your soul or whatever you want to call it.
heh we're seriously considering live-streaming someone's execution but live-streaming a woman taking off her shirt to the public would be an outrage. I lean toward "America f*ck yeah!" but I know there's plenty of stupid here as well.
Who wouldn't be opposed. It is boring. Make it guillotine with a slide and bowling pins at the end. And take bets on Polymarket whether there will be split or no - then the numbers will be reversed.
We are moving anyway towards Escape from NY/LA world. Let's at least take the good parts from it.
I go back and forth on this. I'm generally opposed, but I also think that if we have a death penalty it shouldn't be so bloodless. It should be a beheading that the governor of the state has to do themselves. We shouldn't be able to pretend we aren't doing something incredibly violent
Then you have to decide what to do for public execution number 2 - do the same again and risk that people become desensitised to what's happening or just go even more violent?
This has the exact opposite effect from the research I've seen: public executions are associated with a higher-violence society via the "Brutalization Effect".
A government willing to participate in, and especially revel in, violence sets a precedent for the common people. It desensitizes them to the act and gives them an excuse that "if the government does it, I should be allowed to".
The government is supposed to reflect the moral and character of the society it operates. But it works both ways, and people (I imagine especially children) start to adopt the moral and character of the government - or an anarchic rejection thereof. So when you have Nazis, you get Hitlers Youth.
We should not be proud of executions. They are a dirty deed that "must" be done (though many would argue shouldn't - which I'm inclined to agree with after so many exonerations), so we should be ashamed and do it quietly, with shame for us and dignity for the victim.
From Daisaku Ikeda: The Courage of Nonviolence [1]
quote
Violence vs. Nonviolence: The Struggle of the Twenty-first Century
I am also reminded of a moving episode that Leo Tolstoy related in a letter written two months before his death. The letter, dated September 7, 1910, was addressed to Mahatma Gandhi.
The episode went something like this. There was a test on the subject of religion in a certain girls' school in Moscow. A bishop had come to the school and was quizzing the girls one by one about the Ten Commandments. When he came to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the bishop asked: "Does God forbid us to kill under all circumstances?"
The girls each answered as they had been taught. "No," they said, "not under all circumstances. We may kill in war or as legal punishment."
"Yes, that's right! You've answered correctly!" said the bishop.
Then one of the girls, her face flushed with indignation, spoke up: "Killing is wrong under all circumstances!"
The bishop was flustered and marshaled all his rhetorical skills to convince the girl that there were exceptions to the commandment against killing, but to no avail.
"No," she declared. "Killing is a sin under all circumstances. It says so in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus not only forbade killing but taught that we must do no harm to our neighbors."
In the face of truth in the girl's assertion, the bishop's authority and verbal skills were of no use whatsoever. In the end, he could only fall silent. The young girl, Tolstoy wrote with evident satisfaction, had proven victorious.
Let us amplify the words of that young girl--"It is wrong to kill, even in war!" And let us broadcast them to the world!
The twentieth century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. Have we learned anything from those horrific tragedies? In the new era of the twenty-first century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.
The real struggle of the twenty-first century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.
My read on this is that Hegseth told him "Hey we have this Palestinian-American Islamist terrorist why don't we execute him", Trump said it was a good idea and bailed out once someone told him that using a firing squad on a paraplegic would be bad optics.
What President Trump did was make us think past the sale. He made everyone agree to executing the POS by turning the argument into whether it should be televised.
51 comments
[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 19.3 ms ] thread- Executing people in a way that makes us not have to think about it as a society, or only think about it in passing
- Executing people in our faces, so we have to think about it
Personally I find the first option gross. "Out of sight, out of mind"--you know what I mean?
I think that there is likely _enough_ visibility in the case of the classic execution, which is only done after the fifth amendment has been thoroughly exercised and appeals process fully depleted, and (ironically) not nearly enough visibility in the exercise of state power done by drone strikes and such, and so I take his point and appreciate it for what it is, which predominately is that I hadn't thought about it in that way before -- I still oppose the idea, but perhaps less strongly than before now that I know that bloodlust isn't the only viable interest (tho still a tremendous worry to me)
If this were livestreamed you'd have just insanely grotesque stuff like livestream commentators narrating and reacting to the footage while polymarket ads play over it, making memes and remixes of it like what happened with the Charlie Kirk assassination clips. It's all sick IMO.
I’ve worked on a slaughter floor before, and while it’s certainly not an enjoyable experience I can say with all honesty that a great deal is done to minimize suffering.
My philosophy is that I only eat meat I would personally be able to kill, which means chicken, ducks and fishes (probably game too). I still avoid battery chicken though.
2. Do you actually believe in the implied principle of "if you support [x] you must watch every [x]", or are you just using it a cudgel against people you hate? Would it be fair game for anti-abortion groups to demand "if you support abortion you must watch every abortion"?
The “safe” dose of midazolam used for anesthesia is orders of magnitude smaller than the dose used in lethal injection.
> Would it be fair game for anti-abortion groups to demand "if you support abortion you must watch every abortion"?
This was actually a tactic used by anti-abortion groups back when Roe was settled law.
That said…
If you’re going to do this, it absolutely should be a public event. If This is what a society does, the society have to own that imho. Anyone supporting it should be required to watch one first.
How can it be ok to do it but only secretly in a dark corner and not let anyone see?
I'd rather we got rid of the death penalty pretty much everywhere but the military, but I don't see how watching an execution really benefits anyone. Watching another human getting shot isn't going to benefit your soul or whatever you want to call it.
> The poll was conducted online Oct. 9-13 among 2,545 U.S. adults nationwide reached through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel
Apparently Trump called off the livestream on October 15: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crx23qlnj27qo.
So this article is last week's news.
We are moving anyway towards Escape from NY/LA world. Let's at least take the good parts from it.
A government willing to participate in, and especially revel in, violence sets a precedent for the common people. It desensitizes them to the act and gives them an excuse that "if the government does it, I should be allowed to".
The government is supposed to reflect the moral and character of the society it operates. But it works both ways, and people (I imagine especially children) start to adopt the moral and character of the government - or an anarchic rejection thereof. So when you have Nazis, you get Hitlers Youth.
We should not be proud of executions. They are a dirty deed that "must" be done (though many would argue shouldn't - which I'm inclined to agree with after so many exonerations), so we should be ashamed and do it quietly, with shame for us and dignity for the victim.
And occasionally people are exonerated, and it's better to set them free rather than shrugging at their graves.
They push out one outrageous diversion after another, and you fall for it.
From Daisaku Ikeda: The Courage of Nonviolence [1]
quote
Violence vs. Nonviolence: The Struggle of the Twenty-first Century
I am also reminded of a moving episode that Leo Tolstoy related in a letter written two months before his death. The letter, dated September 7, 1910, was addressed to Mahatma Gandhi.
The episode went something like this. There was a test on the subject of religion in a certain girls' school in Moscow. A bishop had come to the school and was quizzing the girls one by one about the Ten Commandments. When he came to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the bishop asked: "Does God forbid us to kill under all circumstances?"
The girls each answered as they had been taught. "No," they said, "not under all circumstances. We may kill in war or as legal punishment."
"Yes, that's right! You've answered correctly!" said the bishop.
Then one of the girls, her face flushed with indignation, spoke up: "Killing is wrong under all circumstances!"
The bishop was flustered and marshaled all his rhetorical skills to convince the girl that there were exceptions to the commandment against killing, but to no avail.
"No," she declared. "Killing is a sin under all circumstances. It says so in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus not only forbade killing but taught that we must do no harm to our neighbors."
In the face of truth in the girl's assertion, the bishop's authority and verbal skills were of no use whatsoever. In the end, he could only fall silent. The young girl, Tolstoy wrote with evident satisfaction, had proven victorious.
Let us amplify the words of that young girl--"It is wrong to kill, even in war!" And let us broadcast them to the world!
The twentieth century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. Have we learned anything from those horrific tragedies? In the new era of the twenty-first century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.
The real struggle of the twenty-first century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.
end quote
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50060304#50060591
[1] https://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/resources/works/essays/peac...