A ceiling which we are doomed to forever struggle against
Elie Mystal on what a rat bastard Neil Gorsuch is:
We live in a culture that fetishizes vengeance. Nobody is going to cry if Tony Stark blasts Thanos’s face off this summer. Nobody is going to care if Game of Thrones returns with a ritualistic burning of the Lannisters. Morally, our society is more at peace with the death penalty than it might seem.
Compared to moral philosophy, the law offers a much more compelling case against capital punishment. Some would argue that the first law is a law against capital punishment: thou shalt not kill. And if Charlton Heston is not your idea of a law-giver, political philosophers will tell you that the only reason we’re even in a “society” is because “law” was the only way to stop the endless cycle of revenge-killings that we would clearly engage in without it. The law has ever tried to mollify our thirst for vengeance.
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This week, Gorsuch wrote a majority opinion that was both shockingly cruel and entirely consistent with arch-conservative thought. The case is called Bucklew v. Precythe. Russell Bucklew is a convicted murderer whose depraved crimes are not in dispute. He was sentenced to death in Missouri. Missouri is a lethal-injection state, but Bucklew has a rare medical condition that would cause him to be in extreme pain as the lethal drugs do their work. Bucklew appealed his sentence, arguing that the pain would be a violation of his Eighth Amendment protections, and asked for alternative methods of death that are not sanctioned under Missouri law.
Gorsuch, writing for a 5-4 majority, denied his appeal. Gorsuch wrote: “The Eighth Amendment forbids ‘cruel and unusual’ methods of capital punishment but does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death.” That’s about the most heartless-bastard thing I’ve read in a while, and I work on the Internet.
It does seem harsh.
The Eighth Amendment should not be caged and hobbled in accordance with the wishes of the simple and bigoted minds who wrote it. It’s not our fault that these hypocrites blurted out a principle that would honor human dignity more than they had the will to in their own time. Way back in 1958, the Supreme Court said that the Eighth Amendment “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The Eighth Amendment isn’t an artifact; it’s a challenge. It’s not something to hide behind; it’s something to live up to.
But Neil Gorsuch, and a legion of conservative legal “thinkers” like him, don’t want our society to mature and evolve. They want it to arrest and ossify. They don’t view the Constitution as a floor upon which we can build a better society;, they view it as [a] ceiling which we are doomed to forever struggle against.
People will suffer because of this opinion. More people will spend their last moments on this earth in agonizing pain, because of this decision. That primarily (though not exclusively) “bad” people will suffer is the only reason Gorsuch thinks he can get away with authorizing such suffering. (I’ll spare you Brett Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in this case, because it’s just a thoughtless contemplation of firing squads. He sounds like a child who’s just figured out he’s strong enough to pull the wings off a fly.)
This decision is immoral. It is painful. It is evil. You don’t even have to be morally against the death penalty to understand what has been done here. You just have to be more decent than Neil Gorsuch.
Do you ever feel as if we’re living in a nightmare?
Nightmare indeed.
Renders the “cruel” provision of the 8th Amendment nugatory, irrelevant surplusage. That defies all canons of legislative construction. And the 8th Amendment, is part of the Constitution, the supreme law of the land that controls even over other kinds of law.
Today’s SMBC is somewhat relevant to the first point: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dream-3 Be sure to check out the hovertext.
I’m struggling with the idea that a prisoner has to ask for a less painful way to be killed…. and is denied. Both parts of that are so grotesque that I’m not sure I even know how to think about them properly.
It’s profoundly depressing that – if it came to a vote – the UK would reinstate capital punishment in a heartbeat. I think the vote would be fairly close, but I don’t have the slightest doubt what the outcome would be.
Sorry to sound like the rambling old geezer I clearly am, but holding oneself to a higher standard is supposed to be difficult. That’s the entire point. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.
Denying someone a less painful death because it costs a few pennies more and we’d rather feel smug in our vengeance? Killing prisoners and justifying it using the (factually incorrect) rationale that it’s cheaper than keeping them in prison or the ludicrous idea that it’s a deterrent in order to justify an almost literal thirst for blood?
That seems to me like holding oneself to the lowest possible standard. Which is easy. That’s how you know you’re doing it wrong.
latsot, it may not be just about money. I know a lot of people who would say he’s a murderer, why shouldn’t he have a painful death? Just like in the cartoon – they want it to be painful. It really is about vengeance, not about removing a dangerous person from society, because we could do that without killing him.
Latsot’s comment re the probable attitude of the British public if we had a referendum (gawd forbid) on the subject reminds of something that struck me way back in the halcyon days of Thatcher. The hangers and floggers (including Ronnies girl friend) brought the matter before parliament. This was when the Tories had a massive majority and yet with a free vote (not whipped) they were unable to muster a majority in favour of reinstating the death penalty.
That was when I realised the MP’s in parliament with a large Tory majority were still better human beings on balance than the population at large. As my opinion of the MP’s then was not much higher than of the present bunch of coconuts you can understand that I find it difficult to avoid having a very poor opinion of the public at large.
Americans are no better, possibly worse what with the influence Christianity with it’s emphasis on redemption and forgiveness. Odd that, bit like expecting peace from Islamists I suppose.