Despite the pleas of the victim’s family and an agreement by the DA to commute the sentence to life in prison, Marcellus Williams just had to be murdered by the state, put to death by lethal injection on 9.24, 2024. The governor, a Rethuglican (no surprise there) acted to hurry up and kill him, post-haste most quickly.
Oh! And Governor Mike Parson disbanded the commission formed to investigate Mr. Williams’ innocence claims. Mentioned somewhere around these parts that Texas did something similar to Cameron Willingham, unlawfully convicted with flawed science and wrongfully executed … doesn’t mean it wasn’t unconstitutional … and just how hot is it down there, Antonin?
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, at least 200 people sentenced to death since 1973 were later exonerated, and some 20 unfortunate souls were actually in fact executed despite strong evidence of innocence. Methinks that is what we call a fairly significant “oops.”
Amazes to think that our ‘Murrican society is so bloodthirsty that every opportunity to kill someone must be taken, even more so than ensuring that life should not be took.
Sigh.
Well, ‘Murica is built on human suffering, so there is that.
“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
— D. H. Lawrence (1923)
In that same vein we have the Sarco (“sarcophagus”) pod, invented in 2017 by former Australian doctor Philip Nitschke (really? Nitschke/Nietzsche? Who says GOD lacks humor and irony … after all, HE gave us both of those things!) to … impute … death by replacing oxygen with pure nitrogen gas via the touch of a button. The suicide death capsules are quite the futuristic, 3D-printed and mass-produced, available for only the low-low, low-low price of $20 twenty ‘Murrican bucks…
Since euthanasia has been legal in Switzerland since the 40’s, just recently a Midwestern woman suffering from osteomyelitis traveled to Switzerland to die in a forest …Nietzsche (oh wait) watched her die via videolink … snuff films for the new age.
However, there reportedly were (unconfirmed) strangulation marks around her neck, and thereby followed arrests of the doctor, a reporter and a couple of lawyers … bit of the controversy, that.
Anyhoo, the cognitive dissonance is real … killing those who want to live, forcing life on those who want to die. Not only should the Nihilism Party advocate for elective euthanasia, but economic euthanasia as well … saw a news article about Canada’s MAID program being used for exactly that, which must admit ain’t such a bad idea. Unless, of course, the person actually wants to live and just can’t afford to.
Would solve the homeless problem. En masse. Or could just try effective social services, affordable housing and a living wage, there are those.
Dunno.
Is there debt owed to life? Life certainly incurs a lot of debts, there is that.
Some really smart person remarked that in non-western (read: civilized) cultures a person does not have to earn a living … like a tree or the ocean, persons just live and contribute to community with communal actions (e.g., water retrieval, food gathering, labor in creating necessities, etc.) that benefits the group, allows all to simply live and enjoy the experience of existence.
But.
Can’t make billionaires that way. {Hosea 13:15}
Sigh.
Welp, rather than employ the drastic (and oft messy) approach of self-deletion, seems much of society is choosing simply not to prolong the species, electing to simply opt out.
Live this life then shuffle off.
Travel, get a dog, take a class, learn a new language.
No more babies for the man.
Robert Smith (the Cure … there goes GOD again, being ironic) once said he resented his birth and would never inflict it on a child, committed to remaining decidedly and definitively childfree.
Extinction by attrition. “Let It End With Us.” Maybe Lonesome George can be the party mascot.
After all … in a culture that reveres death, the end is predictably inevitable.
And likely deserved.