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progress is not possible; that redemption is not possible; that recompense is not possible--and since change is not possible, the rich must remain rich, the poor must remain poor and at the mercy of the rich, and the "dog eat dog" world that they believe in--filled with guns and nukes and egregious unfairness--must, by the very nature of things, continue. It is a bleak, depressing world for most of us, but with small pockets of glitz and gold where the rich play their vicious power games and plot how to impoverish, poison, oppress and enslave us all.
The cold-blooded murder of virtually the only people in prison--the black and the brown and the poor--by the state, the insertion of lethal poisons into their arms, or breaking their necks, or electrocuting them, to extinguish life--is an example to the poor of what the state and its wealthiest beneficiaries really think of the value of a poor person's life. It is not what it appears to be--and what it is sold as: a demonstration of the value that society places on the lives of those the criminal may have killed. This rhetoric masks the reverse and intended message: that life is cheap, that violence is permitted if you can get away with it (George Bush, for instance, has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent people in Iraq, and tortured many others, to get their oil--and not only gets away with it, he gets to be President, and gets to further enrich himself and his buds at our expense); and that the OLD TESTAMENT law of "an eye for an eye" retribution is the REAL law of the land. Progress, redemption, recompense and change for the better are NOT POSSIBLE.
The fact that the innocent are executed--because of their poverty (their inability to pay for good attorneys)--may be what breaks the spell of ghoulish pleasure in state execution that some Americans are in thrall to--but it is only one part of the injustice of state execution, and not the most important part. If the ruling fascists (i.e., the wealthy, both Democrats and Republicans) had any sincerity in their claim to be valuing life (the lives of victims) by killing other lives (convicted murderers), then they would long ago have immediately stopped all executions, the moment they were apprised of the first questionable conviction; and, with DNA testing, the moment that it became possible to overturn prior convictions of the innocent by improved evidence.
But that is not what they are doing. Instead, they are clinging to their bloody demonstration of the cheapness of a poor man's life with all their claws. They want it. They crave it. It supports them in their world view that only the rich deserve justice; that justice and equality only belong to those who can pay for it.
I've read opinions of the California Supreme Court in death penalty cases--judges appointed by Dems and Repubs--and it was my impression that these justices take a sort of glee in denying death penalty appeals. There is a certain zing in their written opinions--a zest for death--and a feeling of great self-satisfaction in their clever turns of argument denying all grounds for appeal. They have no pity. They have zero understanding, or desire to understand, the life of the poor. They have no belief in progress and change. One of the opinions was about a teenage boy of 15 or 16, caught up in a gang war. No hope for him; no redemption or recompense possible. Off with his head!
It was the most sickening thing I have ever read--with its legal niceties, and its whizzbang law school debating points. They ordered the cold-blooded murder of this troubled child of the streets, with not the least shred of sorrow in their hearts at OUR failure, as a society, to give him any hope or protection. The Reaganites and the Bushites and their Democratic colluders WANTED him to live in a jungle, with all the other lab rats of 'trickle down' economics. He proved them right, that, without rich parents, and a beach house, and a Swiss Chalet, and a Yale education, and Saudi princes bailing out his failed businesses, the poor cannot achieve the scale of murder that the privileged achieve, and they should not be forgiven for this--for being poor, for being unable to fatten the stock portfolios of the rich with grand scale murder on behalf of war profiteers. Small scale murder, against other poor people, in adolescent tribal rites of neighborhood protection--murder that does not make the rich richer--is an unforgivable crime. And the rich value the lives of this child's victims about as much as they value the lives of the tortured and the dead in Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib, or those of the blown apart babies and grandmothers in Iraq. That is, not at all.
But the child they executed does have value to them dead--the value of their standing on top of the heap, and pissing down the pile of stacked up bodies of the dead and dying, right into the faces of the poorest and the weakest among us.
STOP THE DEATH PENALTY!
...and, while we're at it, let's also...
THROW DIEBOLD AND ES&S ELECTION THEFT MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HARBOR'!
Election fraud is at the heart of this and all other fascist policies.
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