Chris Hedges: Murder Is Our National Sport

[marmar]

from truthdig:



Murder Is Our National Sport

Posted on May 12, 2013
By Chris Hedges


Murder is our national sport. We murder tens of thousands with our industrial killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq. We murder thousands more from the skies over Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen with our pilotless drones. We murder each other with reckless abandon. And, as if we were not drenched in enough human blood, we murder prisoners—most of them poor people of color who have been locked up for more than a decade. The United States believes in regeneration through violence. We have carried out blood baths on foreign soil and on our own land for generations in the vain quest of a better world. And the worse it gets, the deeper our empire sinks under the weight of its own decay and depravity, the more we kill.

There are parts of the nation where the electorate, or at least the white electorate, routinely and knowingly puts murderers into political office. Murder is a sign of strength. Murder is a symbol of resolve. Murder means law and order. Murder keeps us safe. Strap the criminal into the gurney. Plunge the needles into veins. Haul away the corpse. It is our Christian duty. God Bless America! And one of the next on the list to be murdered in Florida—a state that has decided, under its new and cynically named “Timely Justice Act,” that it needs to accelerate its execution rate—is William Van Poyck. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. June 12 at Florida State Prison. He is a writer who has spent years exposing the cruelty of our system of mass incarceration. On June 12, if Gov. Rick Scott has his way, Van Poyck will write no more. And that is exactly how our political class of murderers wants it.

“Only God can judge,” Matt Gaetz, a Republican who sponsored the Timely Justice Act in the Florida House of Representatives, said during the debate. “But we sure can set up the meeting.”

Van Poyck, 58, knows what is coming. He has seen it many times before. He chronicles existence on death row in his blog, posted by his sister, Lisa Van Poyck, at deathrowdiary.blogspot.com, where there is a petition to Gov. Scott asking for a reprieve. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/murder_is_our_national_sport_20130512/

[JimDandy]

1. Kick and Rec for a good read.

Last edited Tue May 14, 2013, 07:46 PM - Edit history (1)

I've always thought that trying someone for murder, if they were involved in the commission of a crime that resulted in murder, was a perversion of justice when they weren't the one to pull the trigger or even knew a weapon would be involved in the crime.

Prison is for rehabilitation...even for those convicted of murder, and especially if they didn't pull the trigger! He sounds not only rehabilitated, but a good addition to the human race.

Going to go look for the books he wrote.