By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
I caught a headline this week that seemed to sum up the energy of these last several months: “Sharp Rise in Executions Bucks Declining Trend, Rights Groups Warn.” The article details an Amnesty International report on the sudden flurry of lethal activity in the remaining nations that put people to death: China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and, sadly, US (the killing fields and gulags of North Korea are not mentioned, but should be.) Here, where appropriate poisonous cocktails are no longer easily acquired, some states, including my own, have turned to secretive formulas and elusive sources to end life. An Oklahoma judge has just declared such secrecy unconstitutional, in violation of the prisoners’ civil rights. She argues that they have a right to know what is being used to kill them.
Cold comfort, that, not to mention that having such a conversation just seems wrong to its core. My spirit recoils at the mechanics of execution when the actual ethical challenge is our embrace of state-sanctioned murder, representing some archaic need for revenge within the American psyche still alive in our romanticized notions of vigilantism, approval of Stand Your Ground laws and shrill hysteria over Second Amendment rights. Our flirtation with violence and vengeance, our love affair with the macho arts and posturing, our need to bang the drums louder and keep the pot stirred, add energy to the final gasps of the darker agenda of humankind, frenzied to regain its flagging influence.
We keep trying to do the right thing, end the game, but someone is always there to pick up the ball and keep it in play. For instance, we were given a reprieve in speculation-overload this week when the search for the missing Indonesian flight intact was ended. As much as my heart goes out to grieving relatives and friends, keeping hope alive to feed another agonizing news cycle is not just cynical but cruel. Not that some aren’t still glued to cable news, ball carriers relentlessly in pursuit of which X marks the entry point on the map of the Indian Ocean. Inquiring minds are hunting the details like dogs at point, unwilling to let this tragedy rest, in exchange for another of the myriad national or international emergencies available for dissection.