Oh, America. Why do you keep on doing this to me? I don’t want to be so fascinated and horrified by you. I, honestly, don’t want to spend much time at all thinking about you. We live in an American-centric world, whether we like it or not, and sometimes it feels like I know more about you than about my own home.
Then you do things like this. And all of my knowledge doesn’t add up to one goddamn bit of understanding. I’m only glad that so many of your people share this with me.
I woke up this morning to find that you’d killed someone. No- not anyone you’d killed in any of your wars. And not yet another person dying from lack of decent medical care, or another life cut short from needless poverty. This death was deliberate.
This killing was premeditated. This killing was cold. This killing was carried out despite an utter lack of credible evidence to explain it. This killing was carried out under orders. Professionally. Systematically. With signed letters and stamped forms.
I don’t know if Troy Davis killed Mark MacPhail.
I don’t care if Troy Davis killed Mark MacPhail.
Whether Troy Davis killed Mark MacPhail is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that you, America, are a country with no hesitation about killing. Killing your own, killing others. You have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the past decade in retribution for the death of 2,977 of your own. Yesterday, you killed one of your own in retribution for the death of one.
Does it matter to you, America, who you kill? Does it matter if Troy Davis killed Mark MacPhail, or do you just spill blood to cleanse the blood that was spilled?
Here is my problem with the death penalty: it assumes that retribution is just.
Retribution is not justice. Even if it is fair, it is not just. If we as a society decree that killing is reprehensible, the only way to show that we believe this is not to kill. We do not kill when we are angry. We do not kill when we are hurt. We kill only when absolutely necessary to defend ourselves.
This does not mean that we do not hurt or that we are never angry. It does not mean that we don’t grieve, or that our grief and pain do not make us crave retribution. It means that we have decided that killing is reprehensible, so we do not do it. It means that we have decided that a civilised society does not kill. It means that, as civilised people, we accept that we must in this regard restrain our very human urges to lash out at those who hurt us.
If we believe that killing is wrong, then we lead by example or not at all.
America, you have disappointed me.
Added: I’d barely gotten this posted before seeing Greg Laden’s post, How to be against the death penalty and keep the kids off the lawn at the same time. Which pretty much surmises my own opinions regarding capital punishment in far less words than this. Go read it!
“If we as a society decree that killing is reprehensible, the only way to show that we believe this is not to kill.”
Exactly. Exactly. EXACTLY.
Both your and Greg Laden’s posts are really well-written responses to this killing, and I agree wholeheartedly with everything you both write. But that one sentence, girl, is exactly it.
I feel some hope every time a big deal is made over the death penalty in my country. I have some small rush of faith that those of us who are opposed to the death penalty are actually being heard, and that we’re possibly convincing others to side with us. They’re very, very small steps forward, and they often come at the cost of HUMAN LIVES, but at least they are steps forward. When a case as questionable and as obviously biased as this crops up, I’m absolutely outraged to hear of it, but I have some hope that it’ll show people how outrageous our system is.
The thing that I just don’t get about it – if you pick all the countries in the world that would typically stand as the antithesis of what America believes it stands for: they all have the death penalty.
Loved this post, I agree wholeheartedly!