THE CURTAINS ARE DRAWN – THE POLITICAL GIANT
During some executions by lethal injection in the USA, there’s some strange form of “decency” at work. Indeed, they sometimes draw the curtains while the prisoner is injected with the lethal cocktail, only to open them again so that the “audience” can see the inmate die. Whether it’s to “protect” the doctors/executioners or simply not to show the inmate going mad knowing he’s being injected with Death itself, this drawing of the curtains sounds hypocritical at best. Just like death sentence itself. How can we allow someone who’s been charged with murder to be murdered by the State in exchange. How foolish is that! Death is not justice. Murder is not justice. Murder is murder. And though no murder is justifiable, at least when someone kills someone else out of passion for example, we can understand what led him to commit such an irreparable act. But when the State kills someone instead of trying to understand what social or psychological issues led the murderer to kill another human being, what is there to understand apart from the fact that we don’t want to deal with real issues like poverty, drugs, education or social conditions. The Political Giant wants death/murder, because it’s much easier than finding genuine solutions to genuine problems. Murder is quicker and easier than rehabilitation. The Political Giant is usually a lazy one.
And what about Troy Davis: he was killed by the State of Georgia even though everybody knew he was innocent. What is there to understand apart from the fact that the system does not work. Death is not justice. Death is vengeance, vigilantism, and violence. Death penalty is barbaric and shouldn’t exist anywhere in the world in 2012. And yet it still exists in 58 countries. But if the Political Giant is usually a lazy one, he is also usually quite scared of vox populi: the voice of the people. And since “people shouldn’t be afraid of the governments, governments should be afraid of their people,”* the Political Giant is a giant that you can fight with your voice, with a pen, with demonstrations or petitions or simply with the strength of your convictions. And easy for us, some people started the fight 50 years ago: amnesty.org and in the meantime, other people are trying to get innocent people out of American death rows: innocenceproject.org
* (The Wachowski Brothers, V for Vendetta, 2005)