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Saturday, October 01, 2011

Troy Davis and Capital P.

There have been no polls conducted over the Davis case, but Jerry Luquire of the Georgia Christian Coalition argued that the execution should proceed because Davis had failed to prove his innocence in the only forum that counts -- a court.
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre78k6a7-us-usa-execution-divide/

Does Morality requires an eye for an eye? We have heard that it does, but then someone else said something else, but we decided to ignore Him.
And why not? I tell you that if one of my family or near friends were killed, I would probably want to extract the ultimate revenge, and hunt the killers down myself. Well, we can't do that, so we have the State do it for us, even though the legal process keep everything stretched out for ten to twenty years.

If one of my family is hurt, that is an Existential Threat to me: it threatens my existence just as if the implement of violence were directed at me.
Now, remembering what has gone down in the last few days about panic attacks and existential threats, how am I supposed to deal with the residue Memory that threatens to destroy my sense of self, the terrible regret and longing which would act just as a panic attack and rip away my life?

Wait for the State to execute someone sitting on Death Row for more than a decade?
Find solace in the execution of someone about whom seven of nine witnesses changed their accounts and say they were pressured by police?
Well, if that's all there is, I guess we have to accept it. The families that grieve have to accept the crap the State throws to them, even if it is tainted, out-of-date, and sometimes stupid and brutish.

How shall we be made whole?
The State cannot deal out Morality. The State is the worst type of entity to handle moral issues. Sometimes it can barely handle ordinary Justice. Justice by definition demands an impartial and unpolitical process to determine the facts, and this impartiality is all too often missing in the offices of political Prosecutors.
We have a lot of people hurting, and we shall have a lot more: violence, theft, health, old age, breakdown of social norms, lack of a safety net, and a general increase in brutal behavior.

So what do we do?
That's hard to say, because by now we are so degraded that we only know of the alternatives: (1) kill, or (2) be soft on crime. And this is the range of opinion among the illiterates who pipe up and say this country is the greatest on the earth!

Now, what do I think of Jerry Luquire and his quote above? I have decided to act as if I do not always have an answer to everything.
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