The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced plans to expand the use of the federal death penalty, including through the deployment of firing squads.
The announcement on Friday was part of a policy document issued by the Department of Justice, setting out the legal argument for various methods of execution.
It touted steps for “restoring and strengthening” the death penalty as integral to the pursuit of justice.
“The Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences — clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals,” the Justice Department said in a news release.
He wants to watch more videos of executions.
Again I ask.
Does anyone really think those camps are only for immigrants, or criminals?
Bullshit. They’re for us.
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Build massive secretive camps that house thousands and thousands of people
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Raise a personal gestapo to hunt down and disappear immigrants
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Pass laws that brand anyone left of Reagan as a domestic terrorist
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Call for more firing squads
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???
They don’t call it fascist dystopia for no reason.
You forgot to profit between each step.
The last step is to privatize all the previous steps.
- Americans continue to do fuck all, giving it their tacit approval
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We can start with his administration. Most of them have committed crimes punishable by death.
And everyone on this side of the pond said I’m overreacting by calling trumps immigrant detention centers “concentration camps”, but here we are. Even the Nazis didn’t start as fast with their genocide as the orange turd seems to try.
In a two tiered justice system where the rich have no accountability I can’t see this being problematic at all. America is a shit hole country now.
is this where I post that always has been meme?
Had been for quite awhile now, longer than we’ve been able to see it.
Nothing should be a clearer indication that the death penalty should not exist than lunatics like him controlling it.
It’s funny how all the countries with autocrats or legal corruption love the death penalty
Itakes perfect sense really. They want to be able to legally execute their political enemies and anyone ideologically opposed to them.
also that countries that work to reduce violence like this and disparity is actually advancing. theory crafting societies of violence is just never going to work out in any long term way.
This is why I am disinclined to believe in secret government conspiracies. None of the actions of the current administration are clever or indicative of a larger long-term strategy, they’re all short-term plans that mostly exist so they can feel big and important when they announce them, rather than because they will necessarily achieve anything.
Secret conspiracies definitely exist but I agree this particular administration is too inept to keep anything under wraps.
I think they are likely but not like theories have them. Mostly bad action. The larger the more we know. I mean we know a ton about crazy crap they want to do currently. Not so much hidden as denied. Lots of illegal institutional activities.
Whenever capital punishment comes up, I am reminded of the hypocrisy of American Christians.
Pretty much every Christian claims to believe that killing is prohibited by the ten commandments. In a democracy, if you vote for a politician who supports the death penalty, you are asking them to kill a person on your behalf. A Christian should not be able to vote for a politician who supports the death penalty.
Compare that with abortion. The bible says virtually nothing about abortion except how to pray for one. If you vote for a pro-choice politician, nobody is being killed on your behalf.
Compare these two, and it’s obvious that a Christian who votes for a pro-death-penalty and anti-abortion candidate is voting against their own religion. But they claim to be voting for Christian values, which is pure hypocrisy.
I think we are reaching a point where its an open secret that the words of Jesus are purely marketing for Christianity and the reality is quite uglier.
alwayshasbeen.jpg
yeah but the realization for large portions of the population is what is new, although I agree that it has always been just marketing!
It might not even be the amount of people realizing, but the ability to share and express ideas has gotten a little easier. …at least for now.
yeah, although I feel like open communication leads to more people realizing, but I get your point.
I feel like the democratization of global communication led to “a new hope” of sorts, and now we’re living through “The Empire Strikes Back”
Just got to make it to the third movie before things get too bleak… Hopefully…
Totally agree with you on all points. People seem willing to rise up, even if it’s taking a bit longer than I’d have hoped, but there is still hope.
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I’m an atheist and I know not to subsume all of Christianity under white evangelicalism.
Yeah, I think all religion is superstition and all superstition is a negative force on humanity, but even I think that some religions and denominations are worse than others. And yes, evangelicism is among the very worst.
For many for sure, I still hope others think the proper lessons are good. I mostly cling to that cause I went to religious schools as a kid, parents were not and I am not, but had decent education otherwise. But I did learn Christianity decently and in general has good ideas but they’ve been warped to greedy people’s needs.
Kinda reminds me of the movie Dogma, ideas are good (help people, be kind etc) but beliefs are hard to change. If you got an idea it can be shifted into something better as needs change.
I think if there is a higher power (I don’t really but think it’s a possibility like multi dimensions) they’d like us to understand the spirit of that book, not literal and not use it like a shield for being an asshole.
In the end you are you, if you don’t do stuff cause a book says no, it not cause you are good. If you do good stuff just cause a book says so it’s not good either. Want to be better for the people around you, not what some book says.
As someone raised in the church, but did not fall into white nationalism like so many Republicans, they will absolutely never be swayed by logic. They’re literally brainwashed in a cult. Jesus is no different than a member of antifa to them. They only care about themselves, their cult, its leader, and seeing other people hurt. None of those things are in the ten commandments. If judgement day came today, every single one of them would have a reserved seat in a particularly nasty place in Hell.
The bible says virtually nothing about abortion except how to pray for one.
It actually literally has a recipe for it
It actually says no, no less than three times, that life begins at the first breath, thereby obliterating 90% of the anti abortion talking points.
Will they start with child rapists?!
That would be friendly fire.
Nope just immigrants
They can add that label to the prisoners, sure
Add Russian agents to the list.
The death penalty is anathema to civilised society.
He means Death Squads. Every Republican accusation was an admission of guilt.
Shooting the pedos? Let’s start there.
I hope he does this, then the next president comes in and trump gets sentenced to death for treason lol.
Unlikely but a nice dream
I have absolutely no faith anyone will ever give these psychos any consequenses, especially not any democrat. That would mean they themselves would be open to consequenses, and that simply won’t do for the ruling class. The worst that is ever going to happen to Trump through legal and peaceful means, is that he’ll be sentenced to house arrest at Mar-a-lago, and even that is doubtful. Any other punishment will have to be done by the people.
Hell it’s a toss-up whether or not he’ll survive until the election. He’s under assault from both the outside and his own body. It’s just a question of what gets to him first a bullet or the dementia.
…or the McDonald’s.
Probably the McDonald’s. After all, it has already infiltrated the Pentagon.
Death penalty is stupid because now ppl who Commit a crime will just all in.
Death for being a rally? Guess ill just commit to politicians instead
Death for aborting rapist baby. Guess ill kill the rapist and maybe a few morw while im at it.
Etc etc
If I supported capital punishment, I’d be in favor of firing squads over lethal injection. It’s more honest. Shooting someone is clearly meant to kill while lethal injection dresses it up like a medical procedure.
I oppose capital punishment though. The criminal justice system is not reliable enough to only punish those truly guilty of the worst crimes, it doesn’t seem to be a more effective deterrent than imprisonment, and it usually ends up costing more than imprisonment for an offender’s natural lifespan.
I mean…
There’s completely painless ways to die.
That’s what the whole assisted suicide thing is in civilized countries.
The “problem” is, that’s completely painless, you just go to sleep. And the people who want this, want it to be a painful gruesome death.
It’s not justice or even removing an uncontrollable element, it’s vengeance. And vengeance has to be painful.
There’s nothing stopping an ethical death penalty except the ethics of the people implementing
And the “can’t take it back” aspect. Conviction and execution of innocent people does happen.
For Republicans this is a feature, not a bug.
I mostly am just against the state having the right to kill.
But innocent people being killed is definitely a top list issue.
There’s completely painless ways to die.
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There’s nothing stopping an ethical death penalty except the ethics of the people implementing
This comment implies that the method of killing is the fundamental ethical problem with the death penalty. The killing part is the fundamental problem for me.
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Yes…
Any discussion on an ethical way to do something, is first predicted on the thing happening.
There’s an ethical way to cut aomeone’s leg off, that doesn’t mean we should cut Bob’s leg off, it doesn’t even mean we should cut anyone’s leg off under any circumstances.
Just that if we were going to do something, there are ways to do that ethically.
People really don’t learn this shit anymore?
This argument is specious. It implies that there’s an ethical way to engage in any imaginable act and ignores the possibility of the existence of acts which may never be ethical under any circumstance. This isn’t a question of whether someone has “learned this shit.” You’ve created a tautology re: the existence of an ethical means to all ends. One doesn’t need to accept Kant’s Categorical Imperative to believe that some acts can never be ethical.
ignores the possibility of the existence of acts which may never be ethical under any circumstance.
Name 1, and I bet I can justify it ethically.
Like, “if you don’t do ____, then superman blows up the sun” is the obvious one, but depending on what you say, I can dial back some.
Name 1, and I bet I can justify it ethically.
Trump fucks kids, go.
On the other hand, there’re good, ethical reasons to cut off Bob’s leg sometimes. If you hold the view that there’s never an ethical reason for the state to execute someone, then by that definition all those killings are just some varied degrees of unethical.
A prisoner is suffering and wants to die, their life is a constant pain and keeping them in prison until they die would be torture…
Youd make them suffer for years to only die in prison later?
I guess everyone has different ethical lines…
That’s not a “death penalty” though. It’s mercy killing.
First, I didn’t make the argument.
Second, I think most people could draw a line between allowing a suffering prisoner to choose death and forcing it on them.
Third, that assumes that there’s an ethical argument for life imprisonment.
Up next, america announces new crucifixion punishment for “politically problematic” prisoners
The people who manufacture the drugs that make you go peacefully have embargoed the USA, because they don’t want their drugs used for state sanctioned murder.
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Manufacturer Bans: Pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Baxter International, B. Braun Medical, Fresenius Kabi, and Johnson & Johnson, have established policies to stop their products from being used in capital punishment.
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EU Export Restrictions: In 2011, the European Union passed anti-torture measures that prohibit the trade of goods used for capital punishment.
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And the people who want this, want it to be a painful gruesome death.
Yeah. If done correctly, a bullet to the head is quick and painless, as in, you are dead before your body has recognized that you’ve been shot.
But the people who want this want suffering, so likely firing squads will be ordered to hit body parts that will not result in instant, painless death but rather a gruesome and agonizing death from shock and blood loss.
Who would do the actual shooting though? For me this presents a problem. It can go two ways:
- We have to employ someone that doesn’t want to kill people, but does it anyway in an act of duty while suffering the psychological trauma every time they do their job.
Or even worse…
- We have to employ someone that does want to kill people, and we’re paying them to do it.
That’s actually why it’s a squad.
A single executioner would be more than capable of delivering a killing shot. Hell, they could just shoot them in the head with a handgun.
The squad means that no one member knows if they’re the one that actually delivered the killing shot.
The squad means that no one member knows if they’re the one that actually delivered the killing shot.
I get it. Its an attempt at plausible self-deniability, but all the people that fired know that one (or more of them) could be the killer. For someone that doesn’t like killing people, I wouldn’t think that’s enough.
It doesn’t even make sense in my opinion. In my mind, all of them are the killers, no matter whose exact bullet it was, and I don’t get how you could convince yourself otherwise.
It also comes from the military, when you’re executing one of your own as a traitor. So there’s a mitigating factor in there somewhere.
Theoretically any given soldier could deliberately miss too, relying on there being at least one other squad member to make a killing shot.
I mean, not killing people under any circumstances is better.
ACAB
Select one person from the jury that convicted and assign them the role of carrying out their judgment.
I thought about that too, but juries usually don’t decide the sentence (in this case, execution). Juries just determine guilty or not on the charges. Sentencing is usually decided by the presiding judge after the jury renders its verdict on the charges and are already dismissed.
We have to employ someone that does want to kill people, and we’re paying them to do it.
Honestly: While it may feel wrong, and requires some emotional distancing, if you start thinking about it rationally you’ll find that there isn’t really a fundamental problem with this one. Note that you gave an argument why the first case is bad but not for the second.
If we think things through, the main issue we have with killing is that people whom we don’t want to die die; [while I reject capital punishment in the vast majority of cases](https://fiona.onl/positions.html#no-death-penalty-for-individual-crime), the assumption here is that we have made a decision that we want someone to die, so causing that person to die is within the deployed ethical framework not unethical.
And if there is someone who wants to perform an act that is usually highly unethical, but in some instances is, according to the accepted ethical framework, not, then there isn’t really a clear issue to let that person do that thing in those cases, especially if others don’t want to do it.
The issue here is the framework in which the death penalty is a commonly available punishment itself, not that some things feel wrong within that framework.
I mean image recognition is one of the things AI is actually good at… Just sayin…
That’s…actually worse than the two scenarios I posted earlier. State built and controlled AI rifle-toting killbots doesn’t seem like a good idea to encourage.
I don’t know, we’re already well down that path already - in this context I think its actually one place where it makes sense if you agree with the death penalty I personally do not.
2022 for reference: https://youtu.be/OcgXru3Z3GQ
I don’t know, we’re already well down that path already
I’m not claiming the technology doesn’t exist, I’m saying that I don’t want the society I live in to fund its expansion and employment by the state against its citizens. Once deployed, it would be trivially easy to employ against not only “the convicted” but any other group the state wanted killed. Even proponents of state level death penalty probably don’t want that.
if you agree with the death penalty I personally do not.
You and I agree on this. I might be onboard with it if we have a way of enforcing it without ever executing an innocent person, and also equal enforcement across groups. The historical data doesn’t like. The death penatly is disproportionately applied to people of color, so the system is broken. This means we cannot rightfully have a state level death penalty.
ah, the way you said “encourage” led me to believe you meant that it was not available, and that discussion of which would encourage its development further. The slippery slope debate about its use elsewhere is valid, but I think it is also valid to discuss it as an alternative when discussing viable death penalty executioners, and it is part of my reasoning for why the death penalty is wrong across the board.
If you think this sort of technology won’t be deployed the moment a serious civil uprising occurs, well then I envy you because I would love to live under that belief - but I don’t.
Sure… for static photos of inanimate objects image recognition its ok. It is easily fooled by false perspectives, weird lighting and odd angles but whatever.
The problem is that AI is a shit show as soon as you try to adapt it for real world use. The capability of these things are beyond exaggerated because tech bros lie and bias test results (because it makes them very rich).
Such speculation of using AI for this or that is part of the scam. Best not to do it.
I mean this discussion is centered around static location and a target that can be color primed for recognition, so I think most of your points fall flat.
Sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending it is fully worthless is not a productive take, but I understand it is the cultural zeitgeist around here - I’m willing to go against a wave when I think its partially wrong.
It’s not even reliable to REACH those truly guilty of the worst crimes, it seems.
Heck, where we’re at now, let’s just ask ChatGPT to put red dots where each person will shoot and really spice up the thing. Turn that room into Equilibrium.
