Monday, August 03, 2020

Backward conservatives & centrists won’t give up on capital punishment in the US

By SJ Otto

This Sunday, as I read my weekend Wichita Eagle, I learned that the Trump Administration has dropped its insistence that two British ISIS (Islamic State) captives be turned over to the US for execution. The article is called “Barr may drop insistence on death penalty for ISIS duo.”[1] For me, this article is one more piece of evidence that President Donald Trump and Republicans in general, love to kill criminals, terrorists and others that they would like to see eradicated from our society.

Killing people has always been a way of dealing with criminals and traitors to this country. Conservative people, including many centrist Democrats, love to kill people. The European nations have all done away with executing people. They have adopted the idea that such punishment violates human rights and has no place in a civilized society. But the US clings to the past. This last Summer I went on a trip to Cuba and found that they quit executing people in the last 15 years or so. The Sandinistas abolished capital punishment when the won their revolution in 1979.[2] At that same time, the Ronald Reagan Regime, which was accusing Nicaragua of violating human rights, was expanding executions.

It becomes more and more evident, over time, that the US is not the nation moving towards a more humane and progressive society. The US is one of the most backward, anti-human rights and anti-progressive nation in the world today.

Elvis Costello/ Let Him Dangle.

[1] Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, “Barr may drop insistence on death penalty for ISIS duo,” The Wichita Eagle, August 2, 2020, vol. 148, no. 215, p. 13A.

[2] Thomas Borge, Carlos Fonseca, Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega and Jaime Wheelock, Sandinistas Speak, (Pathfinder Press, New York,) 1982, p. 87.