America’s Primitive Love Affair With The Death Penalty

As the conscience of America seems permanently mired in economic worries, it is nearly impossible to find anything worth smiling at, let alone cheering for. However, in a recent GOP debate, Rick Perry was able to rouse a seemingly comatose audience not only into consciousness but also rousing applause. He didn’t do it by lambasting Obamacare or proposing a fiscal policy to get Americans out of the proverbial hole; he did it by saying nothing.

While asking Governor Perry’s opinion on the record number of executions that occurred under his watch in the state of Texas, moderator Brian Williams was unable to finish his question before the audience began to yawp and clap their hands as one would during the final thirty seconds of a basketball game. After the audience’s heartbeats finally slowed, Perry went on to state that Americans have a keen sense of “justice,” and that “if you come into our state and you kill … you will be executed.”

The ancient Hammurabi-esque similarities do not go unnoted. This institutionalized bloodlust is rarely practiced in democratic and industrialized countries, but is fairly common in nations like Iran and Saudi Arabia, two countries that certainly do not claim to be international vanguards of liberty and human rights like the United States so often does.

However modern and civilized the United States tries to present itself to the world, capital punishment is one of the ugliest aspects of the American system, and is something that many leaders try to conceal when patrolling the globe and insisting on others’ adherence to human rights. However, as the contentious execution of Troy Davis ignited international outrage, it is a flaw that many around the world can plainly see and one that has consistently contributed to others’ doubts about the United States’ role as a champion of modern justice and progress.

Yet at home, support for the death penalty is very public and popular. To make matters more difficult, it is impossible to point the finger at a single perpetrator: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike have favored the practice throughout the years despite its many proven failures and weaknesses. As a consequence, the self-injected and macabre fascination with capital punishment in the American bloodstream is something that has reduced the United States’ already slothful pace toward universally compliant judicial systems and human rights to that of a snail’s crawl.

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Why We Despise The Baby Boomer Generation

From DelegateNero on Reddit:

Yesterday, during the Occupy Tampa general assembly, I found myself struggling to hear the crowd as right behind me a drum circle continued to pound away while the group discussed action. People from around the area yelled for them to stop, which they didn’t, continuing on with a relentless drone of drumming, a crowd of dancers wearing long flowing flowery skirts, dirty graying dreadlocks, and carrying signs for pot legalization.

None of which really bothers me. All of which sets me off.

I remarked to my girlfriend ‘I hate fucking Hippies.’ She asked me to clarify, herself a pantheist, pothead, naturist, and somewhat in line with what you might refer to as ‘hippy’.

Most of them looked to be Hippies. Not just Hippies, but Baby Boomers. The whole scene played out exactly as I view that post-war generation. Loud and self-absorbed, demonstrating without doing anything, craving attention while the new activists – anarcho-punks, college reds, unionists, libertarians, the apolitical – struggled with risking arrest, building the message and the movement, getting shit done. During our march they pushed through the crowd, breaking up chants as people lost their own voices trying to shout over the drums. There was no attempt to lead the group by keeping rhythm, just walking along making noise for whatever reason.

My whole view of the Baby Boomers came to a head with the economic meltdown. See, the Baby Boomers will tell you over and over about how they changed the world, how they almost won, how they ended the Vietnam War and spread peace and fought nuclear weapons, etc. They’ll talk about environmental achievements, and how great the music was.

What they don’t tell you is how they nurtured their self-importance until it blossomed in to hyper partisanship. They don’t talk about how they’re the ones fucking us right now. They don’t talk about how Social Security is more important to them than anything, just like cheap education used to be. They don’t talk about about being the ones that put us in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and continued the spread of the US hegemony. They don’t talk about how they’re the ones holding alternative energy back, the ones who coasted by on their parents (a generation who, for all their faults, can say that they survived the worst and defended the defenseless when needed,) and shifted all their failures on to their older kids.

They don’t tell you how afraid they are of us.

They don’t really understand egalitarianism or a fair economy. They don’t understand direct democracy, don’t understand unity.

They don’t understand anything but getting their own way. I hate Hippies because they’re most selfish of the Boomers, who are the most selfish of all generations.