Times Up for Tookie
I’m writing this at about 10:30 pm Monday night, for posting Tuesday morning. By the time this is posted, Tookie Williams — co-founder of the street gang known as the Crips — will have been executed by the state of California. I’ve written before about my opposition to the death penalty, but I haven’t blogged much about Williams case as final appeals wound their way through the courts and the office of the “governator.” I didn’t blog about the 1,000th execution either.
Why? I took read both stories, took a deep breath and asked myself “Why bother?”, because the death penalty is right up there with torture as one of those subjects I’m tired of talking about. People don’t care about 1,000+ executions anymore than they apparently care about 2,000+ American dead or 30,000+ dead Iraqis. Even the guy most of them elected said he’d do it again, and will likely quietly retire to his ranch after being responsible for more deaths than all the 1,000 executed since the Supreme Court gave the states the okay to start executions again. It’s starting to feel like pushing a rock up a hill; an exhausting and pointless exercise because torture and death is what most Americans want. Else, why would so many of them vote as they do?
And when there’s evidence of an innocent person being executed, what do most Americans do? A few weeks ago, strong evidence surfaced that Texas executed an innocent teenager twelve years ago; evidence strong enough that even the prosecutors and the judge involved now admit the conviction was “based on omission and lies.” The case even bubbled up in the media for a day or so.
And, as they do when a new story of torture and abuse rises out of Iraq, most of America simply yawns and turns the page or changes the channel. Most of apparently couldn’t’ care less. Why should we? It’s what most of us intended. How can it not be intended, when it’s prominently featured among the known probable outcomes of a chosen course of action?
No guarantee that an innocent person won’t be put to death? Nobody much cares, or at least not enough people to make a difference. Chances are if you speak out against it you’ll be drowned out; either by the cheering crowds outside the execution chamber or the belligerent conservative denizens of the online world who would probably like to be howling outside the death chamber.
Against my better judgement I sallied forth into discourse with one such neocon netizen who was holding forth that “liberals” were both hypocritical for opposing execution for Tookie Williams but not for Scott Peterson. Subtly, and ironically, we’ve gone from “White Woman in Trouble” phenomenon — a prime factor in the coverage of Laci Peterson’s disappearance — to a new “White Man in Trouble” phenomenon, designed to distract attention from a black inmate facing imminent death to focus it on a white inmate with year’s of appeals between him and the execution chamber. I pointed out that I’d opposed the death penalty in the Peterson case, and even blogged about it, as much as I oppose it in the Williams case. Other people argued as much, pointing out that Williams date with the death chamber is to happen much sooner than Peterson’s. We were simply ignored, while the same argument was repeated over and over again in reply.
If we know nothing in post Iraq war America, we know that if you make some thing up and repeat it often enough — whether it’s that Iraq has WMDs and had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, or that the liberals are more concerned about Tookie Williams than Scott Peterson because they’re racist — a surprising number of people believe it. Possibly even a majority. It works. As for why that’s the case, I’m pretty much down to agreeing with the Rude Pundit, as I think he captures the essence of it.
It’s gonna be a party of hatred, a chance for us to do our little jigs of death and doom and horror. It’s gonna be all about Lee Boyd Malvo, the juvenile D.C. area sniper, sent to jail for life, but we wanted his blood, motherfuckers, we wanted that juvenile bastard executed on the fuckin’ mall, with a big American flag behind him, and fuckin’ Toby Keith singin’ songs of how great the U.S. of A. is because we’re killin’ that kid. But, now, aww, fuck, it’s like gettin’ a hard-on and havin’ nowhere to shove it.
Call it outrage fatigue, but sometimes it just
December 13th, 2005 at 11:57 pm
The death penalty is definitely an issue that can cause outrage fatigue - much like abortion rights, there is a point at which I just can’t argue the same "points" with fundies anymore.
With the death penalty, and with Tookie’s case in particular, I get so_tired of people "arguing" (if you can call it that), "Where are the protests for the families of the victims?!?" It’s such a messed up way of thinking that it hurts me to have try and reason on that level. Killing people (even though they may be reformed and contributing to the good of society, and even though our justice system has been known to convict many innocent people) goes against everything I know emotionally and intellectually to be right and good. And people yelling "but what about the victims?!?" as if that is an argument for killing doesn’t make any sense to me. So I get tired of engaging in it.
It’s funny that sometimes the issues I feel most passionately and certain about are the ones it hurts me to have to argue or revisit over and over again.
December 14th, 2005 at 12:32 am
It’s a very effective tactic of the other side, to get us to talk about something else, preferably a subject of their choosing. You can’t talk about the injustice of the death penalty because you’re only supposed to talk about the victims. Or you’re supposed to go advocate for clemency for Scott Peterson (to prove you’re not racist against white inmates).
We saw it during the build-up to the war in Iraq. Lots of people who dared criticize the rush to war could be silenced with a simple question: "What bout the victims of 9/11?" Never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 (something that was known even then, by anyone who cared to look for the information and read it themselves). If you criticized the rush to war, and if bombing Afghan and Iraqi civilians made you queasy, you were spitting on the graves of 9/11 victims.
Protest the war in Iraq, and you be asked "Why are you protesting against Saddam’s torture chambers, rape rooms, and massacres?" "Why aren’t you marching to demand that Saddam give up his WMDs?" And it didn’t matter that the U.S. backed Saddam during all of his most murderous days, when his greatest crimes were committed. It didn’t matter Nor did it matter that there was no evidence of any WMDs. (Of course, we live in an era of triumphant faith, where evidence isn’t needed for much of anything anymore.) If you opposed the war, you were for torture, rape, etc.
What’s frightening about this tactic is how well it works.