VIRTUE-SIGNALLING AND PUBLICITY STUNTS LEFT AND RIGHT

          Here in the Prozac Nation. the general population has been following both the Media and Political lead and focusing on diversions and distractions in a desperate attempt to prove to themselves that our Trash Culture is still exceptional and we can vote our way out of all of our problems.

          So, the last two weeks, we've had debates over Capital Punishment in the United States, something that's been talked about for a long time and has long been incompetently managed by our failed Legal Establishment---that is, whenever the convict hasn't died of old age before sentence is carried out. The recent Internet blood-sports over the issue began with a Hung Jury in the Lindsay Clancy Case; a botched execution in Tennessee after waiting 30 years to get around to it; and chest-thumping Alpha Pete Hegseth vowing to live-stream a military execution (which itself is being carried out 14 years after sentencing after a trial that took 3 years to conclude). 

       Obviously, the problem is both with our Legal Establishment and a complete public ignorance of how the Justice System is supposed to function, but nobody was addressing anything of these things. Most of the controversy fell on Hegseth's orders---which were countermanded by President Trump yesterday. Like nearly everything else in our Political-Media Culture, this was a publicity stunt which was never intended to happen, but made good distraction, headlines, and political theater for a time. Most of the public debate fell into three general categories.

       One was the MAGA Churchians who idolize characters like Hegseth and think that his Alpha spirituality somehow reflects Christian or Conservative values. After all, they reason, public executions "is what Charlie would have wanted" and that's good enough for them.

           There's little that need be said against such a position; but if anyone's interested in hearing an actual Conservative perspective, watch this three-minute clip of an interview with former Ambassador Chas Freeman. Freeman goes into the unconstitutionality, outright barbarity, and immorality of Hegseth's scheme: such, though, will likely fall on deaf ears among most MAGA Churchians because they see things like 'cruel and unusual punishment;' as a sign of strong leadership, and take voyeuristic pleasure in witnessing such scenes. 

           We noted here most MAGA Churchians because a certain segment of them have been Virtue-Signalling over Hegseth's orders and expressing their opposition to the Death Penalty in general. These are the second main group who's been chiming in on the subject. 

           The problem with this group is that their position might have some legitimacy if they weren't such complete hypocrites about it all. While they object to live-streaming an execution by firing squad here they fall all over themselves otherwise apologizing for an Administration which routinely executes Caribbean boatmen, defends ICE gunning down people on American streets, bombing Iranian schools and other civilian targets, etc. They also deny or even applaud the Genocide in Israel and Lebanon, and support for the thugs in Ukraine and Syria. The victims there didn't even get a trial.

          Denialism is really the key to understanding their position. These other cases are easy to hand-wave away as 'fake news,' or narratives that the victims somehow got what they deserved. A live-stream, though, would be undeniable proof of what sort of political regime that they are supporting. In other words, the only reason that they care at all is that it's bad optics. 

          The third group---also engaged in Virtue-Signalling---was the Corporate Media. Of course, they knew all along that this proposed execution was a Publicity Stunt and thus felt at liberty to pretend outrage over it. They don't mean a word of what they say: every time there's a scheduled execution in the US, the Media is in the background lobbying to get permission to cover the event live. Their only real objection was that Hegseth wanted the Government to live-stream it: giving the public free access to sate its bloodlust when the Media could have profited off it instead.

         

         Public executions have had a mixed history in the United States. Many of our Founding Fathers opposed them because of their close association with the terroristic policies of European authoritarian monarchies. During the French Revolution, the dangerous impact of such spectacles on the populace was made abundantly clear with their wholesale employment by the Jacobin psychopaths during the Reign of Terror. Like many other evil policies that we inherited with our independence, public executions took a long time to stamp out permanently. At least we thought that they were gone permanently until our Culture degenerated to a level where they are being discussed again.