Secretary Hegseth ostensibly intends to exploit our natural revulsion to beholding dispassionately enforced death as a deterrent to crime. His true motive, though, satisfies a more barbaric fulfillment.
When in history has public execution served more as a deterrent to crime than as a gruesome form of amusement? With the deterrence theory of capital punishment decisively refuted by crime rates unresponsive to the threat of the death penalty, how does elevating this controversial practice to morbid spectacle encourage a safer world?
More to the point, how do we condone, as a nation, officially embracing a bygone primitive and shameful bloodlust, gratified by retributive delight in the additional indignity and humiliation of dispatching the condemned publicly? With moral decadence in Trumpland proceeding at full tilt, are we now to further that signature inhumanity so characteristic of our times, by retreating into an era of open celebration of this final ignominy imposed on those in their worst hour? Such disgraceful pandering to vulgar cravings for the macabre demeans us as human beings.
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Robert Gavlak
Midtown
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