• @InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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      12 months ago
      • Be an advanced, developed nation

      The south is not remotely an advanced, developed nation.

      It’s like if you took Brussels, then glued the worst bits of Somalia to it.

      We had to fight a war to get them to stop keeping black people as pets, and they just kept doing it anyway.

      Hitler wrote of the south specifically as an inspiration for German genetic policies (Jim Crow) in Mein Kampf. Black GIs came home from killing nazis to be lynched from trees.

      • TheTechnician27
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        2 months ago
        • The US federal government has the authority to, at any time, outlaw state-sanctioned murder across the country either via Supreme Court ruling or via constitutional amendment and tell states to kick rocks. It chooses not to do this. I don’t care that an amendment is “hard”; if it’s possible to do but it fails to do this, then it’s the federal government’s fault. The votes of about 355 legislators and the signature of Joe Biden 5 SCOTUS justices could end this today; it’s the stroke of a pen, and they simply don’t do it.
        • This case went before the SCOTUS requesting an emergency block, where it was voted against 6–3. The SCOTUS had the power to trivially prevent this and decided not to.
        • The majority of US states (27) as well as the federal government have state-sanctioned murder on the books as a legal criminal punishment. 12 states and the federal government have carried it out in the last 10 years.
        • This is incidental to your overall point, but the current US population is ~337 million; “almost” 400 million is doing so much lifting there.

        Edit: I accidentally became so sleep-deprived that I forgot a constitutional amendment has a separate proposal and ratification process. The SCOTUS method would 100% work, though, and it hasn’t yet been banned at the federal level which is a simple majority of Congress and a presidential signature, so they do overall endorse it.

          • TheTechnician27
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            2 months ago

            Ah, yep, I was too sleep-deprived to remember that proposal and ratification are separate processes. Still objectively represents a failure of the United States that they can’t push this through. And of course that Congress could actually at any time ban it at the federal level with just a majority vote and haven’t done so. Or that the SCOTUS could actually ban it unilaterally. Or that even just a successfully proposed constitutional amendment would represent taking a stand against it, but they haven’t even done that.

            • TrenchcoatFullOfBats
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              12 months ago

              Roe v. Wade worked, until it didn’t. Legalizing something via SCOTUS has lately proven to be as permanent as the political views of a majority of the justices on that bench.

              The only correct way to fix this problem is via a Constitutional amendment, and that’s never going to happen because Republicans have rage boners for state-sponsored killing, or in this case, murder.

        • P03 Locke
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          2 months ago

          The votes of about 355 legislators and the signature of Joe Biden could end this today; it’s the stroke of a pen, and they simply don’t do it.

          And 269 of those legislators are Republicans, most of which are uncaring sociopathic individuals who were voted in by a party of spiteful, hateful, racist voters.

          The best way to change that situation is to vote. Don’t bitch about it. Vote.

          This case went before the SCOTUS requesting an emergency block, where it was voted against 6–3. The SCOTUS had the power to trivially prevent this and decided not to.

          Wow… 6-3, I wonder where I’ve heard that split before? Oh, right, it’s the same SCOTUS split that has been going on ever since Trump put three immoral and corruptible judges unto the Supreme Court, voted in by Republicans in the Senate, who were in turn, voted in by Republicans.

          The best way to change that situation is to vote. Don’t bitch about it. Vote.

          The majority of US states (27) as well as the federal government have state-sanctioned murder on the books as a legal criminal punishment. 12 states and the federal government have carried it out in the last 10 years.

          And most of those states are red states… you know, the states filled to the brim with Republicans.

          Are you starting to see a pattern here?

          • TheTechnician27
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            2 months ago

            And 269 of those legislators are Republicans

            I 100% agree with you that they’re vermin. My point is that they nonetheless are members of the federal government which could otherwise ban this.

            Don’t bitch about it. Vote.

            I’m quite content to do both actually, thank you very much.

            I wonder where I’ve heard that split before?

            Yes, and I’ve mentioned that split elsewhere in this thread; doesn’t mean that these traitorous fucks don’t have control over the entire US through essentially unchecked authority and that that is – say it with me – inherently the fault of the United States.

            Most of those states are red states.

            Nobody’s disputing that. See the first portion of this response.

            I think you think what I’m saying is some kind of weird both-sidesism (it’s not; the world would be a markedly better place if every Republican were replaced by a Democrat counterpart), but the fact is that a ban on capital punishment can’t happen because the US is backward enough to have too many of these Republicans representing it.

    • @Mango@lemmy.world
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      -122 months ago

      No.

      Death > imprisonment

      You can’t suffer while dead, and you certainly can’t be a prison pimped slave worker while dead. There’s also no way to profit from an execution so far as I can tell.

      Some people need to be gotten rid of instead of being made to suffer on my dime. This is especially true depending on your views on free will. It’s triple true when you consider how much crime is just a result of unnatural financial pressures that none of us evolved to deal with.

      • Juniper (she/her) 🫐
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        122 months ago

        That is frankly a disgusting point of view. Death and non-rehabilitory imprisonment are both wrong but not because it “costs money”.

        This is clearly from an incredibly privileged person, because if you understood how minoritized people are treated by the legal system you wouldn’t be arguing for more executions.

          • @anarcho_blinkenist@lemmy.ml
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            102 months ago

            I’d rather be dead

            hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people. And to do it over your tax money? (which by the way, is a fraction that your employer steals from the value you produce for them every day)? it’s a misanthropic and myopic selfish callousness; whether or not you have struggled it is a sign of insularity to ascribe your experiences to others and how it “should be”, and to do it in such a transactional way is even more disturbing.

            I’d like to know how much you can cope with…

            unclench your jaw and breathe friend, this is unreasonable

            • @Mango@lemmy.world
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              -52 months ago

              I can see that you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government, and that’s how you think death is worse. Looks like you also believe they give us options and rights the way they tell you in school.

              • Juniper (she/her) 🫐
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                52 months ago

                There are fates worse than death, you’re right. But I think you would be one of the few who would prefer it to prison as it currently exists. But I think a sub point you have made is that prison is tantamount to torture, and I in some ways agree with that, which is why I say that non-rehabilitory prisons are unethical. It’s also the model in the entire US.

              • @thrawn@lemmy.world
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                32 months ago

                You completely ignored the most important part to continue harping on your personal qualms.

                hey cool, then you can request the judge for the death penalty instead of life (people have done that before). But you don’t get to make that decision for other people.

                That is a perfectly reasonable compromise. I too feel that life imprisonment is worse than death, but most people being wrongfully executed do not. You can acknowledge the superior solution then continue on your personal experience.

                I can see that you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government, and that’s how you think death is worse.

                Not to diminish your experience, but Marcellus Williams went through far, far more than you have. He disagreed. So since you haven’t been through pain and helplessness at the whim of government as he had, is your opinion worth nothing next to his?

                Of course not. Everyone can have an opinion on the death sentence. I’m sorry for what happened to you, but it doesn’t automatically make you right.

                • @Mango@lemmy.world
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                  02 months ago

                  I directly addressed that first point, so I’m gonna leave that one alone. You also think it’s like they tell you in school and news.

                  • @thrawn@lemmy.world
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                    12 months ago

                    Where? I reread this thread and all I see is the same complaining about your personal situation. You only replied one time to that comment, and there was no attempt at justifying anything.

                    It seems like you suffered significant trauma and it’s affected your worldview heavily. You saw a story about someone being executed despite evidence of their innocence and came in here not to suggest a better path but to say death > imprisonment and keep bringing up your situation. And yeah, that genuinely sucks and we all wish it didn’t happen. But your contribution here is based on your feeling of misery and helplessness which isn’t useful because the man who actually was executed didn’t want it.

      • @Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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        42 months ago

        And the huge list of people executed by the state despite it being reasonably likely they’re actually innocent is… cheaper (it’s not), and therefore acceptable?

        • @Mango@lemmy.world
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          -42 months ago

          Absolutely not. I’ve been bullied into a false conviction myself. The reason why is that they absolutely do not give a single fuck about the people they’re ruining. Even the slightest bit of interest in being right from the court system and police would be a massive improvement for everyone. If suggest training if the problem was stupidity, but it’s malice. They know what the fuck they’re doing.

            • @Mango@lemmy.world
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              -32 months ago

              I’m just putting it above imprisonment. I think that if you believe someone needs punished so badly, you should have the conviction to kill them because otherwise you’re just making things worse for everyone. The issue at hand is that nobody has conviction anymore. What they have is blind rage and not enough time or resources to figure out where to put that because we’re all kept busy by the people farming us and controlling the story. Things like petty theft wouldn’t matter if our economic value weren’t skimmed by employers so ridiculously.

      • KillingTimeItself
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        12 months ago

        There’s also no way to profit from an execution so far as I can tell.

        there absolutely is, with legal injections whoever sells them makes money, you save money as a prison by not having to house these people, and while you can’t exploit them for labor, there is never really a guarantee that you can. It’s a little more nuanced than this, for example solitary confinement generally makes it pretty hard to make money off of people. Death row is often a multi year process, taking many many thousands of dollars of human upkeep to keep it going.

        technically you could go a step futher and say there’s a broader economic benefit to killing them as you can use it as some sort of social driving pressure. Stalinist USSR for example.