Well I am, now convinced we are a very powerful

[nadinbrzezinski]

not for long, but back wards nation.

let me explain, and yes many elements are connected.

We as a nation are apparently unwilling to FIGHT for national health care, why? If the bastards cannot afford it, let them die
We as a nation still practice the death penalty. We don't care if the condemned are guilty or not either, as the Texas case this year proved, for we only want revenge.

Yes those two are connected... we don't value life, as long as it is not ours or that of our families. We don't care if the state executes people, it makes people feel good. It is purely about me, and how I feel, not ethics, or whether we may execute somebody who did not do it. All other arguments about he death penalty are there to justify our need as a nation to kill.

We don't even care if the state runs shelters for the homeless, after all they are lazy and god damn it they should get a job! In fact, we'd rater not the state run them.

Yep, we are a very calvinistic society, where the only thing that matters is getting personally ahead and personal salvation through wealth. We are no longer even a society in many respects, and the sense of community is gone.

Until Community comes back, and I am at a loss what will bring it back, forget about any civilized discussion about Health Care, let alone the death penalty.

Here is a piece of trivia, for any of you who still believe we live in an advanced country... even our neighbor to the south does not have it. They had a series of very brutal murders about ten years ago, yep the kind that would automatically qualify as death penalty cases anywhere in the US, where it is part of the legal code. It was proposed to bring it back. They HAD a national discussion on the death penalty and how it brutalizes the nation. They decided not to bring it back. There is no deterrent value and the social costs are far higher to justify any so-called benefits. Oh yes it is still in the legal code in Mexico, for only one crime, HIGH TREASON. Oh and it only applies in that case to one man, The President, and it would be carried out by the military by firing squad. Yep, there are some things we can even learn from so called developing countries, because we are not a developed country, just a bully.

[sojourner]

1. i agree completely

a caller to Mike Malloy show last night angrily nailed the "rationale" behind national bloodlust: "someone must pay"

no matter who...someone must bear the "bloodguilt" === only we demand not that the guilt be "borne away" as it were (ancient hebrews used to cermonially place guilt upon a goat who was released to the wilderness...thus "scapegoat"), rather we demand retribution.

9/11? someone must pay. might as well be the iraqis bc saddam is a bad man; dp for someone who MIGHT be innocent? well, SOMEONE must pay...and was this so-called innocent a bad man? good enough. someone must pay.

makes me ill to be an american when my countrymen actually believe in the goodness of this.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I heard the call

and I went, yep, he is onto somethning

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. shaemless kick