Cheating the Executioner

November 5, 2006

Posted by Jay Livingston

Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death today. No doubt, he will be under close watch to make sure that he does not kill himself.

It’s called “cheating the executioner.” It's a phrase you hear when a murderer shoots himself just as the cops are closing in on him. Or when a prisoner on death row dies of some disease while his case is still pending. It cropped up in the news two weeks ago when a death-row prisoner in Texas, Michael Johnson, committed suicide the day before he was to be executed. He cut his own throat and used the blood to write “I didn’t do it” on his cell wall.

The headline in the Washington Times (the online version at least) was “Death Row Inmate Cheats Executioner,” and some other papers had similar wording. That headline, along with the reported detail that death-row inmates are checked on every fifteen minutes, tells us a lot about the real reasons for the death penalty, and they are not the ones usually given.

One rationale for the death penalty is that it saves innocent lives. Supposedly, it deters other potential murderers. Or it “incapacitates” the executed murderer so that he can’t kill again. In reality, there’s not a lot of convincing data to support the idea that executions have any impact on murder rates. But evidence is not really relevant because most death-penalty supporters base their opinions not on the practical effects of executions but on principles of justice and morality: a person who commits a horrible crime does not “deserve” to live. It’s a matter of right and wrong, and regardless of the impact on future murders, it would be wrong to let him live.

If the criminal’s death were the central issue, as it is in these three rationales, it wouldn’t matter how he died; he would still have been removed from society. So we are not looking at a simple rational process. The irrationality is clear in the standard death-row procedure of the 15-minute suicide watch. If the guards had caught Mr. Johnson in time, the best medical help would have been called and no effort spared to save his life. Then, weeks or months later, when he had recovered, the state would kill him.

Why does the state go to such extraordinary lengths —checking every fifteen minutes— to make sure that some condemned man doesn’t pull a fast one and kill himself. Why, when death comes by suicide or cancer rather than execution, do some people feel “cheated”? What were they cheated of?

The answer is clear. The death-row suicide deprives us of only one thing: the chance to inflict the punishment ourselves via our representative the executioner. The importance of the execution is not the effect it has on the criminal — that effect is the same regardless of the cause of death — but its effect on society, on those who carry out the execution. It allows them to dramatize that they and their morality are in control. It draws a clear line, with “us” on the good side and the criminal on the other.

This is the logic behind President Bush’s characterizing the 9/11 bombers as “cowards.” It was not only that they killed unsuspecting civilians. They also cheated us of the privilege of trying and executing them, of showing them who was boss and who was right. The trial, sentence, and execution would have drawn that line between us and them, between good and evil, a line which the president and many other Americans desperately wanted to draw. No doubt, many Iraqis— and Americans— will feel the same way about Saddam.

By executing the criminal, the “good” people confirm their own virtue. Any other form of death cheats them of this occasion to feel good about themselves and secure in their morality.

Can We Talk?

November 1, 2006
Posted by Jay Livingston

The news today is that North Korea has agreed to sit down in talks about their nuclear bomb. North Korea leader Kim Jong-il (son of former leader Kim Il Sung) had previously demanded that the US talk with North Korea one-to-one, but US leader George W. Bush (son of former leader George Bush) had refused. Lil’ Bush refused direct talks and insisted that four other countries had to be there. Lil’ Kim eventually caved, probably because China was threatening to cut off his oil.

North Korea isn’t the only country we won’t talk to directly. Syria, Iran, maybe others. As with North Korea, if we’re going to communicate with them at all, we need other countries as intermediaries to relay the messages.

When I was a kid, I would sometimes have a dispute with one of my brothers, and we’d get so angry, we’d refuse to talk to each other. At the dinner table, I’d say something like, “Tell Skip that if  he doesn’t give back my racer, I’m not going tell him where I hid his airplane.” My mother would dutifully turn to her right and repeat the message, as though my brother hadn’t been right there to hear it. Then she’d do the same with his answer. You see similar scenes in sitcoms and movies. Maybe it happened in your family too.

In real life, at least in my house, it never lasted long. Everyone would see how stupid it was, how impossible to sustain, and usually we’d wind up dissolving in laughter at how ridiculous we were.

I imagine our ambassador turning to the Chinese representative and saying, “You tell North Korea that we aren’t going to give it any food unless they stop making bombs.” China turns to North Korea, just as my mother turned to my brother, and repeats the same message. Then North Korea says to China, “Yeah, well you tell the US . . . .” and so on. That’s pretty much what these countries have been doing anyway, though without actually sitting down in the same room.

When people insist on this “I’m not talking to him” charade, we call it childish and silly. When nations do it, we call it foreign policy.

(Full disclosure: I think I may be borrowing — i.e., stealing— this observation from something I heard Philip Slater say many years ago.)

Halloween

October 30, 2006

Posted by Jay Livingston

They were lined up down the street to get into Ricky’s this afternoon, all the last-minute costume buyers. Costumes are bought nowadays. Almost nobody has a homemade costume, even kids. In more and more areas of our lives, we are now consumers where we used to be producers. Fewer meals cooked at home, more eaten in restaurants or bought in a store and microwaved. Nobody has the time, buying is so much more convenient, and besides, the people who specialize in making these things make them better than we can. My neighborhood grocery store sells pumpkins already painted with faces. You don’t even have to carve your own.

The odd thing is that even though the costumes are better, they’re not as much fun. I’d rather open my door and see kids in costumes their parents patched together from odd clothes and stuff they had lying around the house. A professional ninja or princess costume doesn’t just substitute cash for creativity, it depersonalizes; anybody with the $34.99 can have the same costume (made in China). And many do. Stores have sold out of the popular costumes.

I like to think of holiday celebrations as islands of community, where things are personal, created and controlled by the group of people involved. But Halloween (and perhaps other holidays) is becoming standardized, controlled by the costume industry. It has become McDonaldized.

So it’s not just the witches and vampires that come out at Halloween; you can also see social trends and themes, like McDonaldization. Parental protectiveness is another. Back in the day (my day at least), kids went out trick-or-treating, and parents stayed home. Now, trick-or-treaters making their rounds have parents following along lest some stranger kidnap their child. And at the end of the night parents inspect the kids’ haul for suspicious looking treats. We’ve all heard the stories about razor blades in apples, LSD on decals, poison in candy.

Twenty years ago, sociologist Joel Best investigated all the reported incidents of “Halloween sadism” that he could find in the press, and he concluded that Halloween sadism is best seen as an urban legend. He’s updated his research and found nothing to change his original view. Yet parents still go out of their way to guard against unknown, sinister evildoers who would harm their kids. No doubt, many of these are the same parents who buy their kids a skateboard or put a swimming pool in the back yard.

Mendacity

October 27, 2006
Posted by Jay Livingston

“Mendacity,” says Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” I was channel surfing tonight and watched some of the 1958 film version on TCM.

The few Tennessee Williams plays I’ve seen all follow the same pattern: the principle characters, usually a family, are all hiding important facts about themselves; they have agreed not to see the obvious truths and to let one another live these lies. Then something happens — an outsider not in on the game arrives or some event blows someone’s cover — and the whole fabric starts to unravel. Pathetically or viciously, they begin to reveal one another’s secrets, and the characters must face what they had tried so long to avoid. Big Daddy’s cancer, Blanche’s promiscuous past, what really happened on that fateful day long ago, etc. The plays leave you wondering how these characters will go on with their shattered lives now that they no longer have the fictions— the lies and mendacity— which kept them afloat for so long.

The real-life play of the White House and Iraq seems to be following a similar dramatic arc. A majority of Americans have long since concluded that the war was a terrible mistake, a mistake based at best on faulty intelligence and at worst on outright mendacity. Now, the Administration itself can no longer maintain the false facade. Generals have been giving grim assessments, and these have made it into the news. Even the president admits that things are going badly, that we can no longer “stay the course,” and that some kind of change is required. If the Democrats win control of Congress, they will be in a position to investigate and reveal even further unpleasant truths that the Republicans have suppressed. The folks in Washington have begun to resemble the characters in a Tennessee Williams play.

The troubling difference is that when the play is over, you leave the theater, and you don’t really have to worry about what will become of these characters. They have no existence beyond the end of the last act. But while the voters may ring down the curtain on the characters who brought us this war, the disaster that they created in Iraq will remain.

Maybe Tennessee-Williams-style plot is typical of American culture, maybe not. But many observers have noted out characteristically American preference for not thinking so much about the past but rather looking optimistically to the future. We also tend to view the world as a story, and we don’t like difficult or unhappy endings.

So this election or the next one in 2008 will be The End of our drama. The show is over and we can head for the exit. Troops will be withdrawn, and the media will lose interest in what happens in some strange and complicated foreign land. But in real life, the war will have consequences far into the future — for our economy, for our position in the world. The trouble is that Americans in 2010 or later may not be able to see the connection between those problems and the events of 2003-2006. The Iraq war? That play closed a long time ago.