Monday, March 18, 2019

In the Horse Barn


12 comments:

  1. I’m still slowly taking in what happened in NZ. It’s horrific and painful and unthinkable. But I do not join those who want an eye for an eye. Rather, I offer this quote from Rilla of Ingleside, published just at the close of WWI. The adults in the room have just been describing all the things they would like to do to Kaiser Wilhelm...such as boil him in oil. The speaker is a precocious 8 year old child:


    I would like to turn the Kaiser into a good man – a very good man – all at once if I could. That is what I would do. Don't you think, Mrs. Blythe, that would be the very worstest punishment of all?"

    "Bless the child," said Susan, "how do you make out that would be any kind of a punishment for that wicked fiend?"

    "Don't you see," said Bruce, looking levelly at Susan, out of his blackly blue eyes, "if he was turned into a good man he would understand how dreadful the things he has done are, and he would feel so terrible about it that he would be more unhappy and miserable than he could ever be in any other way. He would feel just awful – and he would go on feeling like that forever. Yes" – Bruce clenched his hands and nodded his head emphatically, "yes, I would make the Kaiser a good man – that is what I would do – it would serve him 'zackly right.

    L.M. Montgomery, Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8)

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  2. Personally, I favor life in prison "without possibility of parole." That makes reasonable allowance for the hopefully rare but inevitable miscarriages of justice, and gives survivors closure in a reasonable length of time.

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    1. Not that rare. Illinois abolished the death penalty when it realized that, over a course of years, more people had been released from death row because they were proven innocent than had actually been executed.

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    2. The used the adjective "hopefully" very much on purpose...
      After a person has been executed it is too late for apologies.

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    1. I had a feeling that’s what happened. DC clergy are remarkably courageous about speaking truth to power.

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  4. Another thought about what happened in Christchurch. I remember one of my college history teachers, a former Marine officer, saying that the stories of German troops marching across Belgium with babies on their bayonets were completely unreasonable because those rifles were heavy even without a big weight on their ends. Even if the soldiers were ordered to do it, as soon as the officer's back was turned, those dead babies would be in the ditch; difficult atrocities are unlikely, but easy atrocities (e.g. holding down the trigger of a machine gun) can happen even with the best-trained troops. So outlaw private possession of semi-automatic weapons of all kinds, and severely limit the number of rounds in a weapon. As memory serves me, when I was young (in California) a shotgun could not legally take more than three shells. Although most shotguns were made to accommodate five shells, they had to have a plug in them to reduce that to three.

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    1. The thing that horrifies me the most about trump is the huge number of trump-worshiping violent poorly informed followers he has. Some really scary cults like the Jonestown Commune under Jim Jones (where 900 committed suicide) and The Branch Davidians under David Koresh (where over 80 died in a battle with the FBI). With trump his cultists are not gathered in one location but scattered throughout our country. And you have a nut job like Steve King calling for another Civil War. So, they're everywhere, they're crazed and they're armed. The GOP has really screwed up by enabling trump to this point. Will they wake up in time? With Mitch McConnell in charge of the Senate is that even possible?

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    2. You make good points (as ever), Susan. I am concerned about what happens when DT gets further backed into a corner by reality and Mueller brings out his report. Will DT freak out and incite his crazy cultists to violence? My guess is yes.

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    3. No argument here with Susan and listener.

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