I have long been opposed to Capital Punishment. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people whose death I have no problem with and might even coldly appreciate. But I cannot come up with a circumstance in which I trust any State in any way to bring that death about.
However, I have held onto the idea that there could be a good person, quietly and grimly, with skill, presence, and justice, who could do the bitter work of ending the life of an evil person who could not reasonably be stopped in any other way.
Unfortunately, I think I read too many novels.
People of profound judgement who can quietly engineer a natural looking heart attack for a deeply corrupt Supreme Court Justice who is defiling the constitution are, and it pains me to admit this, almost certainly non existent. As are the ingenuous operatives who could create a natural looking car accident that takes out a person committing vast crimes against humanity, say a Putin or Netanyahu. I know that the nature of these extraordinary vigilantes are such that we would not clearly see what they have done. It would look like the hand of god. But as I have observed recently in this space, that is the point. We haven't even seen the hand of god killing people whose death would lighten the world. How easy it is to conjure up from history, recent and long ago, a premature tragic death that is only a loss for the world. But as to the many people whose death could benefit so many?
Crickets.
And so if we don't have these angels of justice out killing people where it needs to be done, what do we have? We have idiots who shoot the wrong people or miss, or simply set it all up wrong so that it could never have any positive effect. We have crazy people. Mean people. Deluded people. Inept people. Insane people. Or all of the above, killing people left and right to no tune but agony and destruction.
People who head on out to kill other people, it is impossible not to conclude, simply suck.
And so I unconditionally withdraw my support.
It was pretty theoretical anyway.
And though my heart may still clamor for justice at any cost, I bow to the reality of human nature. Perhaps means other than assassination are equally hopeless to solve our gravest problems. But if we are going to fail justice either way, through execution or craft, we may as well do it with less collateral damage.
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