The "not invented here" syndrome

I have vision problems, but I have a BIG monitor. I have written entire Sci-Fi novels on the old Commodore C128 computer, with a NTSC display. With HTML or text documents you can select the font size, so yes, I have read entire books online, and off line.

Other than considerations of length of sentence and the security of the prison, the same as for anybody else. That is one of the factors that distinguishes justice from revenge.

'Cruel and unusual' are relative to the impact on the person being punished, and independent of their crimes.

Surely you don't suggest that we should seek moral guidance as to what is cruel and unusual from the criminals themselves?

Are you obtuse by nature, or are you going out of your way here?

How the criminal may feel about his actions should play no role in stopping the individual from repeating his/her crime of choice. Why should a criminal's thoughts or feeling have any bearing? They've already displayed their contempt for society and disregard for their fellow man------it's time to kill that rabid dog---and by any means that will work. Screw criminals and their "perceived" rights. Any rights a criminal may have had should be forfeited when they choose a life of crime. Our bleeding heart society is punishing victims and promoting criminals. I think that needs to be changed.

Harold

snipped-for-privacy@spamcop.net wrote in news:1168280946.310400.301470@

51g2000cwl.googlegroups.com:

Why not simply enforce "The Golden Rule" which states "Do unto others as you would be done by"?

With Interest, of course!

OK, Harold, let's play. Who is it who doesn't recognize what the victims suffered? But why would it matter? Unless, that is, that "justice" actually is vengeance that's weighted by the victim's suffering, right?

[Ed said]

Same questions as above. What does the criminal's concerns have to do with it? The crime was murder. Our Constitution says no "cruel or unusual" punishment. So, why be cruel? We can snuff him painlessly if we want. Why would we do anything other than that?

Again, no cruel or unusual punishment. You have to be sensitive to the criminal's pain if you're going to avoid the "cruel" part, right?

'Sounds like revenge to me, eh?

I'm not trying to bait you here, Harold. I'm just trying to bait you.

In practice, and in the collective mind of society, justice = revenge for transgressions against society. Otherwise, the concept has no meaning or purpose. That's especially true when you're talking about the death penalty.

Yes, those are the abstractions by which we delude ourselves about what "justice" is. Fortunately we don't practice it very much, or we'd all be cranky as hell, all the time.

Nothing spells "relief" like some good social revenge -- ah, I mean "justice." d8-)

Chuckle!

You're a tough one, Ed. I envy you your ability to debate.

Nut shell: One condemned to death by a jury of peers need not endure pain and suffering. If in the process of being executed the criminal was to suffer-----that's life (or death). Pain and suffering is not a requirement of the death sentence, but it should also not be a mitigating factor. The criminal should be put to death, regardless.

Did I say it "good", Ed? (If so, take that damned hook out of my mouth)

Harold

Ah, neither of us really has time for this. Or I don't, anyway. d8-)

The bottom line, in my opinion, is this: "Justice" is a very mixed-up bag in the West. At a low level of transgression, particularly with youngsters who commit petty crimes, we do expect to "correct" them, and sometimes we actually do it. At a slightly higher level we may expect to modify behavior through fear or by inflicting the psychological pain of confinement. Sometimes that actually works, too.

But as we inch up the ladder we quickly reach the point where "justice" means *inflicting* pain (usually psychological) as pay-back. And there is no doubt in my mind, having looked for contradictory evidence and never having found any, that this shades into outright desire for revenge when the crimes become violent or otherwise destructive of innocent victims' lives.

It's all sanitized, philosophically, by the sophistic theories of "justice" that we've built up over hundreds of years. Less sanitized cultures tend to recognize this kind of "justice" for what it is: state-sanctioned revenge. And they approve of it.

And if we don't get our revenge, we grow angry and anxious. Whenever a criminal gets off too lightly we hear from the people who get most upset about this kind of thing. You probably could find 100 instances of it right here on this NG, if you looked back over the last 5 years or so. I find it particularly interesting when it comes from the mouths of people who tell us they don't care about society. But this is all about society, when we want revenge for something that happened to someone in circumstances that we would never face, and threats that couldn't touch us by any extension of the imagination.

Why do we get upset when criminals get off "too easy"? Think about it. As for your lack of concern for the criminals we kill -- excuse me, those on whom we inflict capital punishment -- why bother to kill them at all, then, if you have so little concern for their lives one way or the other?

Probably it's best if we don't try to answer that. I've seen this discussion go on for months at a time, but I've never seen it resolved.

You liberals stack BS on top of BS til there is no way to understand you .

First , Bigot is what a Liberal calls a Free White Male , In a successful white society . You must work to attain a good reputation . Bigot is a good person lowering a lazy person cause they dont work .. and thus the lazy one gets a bad reputation and cant get work , so he must go live in France .... Its simple .... The socialist French cut ppls heads off cause socialists do that when they see successful ppl . No free society executes anyone , they deport them . and to deport them , they need not even "Try" them . all they do is let them know they dont think they work hard , and they take the hint and RUN !!

In a Free society free market , supply/demand , you can eat only if you compete to make good reputation No written laws , no lawyers , no police to interfere with business deals , but makeone bad deal and they will not do any business with you . An Isreali would be asked to leave imediately ... No one would even speak to them !

Isnt Bigotry wonderful ! No complaints , no crime no police , no religion , no poor ppl , no laws , no communism , no divorce , no doctors , no hospitals , no traffic lights , no drivers lic , no airplanes flying overhead ....no liberals ... Success ......

Agreed! However, it has been enlightening. There really is no resolution, no more so than for which religion is "right".

For one, it guarantees that the life of crime, for that individual, comes to an end, and spares members of society from further victimization. Seems a small price to pay for the added security.

Some folks like syrup on their pancakes------some may prefer mustard----

As long as we have at least two people addressing almost any issue----I feel we'll always be at odds. Need not be rude about it though, even when opinions are diametrically opposed. I think we've handled this with due respect. Thanks for your thoughts.

Harold

But this is all about society, when we want

You lost me right here. Are you saying that crime doesn't affect most people? Are you saying that if criminals aren't dealt with that crime won't increase? Are you saying that criminal activity will never affect you, or the ones you love?

OK, one last remark. d8-):

That would be true whether we kill them painlessly or painfully, or whether we killed them at all, versus just locking them up for life.

It's a circle, Harold. There's no getting off of it...except to the degree that we really think about our true motivations in meting out "justice," including our emotions as well as our reason. I would contend that you should focus on the emotions and don't try to untangle the reasons, because that way lies madness. For example:

"Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." -- U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch

-- Ed Huntress

That was a stinker of a sentence, wasn't it? Sorry about that.

What I intended to say is that our desire for "justice," or revenge, as you prefer, applies even in cases where the criminal has no relation to our lives and the crime couldn't possibly happen to us. The point being, even people who consider themselves anti-society and profess that we all care only about ourselves and our families get angry over a foul crime perpetuated by someone a continent away, to someone we don't know, for reasons that have nothing to do with our lives at all.

It's a social instinct, IMO.

I think this guy lays it out pretty well.

Theater of blood Bush wanted his Iraq war to be a lofty Shakespearean history. He got a vicious, corpse-strewn revenge tragedy. By Gary Kamiya

Jan. 09, 2007 | Even his critics cannot deny that George W. Bush is a master of staging. His "Mission Accomplished" landing on an aircraft carrier was worthy of Cecil B. DeMille, and his reign has consisted of one glittering patriotic masque after the next. In the words of Frank Rich, his Iraq war was "The Greatest Story Ever Sold." But reality has overwhelmed Bush's stagecraft, and what he once dreamed of as the majestic climax of his mighty drama, the execution of Saddam Hussein, has revealed his entire Iraq spectacle to be a grotesque theater of blood.

Bush wanted Saddam's execution to follow classical precepts and take place offstage. In his "Poetics," Aristotle wrote that it was preferable for the dramatist to describe a death, rather than depict it. Aristotle's reasoning, of course, was the exact opposite of Bush's. He wanted to enhance the audience's feeling of pity and terror at the death of a tragic hero, while the Bush administration wanted to make sure that Saddam's death did not turn him into such a hero. In fact, Saddam had become a bit player, his villainy swallowed up by the horror show of Iraq, but still Bush intended his execution to allow the audience to contemplate Saddam's sins, give thanks for America's actions in removing him, and experience a patriotic catharsis. Then Bush could return to playing his favorite role, former wastrel turned war hero Henry V, and urge us "once more unto the breach, dear friends."

But something went wrong. Saddam's final performance, in which he showed dignity in the face of the taunts and curses of his Shiite killers, erased memories of his humiliating capture and made him a pan-Arab hero, a symbol of resistance to the hated Americans. And the entire macabre scene revealed Bush's war to be not a triumphant Shakespearean history but a nihilistic Jacobean revenge tragedy, a corpse-strewn tale in which blood simply begets blood.

All but the most ghoulish war supporters have condemned Saddam's disgraceful execution, which resembled a revenge killing more than it did a dignified judicial process. It was impossible to reconcile this degrading spectacle with the Bush administration's lofty rhetoric about justice and democracy. Saddam's sordid end was simply one more example of Iraq's descent into a hellish pit of vengeance and sadism. And it made a mockery of Bush's purely theatrical plans to "surge" troops into Iraq: The fact that America's "allies" were capable of behaving like this shows that their agenda is different from ours, and that we have no capacity to influence it militarily.

But overlooked in the disgust over the primitive, vengeful nature of Saddam's execution is the fact that Bush's entire Iraq war, like most wars, was ultimately an act of revenge. There is no such thing as a clean war: As Goya said in the title of one of his horrific etchings of war, "This always happens." When you set out to kill people, you cannot control what happens afterward; as in revenge tragedy, death inspires more death. Saddam's ugly end is no unfortunate anomaly, it is a hideous microcosm of the entire war -- one started by Bush, but supported by a large percentage of the American people, who were driven by the same primitive passions that led Muqtada al-Sadr's men to curse a man about to die. Before we throw stones at the Iraqis for their tribal vengefulness, we would do well to contemplate the degree to which we share it, and think again before we launch a vengeful war.

America has always been obsessed with revenge. The angry god who holds sinners in his hands is a national archetype going back to Jonathan Edwards. Melville's Ahab wants to smite the White Whale out of vengeance. And the aggrieved hero who seeks vengeance continues to dominate our popular culture, from "Dirty Harry" to "Death Wish" to "Kill Bill." "Payback is a bitch" and "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" are our watchwords, only slightly checked by "Don't get mad, get even."

But if revenge is a universal American obsession, its true home is on the political right. Fear, resentment and calls for revenge are closely related, and these qualities -- together with a belief that "real" Americans and "authentic" emotions and beliefs have been pushed aside by phony elites -- have long driven right-wing politics. The 1930s demagogue Father Coughlin, whose enormously popular broadcasts combined anti-capitalism, anti-Communism and anti-Semitism, utilized them; so did Joe McCarthy. The rise of the "Reagan Democrats," working-class and lower-middle-class whites whose racially tinged resentment of do-gooder social programs drove them to the right, reshaped America's entire political landscape.

Religion, too, plays a role in the rise of vengeance-based politics. Many American conservatives identify themselves as evangelical Christians, which might lead one to think they would favor the turn-the-other-cheek teachings of Jesus over the vengeful ethos of the Old Testament. But for various reasons -- perhaps the most significant being that many evangelicals see themselves as fighting a rear-guard battle against a corrupt, secular culture -- most have embraced an angry Christ closer to the implacable Old Testament Father than the forgiving Son.

Resentful populism continues to be one of the most powerful cultural forces in America. Demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have gotten rich by spewing resentment of "liberal elites," "feminazis" and murderous Muslim fanatics, and offering vicarious fantasies in which these villains -- or simply the entire Middle East -- come to a bad end. Indeed, it cannot have escaped attention that the execrations hurled at Saddam by al-Sadr's followers bear more than a slight resemblance to the triumphalist gloating and bloodthirsty ravings of certain right-wing war supporters.

Which is where Iraq comes in. Bush invaded Iraq in large part to take revenge for 9/11. Revenge was obviously not his only motivation: There is a murky zone in which ill-conceived but arguably rational notions of deterrence -- "we must teach the Arabs a lesson they'll never forget" -- are indistinguishable from reflexive vengeance. And revenge was never officially acknowledged as a legitimate justification -- such atavistic emotions never are. But the fact remains that Iraq was a counterpunch, the enraged reaction of someone who had been mugged and lashed out -- but lashed out in slow motion. Indeed, the peculiarity of the Iraq war, its historical uniqueness, lies in the fact that it was simultaneously driven by the most primitive, hotblooded emotions and was almost mind-bogglingly abstract and coldblooded. It was like spanking a 5-year-old six months after he broke the cookie jar. (By comparison, the war against the Taliban was retributive and served a legitimate deterrent purpose.) This split motivation allowed the Bush administration to deflect all criticism: accuse it of being too emotional, and it soberly pointed to its strategic rationale; attack that rationale, and it waved the bloody banner of the World Trade Center.

And that bloody banner was a very effective rallying cry. Bush could never have sold the war to the American people had it not been for their post-9/11 desire for retribution.

The lead editorial in the Philadelphia Daily News on Sept. 12, 2001, summed up the visceral feeling so many Americans held after the attacks, fanned by right-wing pundits, and opposed only by reviled apostates like the late Susan Sontag: "REVENGE. Hold on to that thought. Go to bed thinking it. Wake up chanting it. Because nothing less than revenge is called for today." Muqtada al-Sadr's supporters couldn't have said it better themselves.

The story of how the Bush administration used that primordial rage to build a Rube Goldberg-like bridge all the way to Baghdad is an age-old tale of wartime hysteria, racism and ignorance. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but it was part of the Arab/Muslim world, and in conditions of hysteria it becomes possible to sell people on grand clash-of-civilization theories. After 9/11, the neocons in the Bush administration insisted that the Arab/Muslim world had become an incubator of terrorism and violent religious extremism, and we needed to punish it. Traumatized and enraged by the terrorist attacks, and ignorant of Middle Eastern history and politics, Congress and most of the media went along. And most of the American people, looking for an enemy to blame, went along.

Just how potent the forces of vengeance and resentment are can be gauged by the wild popularity of right-wing figures like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage. These resentful demagogues -- who sounded like Conrad's demented Kurtz, hysterically calling for Bush to take the gloves off and exterminate the brutes -- gave voice to the inchoate passions of millions of Americans, who correctly perceived that the Bush administration, for all its fancy talk, was really bent on good old all-American revenge. Once unleashed, the desire to take vengeance is very hard to stop. The violent self-righteousness of war supporters like Andrew Sullivan, who accused opponents of making up a coastal Fifth Column, stemmed from their certainty that revenge was not just morally justified, but necessary. America was finally unshackled, its noble and "authentic" fury unleashed; anyone who got in the way was a combination of Neville Chamberlain and Tokyo Rose.

Revenge is a universal impulse, as old as humanity. It is enshrined in the lex talionis, the notion of "an eye for an eye" espoused by the Code of Hammurabi (written circa 1760 B.C. in ancient Mesopotamia, a land that is now putting that precept to dreadful uses) and the later Mosaic Law of Judaism. It underlies the concept of retribution, which is one of the pillars of criminal justice. Similarly, just war theory accepts that punishing an uncorrected wrongdoing constitutes a just cause for war. A paradigmatic case would be Pearl Harbor: The U.S. was justified in declaring war on Japan to punish it for its unprovoked attack.

But -- leaving aside the fact that we had no actual cause that would justify punishing or taking revenge on Iraq -- revenge is a primitive form of justice, one that civilized societies have always struggled to sublimate into a higher form. As Francis Bacon wrote, "Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out." Individual revenge undercuts the legal capacity of the state; it is only justifiable when legitimate state authority fails (hence the plotlines of a million Hollywood movies).

Which takes us back to the dramatic genre that Bush has plunged us into. Jacobean revenge tragedy (so called because it flourished during the early

17th century reign of King James, who followed Elizabeth) is a dark and disturbing literary form, spiritually gloomy, grotesquely violent and often shockingly obscene. Revenge plays, which were influenced by the dramas of the Roman playwright Seneca as well as the writings of Machiavelli, are almost invariably set in a mythical Italy where every evil flourishes, usually a ducal court ruled by a despotic monster and populated by panderers, poisoners, prostitutes and evil courtiers. Their protagonists are bitter, obsessed men bent on revenge for earlier misdeeds, who engage in complex subterfuges to kill their enemies, usually in the most painful and bizarre way possible (they often taunt their dying victims). Ghostly visitations, real or feigned madness, and various skulls and other body parts, which are sometimes used as murder weapons, are typical. (In Thomas Middleton's "The Revenger's Tragedy," the protagonist, unsubtly named Vindice, kills one of his enemies by smearing a skull with poison, then tricking his lustful victim into kissing it.) In the climactic scene, the protagonist often presents a masque or a play within a play, during which he kills the villain or villains, and is usually killed himself. (Unlike Seneca's Greek dramatic models, but like Saddam's execution, the deaths in revenge tragedies take place very much onstage.)

Jacobean revenge tragedy reflected a disillusionment and spiritual crisis that gripped England after the reign of Elizabeth, a loss of Renaissance optimism. Always dark, the genre became increasingly nihilistic. Its protagonists, initially upright figures, become more and more unpleasant, until they are morally indistinguishable from their enemies. In one of the bleakest revenge tragedies, John Webster's "The White Devil," one of the main characters, Lodovico, vows vengeance before he has even been the victim of any wrongdoing. Their world becomes one of free-floating hatred. Their characters, devoid of depth, move meaninglessly about like chessmen on a vast board until they fall bloodily over.

The grand exception to the narrow, terror-filled vision of revenge tragedy is, of course, Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Hamlet also grapples with revenge, but unlike all other revengers, he questions its very nature, its cosmic justification. Caught between the blood-for-blood imperative that was still alive in 16th century England, and the Christian injunction to overcome evil with good, and rising above both, Hamlet raises questions about morality, duty and existence itself that are not even dreamed of in other revenge tragedies, and that continue to inspire and unsettle us today.

It may seem a stretch to compare the political beliefs of George W. Bush and his right-wing supporters with a death-obsessed, grimly self-destroying dramatic genre that is now more than 400 years old. Certainly the parallels cannot be drawn too closely. But the comparison sheds light on Bush's moral vision. Like a protagonist in a revenge tragedy, Bush sees himself as surrounded by evil, one-dimensional villains, whom he has sworn a solemn oath to defeat. Like Vindice, he figuratively carries around a skull -- in his case the shield of a policeman who died on 9/11 -- to spur himself on.

But like so many revenge tragedy protagonists, Bush is fatally flawed. By taking revenge against a foe who had not actually injured him, he opened a Pandora's Box of gratuitous violence, one he cannot now close. In a larger sense, he is trying to play the part of Vindice in a Shakespearean world, one far too complex to be comprehended by his black-and-white morality. By failing to grasp that the world is larger than his simplistic vision, and insisting that he must carry on to the climax and kill a villain who can no longer be identified, Bush is trapping us in a failed chess game, condemning us to a bloody perpetual check. He is threatening to repeat dramatic history and himself become a villain -- a blood-drenched avenger no longer morally distinguishable from the evildoers he is fighting.

And the final act in this grim drama, Bush's absurd call for a meaningless "surge," resembles one of those hideous masques in revenge plays during which the protagonist kills his enemies, then is killed himself. This little play-within-a-play may demonstrate Bush's resolve and put off the unhappy ending, but it is real men and women who will die for his dumb show.

Bush's revenge tragedy has run for far too long. It's time to bring the curtain down.

-- By Gary Kamiya

Oh, OK.

I still say kill them all (criminals), and let God sort them out. :)

In article , "J. Carroll" wrote

Well, unabashedly grabbed and posted:

Agree or disagree, _that_ was a hell of a rant, well-written and replete with rhetorical devices, historical references, and literary allusions!

Nice rant!

Revenge is a fruitless endeavor. It is better to simply make certain the perpetrator of a crime against oneself or the social group either will not, or will not be able, or will not be willing to commit such an act again.

Simply killing a criminal is far more humane than some of my ideas of real punishment: Outlawry: complete withdrawal of all social services and protections, but the criminal is left at large. Can be either for a set term or for life. Emphasis: Criminal loses _all_ social benefits and protections.

Combine Outlawry with Shunning. Perhaps a worse punishment than Simple Outlawry.

Total solitary confinement with no contact even with those who deliver meals, clothing, bedding, or who do cell maintenance. That's the lightest. Medical care is delivered only after the prisoner is anesthetized or made amnesic by drugs administered in food or gaseous means.

Chemically induced, reversible, paraplegia in solitary confinement for a set term. To make it more unpleasant, officials could allow the inducing agent to wear off slightly and then re-administer. (but that would be cruel)

Induced, reversible, paraplegia combined with total sensory deprivation, confining the person within his own mind, for a set term or for life.

Either of the last two made irreversible, but the criminal is kept alive

Comments? At least none of those would be a (shudder) _Death_ penalty.

Yeah, me, too! :-)

People don't escape from the grave to kill more people. To this day, there is no prison from which a person can't escape. Never lose site of the fact that some of these individuals never learn anything from their experiences----they simply repeat familiar patterns, regardless of the hazards.

Having moved to Washington from Utah, and being politically ignorant, I still recognize the name as the honorable Orrin Hatch, from Utah. His comment makes a lot of sense when you view it in the proper perspective. What he's saying is that, in spite of our contempt for the death penalty, when an individual crosses the line and destroys the lives of others, a fair and just punishment is death. If it serves no other purpose, it assures there will be no further violence on the part of the condemned. I like that. You don't think I slept somewhat easier when they finally executed the Hi-Fi shop killers? These guys (black)* had a grudge against white society----and would probably have done more torturing and killing, given the opportunity.

*No, my comment is not intended to be racial, just a statement of fact. I have no axe to grind with the black community.

Harold

'Sure sounds like revenge to me. You've even taken the time to come up with "unusual" ideas for punishment. d8-)

OK. Only one last wisecrack for me, then...

Yeah, like standing on your head while wearing 3D glasses and sucking on a psychotropic frog.

d8-)

Say goodnight, Gracie.

-- Ed Huntress