Caveman Barbecues, Walkeragua, the Death Penalty, and... Wait, Gandhi Liked to What?!

Really? You came back after the absolute dumpster fire last time? Well, you've been warned. Let's roll.

So. Death penalty. The cure society has historically prescribed for those afflicted by murderous actions, jokes about the genitals of kings, treasonous ideas, having the wrong religion, having the right religion with the wrong variations, making fake coins, and selling nuclear secrets to those damned Soviets. Can you imagine a world in which the Americans have a nuclear monopoly? Can you? CAN YOU?

This subject is so delicate and complicated and... solemn that irreverent idiots like me should probably stay away. That said, we roll. We've been executing fuckers since a caveman ate the leftover mammoth another caveman had saved for the afternoon. And hey, it wouldn't have been a big deal, except that mammoths went extinct just the day before, so those leftovers were the leftovers. And our friend Ugg was so frustrated. And what do you do when someone offers you an offense that can't be fixed? Make them pay for McDonald’s, you say? These are prehistoric times, you idiot. No. Ogg was executed and barbecued. And justice was served with a little bit of lemon. Apparently, mammoth was tastier.

The question of what to do when someone does something that can't be fixed—and even that distinction is absolutely variable, because once upon a time a crime against a living king was considered an irreparable offense—is one we have been trying to answer for as long as society has existed. From Cromwell and company executing Charles I to Tennessee's attempt this week to dispatch Christa Pike, the perceived need to dispose of certain humans—whether because they are inconvenient to your rebellion, like Charles, or because society has judged them irredeemably evil and frightening, like Pike—has remained one of the central questions of organized society.

And hey, legalized, state-sanctioned murder. We're all for it, right? I think we are, because we like to pretend murder is something unthinkable and evil, but give us enough people and suddenly we have a math formula for it. A rate. A threshold. A number low enough that everyone shrugs and goes back to lunch. Thirteen per 100,000? Well. That's a statistic. A good one. Someone give the mayor a raise. Broken families? Ridiculous, bleeding-heart liberal. Those are only 13 families at most. Calm down. Think about that.

So, before we moralize about the death penalty—how right it is (it isn't), how convenient it is (not very), and what exactly happens to the last monster once all the others have been executed—we should probably ask what problem we're actually trying to solve. And just imagine the dialogue: "We expect you to execute yourself, Mr. Monster, so we can finally have a perfect world." "What's the problem?" "There’s nobody left."

And overall, we should try to understand why we're so abysmally bad at actually doing it. Like, the execution lasted about one hour and 47 minutes, and at a global—sit down, flat-earther—rate of roughly 52 homicides an hour, around 92 people were murdered in the same amount of time Tennessee failed to murder a person. They failed so hard she was snoring. Really? AND IT'S THE SECOND TIME THEY'VE DONE IT THIS YEAR? Guys, I'm saying this with love: maybe... I don't know... murder is not your thing. And hey, I get it. It's not my thing either. So maybe... give it up? Hell, I almost accidentally killed myself with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s a week ago, so maybe focus on that? Because beyond the morals of the matter, this is absolutely shameful. Really, if your whiskey is more deadly than your executions, you have a problem. So, no more murder, legal or not. Tennessee, you're benched.

And hey, maybe we should stop looking at the death penalty with horror and instead be pragmatic about it. Like, it could be convenient... right? You tailgated someone and then, when they touched the brakes, you honked so hard the floor was shaking? Step into the execution chamber. Got up after eating fast food and didn't clean up the table? You have been sentenced to die by a jury of your peers. Your dog was off-leash and bit my dog? We'll probably spend two hours trying to find a vein, but you're paying. Tax evasion? Evade this. Sexual offenses? Let's not break the joke. We should probably cut this here before the FBI comes knocking, yes? No problem?

And obviously, yes, yes, those who go looking for revenge better dig two graves. We're a lazy species, and that used to be a drag, but fortunately Cummings invented bulldozers, so digging graves is no longer a problem. Bring it!

But the thing about the death penalty is that it has very little loyalty, as we can learn from the story of William Walker, a filibuster—yes, really—and all-around unhinged tyrant who was born in—I'll be damned, fucking keelhaul me, mateys—Nashville, Tennessee. Really, Tennessee? What the fuck? Jack Daniel's made me think you guys were cool.

So, after Walker invaded Nicaragua, renamed it Walkeragua, and played out basically every aspiring tyrant's fantasy for a year, we get three lovely examples of capital punishment orbiting this man. Patrick Jordan was executed by firing squad for killing a boy while drunk, and Ponciano Corral was executed for treason. Treason. To fucking Walkeragua.

And the third, you ask? Well, that one came later. Walker himself. Honduras sentenced him to death and shot him for being, broadly speaking, kind of a brutal asshole to the whole of Central America and all that. See? No loyalty whatsoever. How was the saying? Live by the sword, die against a wall in Honduras? Well, something like that.

And speaking of the death penalty, I had this dream a few weeks ago. For some uncanny reason, I was made the medical proxy for a person I really dislike, which would be a very, very, very, very bad idea. But hey, dreams, am I right? So I was taking care of her, refusing all pain meds to protect her sobriety—she is in no way related to AA or NA—and then telling the doctors, "Unplug her..." and immediately after, "Plug her back in." Back and forth. Back and forth. Dipping her feet into hell with all the elegance usually reserved for a teabag.

And yes, that sounds like a terrible idea, right? Like, if I shouldn't have this kind of power over anyone's life, even someone as evil as that person, maybe the state shouldn't either? Nonsense. Quick, someone think of something funny.

I know: Bob Denard. What's funnier than Bob Denard? Almost anything. This man was sentenced to death in absentia by Benin after a failed coup attempt in 1977, which is already a pretty impressive achievement. Robert d'Artois had pulled a similar medieval trick centuries earlier—get condemned while conveniently being somewhere else—but Denard upgraded the concept by having an actual death sentence waiting for him.

And, naturally, he just... kept going. Going where? To hell, presumably, if it exists, because this man really, really liked tormenting Africa. Especially the Comoros. I don't think anyone has ever felt such a deep-rooted need to torment one country since Germany finally accepted that France just wasn't that into them and could only offer friendship. It took them a while, but they eventually got there. Just like Denard got there.

Where is there? Some days in jail, a suspended sentence, another suspended sentence, and a peaceful death in his bed, of old age, after everything he did to the Comoros. What? You don't know?

What did Denard actually do to the Comoros? Oh, nothing dramatic. He helped overthrow President Ahmed Abdallah in 1975, came back three years later and overthrew the guy who had replaced him so he could put Abdallah back, then effectively became the power behind the throne as commander of the presidential guard and earned the nickname "vice-king of the Comoros." He ran that little arrangement for more than a decade, backed by a presidential guard of roughly 600 Comorians overseen by a few dozen European mercenaries, while maintaining ties with apartheid South Africa. Then Abdallah was shot dead in 1989 in Denard’s presence under circumstances murky enough to keep lawyers employed for years. Denard fled and—because apparently ruining one tiny archipelago once was not enough—returned in 1995 with about 30 men and overthrew another president before France finally sent troops in and told him the game was over. Four coups or coup attempts in one country. At some point that stops being foreign policy and becomes a hobby.

We're all mortal creatures. Immortality is—I think—permanently out of our reach because the same DNA that gave us Einstein—who famously helped set the American nuclear weapons program in motion—and Gandhi—who, late in life, liked to sleep naked with young women, including his grandnieces, to test his commitment to celibacy. What if your faith failed you, asshole?—and, obviously, me, also gave us horrible monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Allison Mack—that girl from Smallville who joined a cult and apparently thought branding women with a cauterizing iron was a reasonable life choice—and whoever wrote that fucking Pulcino Pio song.

The big question about the death penalty, in the end, is whether it's cruel because it brings the inevitable closer. Is it a sin because, no matter how many clinical layers you add, it kinda stays murder? And if so, is everyone guilty of that murder? Or just the ones who voted for the current government? Are we all going to hell? Or is the whole thing irrelevant because, in the end, we all die anyway?

When we have a disciplinary method whose failure policy stays "God will know his own" after all of history has passed... well, maybe it's not a very good punishment. What if we give them 25 to life listening to Pulcino Pio? What? You prefer the sweet release of death? Me too, my friend. Me too.

Now, if you're gonna get sentenced to death, make sure it's due to some disrespectful joke and not because you murdered someone. Yes?

Right. Well, we did it, people. Friday afternoon. Let's order some food. Have some fun. Definitely let's not drink fucking Jack because my hair stands on end when I think about drinking.

Get your shit together, Tennessee.

Peace.