Botched job in Oklahoma

Stuart changed things. I could hear  something disturbing in the next classroom, a cane zinging through the air, striking some unfortunate soul. Stuart changed the way I heard all that. He could see that I was aghast and quickly whispered, "We have corporal punishment, but we don't have capital punishment." That was many years ago when I was an exchange student in New Zealand.

Perhaps I've told you this story before, so transformative was it. I didn't become a fan of corporal punishment, but I never thought about capital punishment the same way again. Before that whispered conversation in my biology class, I'd never even thought about capital punishment. I just didn't know at the time how few "developed" countries still had capital punishment. Most had outlawed it a long time ago and along with it an "eye for an eye" morality. What was "normal" in my country had ceased to be acceptable in most European countries and many other places. New Zealand.

Most of my adult life I lived in Missouri, a state that ranks right up there with Texas and Florida in its zeal for executions. China. Iraq. Some Missouri executions have been botched, just like the inexcusable situation with Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma last week. In Missouri, I expressed my dissent, usually silently at vigils outside the governor's mansion the night before an execution. Nobody noticed much or cared, aside from a cub reporter for the university newspaper desperate for a story to cover.

Alas, I might be confused about rats (as James and Emma made clear in the comments), but I'm clear about this: Human beings are not rats. No human being is a rat, not even Clayton Lockett. I fear that the most upright, law-abiding human beings can allow themselves to commit unspeakable atrocities IF they first allow themselves to think of the "other" (whoever it is, innocent Jews or not so innocent Locketts) as something other than human.

I'm living now in a country that shares with the US a horrific history of executions. My sense is that few Chinese people question the appropriateness and practicality of them. I hope that changes, that both  the US and China can step into the modern age before too long. We can leave "an eye for an eye" morality behind us.

(I realize I've lost all credibility among some of my readers. I got a pretty good drubbing last week and may be in for another this week. . . I intimate that I value a human's life more than a non-human's, even if my point is something else.  That's probably going to get me in more trouble.)