<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta name="Author" content="Michael Bubb"> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Mozilla/4.5 [en] (Win98; I) [Netscape]"> <title>Article Template</title> </head> <body> <center><img SRC="L.jpg" height=121 width=121></center> <center><table COLS=2 WIDTH="100%" > <tr> <td>The Brooklyn Rail </td> <td> <div align=right>Issue 15 (1-15 April 1999)</div> </td> </tr> </table></center> <hr WIDTH="100%"> <center>Death and Texas T Hamm</center> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> "Wan with untimely slumbers and nights of riot, and not fearing in his indolence even the cruelest of princes, he yet plotted amid his gluttony and lust the destruction of illustrious men." <blockquote>-Tacitus, describing the reign of Tiberius from 29-37 A.D.</blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote>  To kickoff Holy Week, the state of Texas unceremoniously executed two not-quite-illustrious people over the span of seven days.  The death toll at Huntsville now stands at 9 during the first quarter of this not-quite-election year.  Waiting in line are nearly 450 others, about 40 percent of whom are black.  Absent from the media fanfare over the triumph of "equal justice" in the King-Byrd dragging case was any discussion of the casualness by which the good people of Texas freely ratchet up the number of casualties in their state.  Missing from stories about "presidential hopeful" George Bush II, moreover, is any consideration of the grim, but zealous brand of death politics he would bring to office.  As suggested by the quote above, Bush II has a clear historical predecessor.  Emperor of Rome from 14-37 A.D., Tiberius, a fiscal conservative, presided over an era likewise suffering from compassion fatigue.  Of noble blood but tyrannical instinct, by 29 A.D. he feared a palace coup.  While one of his governors stamped out treason in far-away Jerusalem, Tiberius embarked on a domestic purge in Rome.  Not content with the elimination of Sejanus, his primary foe, Tiberius went after the former's allies, friends, and children.  Unable to control his fury, the emperor even pushed his own astrologer off a cliff.  Tiberius occasionally sought to dampen the wildfire that his wrath had unleashed.  When hearsay threatened one of his henchmen, Tiberius wrote a letter on his behalf.  In it, the emperor called for an end to slanderous gossip, requesting "that words perversely misrepresented and the freedom of table talk might not be construed into a crime." Soon thereafter, though, incriminations freely returned because, as Tacitus observes, "every one was impatient to be the first to mark his victim, some to screen themselves, most from being, as it were, infected with the contagion of the malady."  So great became the pile of dead bodies during his reign that the emperor made viewing them, even by relatives, a severely punishable crime.  Perpetually insecure, Tiberius worried about his place in history.  Upon his death in 37, the ascension of his grandson, Caligula, carried out the family line. Decadent, dynastic and deadly, the Bush family holds many thrones.  Jeb's Florida, in fact, is a distant second to George II's Lone Star State on the execution charts.  Of the, say, 60 or so people Texas will extinguish between now the next presidential election, it seems doubtful that there is a messiah in the lot.  Though clearly not Milosevechian, Junior is just plain lethal.  Thus, as Holy Week passes and our national day of duty fast approaches, one might suggest that nothing conveys the currently pitiful state of American politics better than the old maxim: Death and Texas.</blockquote> <hr SIZE=5 WIDTH="100%"> <center> <a href="../homepage.htm">Railyard</a></center> </body> </html>