>The death penalty is merely a way of creating smoke to trigger the
>aphorism where there's smoke there's fire: that is to enhance the
>illusion that "evil" is grounded in personal acts and that crime rather
>than capital is the enemy.
>
>Carrol
I agree entirely with Joanna's take, and go part of the way with Carrol's. That the state legitimises its killings on the implicit premise that an evil is the sort of thing one extirpates by way of the termination of the individual perpetrator of an individual deed seems right to me. That being the case, it's not a premise that stands up to a moment's glance, of course. When a state murders a murderer who murdered because the state murders, we obviously do have something of a systemic problem - a structural evil, if you like - and one with all kinds of potential for murderous escalation, too. A system of evils begetting evils ...
I don't know where McVeigh is going with the astute observation that his act can not tenably be distinguished from acts perpetrated by the US state (seems peculiar, to say the least, to make one's 'point' by emulating the phobic object in precisely the respect that makes it phobic), but I shouldn't be surprised if there is something to the martyr argument that's been going the rounds. The bed-rock myth of Christianity is, after all, that 'He died for us' - and much of the far-right does seem to sustain itself in a certain Christian-soldier ethos; hence Oklahoma on Waco's anniversary. What then on June 11 next year? Or any June 11?
And it seems entirely possible that, having killed McVeigh, the state shall have to kill again anyway, for if blood be the currency of justice, McVeigh's alleged accomplices may have to be killed, too ('tis more important for justice to be seen to be imposed consistently than judiciously). So the more justice we get, the more martyrs we make, and the more justice we'll be needing.
Methinks that's a hard road to exit once you're on it.
Cheers, Rob.