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Tue, Dec

Who is More Deserving of the Death Penalty?

VOICES

ACCORDING TO LIZ - Obama for his calculated order of the murder of Osama bin Laden?  The generals who approved it? Those who carried it out? 

The Ivy League grad with chronic back pain who shot the CEO of a health insurance company, notorious for its high levels of care denial so thousands suffered and/or died despite paying millions into the company’s coffers? 

That CEO who had personally profited from those deaths? 

The board of directors and stockholders who continuously rewarded him with astronomical bonuses for the profits his policies brought in? 

The private insurance companies that insert themselves between the patients and their doctors that double healthcare costs for Americans so too many die or live in pain, and have to watch their families suffer from the financial ruin that caring for them brings? 

Those who work in the divisions of those healthcare companies and don’t question the morality of making life-and-death decisions based on how the cost to succour a patient who has paid premiums for decades might affect their employer’s bottom line? 

The generations of politicians whose votes ghettoized millions of Black American, limiting their ability to purchase a home, feed their kids, obtain timely healthcare, and the opportunity to build themselves the American dream of self-sufficiency, freedom from paycheck loans, and not being one step away from eviction? 

Those who drive drunk or those who supplied them or those who market their poison or the government that profits from the taxes? 

The state executioner? 

The jury that decided on the death penalty? 

The judge that ratified it? 

The courts that allowed it? 

The citizens that accepted it? 

The police that withheld clearly exonerating evidence…? 

The executives that refused to pay for an adequate safety valve that led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion? 

The tobacco industry? 

The manufacturers of DDT and Agent Orange? 

The soldiers involved in the My Lai massacre or the Pentagon that sent them to Vietnam to fight an unjust war with inadequate support, and kept on lying about losses? 

The Attorney General who authorized torture or those who carried it out, knowing full well it was immoral and un-American? 

Biden’s bombing of Syria and the resulting “collateral” civilian deaths after rebel groups drove Bashar al-Assad to flee to Moscow? 

Senator Manchin, he of coal mines and oil pipelines? 

The government officials that, to cut costs, allowed for the poisoning of Flint’s water supply and the neurological damage of a generation of children? 

Google for knowingly financing, and the programmers and marketers of the Character.AI free friends chatbot for knowingly letting it loose on children prioritizing overtly sensationalistic responses and aggravating feelings of anxiety, depression, isolation, and suicide prevalent in kids seeking online solutions to real world unhappiness? 

And for inciting inappropriate sexualized behavior and impulsive violence including self-harm and, in one instance, sending a boy in Texas a text that “murdering his parents was a reasonable response to their limiting of his online activity”? 

The prime minister that bombs the civilian population of Gaza? 

The president that supplies the bombs? 

The companies that pay lobbyists huge sums of money to stop legislation that will save lives because it may cost them a few pennies per unit? 

Those politicians receiving the largesse of the lobbyists who put personal enrichment or electoral support above the wellbeing of their constituents? 

Oh, this is indeed a slippery path we tread.

(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about.  She can be reached at [email protected].)

 

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