How low can they go?

It will come as no surprise that, as they wrap up their four years in office - four years characterized largely by malfeasance and incompetence - Trump & Co. are hell-bent on making sure that their last few weeks are even more rancid than the years leading up to them. Seriously, we have a "president" trying to overturn an election he lost roundly, undermine democracy, and foment violence on the part of his civilian Storm Troopers. 

As if that weren't enough - and it's never enough with these guys - they're continuing to botch the pandemic response, failing to meet with Biden's folks to ensure an orderly transition of power, and setting all sorts of administrative and personnel landmines for the incoming administration. Not to mention possibly starting yet another unwinnable war in the Mideast out of sheer power- and bloodlust. (I'm less concerned with his efforts to destroy the Republican Party.)

And then, of course, there's the flurry of last minute executions of prisoners. (C.f., power- and bloodlust.)

You will not be surprised to find that I'm not a proponent of the death penalty. There've been too many mistakes made with it, and it's been meted out way too unevenly and erratically. 

Certainly there are plenty of crimes that justify life imprisonment, and plenty of criminals who are so completely damaged that we can't risk having them walking around among us. For them, I'm all for throwing away the key (but still treating them as humanely and decently as possible).

But the death penalty? 

Most countries have done away with it, and our persistence puts us right up there in the top tier. Yes, there are worse places: China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia et and al. here and there. But that's not such great company to keep. Among the developed countries we most closely identify with, it's American exceptionalism all the way. Yay us!

So of course Trump and Barr, before he exited stage right just before Christmas, wanted to Be Best in every terrible way possible, so they revved up the executions. And in the Trump Misadministration's inimitable way, their execution of executions has been a cluster:

Officials gave public explanations for their choice of which prisoners should die that misstated key facts from the cases. They moved ahead with executions in the middle of the night. They left one prisoner strapped to the gurney while lawyers worked to remove a court order. They executed a second prisoner while an appeal was still pending, leaving the court to then dismiss the appeal as “moot” because the man was already dead. They bought drugs from a secret pharmacy that failed a quality test. They hired private executioners and paid them in cash. (Source: ProPublica)

Going ahead while an appeal is pending, rendering the appeal "moot." Wow. Even by Trump standards, just wow. Shopping around to find what was probably one of the only pharmacies that would supply them with drug and having it fail a quality test. No surprise here. (They also, by the way, considered bringing back firing squads.)

But what really stopped me in my tracks was that the government "hired private executioners and paid them in cash."

For unclear reasons, BOP planned to have the executions carried out by two private contractors, rather than government employees. The government won’t disclose the contractors’ names or profession, and it pays them in cash. “If we didn’t pay them in cash,” a BOP lawyer said in a deposition, “they probably wouldn’t participate.”

I was going to ask myself "where do we find men like these?" And then I remembered that Trump just pardoned four Blackwater mercenaries who'd been convicted of massacring Iraqi civilians. So they would have been available, and we know they like working freelance and might have welcomed the work as they integrated back into society. 

Anyway, Trump will have presided over the executions of more people than the last ten presidents combined, which I'm sure will leave him at least temporarily sated. He's been hankering after seeing the death penalty carried out since he famously called for the execution of the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers (do I have to mention Black and Hispanic?) accused of the vicious rape of a female jogger (do I have to mention white and affluent). Even when it's been pointed out to him that these young men were all found innocent, Trump has persisted that he was right to call for their death.

While I doubt he would have the guts to actually be an executioner himself, Trump sure does respond to the siren call of the executioner's song. 

Good thing for him there's no death penalty for the crimes that make up his personal portfolio. At least none that we know of.

I keep asking myself just how low they can go. Cash payments to hired killers? That's right down there. Let's see what else the next couple of weeks brings.

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Googling for an image to use for this post, I found that you buy blueprints for a DIY electric chair, and a miniature electric chair (pictured above) for use in a doll house. Oh, what a world we live in.