A reader writes, aghast at government plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major who murdered 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009.
"I am so upset, so disgusted and in disbelief," she says. "What has happened to this country?"
I want to sympathize, but can't.
"Disbelief?" I reply. "Really? You are paying attention, right? This is very on brand for them."
Between condemning children in Africa to death by denying food — and now vaccines — to shooting Americans in the street for failing to comply promptly to the orders of masked men, to the certain atrocities going on out of sight in windowless ICE prisons nationwide, the idea of the government beginning to ballyhoo their horrors has a certain appeal. At least we'll be able to witness this one. And unlike most victims of official violence, Hasan bears undeniable guilt.
I'm generally against the death penalty, because it is so misapplied, racially and economically. But I'm willing to make exceptions — I'm glad Timothy McVeigh is not still around, writing manifestos, enjoying cheeseburgers and watching Netflix in his cell. Hasan falls into that category.
Which doesn't mean his death should be served up as public entertainment? Or should it?
We've fallen out of practice watching public executions. To get myself in the spirit, I pulled down a collection of William Makepeace Thackeray's journalism and reread "Going to See a Man Hanged."
Writing in 1840, the future author of "Vanity Fair" spends pages setting the scene — his sleepless night before friends arrive in a carriage at 3 a.m., imagining the final hours of "the poor wretch" awaiting execution. The gallows set up in the street before Newgate Prison; the sight sends "a kind of dumb electric shock" through Thackeray. The "gentle and good humored" crowd of 40,000 — Charles Dickens is also there. The cursing ragamuffins and teenage prostitutes, "giggling, drinking, and romping." The jokes, the rumors, the catcalls.
The condemned man, François Courvoisier, a Swiss valet who slit the throat of his employer, regards the crowd with "a wild, imploring look. His mouth, contracted into a sort of pitiful smile."
Yet as a nightcap is being drawn over the condemned man's head, and though he'd waited four hours to see it, Thackeray turns away. He writes:
"I am not ashamed to say that I could look no more, but shut my eyes as the last dreadful act was going on, which sent this wretched, guilty soul in to the presence of God."
Even unseen, the execution makes Thackeray feel complicit:
"The sight has left on my mind an extraordinary feeling of terror and shame. It seems to me that I have been abetting an act of frightful wickedness and violence, performed by a set of men against one of their fellows, and I pray God that it may soon be out of the power of any man in England to witness such a hideous and degrading sight."
It would — though not "soon." The last public execution in England occurred in 1868. The practice ended out of embarrassment over the large, celebratory crowds that gather.
But not in Burma. In the 1920s, George Orwell, an official of the Indian Imperial Police, witnesses an execution close up.
It is a "sodden morning of the rains." The condemned man, "a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes," chained to the belts of his warders, who walk close by him.
Orwell walks behind, watching, later writing:
"His feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path."
This small, human gesture gets to Orwell.
"Till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man," he writes. "When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. ... His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned — reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together ... and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone — one mind less, one world less."
I don't believe I'll watch the livestream Dec. 3, assuming it isn't canceled due to public outcry. No doubt there will be parties, with nachos and beer, among those who don't mind such public entertainment. But I hold out hope that maybe, just as the British public and George Orwell were revolted, maybe some who watch will be disgusted by the spectacle. Maybe this will reach Americans in a way other official excesses haven't.
