12.15 Inertia - Status Quo

Bestest Friend and I are in the middle of a blog project. Each day of the month we will post a picture on a pre-determined theme and write a little something about it. The theme for the fifteenth day of each month is "Inertia."
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China.
Iran.
Saudi Arabia.
Iraq.
The United States.

Those countries were the top five state sanctioned executioners in 2014.

I used to do an ambivalent dance around the death penalty, but watching my Facebook friends gloat in glee over the government-sponsored murder of a twenty-two year old yesterday turned my stomach.

1) He will now serve as a martyr for all terrorists. His picture will be used in recruitment materials for anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Christian groups from here to eternity.

2) The amount of the money the US government will shell out for the costs of housing him on death row, paying for the legal appeals, and then actually executing him will cost more than 50% the cost of just keeping him in jail until the day he dies.

3) It doesn't make it right for the victims or their families.  I don't know how I would feel if I were one of those people, but it seems to me like violence in the face of unbelievable violence would not help me to sleep better at night.

Interstate implies speed. Rust implies sitting there for a long time.

But maybe it was just the joy with which people celebrated this news that just brought me down. If you ask me tomorrow, maybe I'll go back to my ambivalent stand on the death penalty.

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To see what Bestest Friend wrote about the theme of the day, check out her blog, Too Legit to Quit.