by Lee Camp

This goes out to all the liberals.

If Trump were president right now would you be furious about the US-backed genocide Israel is perpetrating? 

If Trump were president right now would you be irate about the fact the administration has done nearly nothing about climate crisis? 

If Trump were president right now would you scream obscenities over the fact that 43 million Americans have student loan debt and the Biden Administration has managed to erase it for a whopping 1/4th of 1% of those struggling people? 

If Trump were president, would you care that the US government can’t provide good healthcare to millions of Americans?

If Trump were president right now would you have your undies in a twist over the US government spending more on military than the bottom 170 countries combined — and spending more every year no matter how much the Pentagon proclaims they have no idea where the money is going? 

by Lee Camp

Can you imagine having a US government that isn’t constantly putting us all at the cusp of annihilation? Can you? I can’t. It’s like trying to imagine a New York City corner store without a cat sleeping on the bread. Every step of the way, seemingly no matter the president, the US government thrusts us all, naked and scared, into the event horizon of extinction. And every 4 years we vote for them to do it again.

They imperil us and our families and our lives and our carefully coiffed dogs constantly and they’re doing it again right now by supporting Israel’s special genocide operation. Nothing puts nuclear powers around the globe on red alert with their fingers hovering just above the red button like full-on genocide.

But this is just the most recent of many. In case you need a quick refresher:

1. Iraq - Years of fighting and killing supposedly in order to stop weapons of mass destruction that never existed. The US killed roughly one million people.

2. Afghanistan - Over 20 years long, a complete disaster with unclear goals. Ostensibly it started in order to get the guys who perpetrated 9/11 even though 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi. The US spent trillions of dollars and killed roughly 880,000 people. 

by Lee Camp

What’s one more human being? What’s it matter if this country murders one more innocent person? The USA has murdered millions of innocent people around the world in the past quarter century, so what’s one more? We’re an empire built from our founding days on genocide, so what’s one more guy? 

And this particular guy actually had some sort of legal proceeding before the state of Oklahoma decided they’d put him on their murder schedule. The state of Oklahoma has a bunch of folks they plan to murder this year, and they’d really like to get moving. …But something is a little different with this one. In this rare case the state of OK is actually asking the Supreme Court to stop them from murdering the man. Even the Attorney General Gentner Drummond has confessed errors and seeks to vacate the conviction. (But then again, the Attorney General’s name is “Gentner,” so how much can you trust him? That’s not a name and he knows it.)

The soon-to-be victim’s name is Richard Glossip, and basically the state destroyed key evidence before his retrial so that he could not use it in his defense and DNA testing could not be done to prove him innocent. Despite the Attorney General asking that Glossip be spared, the Governor Kevin Stitt (also not a name) has said, “Let the chips fall where they may. If we murder him, we murder him. Who gives a tip of turd?” …He didn’t actually say that, but that’s how he’s acting.

So now we’re waiting to see whether the Supreme Court will save the life of a man who even the guy who convicted him said should be released. In the uniquely brutal “justice” system of the US empire, this case is even more disturbing than normal, which says a lot. It’s like saying the Zodiac killer was really kinda harsh this time around.

But in many ways, it doesn’t matter who this particular wrongly convicted man is, the entire capital punishment system is utterly insane. Let me count the ways (eleven to be precise): 

1. It murders innocent people often. 

Cameron Todd Willingham, Troy Davis, Carlos DeLuna and countless others have been murdered by the death penalty despite being innocent. Then there’s 190 people since 1973 who have been sitting on death row waiting to be killed when they were exonerated and finally freed. 

2. It’s racially biased in multiple ways.