Troy Davis is going to die in two hours. Davis has been on death row in Georgia for 20 years, convicted of killing a cop. A white cop. Davis is black.
There are a couple of problems here, however. One, there is not now, nor has there ever been, one shred of physical evidence that ties Davis to the murder. And, two, seven of the nine "witnesses" who testified against him have recanted their stories. Want a little more? One of the two witnesses who didn't change stories is held to be the actual shooter by several who testified against Davis. Why'd they lie? It's a textbook case of police misconduct. More than one witness was threatened with lengthy jail terms of their own if they didn't "cooperate" and others were given the chance to identify Davis in ways that any viewer of Law and Order knows to be unconstitutional.
Long story short, Georgia is getting ready to kill another black man, with no more evidence behind them than was held against all those who were lynched a century ago. This, after the Governor of Texas was applauded at the Republican Presidential Debate last week for holding some sort of perverse record for most executions presided over, by all those great Christians who populate the GOP.
I'm sorry, Troy. And I don't see how my life is going to be changed for the better in any way by your death.
But that's not the popular sentiment in our country today.
A lot of people say our country is going to hell in a handbasket.
I say we're already there.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Silence is Golden, or Just Hypocritical?
As we near the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, I'm already feeling inundated by the images, memories, retrospectives and so on. One thing, I've noted, is missing: Falwell's and Robertson's alleged theologizing on the causes of the attacks. You may recall, the alleged Reverends saw the whole thing in terms of God's vengeance and/or not-so-benign neglect as retaliation for, depending on which day, accepting our LGBT brothers and sisters as actual citizens, needing to be "brought back to Jesus" or some other such bullshit.
They, and others, shoveled the same manure on New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina and the Corps of Engineers wiped out that wonderful city. Too many boobies for beads, don't you know. And so God recreated Sodom and Gomorrah with water playing the part of fire.
Dad tells the story of going to visit a wonderful lady, Dr. Sarah V. Clement, late in her life. She was a retired Lambuth College professor and member of the church he was serving in Jackson. She'd been his teacher. When he arrived, she had her Bibles, including her Greek New Testament, spread out on her coffee table before her. The television was blaring one of the mid-80's plague of "tele-vangelists" and she had a terribly puzzled countenance. She asked Dad to listen for a minute, and then turned to him, serious as a heart attack, and said that she had been listening, been moved to look up his text for herself in all the translations, and untranslated as well, and had come to the conclusion that TV Preacher Boy had "No familiarity whatsoever" with the text from which he claimed to be working.
That's sort of the way I feel about the "God did that to get you" crowd.
That said, however, I'm wondering why they've been so quiet on the Texas wildfires. I know that raising the question of their silence is kind of like the old "looking a gift horse in the mouth," but I just can't help myself.
If your God is the kind of petty despot that jerks the short leash on you every time he (No, I won't go gender-neutral in this context; such an asshole god would surely be male) gets a burr under the saddle, what would he be saying in burning Texas from pillar to post? Could it have anything to do with the thunderous, revolting ovation that greeted Brian Williams' reference to Gov. Perry's record 234 executions presided over? That number includes minors, mentally disabled, and at least a handful of people now commonly perceived to have been wrongly convicted. Williams' interrupted question was, basically, "Do you sleep well at night after all those people were put to death on your watch?" Perhaps encouraged by the cheering, perhaps being totally amoral, Perry told Williams that he sleeps very well at night, thank you. Rick isn't the kind of fellow, you see, that's going to be bothered by, oh, almost 10 dozen dead people in his wake; he's got a political career to advance.
And Texas burns...why?
They, and others, shoveled the same manure on New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina and the Corps of Engineers wiped out that wonderful city. Too many boobies for beads, don't you know. And so God recreated Sodom and Gomorrah with water playing the part of fire.
Dad tells the story of going to visit a wonderful lady, Dr. Sarah V. Clement, late in her life. She was a retired Lambuth College professor and member of the church he was serving in Jackson. She'd been his teacher. When he arrived, she had her Bibles, including her Greek New Testament, spread out on her coffee table before her. The television was blaring one of the mid-80's plague of "tele-vangelists" and she had a terribly puzzled countenance. She asked Dad to listen for a minute, and then turned to him, serious as a heart attack, and said that she had been listening, been moved to look up his text for herself in all the translations, and untranslated as well, and had come to the conclusion that TV Preacher Boy had "No familiarity whatsoever" with the text from which he claimed to be working.
That's sort of the way I feel about the "God did that to get you" crowd.
That said, however, I'm wondering why they've been so quiet on the Texas wildfires. I know that raising the question of their silence is kind of like the old "looking a gift horse in the mouth," but I just can't help myself.
If your God is the kind of petty despot that jerks the short leash on you every time he (No, I won't go gender-neutral in this context; such an asshole god would surely be male) gets a burr under the saddle, what would he be saying in burning Texas from pillar to post? Could it have anything to do with the thunderous, revolting ovation that greeted Brian Williams' reference to Gov. Perry's record 234 executions presided over? That number includes minors, mentally disabled, and at least a handful of people now commonly perceived to have been wrongly convicted. Williams' interrupted question was, basically, "Do you sleep well at night after all those people were put to death on your watch?" Perhaps encouraged by the cheering, perhaps being totally amoral, Perry told Williams that he sleeps very well at night, thank you. Rick isn't the kind of fellow, you see, that's going to be bothered by, oh, almost 10 dozen dead people in his wake; he's got a political career to advance.
And Texas burns...why?
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