Three States decide to kill bad guys:
Donald Trump’s upset presidential election win has dominated global headlines, but for those against capital punishment, Election Day offered other surprise: three states voted to reinstate or otherwise support the death penalty.
The measures voted through in Oklahoma, Nebraska and California via referendum are not expected to spark a sharp rise in the number of executions, but activists say they are a step in the wrong direction.
“Those states have chosen a failed, broken policy when they had the chance to move towards a new dawn,” said Shari Silberstein, director of the advocacy group Equal Justice USA.
“The death penalty’s demise is inevitable. We have a long list of evidence why that’s true,” she added.
In 2016, the United States is on course for its lowest number of executions since 1991.
This comes as post-conviction appeals in capital cases tend to become more and more frequent than in other cases, increasing the time and cost before an execution can actually be carried out.
There is also a shortage of the chemicals needed for lethal injections because pharmaceutical firms, mainly those located in Europe where the death penalty has been abolished, refuse to supply them.
I love how liberals, always expecting of ease and lack of adversity, are always certain that what they want is the inevitable path forward. The world can literally, never go K. Just having liberals realize that K is inevitable and they are doomed to failure will be one of the greatest accomplishments of bringing r/K Theory mainstream.
Favoring the death penalty has little to do with cost or ease of the process, of course. This is the growth of amygdala. People have a certain baseline of amygdala. When they hear some guy murdered a young mother, and their amygdala is in an irritable mood, those irritations add together and they want him dead. For a K-strategist, that is instinctual, and when they demand it, rabbits retreat.
But if resources are everywhere, everyone is satisfied, and amygdalae are quieted, then the murder of an innocent girl isn’t as affecting, and the innate K’s may cede the ground to the innate rabbits who are instinctually opposed to all mortality.
I view it as one more data point indicating that the economy is still down, resources are restricting, and the nation is heading K.
It will remain to be seen if Donald Trump is the one leader who can lift the economy, free up resource availability, and still drive the psychologies of the nation to go K, so as to avert the decline.
Just when you thought the history being made in front of us couldn’t get any more interesting.