Just Business. History and Practice of the Death Penalty in the United States.

My personal experience suggests that a successful businessman and a smart (in the sense of education, not household intelligence) person are often different people.

No, there are coincidences, but in general, a good classical education and a developed intellect, which almost always hypertrophy empathy, sense of aesthetics and contemplation, are bad for business.

The businessman is a predator, he is hungry, he has quick reactions, he works on instincts, a minimum of doubt, morality does not bother him.

Somewhere here is the secret of success of the USA and Americans. They are simple guys, natural behaviorists, they don't feel sentiments, they just want to earn money, it doesn't matter how.

And they have made money. A lot, more than anyone else. And the glitter of gold overshadows everything, so many things are invisible.

But if you put on special glasses, through which the golden rays do not penetrate, the reason for their outstanding successes becomes visible and at the same time becomes scary.

Look at the history and practice of the death penalty in the United States.

It is something eerie.

Since the end of the 18th century in Europe there has been a rethinking of the death penalty as a ritual practice.

It used to be a torture of the body and mind: burn alive, hang so that the person would suffer in a noose for 10 minutes, bury alive, drown, etc.

The punished person should be in pain, fear and shame. His pain, fear and shame should have as many witnesses as possible. This, by the way, is connected with the tradition of forgiveness of those who somehow survived the execution, in addition to purely religious (God's will!), there is also the fact of execution of punishment over the perishable body - it was terrible, painful and shameful. I survived, but that was not the main thing.

The rejection of mystical thinking led Europeans to the fact that execution should be quick, painless, non-public and inevitable. Since punishment is not pain or fear, but the termination of biological existence. And then they abandoned the practice altogether.

And in this comparison, Americans make a frightening impression.
They are not adults, they are teenagers - instead of empathy, cruelty, instead of intelligence, curiosity.

Let's kill people with alternating currents! It is painful for the convict, but a good advertisement for the permanent, and it is also interesting to see what will happen to a person if he is shocked with a current of 2700 volts.

For this purpose, there is a small auditorium in front of the electric chair: the curious, including relatives of the executed person, want to see how a loved one will be killed in such an intricate way.

And then there's the gas chamber as an alternative to the chair. But there were problems there too. Victims often suffered for a long time, and were usually asked to inhale the gas more deeply to ease their suffering and to let the staff go to lunch sooner.

The lethal injection was also staged in the character of the show: several drugs are injected into the inmate's vein from an automated system. The audience can see the process of gradual injection, as the poison from the flasks dwindles. It is not uncommon for people to survive, too.

This past weekend, curious Americans decided to try a new toy - nitrogen asphyxiation. Executed Kenneth Smith instead of the promised few seconds was conscious, according to various reports, from 15 to 30 minutes. Smith's children came to their father's execution wearing T-shirts with memorial inscriptions about their father, expecting to sell them later.

And they will. Business is such a thing, and Americans are the best at it, because they don't have the feelings that an adult should have, but their instincts are well developed.
Teenagers.

And cherry...
The death penalty for children in the world's most democratic country:

In the freedom-loving US, it was legal to legally execute children.

Execution of minors in the USA was banned only in 2005, 14 years after the USSR ceased to exist!

The youngest was George Stinney

13-year-old Joe Persons was executed

A similar fate awaited Fortune Ferguson

Leonard Shockley, a black man, was executed in a gas chamber.

James Arsin was 10 years old when he committed robbery and murder, he spent 13 years behind bars before being executed. Yes, that's the age of majority, but he was sentenced to death after 13 years in prison for what he did when he was 10 years old....

Democracy, it's so democratic....

first img were creating by bing

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Thank you for being here and reading to the end!