My read on this is that Hegseth told him "Hey we have this Palestinian-American Islamist terrorist why don't we execute him", Trump said it was a good idea and bailed out once someone told him that using a firing squad on a paraplegic would be bad optics.
heh we're seriously considering live-streaming someone's execution but live-streaming a woman taking off her shirt to the public would be an outrage. I lean toward "America f*ck yeah!" but I know there's plenty of stupid here as well.
What President Trump did was make us think past the sale. He made everyone agree to executing the POS by turning the argument into whether it should be televised.
From Daisaku Ikeda: The Courage of Nonviolence [1]
quote
Violence vs. Nonviolence: The Struggle of the Twenty-first Century
I am also reminded of a moving episode that Leo Tolstoy related in a letter written two months before his death. The letter, dated September 7, 1910, was addressed to Mahatma Gandhi.
The episode went something like this. There was a test on the subject of religion in a certain girls' school in Moscow. A bishop had come to the school and was quizzing the girls one by one about the Ten Commandments. When he came to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the bishop asked: "Does God forbid us to kill under all circumstances?"
The girls each answered as they had been taught. "No," they said, "not under all circumstances. We may kill in war or as legal punishment."
"Yes, that's right! You've answered correctly!" said the bishop.
Then one of the girls, her face flushed with indignation, spoke up: "Killing is wrong under all circumstances!"
The bishop was flustered and marshaled all his rhetorical skills to convince the girl that there were exceptions to the commandment against killing, but to no avail.
"No," she declared. "Killing is a sin under all circumstances. It says so in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus not only forbade killing but taught that we must do no harm to our neighbors."
In the face of truth in the girl's assertion, the bishop's authority and verbal skills were of no use whatsoever. In the end, he could only fall silent. The young girl, Tolstoy wrote with evident satisfaction, had proven victorious.
Let us amplify the words of that young girl--"It is wrong to kill, even in war!" And let us broadcast them to the world!
The twentieth century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. Have we learned anything from those horrific tragedies? In the new era of the twenty-first century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.
The real struggle of the twenty-first century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.
Who wouldn't be opposed. It is boring. Make it guillotine with a slide and bowling pins at the end. And take bets on Polymarket whether there will be split or no - then the numbers will be reversed.
We are moving anyway towards Escape from NY/LA world. Let's at least take the good parts from it.
Didn't Trump cancel the live streaming of the military execution?
I'd rather we got rid of the death penalty pretty much everywhere but the military, but I don't see how watching an execution really benefits anyone. Watching another human getting shot isn't going to benefit your soul or whatever you want to call it.
I agree. I don’t want to watch it, I’d rather have no death penalty, but if the government for and by the people is okay with killing citizens then perhaps we should be facing that, not turning our backs.
Perhaps we could then rally behind getting rid of death penalty. Or at the very least, ensure we aren’t botching every other one.
You were downvoted but you're right, live by the sword and take the risk to die by it. If you don't like the odds - and let's all hope the judicial system is efficient enough to make those odds really unfavourable - it is easy to avoid them by not committing capital crimes.
He/she isn't right, though. Capital punishment, at its core, is an emotional rather than logical response to a criminal offense.
It serves no purpose in preventing future crimes. First, because you've already caught the criminal, the proposed alternate sentence of life imprisonment without chance for parole already handles preventing that individual from committing further offenses. And second, it's been proven repeatedly that ratcheting up punishment as some sort of deterrent doesn't work because most people committing crimes either believe they're going to get away with it or aren't in a frame of mind to care about any penalties (e.g., crimes of passion).
It also fails to be an efficient way of dealing with a caught criminal. The combination of incarceration time, resources spent on appeals, and the cost of the actual execution methods makes death row inmates more expensive than lifers. We actually pay more to put people to death than we would jailing them for the rest of their lives.
Instead, people fight so hard to keep capital punishment around because it scratches the itch for vengeance.
> And second, it's been proven repeatedly that ratcheting up punishment as some sort of deterrent doesn't work
Who proved that? Have you lived in a high trust society that punishes crimes, or do you not think they exist?
Your point seems to be that people don't believe they will be punished. Everywhere I've been people did know they would be punished, severely. Organized theft in Singapore if you're a male younger than 50 could get you caned. Perhaps you're arguing that public punishment would help raise their awareness?
This is just a bizarre non-sequitor. Do you think that people are opposed to the death penalty because they’re worried that they personally will get executed?
Thanks. Commenting the same logic but on the individual is definitely a downvote risk! Why have normal expectations of people when you can have extraordinary expectations of the state, and want other people to pay for it?
There are many people in these threads that state that they don't like capital punishment (OK?), add zero supporting arguments, and aggressively downvote anyone who supports the death penalty.
Making it public will invite the deviants who derive pleasure from the audience. Look up historical behaviours of crowds in some of the last public executions in France.
If this were livestreamed you'd have just insanely grotesque stuff like livestream commentators narrating and reacting to the footage while polymarket ads play over it, making memes and remixes of it like what happened with the Charlie Kirk assassination clips. It's all sick IMO.
Good, maybe that will cause the >50% who support capital punishment to reevaluate their stance. Or at least the 30% cowards who support it but don’t want to watch.
Palmer Luckey had an ... interesting perspective on it. I was against it before, and I'm still against it, but his point was that the killing of a citizen is one of the largest possible flexes that a state can exercise, and to prevent against its abuse it should probably be more visible to more people
I think that there is likely _enough_ visibility in the case of the classic execution, which is only done after the fifth amendment has been thoroughly exercised and appeals process fully depleted, and (ironically) not nearly enough visibility in the exercise of state power done by drone strikes and such, and so I take his point and appreciate it for what it is, which predominately is that I hadn't thought about it in that way before -- I still oppose the idea, but perhaps less strongly than before now that I know that bloodlust isn't the only viable interest (tho still a tremendous worry to me)
I’m not American and I don’t support the death penalty.
That said…
If you’re going to do this, it absolutely should be a public event. If This is what a society does, the society have to own that imho. Anyone supporting it should be required to watch one first.
How can it be ok to do it but only secretly in a dark corner and not let anyone see?
1. Practically speaking, what's the intended effect, given that executions nowadays are pretty sanitized anyways? Lethal injection is basically equivalent to some guy going under anesthesia.
2. Do you actually believe in the implied principle of "if you support [x] you must watch every [x]", or are you just using it a cudgel against people you hate? Would it be fair game for anti-abortion groups to demand "if you support abortion you must watch every abortion"?
I killed chickens and fishes, but truly, hearing cows cry when their calves are taken away is still heartbreaking. Also seeing the pig moms trying to move to be able to see her children once in her life is extremely uncomfortable.
My philosophy is that I only eat meat I would personally be able to kill, which means chicken, ducks and fishes (probably game too). I still avoid battery chicken though.
I’ve worked on a slaughter floor before, and while it’s certainly not an enjoyable experience I can say with all honesty that a great deal is done to minimize suffering.
I'd like to see the rape gangs in the UK executed. As there were multiple, similar cases ran by different groups, I think it would deter the next group of rape gangs.
In this case, organized rape was effectively unpoliced for some time to avoid "community tensions" with police saying the children involved "were slags". The message should be sent that organized crime will now be prosecuted.
It's not that simple. To my knowledge, this problem goes back to the 1980s at least, and back then it wasn't Asian gangs. The excuses were the same. Social workers believed the under-age girls were entitled to a love life. Police thought they were slags. Nobody actually cared about them. Nobody did anything.
The ethnicity of the more recent perpetrators just provided another excuse. It wasn't the root cause of the inaction.
This seems like the "you can't flip the switch" meme.
Yes, it really is that simple. I can leave my laptop unattended in an unlocked coworking space in Singapore because people know they'll be punished if they rob me. It's marvellous.
I haven't heard of a similar case of organized mass rape in the UK before this, so it's surprising to read you comment, but if you have sources add them here. Like many of the UKs (and Europes) problems, the issue isn't ethnicity, but rather Islam, which explicitly permits sexual slavery.
I go back and forth on this. I'm generally opposed, but I also think that if we have a death penalty it shouldn't be so bloodless. It should be a beheading that the governor of the state has to do themselves. We shouldn't be able to pretend we aren't doing something incredibly violent
Then you have to decide what to do for public execution number 2 - do the same again and risk that people become desensitised to what's happening or just go even more violent?
This has the exact opposite effect from the research I've seen: public executions are associated with a higher-violence society via the "Brutalization Effect".
A government willing to participate in, and especially revel in, violence sets a precedent for the common people. It desensitizes them to the act and gives them an excuse that "if the government does it, I should be allowed to".
The government is supposed to reflect the moral and character of the society it operates. But it works both ways, and people (I imagine especially children) start to adopt the moral and character of the government - or an anarchic rejection thereof. So when you have Nazis, you get Hitlers Youth.
We should not be proud of executions. They are a dirty deed that "must" be done (though many would argue shouldn't - which I'm inclined to agree with after so many exonerations), so we should be ashamed and do it quietly, with shame for us and dignity for the victim.
…and once again, „flood the zone with shit“ works just beautifully.
They push out one outrageous diversion after another, and you fall for it.
It's not trolling when people actually die. https://www.newsweek.com/40-percent-us-covid-deaths-could-ha...
They're pretending it's just a game and they're in control - they're really not.
I wouldn't want to watch it. I think we should abolish the death penalty. Make people live the rest of their lives with their mistakes.
> Make people live the rest of their lives with their mistakes.
And occasionally people are exonerated, and it's better to set them free rather than shrugging at their graves.
My read on this is that Hegseth told him "Hey we have this Palestinian-American Islamist terrorist why don't we execute him", Trump said it was a good idea and bailed out once someone told him that using a firing squad on a paraplegic would be bad optics.
Doubtful, he has a history of ableism that his base revels in.
heh we're seriously considering live-streaming someone's execution but live-streaming a woman taking off her shirt to the public would be an outrage. I lean toward "America f*ck yeah!" but I know there's plenty of stupid here as well.
What President Trump did was make us think past the sale. He made everyone agree to executing the POS by turning the argument into whether it should be televised.
Repost: [0]
From Daisaku Ikeda: The Courage of Nonviolence [1]
quote
Violence vs. Nonviolence: The Struggle of the Twenty-first Century
I am also reminded of a moving episode that Leo Tolstoy related in a letter written two months before his death. The letter, dated September 7, 1910, was addressed to Mahatma Gandhi.
The episode went something like this. There was a test on the subject of religion in a certain girls' school in Moscow. A bishop had come to the school and was quizzing the girls one by one about the Ten Commandments. When he came to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the bishop asked: "Does God forbid us to kill under all circumstances?"
The girls each answered as they had been taught. "No," they said, "not under all circumstances. We may kill in war or as legal punishment."
"Yes, that's right! You've answered correctly!" said the bishop.
Then one of the girls, her face flushed with indignation, spoke up: "Killing is wrong under all circumstances!"
The bishop was flustered and marshaled all his rhetorical skills to convince the girl that there were exceptions to the commandment against killing, but to no avail.
"No," she declared. "Killing is a sin under all circumstances. It says so in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus not only forbade killing but taught that we must do no harm to our neighbors."
In the face of truth in the girl's assertion, the bishop's authority and verbal skills were of no use whatsoever. In the end, he could only fall silent. The young girl, Tolstoy wrote with evident satisfaction, had proven victorious.
Let us amplify the words of that young girl--"It is wrong to kill, even in war!" And let us broadcast them to the world!
The twentieth century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. Have we learned anything from those horrific tragedies? In the new era of the twenty-first century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.
The real struggle of the twenty-first century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.
end quote
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50060304#50060591
[1] https://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/resources/works/essays/peac...
I support the death penalty for people I personally want to kill, which is why the death penalty is probably a bad idea.
The other two in ten are not scheduled for execution.
Who wouldn't be opposed. It is boring. Make it guillotine with a slide and bowling pins at the end. And take bets on Polymarket whether there will be split or no - then the numbers will be reversed.
We are moving anyway towards Escape from NY/LA world. Let's at least take the good parts from it.
Didn't Trump cancel the live streaming of the military execution?
I'd rather we got rid of the death penalty pretty much everywhere but the military, but I don't see how watching an execution really benefits anyone. Watching another human getting shot isn't going to benefit your soul or whatever you want to call it.
The OP article is dated October 15, 2026, it also says:
> The poll was conducted online Oct. 9-13 among 2,545 U.S. adults nationwide reached through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel
Apparently Trump called off the livestream on October 15: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crx23qlnj27qo.
So this article is last week's news.
Who are the fucking ghouls that want to see someone executed live ? 20% of the population ? Jesus fucking tap-dancing christ almighty.
20% is a lot. All the families that were hurt by a terrorist attack, or even some attack, can have some relief by revenge. It makes sense.
Seems unlikely to me that 20% of the population were connected to a terrorist attack by someone who would be executed.
Even if, I don't see how seeing one of the perpetrators getting killed many years later would give relief.
I also believe eternal prison is a bigger punishment than execution.
Not by the same one that is going to be executed.
He spent his life in prison, now he would be executed live, everyone would see how he's going to die, and for him at least, it's very disrespecting.
It's not necessarily just about wanting to see someone executed. Which is worse:
- Executing people in a way that makes us not have to think about it as a society, or only think about it in passing
- Executing people in our faces, so we have to think about it
Personally I find the first option gross. "Out of sight, out of mind"--you know what I mean?
I agree. I don’t want to watch it, I’d rather have no death penalty, but if the government for and by the people is okay with killing citizens then perhaps we should be facing that, not turning our backs.
Perhaps we could then rally behind getting rid of death penalty. Or at the very least, ensure we aren’t botching every other one.
Well, the sanest option is to not have the death penalty at all. Anything else is trying to make the problem work.
The sanest option is not to commit capital crimes.
Is this just an argument to plead insanity? I wonder why this rarely works.
You were downvoted but you're right, live by the sword and take the risk to die by it. If you don't like the odds - and let's all hope the judicial system is efficient enough to make those odds really unfavourable - it is easy to avoid them by not committing capital crimes.
He/she isn't right, though. Capital punishment, at its core, is an emotional rather than logical response to a criminal offense.
It serves no purpose in preventing future crimes. First, because you've already caught the criminal, the proposed alternate sentence of life imprisonment without chance for parole already handles preventing that individual from committing further offenses. And second, it's been proven repeatedly that ratcheting up punishment as some sort of deterrent doesn't work because most people committing crimes either believe they're going to get away with it or aren't in a frame of mind to care about any penalties (e.g., crimes of passion).
It also fails to be an efficient way of dealing with a caught criminal. The combination of incarceration time, resources spent on appeals, and the cost of the actual execution methods makes death row inmates more expensive than lifers. We actually pay more to put people to death than we would jailing them for the rest of their lives.
Instead, people fight so hard to keep capital punishment around because it scratches the itch for vengeance.
> He/she isn't right
Just FYI, Philip is a "he" name.
> And second, it's been proven repeatedly that ratcheting up punishment as some sort of deterrent doesn't work
Who proved that? Have you lived in a high trust society that punishes crimes, or do you not think they exist?
Your point seems to be that people don't believe they will be punished. Everywhere I've been people did know they would be punished, severely. Organized theft in Singapore if you're a male younger than 50 could get you caned. Perhaps you're arguing that public punishment would help raise their awareness?
This is just a bizarre non-sequitor. Do you think that people are opposed to the death penalty because they’re worried that they personally will get executed?
Thanks. Commenting the same logic but on the individual is definitely a downvote risk! Why have normal expectations of people when you can have extraordinary expectations of the state, and want other people to pay for it?
There are many people in these threads that state that they don't like capital punishment (OK?), add zero supporting arguments, and aggressively downvote anyone who supports the death penalty.
Yes. I personally don't like the death penalty, but I wouldn't downvote it.
The sanest option is not to have capital crimes, that way nobody can commit them.
Making it public will invite the deviants who derive pleasure from the audience. Look up historical behaviours of crowds in some of the last public executions in France.
If this were livestreamed you'd have just insanely grotesque stuff like livestream commentators narrating and reacting to the footage while polymarket ads play over it, making memes and remixes of it like what happened with the Charlie Kirk assassination clips. It's all sick IMO.
Good, maybe that will cause the >50% who support capital punishment to reevaluate their stance. Or at least the 30% cowards who support it but don’t want to watch.
Palmer Luckey had an ... interesting perspective on it. I was against it before, and I'm still against it, but his point was that the killing of a citizen is one of the largest possible flexes that a state can exercise, and to prevent against its abuse it should probably be more visible to more people
I think that there is likely _enough_ visibility in the case of the classic execution, which is only done after the fifth amendment has been thoroughly exercised and appeals process fully depleted, and (ironically) not nearly enough visibility in the exercise of state power done by drone strikes and such, and so I take his point and appreciate it for what it is, which predominately is that I hadn't thought about it in that way before -- I still oppose the idea, but perhaps less strongly than before now that I know that bloodlust isn't the only viable interest (tho still a tremendous worry to me)
Except the execution wasn't being presented as a somber recognition of the brutalism of the death penalty, but a celebration of vengeance.
[dead]
I’m not American and I don’t support the death penalty.
That said…
If you’re going to do this, it absolutely should be a public event. If This is what a society does, the society have to own that imho. Anyone supporting it should be required to watch one first.
How can it be ok to do it but only secretly in a dark corner and not let anyone see?
Everyone who is for the death penalty should be legally obligated to watch every single execution.
1. Practically speaking, what's the intended effect, given that executions nowadays are pretty sanitized anyways? Lethal injection is basically equivalent to some guy going under anesthesia.
2. Do you actually believe in the implied principle of "if you support [x] you must watch every [x]", or are you just using it a cudgel against people you hate? Would it be fair game for anti-abortion groups to demand "if you support abortion you must watch every abortion"?
> Lethal injection is basically equivalent to some guy going under anesthesia.
The “safe” dose of midazolam used for anesthesia is orders of magnitude smaller than the dose commonly used in lethal injection.
> Would it be fair game for anti-abortion groups to demand "if you support abortion you must watch every abortion"?
This was actually a tactic used by anti-abortion groups back when Roe was settled law.
While we are at it, Can we have all non-vegetarians watch all the slaughter houses?
Many if not all of us would be okay. Not to mention that many people have some experience of killing animals for food anyway.
I killed chickens and fishes, but truly, hearing cows cry when their calves are taken away is still heartbreaking. Also seeing the pig moms trying to move to be able to see her children once in her life is extremely uncomfortable.
My philosophy is that I only eat meat I would personally be able to kill, which means chicken, ducks and fishes (probably game too). I still avoid battery chicken though.
I think killing animals for food is really quite different from the industrialized animal farming that we have today.
That’s why do it, though.
I’ve worked on a slaughter floor before, and while it’s certainly not an enjoyable experience I can say with all honesty that a great deal is done to minimize suffering.
seems fair. As a meat eater I am for it
If we do this, Abortion proponenets are going to have a lot of watching to do.
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[dead]
I'd like to see the rape gangs in the UK executed. As there were multiple, similar cases ran by different groups, I think it would deter the next group of rape gangs.
If the death penalty deterred anyone, there only would have been a single death penalty ever (or only one for every sort of crime).
Have you been to Singapore recently?
In this case, organized rape was effectively unpoliced for some time to avoid "community tensions" with police saying the children involved "were slags". The message should be sent that organized crime will now be prosecuted.
It's not that simple. To my knowledge, this problem goes back to the 1980s at least, and back then it wasn't Asian gangs. The excuses were the same. Social workers believed the under-age girls were entitled to a love life. Police thought they were slags. Nobody actually cared about them. Nobody did anything.
The ethnicity of the more recent perpetrators just provided another excuse. It wasn't the root cause of the inaction.
This seems like the "you can't flip the switch" meme.
Yes, it really is that simple. I can leave my laptop unattended in an unlocked coworking space in Singapore because people know they'll be punished if they rob me. It's marvellous.
I haven't heard of a similar case of organized mass rape in the UK before this, so it's surprising to read you comment, but if you have sources add them here. Like many of the UKs (and Europes) problems, the issue isn't ethnicity, but rather Islam, which explicitly permits sexual slavery.
[dead]
I go back and forth on this. I'm generally opposed, but I also think that if we have a death penalty it shouldn't be so bloodless. It should be a beheading that the governor of the state has to do themselves. We shouldn't be able to pretend we aren't doing something incredibly violent
Then you have to decide what to do for public execution number 2 - do the same again and risk that people become desensitised to what's happening or just go even more violent?
Treason is a line with which I’m comfortable.
This has the exact opposite effect from the research I've seen: public executions are associated with a higher-violence society via the "Brutalization Effect".
A government willing to participate in, and especially revel in, violence sets a precedent for the common people. It desensitizes them to the act and gives them an excuse that "if the government does it, I should be allowed to".
The government is supposed to reflect the moral and character of the society it operates. But it works both ways, and people (I imagine especially children) start to adopt the moral and character of the government - or an anarchic rejection thereof. So when you have Nazis, you get Hitlers Youth.
We should not be proud of executions. They are a dirty deed that "must" be done (though many would argue shouldn't - which I'm inclined to agree with after so many exonerations), so we should be ashamed and do it quietly, with shame for us and dignity for the victim.
I wonder how people would weigh in on the death penalty if the executioner got selected from the criminal's peers akin to a jury.
I suspect you'd have a lot of people going to jail for civil disobedience.
Probably bad idea. People are incompetent in killing.
The real “news” is only 8 in 10 Americans oppose live-streaming execution