Nuclear Plants and Electric Chairs

My opposition to both rests on the same logical foundation as the one the Governor of Illinois voiced while suspending the death penalty in his state:

If the system can't be guaranteed, 100-percent error-free, then we shouldn't have the system.

And what system, administered by human beings in all their messy imperfection, is going to meet that standard? When the stakes are as high as in executions and nuclear power the answer is obvious.

Enthusiasm for both institutions rests mostly on unsupported assumptions of patriarchal infallibility- that everyone killed by the state is, of course, a vile degenerate who deserves to be murdered in the name of justice and that, of course, no event would ever outstrip the imaginations of Nuclear engineers. And yeah, there's a certain amount of optimistic blindness necessary for most human activity, or nobody'd ever leave the house. But when it comes to lethal systems within our control the blinders must come off or we risk losing our humanity.

Because innocent people have been put to death, and that even prior to the last week the imaginations of nuclear engineers have shown serious limitations.

The wholesale election of right wing saboteurs to positions in a democracy they dream destroying, preferably after taking a long, relaxing piss on women, minorities and anyone who actually works for a living, then looting its coffers for their corporate buddies, is another example of this blindness, or perhaps more accurately, a love of Patriarchy, abdicating responsibility for important decisions and turning them over to Daddy. It's always going to be popular with certain folk to demonize and scapegoat The Other, however the fearmongers choose to define it this week.

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is archetypal, although he's sparked dissent (to put it mildly) by ignoring the cardinal rule of Viking raiders, always rape and pillage BEFORE you burn. It seems the electorate doesn't mind raping or pillaging of the public trust per se, but when you combine the two activites simultaneously with arson, while everyone's still in the building, they finally take note. Sometimes the hubris of its enemies is democracy's only defense.

The whole housing/bank implosion destroyed my belief in capitalism as a working framework for society. Any system that responds to catastrophe by ignoring obvious, effective remedies in favor of filling gaping holes with bales of money then whistling loudly and pretending nothing happened while the institutions that created the holes carry on exactly as before, is fatally flawed. The complete disinterest of the general population was even more disheartening. Free passes for the elite criminals paid for by crippling burdens imposed on the general public didn't seem to bother many people, as long as some Daddy type was willing to give them a scapegoat to blame, most notably poor brown people who tricked those innocent bankers into giving them loans they couldn't afford. The story doesn't even have to hold up very long (that one certainly didn't), it just has to distract people long enough for the next disaster to come along and steal the spotlight.

But as the uprising in Wisconsin shows, never say never.
I'm just hoping enough people shed their blinders, and do it in time, to keep the ideologues from driving us all over a cliff into Galt's Gulch.