Psycopathy

If, as the New Yuk Times tells us, a "nationwide shortage of several widely used anesthetics . . . has been exasperating doctors and veterinarians for months," then it certainly says nothing flattering about the American psycho psyche that the shortage didn't make the front page until it fucking got in the way of fucking killing people. Oh, good, okay, so now it's serious.

I mean, for a nation that goes around the world killing thousands upon thousands of people with robots and high-altitute aerial bombardment and white phosphorous incendiaries and depleted uranium munitions, our persistence in applying capital punishment to our own criminals (and not-criminals) is a very minor barbarism, and yet its clinicalization has got to be counted as a one of the weirder and creepier (and more revealing) aspects of our civilization. Yah, m'kay, we're gonna kill you, but we don't want it to hurt ya. That would be cruel. Talk about soothing moral platitudes. You're going to enact the ultimate cruelty, the most singularly irrevocable act of violence, and you're concerned that it's going to sting?