Liberalism was in the closet making babies and I saw one of the babies and the baby looked at me!

The “Trump is the Peace President” tendency of the anti-anti-Trump faction has been quite recently for reasons that are perhaps not entirely mysterious. But you can’t always keep an apologist for right-wing authoritarianism down. The Trump administration’s announcement of a public execution attracted the attention of Dan Bessner, who knows who is responsible — “liberals”:

While Tennessee Democrats have criticized Republicans for botching two executions, and while Hegseth’s announcement has sparked some outrage, there has been little mainstream discussion about ending the death penalty tout court. Abolishing the death penalty used to be a fairly popular liberal cause. But in 1988, after CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked presidential candidate Michael Dukakis whether he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and murdered, Dukakis said he wouldn’t. The response was later regarded as a fatal moment for his campaign.

Soon thereafter, Third Way Democrats decided that the fight against the death penalty was one they were destined to lose. So they embraced it with enthusiasm. In 1992, presidential candidate and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton interrupted his campaign to fly home to Arkansas to oversee the execution of cop killer Rickey Ray Rector, who was intellectually disabled. In 1994, as president, Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which expanded the list of federal crimes eligible for capital punishment. While Democrats have occasionally expressed interest in reforming the death penalty, it hasn’t been a major focus of the party for decades.

Hegseth’s stated intention to livestream Hasan’s execution is therefore somewhat strange. Trumpists and plenty of other Republicans will likely have no problem with it. And while Democrats will decry Hegseth’s methods, there seems to be little interest in mounting a concerted effort to oppose the death penalty itself. I imagine that Hegseth plans to broadcast Hasan’s death in order to distract from the Trump Administration’s idiotic war against Iran, which has delivered the United States a decisive strategic loss and raised prices on gasoline and other consumer goods. If you can’t give the public bread, might as well give them circuses, though I doubt even that will work.

[…]

I’ve argued on this Substack that liberalism has crushed any attempt to imagine an alternative to itself. And with liberalism collapsing, we risk plunging into nihilism. I can think of no more apt demonstration of our increasing nihilism than millions of Americans watching on their phones as their government shoots a man to death, before scrolling on to the next distraction.

This is the world we live in. Changing it will require far more than legislation that ends the death penalty. It will require answering a question. To paraphrase a friendo of mine, if liberalism brought you to this, of what use was liberalism?

Ah yes, “liberalism” is the reason for Pete Hegseth wanting a public firing squad, and “liberals” cannot imagine a world without the death penalty. Let us counter this narrative with some actual facts:

• Every broadly “liberal” country except the United States has long since abolished the death penalty.
• Every state controlled by Democrats has either a de jure or de facto death penalty ban.
• A Supreme Court with a median liberal vote would be overwhelmingly likely to rule the death penalty unconstitutional.
• No federal execution has taken place under a Democratic administration since is was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976.
• Joe Biden commuted the vast majority of outstanding federal death sentences.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln!

We may also note here that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are not “liberals” even in the broad philosophical sense. Indeed the fact that they’re anti-liberals is precisely why consistently Bessner prefers them to Democrats. I agree that Bill Clinton should not have approved the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, but citing this action taken by a candidate for president more than 30 years following three consectuive Republican landslides as defining “liberalism” is consummate bad faith. Speaking of ancient history, I am reminded of Freddie deBoer asserting that all liberals scretly support torture, and his sole citation was…Alan Dershowitz.

Oh, and I have an update:

Trump said today that the government will not livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan — contradicting a recent announcement by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Liberalism” is so incapable of offering any resistance to the death penalty that this public execution idea was hideously unpopular and was quickly jettisoned. Whoops!

To paraphrase a reference I also understand, if your anti-liberalism has brought you to consistently make dishonest arguments to shill for authoritarian goons, of what use was anti-liberalism?