The Gruesome Ending of the Trump Administration

Donald Trump is ending his presidency in the most disgusting style imaginable. He's decided to set aside laws and procedures in order to kill.

In its hurry to use its final days in power to execute federal prisoners, the administration of President Donald Trump has trampled over an array of barriers, both legal and practical, according to court records that have not been previously reported.

Officials gave public explanations for their choice of which prisoners should die that misstated key facts from the cases. They moved ahead with executions in the middle of the night. They left one prisoner strapped to the gurney while lawyers worked to remove a court order. They executed a second prisoner while an appeal was still pending, leaving the court to then dismiss the appeal as “moot” because the man was already dead. They bought drugs from a secret pharmacy that failed a quality test. They hired private executioners and paid them in cash.

I didn't even know there was such a thing as private executioner. How does one qualify for that? And do you put it on your resume? Probably not since you get paid in cash.
Still got an appeal in the courts? Too bad. Were going to kill you with experimental drugs. Who gives a shit if you suffer.

Now some may say 'but these are murderers'. That they killed innocent people and therefore deserve to die. That's certainly the position of the Trump Administration.
Or not.
See the Trump Administration thinks that killing innocent people is a great thing that deserves to be rewarded if it's done in the right way.

the president had authorized pardons for four former U.S. service members who were convicted of killing civilians in Iraq while working there as contractors for the notorious defense giant Blackwater in 2007...
War crimes pardons have become a trend for the Trump administration. In May 2019, Trump pardoned former Army Lt. Michael Behenna, who was imprisoned for five years for the killing of an unarmed Iraqi prisoner in 2008. The following November, Trump granted pardons to Army Maj. Matthew Golsteyn and 1st Lt. Clint Lorance over their respective war crimes charges and restored the rank of Navy Special Warfare Operator First Class Edward Gallagher to the rank of E-7 following his conviction for unlawfully posing with the body of an ISIS fighter he was accused of killing.

Pardoning every war crime we commit makes us a pro-war crime country.
Let's face it. Trump is just more boorish about it.
Bush and Obama refused to prosecute our extensive torture program.
We express outrage over the killing of innocence at home, but are largely indifferent to us killing innocents abroad. And really the only outrage over killing at home results in enthusiastic killing of those murderers.
So really the only consistency is pro-killing.

Unfortunately, the average American appears to have a relatively high tolerance for war crimes abroad. According to a 2016 Red Cross report, Americans “are substantially more comfortable with war crimes than are populations of other western countries like the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, and even Russia,” as The Week put it at the time. “When asked whether ‘a captured enemy combatant [can] be tortured to obtain important military information,’ just 30 percent of Americans said ‘no,’ the lowest of any country surveyed except Israel and Nigeria.” Indeed, one 2018 poll suggested that a significant portion of Americans believed U.S. service members shouldn’t be prosecuted for overseas war crimes simply because “war is a stressful situation and allowances should be made.”

This is a damning statement on American society. The lack of humanity leaves me speechless.
Fortunately there are still tiny candles of hope. For instance while American civilians endorse war crimes (especially Republicans), the American military members oppose them.
While the Trump Administration tries to kill the International Criminal Court, US judge blocked their efforts.

A U.S. judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from sanctioning human rights lawyers for supporting the work of the world's war crimes tribunal, the International Criminal Court (ICC).
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vtcc73's picture

His butt ugly face and nasty attitude/demeanor is our faces in the mirror. It isn't just trumpistas, the American Taliban, conservatives, or Republicans who support our illegal wars or actions. Earlier generations of Americans fought and died to build the treaties and international law we so contemptuously piss on today. (The military in general doesn't support these policies because they have skin in the game unlike the millions mini-Dick Cheneys of the US.) We're so fucking exceptional that we think we can do whatever we want with impunity. I want the idea that we're always the good guys to end. Most often, now, we're the problem, not a solution.

The time trump has been in office has ripped the mask off of America. Good on 'im, the shit. What hasn't happened is most of us have thought to look at ourselves and our own barbarian attitudes.

Who thinks Joe and Kamala might make an exception and try to change just this one little thing? Crazy talk, huh? Joe promised nothing will change and I think that's one promise he'd die to keep.

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27 users have voted.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

@vtcc73 Unless genocide and slavery are admirable goals.

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17 users have voted.

NYCVG

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@NYCVG Enough people - largely, I suspect, immigrants like my own ancestors who came to America only in the early 20th Century - naively believed in the Dream that for a few decades, they were able to make it a reality. Letting that go and "accepting reality" would be a criminal waste of a miracle like none before it.

We need to view the Roosevelt Revolution not as something that came and went, but as something that was only the beginning, and must now fight for its continued survival....

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11 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

polkageist's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

You express my ideas perfectly. Thank you.

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6 users have voted.

-Greed is not a virtue.
-Socialism: the radical idea of sharing.
-Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

@vtcc73

Sooner the folks tuned into MSM propaganda begin to understand
that the US represents is total military/financial control of the world
and the lack of morality involved
the better chance we have to shut down the machine
as a nation

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18 users have voted.

@vtcc73

Black and brown women should be able to commit human rights violations too, donchakno.

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8 users have voted.
vtcc73's picture

@gjohnsit Nothing says you’re mainstream than being able to commit human rights violations.

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5 users have voted.

"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."

Seriously though, with the for profit prison system we have, I'd find it completely believable that we'd have outsourced the executioners too. Hey, maybe that's who did Epstein in?

Depressing. Just another day in the US of A.

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20 users have voted.

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@Dr. John Carpenter
How do you qualify for private executioner? And who hires?
What does the job interview process look like?

"I always wanted to kill. As a child I killed the neighbor's pets.
After graduating college I killed some hitchhikers and homeless people.
I feel like it's time I went pro, and I'm looking for a company that will appreciate my skill set."

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11 users have voted.

@gjohnsit @gjohnsit through stories from his son, a co-worker back in the early '70's, was given whiskey, and a bonus, and time off with pay.
He pulled the lever on Old Sparky, the electric chair at the Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas.
The man was drunk when he did it, drunk forevermore. Efficient murder, ya think? He fell on the lever. He could always say it was unintentional, then go drink himself into a stupor, and then death.
edit: The prison warden supplied his whiskey.

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp
No amount of money would be enough.

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5 users have voted.

@gjohnsit of his family. The neighbors and church members shunned them.
The man I worked with often appeared in the office drunk and would go on crying jags.

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3 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@Dr. John Carpenter under scrutiny, the corporate name changed.
I think they are EXE now. Tomorrow, it may be something else.

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3 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

It's as if H. G. Well's vision of humanity speciating into brutish, cruel Morlocks and vapid, helpless Eloi is trying to become a reality...https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-left-is-now-the-right

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8 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

there has been the elevation of any group wearing a uniform to hero status. The bigger the gun, the higher the status. Support our troops. Every one of them capable of another My Lai, some few looking forward to the opportunity to repeat history, maybe here on US soil. The police are outfitted as a paramilitary branch of the capitalist security forces. It's us and them all the way. This insurrection will unite both parties in restricting whatever rights we still might have, in the name of freedom. Wear that flag pin like your life depended on it.

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7 users have voted.
RantingRooster's picture

that we (Americans) are such "killers"?

Our history is rife with "killing", anyone and anything that impedes our "manifest destiny", because hey, it's our world, because, well, God said so... or something like that.

1984 was supposed to be a movie, not a f-king instruction manual...

Drinks

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5 users have voted.

C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote